The State of Palestine first identified its cases in the Bethlehem area on 5 March 2020,[2] when a group of Greek tourists who visited a hotel in late February tested positive for the disease.

The senior United Nations official in the region told the Security Council in a 23 April 2020 video conference meeting that Israelis and Palestinians are cooperating in unprecedented ways to deal with the pandemic but that Israel must do more to safeguard the health of all people under its control.

[4] According to an analysis by Haaretz on 22 July 2020, there is a concern that a combination of events may cause the situation to spin out of control.

[5][6] On 31 August 2020, according to United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick, "The deterioration witnessed in recent weeks in the Gaza Strip is of grave concern."

On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.

[18][19] The United Nations (UN) human rights body says that "differential access is "morally and legally" unacceptable under international law laid out in the Geneva Conventions on the regulation of occupied territories."

[20] Several US senators called on the US government to take some action to force Israel to provide such vaccines.

[21] Under the Oslo Accords, annexe III, article 17, responsibility for vaccines in Gaza and the West bank is explicitly given to the Palestinian Authority[b][c] Accordingly, Israel's official position is that it is under no legal obligation to provide vaccines to the Palestinian population in those territories.

Alan Baker, the director of the International Law Program at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and one of the drafters of the Oslo accords, has stated that while he believes Israel has "a moral and epidemiological obligation" to provide them, and a self-interest in doing so, there is no legal obligation.

[24] Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have signed up to the WHO and UN backed GAVI program, aimed at the most vulnerable 20 per cent of populations.

"We expect something to become available by the end of the first quarter [of 2021], but it's really difficult to predict," said Gerald Rockenschaub, head of the WHO office for the occupied Palestinian territory.

Russia is reported to have offered 4 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine but details are unknown.

Health officials say they expect to receive two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in March.

[31] Speaking at a joint press conference with Russian ambassador to Palestine Gocha Buachidze, Minister of Health Mai Alkaila said the first batch of 10,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine received on 4 February 2021 will be allocated to five thousand mainly medical staff in Palestine.

[32] When the first consignment of 2,000 coronavirus SputnikV vaccines intended for frontline health workers within the Strip did arrived at the frontier on Monday 15 February, its transit was blocked by Israeli border officials.

The authority for such shipments ultimately lies with the Israeli Prime Minister's office unit dealing with national security.

[45] Later that day, the Palestinian Authority cancelled the deal.Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila justified the cancellation on the grounds that the vaccines' expiry dates were closer than initially claimed by the Israelis and that the Palestinian Authority had rejected Israeli demands that none of the vaccines be transferred to the Hamas–run Gaza Strip and that the contract not be signed by the State of Palestine.

[50] Later this statement was retracted and the Agency said it is not in position to comment on this issue as it "concerns diplomatic relations," and "The Korean government is not in the position to comment,"[51] As of 13 August 2021, about a quarter of Palestinians have been vaccinated,[52] and the number is expected to rise further in coming weeks as new shipments arrive from a deal with Pfizer to purchase 4 million doses.

[54] Al Jazeera and The New York Times also reported vaccine hesitancy within the West Bank and Gaza.

[59][60] On 24 April, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates (FAE) confirmed 4 more cases in Al-Jalil refugee camp, raising the total to five.

Kafr Aqab, which has 60–70,000 residents, and Shuafat Refugee Camp with around 80,000 have not been receiving a sufficient level of services.

The IDF Home Front Command is in charge in East Jerusalem but since some residents go to Palestinian clinics for testing there is some uncertainty about total numbers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on 26 August that the health care system in the besieged Gaza Strip will not be able to deal with more than a few dozen patients.

[73] On 31 August 2020, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick, warning of imminent collapse in basic services, called for the immediate entry of fuel and other essential goods into the Gaza Strip.

[75] On 7 September 2020, Nickolay Mladenov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, announced the World Health Organization will act as temporary liaison to circumvent the coordination freeze between Israel and Palestine which, along with tightened Israeli restrictions, has prevented Gazans' access to medical treatment.

Brigadier General Faiq Al-Mabhouh was the leader of the Crisis Management Team in the Ministry of Interior during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip restrictions took the "flattening the curve" approach of slowing the spread of infections rather than preventing them completely.

[793] The charts for confirmed new cases and confirmed deaths per day are based on the data collected by the Palestinian National Institute of Public Health for the Northern Governorates, Southern Governorates and East Jerusalem,[794] as per the actual dates.

The ministry noted that around 1,000 Palestinian doctors were participating in health efforts in Europe along with hundreds more in the US, Venezuela and Cuba among other states.

[795] The FAE updated to 678 cases and 30 deaths, 437 and 22 respectively being in the U.S., 3 in Spain and one each in Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Algeria and Sweden.