A Palestinian policeman stands guard at a checkpoint during the lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Gaza City, on Jan. 2, 2021. A Palestinian health official said on Saturday that the first shipment of the vaccine to combat coronavirus is expected to arrive in the Gaza Strip by March. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

 A Palestinian health official said on Saturday that the first shipment of the vaccine to combat coronavirus is expected to arrive in the Gaza Strip by March.

Director of the European Gaza Hospital, Yousef al-Akkad, said in a press statement sent to Xinhua that "according to what the World Health Organization (WHO) informed us, the vaccine is expected to arrive in the besieged Gaza Strip maximum by March."

Regarding the measures that were taken to limit the spread of coronavirus in the coastal enclave, he said that the situation is stable after the governmental follow-up committee's measures were fully implemented.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila said that 25 more deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, adding that 1,064 new COVID-19 cases and 1,477 recoveries were recorded.

"The recovery rate is currently 86.4 percent of the total cases recorded since the outbreak of the coronavirus in Palestine in March, 12.6 percent remain active, and 1 percent have died," al-Kaila said in a press statement.