Israel: West Bank virus wards fill up, testing centres busy as ever

While more than half of Israel's population has been vaccinated, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the COVID-19 wards are overstretched, testing centres are as busy as ever and new lockdown measures have been announced.

The Palestinian Authority has acquired only a few thousand doses of the virus vaccine, not even enough for frontline health workers.

The territory has seen a spike of new coronavirus cases in recent days, with nearly 2,000 new cases reported Tuesday alone.

Meanwhile, in Israel, the government wants to send thousands of doses to friendly countries while West Bank hospitals are filling up.

A woman who identified herself as Umm Bashar brought her mother to the main hospital in Ramallah three days ago after her oxygen levels dropped.

She's still waiting in the emergency unit for a bed in a newly expanded COVID-19 ward.

At a testing centre across town, scores of people gathered in an auditorium were waiting to be swabbed.

Many showed symptoms, and several said members of their households had tested positive.

Tayeb Zeineddin, a volunteer medic who has been working at the test centre since the pandemic began said the situation is worsening.

The Palestinian Authority has reported more than 130,000 cases in the West Bank since the outbreak began and at least 1,510 people have died.

Ramallah resident Ibrahim Abu Safiya expressed his anger while waiting to get tested for COVID-19, saying that Israel should be responsible to provide virus vaccines to the Palestinian authority.

In recent days, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under fire for reportedly planning to share tens of thousands of surplus vaccines with allies in Africa, Europe and Latin America while providing little to the Palestinians.

Israeli media have said Netanyahu sought to reward countries that support Israel's claim to contested Jerusalem and those with budding ties to Israel.

Israel's attorney general froze the program, determining Netanyahu had improperly acted alone.

While vaccinating its own Arab population, Israel has provided only 2,000 Moderna doses to the Palestinian Authority, and it recently approved plans to vaccinate the over 100,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who work in Israel and Jewish settlements.

Israeli public health officials have urged the government to go even further and vaccinate the entire West Bank population, given the large degree of interaction between the sides.