Health care workers are bracing for an expected wave of patients seeking care for COVID-19 after the holiday season. (Credit: Joseph Eid/AFP)
Lebanon enters lockdown today until Feb. 1 as the country grapples with its most severe surge of the novel coronavirus. Stringent measures have been reintroduced, including the odd-even vehicle license plate rule limiting movement. Coupled with an overnight curfew between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m, supermarkets, grocery shops and other food stores can only operate between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. Flights to Beirut’s airport have also been slashed and capped at 20 percent of those in January 2020, with travelers having to undergo two PCRs tests: first on arrival and then a week later. However, Parliament’s health committee has said that the lockdown, with its many exceptions, falls short of what is needed to curb the rapid spread of the virus.
Lebanon set two consecutive records for daily coronavirus infections, registering 3,620 cases on Tuesday and 4,166 on Wednesday, putting further strain on an already burdened health care system. With nearly 90 percent of coronavirus ICU beds occupied, caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan urged private hospitals to raise capacity within a week while warning that non-compliance will lead to a cutoff of public insurance services such as the National Social Security Fund. However, with private hospitals already owed around LL2 trillion by the state, according to syndicate head Sleiman Haroun, and hospitals struggling to secure supplies, Hassan’s threat risks falling on deaf ears.
Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai called on the president and premier-designate to hold a “personal reconciliation” and form a new cabinet. Rai’s call came a day after Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and Saad Hariri’s Future Movement traded barbs, deflecting blame for the lack of progress on the government formation, more than two months after Hariri was nominated. The FPM’s parliamentary bloc had asked Hariri to “return home from his holiday and assume his responsibilities,” in turn prompting his office to accuse the party “of holding others responsible for obstacles that it contrives.” Nearly five months after the collapse of caretaker Premier Hassan Diab’s cabinet, Hariri and Aoun are still at loggerheads over the makeup of the new government, failing to see eye to eye on how to allocate ministries.
The search for oil and gas in Lebanon’s waters will continue until August 2022, after the original deadline became unviable. An international energy consortium made up of France’s Total, Russia’s Novatek and Italy’s ENI had been contracted to drill in maritime blocks 4 and 9 by May of this year, but caretaker Energy Minister Raymond Ghajar said that the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating port explosion had delayed operations. In April of last year, Ghajar announced that preliminary exploration into block 4 had not found a commercially exploitable reservoir, disappointing those who had pinned their hopes on hydrocarbons becoming Lebanon’s economic salvation.
A taxi driver suffering from chronic kidney disease set himself and his car on fire last night in the south Beirut suburb of Burj al-Barajneh. Videos showed the man, who is in his 60s and has no health insurance, pouring gasoline around his car and setting it alight, causing flames to engulf him and the car. He was pulled to safety by bystanders and suffered burns to one of his arms, according to our sister publication L’Orient-Le Jour. In November, a Syrian refugee died in the hospital after self-immolating outside the headquarters of the UN refugee agency in Beirut.