In the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, crowded with people infected with Coronavirus waiting to receive medical service, one of the workers says, "Sometimes we wait for the death of one of the injured so that another patient takes his place from the emergency room because of the family crisis," referring to the possibility Collapse of Palestinian hospitals.
"The epidemiological situation is serious and the occupancy rate of hospital beds ranges between 100% and 102%," Health Minister Mai Kaileh announced on Tuesday.
"Most of the beds are occupied," Kayleh said during her signing of an agreement to establish a new emergency hospital in the yard of Ramallah Hospital, with a capacity of 50 beds.
At a time when the Authority is struggling to contain the epidemic and provide vaccinations for its citizens, Israel has completed the vaccination of more than half of its 9 million people.
On Wednesday, Palestinians in the West Bank received a first batch of Covid-19 vaccines, according to the Kovacs mechanism designated for deprived areas.
An Israeli security source said, "About 60,000 doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines intended for the Palestinians, as part of the Kovacs program, arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv."
In the emergency department of Ramallah Hospital, where there are 18 beds, out of the 370 beds contained in the medical complex, the majority of which are designated for treating those infected with the virus, the eighty-eight-year-old Palestinian woman lies with a virus-infected company and tries to breathe through an oxygen tube while the groans of patients rise in the corridors of the department.
Not far from a company, a man in his seventies sat on his bed in a room designated for resuscitation, inhaling oxygen and looking from afar at passers-by.
Recent weeks have witnessed a steady increase in the number of HIV infections, by about two thousand cases per day.
The occupied West Bank recorded more than 158 thousand injuries and 1770 deaths, while the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip counted about 58 thousand injuries and 572 deaths, according to the latest toll published on Wednesday.
Palestinian hospitals are trying to contain the health situation, as the administrations of some hospitals, such as the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah and the Red Crescent Hospital in Al-Bireh, have worked to equip mobile rooms (caravans) outside the buildings to accommodate the increasing number of injuries.
In front of the Ramallah Hospital, there are three caravans standing on which are written that it is a donation from a Palestinian lawyer and has been allocated for the initial examination of patients.
The hospital administration has also converted the initial examination rooms into emergency rooms and housing for those infected with the virus.
"We have reached the red line," the Health Minister said in a previous statement.
And at Dora Hospital in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, the hospital´s medical director told AFP that the hospital is in a state of confusion.
He added, "Today, there are 75 cases in hospital, including 28 in intensive care on ventilators, 14 cases in intermediate care and the rest of the cases in departments."
And it refers to raising the hospital´s capacity to eighty beds instead of sixty. Rabei stresses the need to "find other solutions (...) We recently received more than fifty patients, some of whom remained and some of them completed treatment at home."
According to Rabei, the hospital also suffers from a shortage of medical staff, which has been working under pressure for a year, and its members suffer from exhaustion and lack of leave.
The number of hospitals in the Palestinian Territory is 84, between public and private, while the family-to-population ratio is about one and a half beds per 1,000 people, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.
The overcrowding in Palestinian hospitals and the fear of death as a result have prompted those infected with the virus to refrain from going to hospitals.
Several Palestinian villages and cities witnessed campaigns collecting donations from the people in favor of buying respirators.
In the town of Silwad, north of Ramallah, the villagers who live in the United States of America donated more than 50 oxygen devices, each costing $ 1,000, in a move aimed at keeping the injured inside their towns and avoiding their going to the crowded main hospitals in the cities.
Silwad Mayor Osama Hammad said, "About ten people from the town have died in Ramallah and Chavez Hospital (Hugo Chavez Hospital, northeast of Ramallah), and new people infected with the virus are refusing to go to these hospitals."
Hammad added, "We announced a donation of oxygen devices to keep the injured in the town and treat them in the local clinic instead of going to the main hospitals and dying."
He said, "At the beginning we announced our need for seven devices, but the people of the village donated more than fifty devices."
On Tuesday, he announced the closure of the town of about ten thousand people, for a period of 48 hours, due to the high number of injuries, as it reached 75 injuries during the past twenty-four hours.
The Palestinian Authority had announced that it had contracted with four companies to provide anti-Coronavirus vaccines.
Earlier, the Palestinian Authority obtained 12,000 doses of anti-Corona vaccines, ten thousand of which were sent by Russia, while Israel, which began last week, transferred a campaign to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian workers with permits to work in it or in its settlements in the occupied West Bank, by allocating two thousand doses of vaccine. Moderna them.
The Palestinian Authority faced criticism internally over the mechanism for distributing these vaccines.
A worker at the Palestinian Ministry of Health - who preferred not to be named - says to France Press, "If we had started vaccination at the time Israel started, we would have no problem."
And he adds: "Now that Israel has vaccinated the Palestinians residing in it, and the Palestinian workers, there is no longer a possibility to transmit the infection to us, and therefore the virus will concentrate on us, so the next three months are very important for us."
