The Palestinian Authority (PA) announced Wednesday a five-day lockdown across the West Bank in response to a major increase in coronavirus cases and deaths in recent days, following the easing of previous restrictions.
Palestinian Spokesman Ibrahim Melhem stated that the lockdown will take effect in all governorates of the West Bank starting from Friday; people required to take shelter at home.
"Pharmacies, bakeries, and supermarkets were exempted." he added.
In the past two weeks, Palestinian health authorities reported over 1,700 confirmed coronavirus cases in the West Bank city of Hebron and hundreds more in Bethlehem and Nablus.
On March 5, the Palestinian Authority enforced a total West Bank lockdown after the first coronavirus cases were reported, which was lifted in late May.
The occupied West Bank has registered a total of 3,045 positive coronavirus cases and 11 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
More about Coronavirus
The novel coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China, and has infected more than one million people and killed over 234,139 worldwide. It also hit several celebrities and top political figures around the world.
The virus is a new member of the Coronaviruses group, which was never identified in humans. The viruses’ family also includes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV), which cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases.
Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. Humans and animals such as mammals and birds can be affected by the disease.
The name coronavirus is derived from the Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “halo”.
On February 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the official name for the disease caused by the new coronavirus is Covid-19, taken from the words “corona”, “virus” and “disease”.
In December 2019, an outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China. On 31 December 2019, the outbreak was traced to a novel strain of coronavirus, which was given the interim name 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organization (WHO), it was later renamed SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.
On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a global pandemic as the new virus has rapidly spread to more than 800,000 people from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
However, it announced the novel COVID-19 is still “controllable”.
“We are very concerned to achieve the alarming levels of the outbreak and its severity, as well as the alarming levels of inaction,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva.
“Now, COVID-19 can be categorized as a pandemic… we have never seen a pandemic spread due to the coronavirus,” Adhanom added.
“Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change the assessment of the threat posed by the Coronavirus,” the WHO director-general stressed.
Transmission of viruses between humans happens when someone comes into contact with an infected person’s secretions, such as droplets in a cough.
Coronavirus can also be transmitted by coming into contact with something an infected person has touched and then touching your mouth, nose, or eyes.
It is known that older people appear to be more vulnerable to the effects of the emerging virus.
The virus caused complete paralysis in all activities and events with large gatherings worldwide due to concerns over the spread of the virus.
The global pandemic, like everyone around the globe, had infected many famous personalities who have gone public with their results, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife Sophie, and the Universal Music chairman and CEO Lucian Graingem who was admitted into the hospital to be treated for the virus.
People across the globe partake in self-isolation for 14 days as an effective precautionary measure to protect those around them and themselves from contracting COVID-19.
Follow the latest news on Google News
