Gaza running out of coronavirus tests, warns Hamas-run Health Ministry

A healthcare worker gives hand sanitizer to people in Gaza City, 18 March 2020

Adam Rasgon writes in Times of Israel, “A spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry on Sunday said authorities in the Gaza Strip have nearly run out of kits to test for the highly contagious coronavirus. “What is available to us in terms of coronavirus laboratory tests is very scarce. It will be gone within days,” Ashraf al-Qidra told a press conference in Gaza. “Therefore, we turn to international organizations and relevant international and local parties to provide a sufficient amount of the laboratory tests.”

“Qidra said the ministry was testing people being held in quarantine facilities around the Strip. Medical professionals in Gaza had conducted, as of Saturday, 1,157 tests on people in Gaza for COVID-19, according to a ministry document. There were also 1,897 people in quarantine facilities in the coastal enclave, the document stated. Both the World Health Organization and the Palestinian Authority have provided authorities in Gaza with the testing materials.”…

“In early March, Abdelnasser Soboh, the head of the World Health Organization’s sub-office in Gaza, said that the coastal enclave’s health infrastructure would not be able to handle hundreds or thousands of cases of the virus. “The health system in Gaza is already shaky and barely functioning. It cannot take on the burden of a large number of cases,” he told The Times of Israel, warning that such a scenario could contribute to its collapse. Hospitals in Gaza frequently lack sufficient medications and medical equipment and often rely on backup generators to maintain a consistent flow of power.” (more…)