Ramallah, Apr 20 (IANS): Palestine is moving toward a gradual economic recovery with a significant drop in coronavirus infections in the West Bank, Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye said.

The government's next step is "to revive the economy", Ishtaye said in a statement issued after the weekly cabinet meeting on Monday.

"All estimations indicate that we will emerge from the state of economic deflation to the state of economic recovery," Xinhua news agency quoted the Prime Minister a saying.

But the coronavirus situation in the Gaza Strip "is still catastrophic", he warned.

Gaza recorded 998 new Covid-19 cases and 16 deaths in the last 24 hours, while the West Bank had 531 new cases and 14 deaths, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.

The Palestinian government agreed to purchase 500,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik vaccine and 4 million doses of the US Pfizer vaccine "with the aim of ensuring access to herd immunity", said Ishtaye.

So far, a total of 131,759 people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus in the West Bank, and 35,090 in the Gaza Strip, according to official figures.