(Credit: João Sousa/L’Orient Today)
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Lebanon’s COVID-19 nightmare continues unabated, with 40 more people dying from the virus yesterday. Hospitals are in desperate need of more staff, including nurses, if they are to boost capacity and admit the growing flood of people requiring care. Private hospital syndicate head Sleiman Haroun said that dozens of would-be patients are shuttling between medical facilities seeking admittance at full hospitals. Firass Abiad, the general manager of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, tweeted that Haroun’s grim statements on hospitals reaching capacity was an accurate depiction of a bad reality, especially in Beirut, Mount Lebanon and Nabatieh.
Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan inked a finalized contract with Pfizer for its vaccine. The contract — made possible by Parliament’s vote Friday allowing the emergency use of vaccines — will see the pharma giant supply 2.1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, which will start arriving gradually in February, according to a statement yesterday by the Health Ministry. The ministry added that it is in contact with the private sector to secure 2 million vaccines from British-Swedish multinational AstraZeneca and Sinopharm of China.
With hospitals overwhelmed by the worsening pandemic, the Health Ministry vowed efforts were underway to set up a field hospital in Beirut and distribute much needed medical devices. In a statement issued yesterday, the minister said the Qatar-donated field hospital originally for installation in Sur would instead be set up on the grounds of Beirut’s Sports City complex or the nearby Rafik Hariri University Hospital. Progress has been slow on the installation of the field hospitals, which were donated in November. The ministry added that it received 18 ventilators, whose arrival was delayed due to financing problems, while dozens of high-flow nasal cannula — used for oxygen therapy — would be distributed to the country’s private and public hospitals.
The winter storm lashing the country is expected to continue through the beginning of the week. The meteorological department at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport has warned inclement weather today will bring wind gusts as fierce as 100 km/h on Tuesday, with torrential rains forecast for today and tomorrow. Sea waves as high as 5 meters are also expected to buffet the coast on Tuesday. Chronic infrastructure failures have often led to flooding on roads due to storms.
Lebanon will once again resort to extraconstitutional means to finance its state bureaucracy, with progress stalled on the 2021 budget. President Michel Aoun on Saturday signed a law passed the day before by Parliament to extend provisional spending through February based on a formula on the previous budget. Lebanon’s constitution includes a failsafe in case there is no budget by the beginning of the year: the state may be financed, only for the month of January, using one-twelfth of the budget of the previous year. This mechanism has served as the shaky legal basis for state spending between 2005 and 2017, when ministers and lawmakers failed to pass constitutionally required budgets. In October 2017, then-Premier Saad Hariri hailed the first budget in 12 years as a “historic achievement.”
Aoun signed off on additional funds to compensate people who suffered property damage from the Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion. In a statement Friday, the president said he approved a treasury advance of LL50 billion to the Higher Relief Committee to follow up on the LL100 billion already allocated for distribution by the Lebanese Army. Another LL100 billion will be set aside for compensation for the devastating explosion at a later date, the statement added. State aid for victims of the blast has been slow in coming, with the army tasked to distribute banknotes to partially compensate for the LL427.6 billion in estimated damages while the HRC has handed out hard-to-cash checks to relatives of those killed. Justice for the crime has been even slower, with nobody held to account over five months after the explosion as the judicial probe stalls.
The president also approved a law to extend the deadline for public servants to disclose their assets. The parliament on Friday passed an amendment to Law 189 of 2020, passed last October, more commonly known as the new illicit enrichment law, to push back the disclosure deadline to the end of March. MP Alain Aoun (FPM/Baabda), the president’s nephew, had told L’Orient Today prior to the vote that the postponement of disclosures was due to the COVID-19 lockdown.