Medical personnel treat a man with COVID-19 at Sibline Governmental Hospital. (Credit: João Sousa/L’Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Having sounded the alarm for weeks, hospitals treating COVID-19 patients appear to have hit the breaking point, forcing them to send an increasing number of less critically ill patients home.
There are now 892 coronavirus patients receiving treatment in intensive care units, according to the Health Ministry’s latest report. Over the last 24 hours, 3,220 people tested positive for COVID-19 and 57 more people died, bringing the total death toll to 2,218.
At Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the country’s largest center for treating COVID-19 patients, capacity has been expanded five times. But it is not enough.
“Twenty patients at the hospital are being treated today in the emergency rooms because regular and ICU rooms are full,” said Hussein Kataya, the nurse in charge of the hospital’s coronavirus emergencies.
The hospital’s ER isn’t adequately equipped to treat critical cases of COVID-19. “We’re contacting other hospitals to move in patients, but they also do not have capacity to respond,” Kataya added.
Hospitals in Saida and the surrounding areas are no longer able to accept any coronavirus patients, with all the regular and intensive care units occupied. The Union of Saida-Zahrani Municipalities pleaded in statement on Friday for residents to comply with preventive measures to curb the spread of the virus.
Ghinwa Dakdouki, a doctor of infectious diseases who works at two Saida hospitals, told L’Orient Today that dedicated COVID-19 rooms in these hospitals are at full capacity, but emergency rooms are still taking in severe cases.
Dakdouki added that cases now tend to present at hospitals in a more severe condition, explaining, “People are treating themselves at home without medical supervision. The treatments they are using worsen their situation, thus they come to us with severe cases.” She said that this also often leads to patients requiring longer hospitalizations.
At the Nabih Berri Governmental University Hospital in Nabatieh, staff are rapidly trying to ramp up capacity as patients continue to flood in.
“Just today, two patients were transferred from other hospitals to us, and this has been an increased phenomenon since the beginning of the lockdown,” said hospital director Hassan Wazni. “However, patients with mild and moderate cases are being sent home, or else the hospital would not be able to cater to the more severe ones.”
For those who are unable to find a bed, their only option may be to undergo oxygen therapy at home. But the oxygen concentrators, considered the safest and easiest way to administer oxygen outside a hospital, are in short supply.
Families and friends of those in need of these life-saving machines have taken to social media in the hope of finding one via crowdsourcing, but suppliers’ stocks are depleted.
In an effort to keep up with demand, importers placed orders for more, only to see them held up by bureaucracy.
Salma Assi, the head of the medical equipment importers’ syndicate, told L’Orient Today that 160 oxygen concentrator machines have been stuck at the airport for a week as they await clearance.
Meanwhile, with COVID-19 vaccines expected to start arriving within weeks, debate continues on the strategy for their distribution.
In early February, Lebanon will receive the first batch of vaccines from a deal with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer to secure 2.1 million doses. Another 2.7 million should arrive later in the year via the World Health Organization’s COVAX program.
Suroj Kumar Jha, the regional director of the World Bank, said in a press conference that the organization would only approve a distribution plan for vaccines if the Lebanese government agreed to allocate doses according to vulnerability and guaranteed equal access to Lebanese and non-Lebanese nationals, including migrant workers and refugees.
The World Bank said Thursday it will allot $34 million from the $120 million Lebanon Health Resilience Project to help the government secure vaccine doses for 2 million people.
Earlier this week, Wadih Akl, a prominent lawyer from the Free Patriotic Movement, tweeted that the priority for vaccinations should be Lebanese citizens, sparking the hashtag #VaccinesforLebaneseFirst.
Fierce debate ensued on social media. However, MP Assem Araji (Future/Zahle), the head of the parliamentary health committee, has insisted that the vaccine will be given out according to need, not nationality.
The head of the Order of Physicians, Charaf Abou Charaf, said in a statement released Friday that front-line medical personnel would be the first to receive vaccinations.
As hospitals struggle to keep pace with rising numbers of hospitalizations and patients needing critical care, the caretaker government and President Michel Aoun agreed Thursday to extend the strict lockdown, originally set to end on Jan. 25, until Feb. 8.
Under the measures in place, movement is restricted under a 24-hour curfew with limited exemptions and food stores can only operate via delivery.
Despite being exempted in previous lockdowns, public transport workers are banned from operating — a heavy blow to drivers who often depend on daily earnings to support themselves and their families.
On Friday morning, drivers of taxis, vans and buses protested in front of the Tripoli Public Transport Drivers’ Syndicate, saying that the lockdown measures “threatened our families and our livelihoods” and demanding a solution to increasing poverty and food insecurity.
Later in the day, demonstrators blocked the Tripoli-Akkar highway to protest deteriorating living conditions and decrying the state’s failure to provide adequate aid to the most vulnerable.
While the government committed at the announcement of the initial lockdown on Jan. 7 to distribute LL400,000 each to some 280,000 of the country’s poorest families via the Lebanese Army, this aid has failed to materialize.
Army spokesperson Col. Elias Aad told L’Orient Today earlier this week that he expected distribution would not start until after the end of the extended lockdown — Feb. 8.
Meanwhile, aid organizations are struggling to keep up with demand for food assistance, as the lockdown’s limits on movement make distribution more difficult.
Fadi Haliso, a co-founder of the NGO Basma and Zeitnoueh, said on Twitter that extending the lockdown “without offering [a] support package is a death sentence to thousands of Lebanese families no less dangerous than the pandemic.”
“People are telling us that their kids are crying of hunger every night.”
Additional reporting by Omar Tamo.