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March 19th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Palestinians will kick off their national vaccination campaign Sunday, offering long-awaited jabs to the general public for the first time following the arrival of doses from the GAVI Alliance and COVAX, a vaccine-sharing program.
The West Bank and Gaza received their first round of allocations on Wednesday, a total of 61,440 doses, 24,000 from AstraZeneca, and 37,440 from Pfizer/BioNTech. Over 40,000 doses reached the West Bank, and more than 20,000 were allocated for Gaza. Gaza has already received 60,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V from the UAE.
To get a better sense of how these little vials get across the globe and into the arms of Palestinians–not to mention all while being transported at subzero temperatures–I spoke with Giorgio Figus, head of supply chain for UNICEF in the oPt.
To start with, there’s no reinventing of the wheel. The United Nations, through UNICEF, has been inoculating Palestinians against infectious diseases since 2009. Their partner, GAVI, which fundraises for and procures the doses, has provided vaccines to over 822 million children in their two decades of operation. When the pandemic broke out last year, GAVI began fundraising to cover the purchase of 2 billion doses, which will reach the most vulnerable 20% of the population of more than 90 countries and territories.
What is different this time, Figus explained, until the coronavirus pandemic, no one had attempted to move this scale of vaccines at super cold temperatures before. The Pfizer vaccine must be transported at -112 degrees to -76 degrees Fahrenheit.
To reach those super cold temperatures, the Pfizer vaccines are packed up in labs in the U.S. with dry ice and sent to the airport. From the moment the boxes are sealed, the clock starts ticking.
“It was five days in total from the moment the manufacturer started to prepare the boxes,” Figus said of a test-run UNICEF conducted last year with diagnostic kits. “I think, by the moment it arrived at Ben Gurion, we still had 48 hours to bring them to the final destination.”
If at this point there is any concern the vaccines won’t make it from the tarmac to fridges in the West Bank and Gaza, the ice can be swapped out at the airport. “I’ve done it myself in the Central African Republic,” Figus said.
“You open the box, you exchange the ice packs, you put it back and that’s it. Anyway, you’ve got always a temperature logger inside of these boxes. So you can always afterward check if the cold chain has been maintained,” he continued.
Once on the ground, the vaccines are physically moved through the airport by a logistics company, IMEX, and customs agents who take the vials “immediately to some cold rooms that they have at Ben Gurion Airport,” Figus said.
From the airport, it is onto ground transport. The vaccines are tightly stowed in pallets, each pallet can contain up to 25,000 doses.
“So you’re going to have one truck, which is going to be pretty much empty,” Figus said. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s up to 10 to 15 pallets inside of these trucks.”
Next, the shipments travel to cold storage centers, one in Jericho in the West Bank, and one at the Islamic University in Gaza. For AstraZeneca from Oxford’s labs, the process is less delicate. The vaccines are stored at a more traditional temperature in a cold supply chain, between 36 degrees to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. In the West Bank, these vaccines are stocked in the main vaccine storage center in Nablus.
Recent reports of potential blood clots from the vaccine have caused the Palestinian ministry of health to pause the rollout of AstraZeneca until there is a “scientific decision from the WHO.”
The cold storage centers are both less than a two-hour drive from the airport but are beyond a series of checkpoints. The West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem were occupied by Israel in 1967 and Israeli authorities control the entrances in and out of the territory.
“We have liaised with the Israeli COGAT [officials] and the Israeli customs to ensure that there were no delays when the items arrived at Ben Gurion Airport,” Figus said. During the dry-run in 2020, “On the same day that the goods arrived, they were both released from customs and Ben Gurion and brought into Gaza and into the West Bank.”
After reaching the central warehouses, local Palestinian health officials are responsible for the distribution of the vaccines. With just two ultra-cold centers, Palestinians are operating on limited infrastructure. “If we got all 20 percent of the vaccines arriving at one time, there would be a gap,” in storage space Figus said, “But considering that they won’t arrive in one go, it’s fine.”
Thus far, around 4,900 people in the West Bank and 10,000 in Gaza have received their first dose of either the Moderna vaccine or Sputnik V, procured directly through the Palestinian Authority or donated by Israel.
“It’s like a courier company that moves parcels around the world. It’s a similar kind of process,” though it is not “treated in the same way as diamonds, or gold, or precious minerals of some sort.”
“It’s much more systematic, and sincerely, the volumes are significantly higher than that of precious stones,” Figus said.
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