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August 7th, 2021 
Awake Goy Palestinians walk by a UN school closed due to lockdown orders in Gaza City on April 6, 2021. (Photo: Ashraf Amra)
The Latest
- 346,576 Palestinians tested positive for COVID-19; 340,988 recoveries; 3,879 deaths
- Of those who tested positive 200,583 live in the West Bank and 117,120 live in Gaza
- 893,105 Israelis tested positive for COVID-19; 858,260 recoveries; 6,516 deaths
With laboratory testing still about a third of what it was a few months ago, it’s not possible to extract trends from the data on new Palestinian COVID-19 cases. Right now, it looks like new infections are down, but health officials are already discussing coping with a fourth wave and expanding health services to keep pace. So while we don’t have an accurate count on how many are catching COVID-19, what we do know is the vaccination rate.
As of yesterday, 607,942 Palestinians have received at least one dose, and 423,327 are fully vaccinated. That’s for both the West Bank and Gaza. That’s only 9% of the population.
Meanwhile, next door in Israel, where the vaccination rate is over 60%, health officials are pressing ahead with a plan to give a booster, or third dose, to persons over 60 years old. More than 200,000 have already received the third dose.
“In the next two to three weeks, whoever is over the age of 60, and has yet to have been vaccinated, is in especial danger,” Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Thursday. Unvaccinated individuals, he explained, are “six times” more likely to catch COVID-19 “than someone who has been vaccinated a third time.”
Both France and Germany have announced they will also vaccinate older adults beginning in September, despite a warning from the World Health Organization to suspend booster shots because of global inequities in supplies.
“I understand the concern of all Governments to protect their people from the Delta variant, but we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,” Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said Wednesday.
The big picture: Of countries that are moving forward with administering a third dose, all have vaccination rates over 60%, while the lowest-income countries have a vaccination rate hovering around 1%. The global average is 15.2% fully vaccinated, meaning Palestinians are clearly in the bottom half of the world when it comes to inoculation access.
What happens in a blackout?
No housework, no school work, no lights, no fans–and certainly no AC–and the refrigerators are full of shoes. Palestinians in Gaza are still without regular power after current lines were blasted in an escalation with Israel in May, and more than a decade of siege that has deprived them of regular electricity.
This week, the International Committee for the Red Cross published the results of a survey on how Palestinians are impacted by blackouts that last up to 12 hours a day.
“It feels just like a cemetery when the power is out,” Mariam Hunaideq, a mother of six who lives in Nahr Al-Barid in the southern Gaza Strip, told researchers.
“This issue becomes extra problematic during the peak of summer and poses a threat to the health and daily life for Gazans, with the majority of the population being unable to refrigerate food and wastewater treatment plants unable to operate,” the ICRC said.
Around 500,000 of a population of 2 million are able to afford diesel generators, but for most, backup power is simply unaffordable. Of those who have alternatives forms of power 57% said they can’t afford to run their generators around the clock.
As a result, 82% of Palestinians are unable to refrigerate food, some showing researchers how the appliance is used to store shoes, instead of perishables. When blackouts hit, respondents said they cannot do housework or schoolwork, and the surge when the grid goes on and off damages devices.
Sometimes, power is “restored when we are asleep. This is completely useless for us,” 10-year-old Yousef al-Sheikh told the ICRC. “I wish to become an electrical engineer to solve people’s problems and let them enjoy a full day of electricity supply. No child should face what happened to me.”
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