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Lebanon’s COVID-19 lockdown was extended another two weeks as death tolls from the virus keep mounting, with a record 67 deaths registered Thursday. Caretaker Premier Hassan Diab announced yesterday that the strict measures currently in place, including a 24-hour curfew, will stay in place until Feb. 8. Since the full lockdown came into effect on Jan. 14, 370 people have died, or more than a sixth of the country’s cumulative death toll. Experts warn these numbers will only worsen in the coming weeks, while fears also persist over the financial ramifications of a prolonged closure.

Parliament’s health committee met to tackle the rollout of vaccines, which are set to start arriving the first week of February. Following the meeting, committee chair Assem Araji said 250,000 Pfizer doses are expected to arrive by the end of March, with another 350,000 by the middle of the year. He also announced that the Health Ministry is readying a platform to register the names of those who want to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccination campaign will not be exclusive for Lebanese nationals, Araji stressed, explaining that scientific standards require at least 80 percent of residents in the country receive inoculation to successfully combat COVID-19.

The World Bank announced that it approved financial support for Lebanon’s acquisition of vaccines. The international organization said Thursday it was reallocating $34 million from its $120 million Lebanon Health Resilience Project, started in 2017, to supply vaccines for over 2 million people. Lebanon has inked deals for 2.1 million doses from Pfizer and another 2.7 million secured through the World Health Organization-backed COVAX initiative. Talks are underway to acquire between 1.5 and 2 million doses of British-Swedish multinational AstraZeneca’s vaccine, according to health committee member Alain Aoun, who told L’Orient Today nothing has been finalized yet.

Lebanon’s top prosecutor questioned Riad Salameh over Switzerland’s request for assistance with its probe, reportedly of alleged illicit money transfers by the central bank chief. Salameh claimed to Ghassan Oueidat on Thursday that no transfers were made from Banque du Liban related to the Swiss investigation. The central bank chief’s statement added that “malicious rumors” not only harm him, but also the financial reputation of Lebanon. A Lebanese judicial source told Reuters that Salameh opted for further questioning in Switzerland by authorities there. The Swiss attorney general’s office said Tuesday that its request to Lebanon was part of its investigation “for aggravated money laundering ... in connection with possible embezzlement to the detriment” of the central bank.

The Lebanese Army busted a captagon-production operation outside Baalbeck amid raids outside the town yesterday. An Army Intelligence patrol stormed a lab in the town of Boudai and arrested several people while seizing a large quantity of captagon as well as machines for manufacturing the narcotic, according to a statement by the army. The raid came amid extensive searches by the army around Baalbeck to find captagon factories, our sister publication L’Orient-Le Jour reported. A 2019 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that Lebanon and Syria were the two most frequently reported countries of origin for captagon — a narcotic popular in Gulf states — between 2013 and 2017.