United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
situation overview
As of 4 May, some 532 Palestinians are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 in the oPt, including 170 in East Jerusalem,[1] 345 in the reminder of the West Bank and 17 in the Gaza Strip. This is an increase of 25 compared to last week, with at least 103 recovered and no new deaths recorded.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH), since the onset of the pandemic, nearly 34,000 laboratory samples have been tested and approximately 14,800 Palestinians are in quarantine at home, or in designated facilities for monitoring purposes.
Addressing the critical gaps in supplies needed to contain and manage the pandemic remains the main priority of the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the humanitarian community. The main items required include testing kits, personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and essential Intensive Care Unit (ICU) equipment (see detailed table below). These gaps are the result of the fragile situation of the Palestinian health system, even before the crisis, exacerbated by global shortages since then.
On 4 May, President Abbas extended for an additional month, the State of Emergency which had originally been declared on 5 March across the oPt, and then continued until 3 May. Noting that “a large share of the population was already vulnerable even before the current outbreak”, the World Bank has estimated that Palestinian economy will shrink in 2020 between 2.6 to 7.6 per cent compared to 2019, depending on the length of restrictions.
read the full report:
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/covid-19-emergency-situation-report-7
