Doctors at St Georges Hospital during the height of the COVID-19 surge of early 2021. (Credit: Marc Fayad)
BEIRUT — Health officials, municipalities and residents of some parts of Lebanon raised the alarm over the rise in COVID-19 numbers Wednesday, which coincides with the start of winter and the school year, as the cash-strapped country is ill prepared to face such a spread.
Here’s what we know:
• Residents of Zahle have reportedly called on Health Minister Firass Abiad to reopen COVID-19 wings at the district’s hospitals, which closed as cases decreased throughout this year. According to the NNA, the hospitals in Zahle are ready to receive COVID-19 cases again but the hospitals’ contagious disease specialists are objecting to such a decision because of their low salaries. In Baalbeck governmental hospital, however, neither COVID-19 wards nor ambulances (needed to transfer COVID-19 patients) might be available.
• The Nabih Berri governmental hospital in south Lebanon announced Tuesday that, in an effort to tackle the COVID-19 spread, it is ready to dispense 800 vaccines per day and that its COVID-19 section is “ready and efficient.” In Burj al-Barajneh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a video circulating on social media documented representatives of the municipality using a megaphone to warn people of the spread of the Delta variant and asking them to take necessary precautions.
• Abiad tweeted a graphic two weeks ago indicating that the rise in infections is most prevalent among younger people, which he linked to the beginning of the school year, the onset of winter season, and this demographic being the least vaccinated in the country. He urged young people to be vaccinated.
• As of Tuesday, Lebanon had registered 482 cases in the past 24 hours, with eight deaths, raising the fatality rate to 8,666.