The Palestinian Authority has said it cancelled a swap deal that would have seen Israel provide it with one million Covid-19 jabs, as the doses were “about to expire”.

Israeli officials had earlier announced the deal, saying the Jewish state was to provide the doses to the Palestinian Authority as their expiry date loomed.

But PA spokesman Ibrahim Melhem said later that an initial delivery of some 90,000 Pfizer doses failed to conform “to the specifications contained in the agreement, and accordingly, prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh instructed the minister of health to cancel the agreement”.

“The government refuses to receive vaccines that are about to expire,” he added, in a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency.