Israel's Severe Airstrikes, Siege Wreck Gaza Health Care as COVID Third Wave Looms
On 5/21/21 at 9:30 AM EDT
Gaza's threadbare health care system was already withering under the pressures of the coronavirus pandemic, treating long-term injuries from past Israeli military action, and a siege that limited medical supplies before the latest bombardment.
Now, after the most recent airstrikes in this new round of fighting between the Israeli government and the Hamas militant group that controls the Palestinian Gaza Strip, a third wave of COVID-19 is creeping up on its overwhelmed, exhausted medical workers.
In eleven days of airstrikes and rocket fire, 244 are dead—including 12 Israelis and 232 Palestinians—and hundreds more wounded, the vast majority in Gaza, which has a densely packed population of two million. At least 65 children are among the dead, 63 of them in Gaza.