The Gaza Ministry of Health has notified the emergence of 177 new cases, bringing the total number of infections to 713 since the beginning of the pandemic, 687 of them through community transmission.
According to health officials, one person died today of covid-19, increasing the number of deaths to seven.
Initially, the Gaza Strip was able to get rid of the coronavirus by detecting cases from the border and isolating them in hospitals in the area, but on August 24 it recorded the first local infections in a refugee camp, which spread throughout the enclave.
The Islamic movement Hamas, which controls the strip, immediately imposed a strict confinement on the more than two million inhabitants until “new warning”.
The fragile local health system, after more than a decade of Israeli blockade, and the fact that it is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, heightens fears of a worsening humanitarian situation in the enclave.
The United Nations warned this week of the enclave’s difficulties in facing a possible further spread of the pandemic.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed at least 869,718 deaths and infected more than 26.3 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 1,833 people out of 59,457 confirmed as infected died, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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