A long queue to receive a dose of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 forms in Geitawi. (Credit: @firassabiad)
BEIRUT — Health Minister Firass Abiad declared the first day of this weekend’s Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination drive “successful” as almost 35,000 doses of the inoculation were administered throughout Lebanon on Saturday.
Here’s what we know:
• In an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the Health Ministry organized a two-day vaccination marathon for residents aged 12 and above that began Saturday.
• At the end of the first day of this campaign, a total of 34,163 people had received a dose of the vaccine. Of that number, Abiad said 25,215 received a first dose, 1,814 a second and 7,134 a third.
• The chairman of the Executive Committee for Covid-19 Vaccination, Eid Azar, explained that the majority of people who received a dose of the vaccine on Saturday were between 30 and 40 years old. “These people were waiting to receive the product in the previous phase of vaccination and had not been able to get it,” he said in a statement to the news outlet LBCI.
• The campaign continued Sunday with Abiad visiting a vaccination center in North Lebanon to monitor progress. At around 9 a.m, the minister tweeted that there had been “a good start of the campaign with 4,535 doses administered” so far. Abiad also shared photos showing lines of people waiting to be vaccinated at assorted vaccination centers both inside and outside Beirut.
• “The best way to protect our society is to get vaccinated,” Abiad said from a center in Halba, North Lebanon, according to L'Orient Today's correspondent in the North, Michel Hallak.
• This weekend’s marathon coincides with Lebanon’s confirmation of the country’s first two cases of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus and as daily new case numbers — mostly comprising the Delta variant, according to Abiad — continue an upward trend.
• The uptick has raised fears about the health care facilities’ capacity to cope with another surge in COVID-19 patient numbers. “If we want to compare the capacity of hospitals between December 2020 and December 2021, we can call the current situation worrying,” warned the chairman of the parliamentary health committee, Assem Araji. “The number of beds available in 2020 was 2,500, while today the figure is less than 850,” he told LBCI. This decrease is explained, according to him, by a drop in the number of cases of coronavirus between June and July last year, which led institutions to close several wings dedicated to the fight against COVID-19. He also refers to the exodus of medical staff, the depreciation of the Lebanese lira and the shortage of medications, in a country that has been in dire economic crisis since 2019. “In case of circulation of the virus like last year, the health sector will not be able to hold and treat all these cases,” he warned.