Coronavirus in Israel: Palestinian workers to receive Moderna vaccines

Palestinians who work in Israel are expected to be inoculated with Moderna vaccines, a senior health fund official has told The Jerusalem Post.

The Palestinian Authority said last week that Israel had agreed to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian workers. Until now, it was unclear which make of vaccine Israel would use for this purpose – Pfizer or Moderna.

Israel has come under fire in the foreign media for failing to vaccinate the Palestinians while it sits on around 100,000 doses of Moderna vaccines at the logistics unit of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries near Ben-Gurion Airport.

A spokesperson for the Health Ministry said that Israel had delayed use of the Moderna vaccine for logistical reasons, including the fact that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines must be stored at different temperatures, distributed in different amounts, and that the second doses are given at different intervals.

Israel has purchased six million Moderna vaccine doses. On Sunday, 175,000 are due to be delivered, and 700,000 more during March and April.

Some 5,000 Moderna vaccine doses were committed to the PA to inoculate its healthcare workers, of which only 2,000 have been delivered.

Several senior-level Israeli health officials met with their Palestinian counterparts in Ramallah on February 19 to evaluate the situation there regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The PA soon afterwards announced the agreement to inoculate some 100,000 Palestinians who work in Israel. The Health Ministry has not confirmed the report.

More than half of Israel’s population has had at least one shot of the Pfizer vaccine, the Health Ministry reported on Friday.

Further shipments of Pfizer vaccines are expected to arrive in the next two weeks, the health fund official told the Post. He said that supply was expected to continue arriving for the next four weeks but was unsure how many vaccines would be coming and in how many shipments.

The official said that it is possible that Palestinians will now receive the Pfizer vaccines, given that there are no longer fears that Israel will run out, but added that, “as far as I know,” Moderna is still the plan.