The Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) announced Sunday that 25 new COVID-19 cases were registered among Palestinian detainees in an Israeli prison in the Naqab desert.

The new infections raised the total number of Palestinian prisoners who have contracted the coronavirus since the outbreak of the pandemic to 171, according to the PPs.

It also noted that the Israeli prison authorities had moved all of the infected prisoners to section 8 in neighboring Ramon prison, but said it has not received any information about their health conditions.

PPS stressed that there was a real danger to the lives and health conditions of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention facilities, given the lack of proper health measures.

It further called on the international human rights organizations, the World Health Organization and the United Nations to pressure the Israeli occupation authorities to release all sick and elderly Palestinian prisoners.

For her part, the Palestinian Minister of Health, Mai Al-Keela, also warned about the danger of the virus outbreak among Palestinian detainees, highlighting major overcrowding in prisons.

Al-Keela stressed that “all Israeli prisons are vulnerable to becoming centers of the epidemic, which means that all Palestinian prisoners are highly vulnerable to infection with the COVID-19, and this puts their lives in danger, especially the sick prisoners, who amount to 700, especially chronic patients and cancer patients.”

She also called on the international community to pressure the occupation over the immediate release of the sick and elderly prisoners to form a neutral medical committee to supervise the results of the prisoners’ samples and their health conditions.