The Palestinian Authority’s “health ministry” said on Sunday it had identified the first case of the Omicron coronavirus variant in the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported.
The carrier is a Gaza resident who was infected within the coastal territory, ministry official Majdi Dhair told a news conference.
Dhair said this meant the variant, first identified in southern Africa and Hong Kong last month, existed in Gaza and was now spreading among the population.
Gaza, with a population of 2.2 million people, has registered 189,837 COVID-19 infections and 1,691 deaths, according to Reuters.
Dhair urged Gazans to get vaccinated, putting the percentage of those who had already received shots at around 40 percent.
The PA officially launched its COVID-19 vaccination campaign in early 2021, with health workers receiving the first shots.
The campaign began after Israel transferred 2,000 doses of Moderna’s vaccine and said it had earmarked another 3,000 shots for Palestinian Arabs.
Gaza, too, received vaccine doses from Israel, despite objections to the move by the families of the Israeli soldiers whose bodies are being held by Hamas.
In addition, former senior Fatah member Mohammed Dahlan orchestrated a shipment of around 20,000 coronavirus vaccine doses from the United Arab Emirates to Gaza, calling the shipment a “generous grant” from the UAE “at a sensitive time where the pandemic is targeting all our beloved.”