By Reuters Staff
2 Min Read
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon will gradually ease strict coronavirus lockdown in force since Jan. 11 in four two-week stages starting from Monday, the country’s caretaker government said on Friday.
FILE PHOTO: Women sit together, during a lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Beirut, Lebanon February 3, 2021. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
Lebanon imposed a 24-hour curfew when cases spiked after lax measures over the Christmas holiday period sent infections soaring and pushed hopsital capacities to the limit.
Lebanon is dealing with a devastating financial crisis that has paralysed banks and the lockdown faced resistance amid concerns over soaring unemployment, inflation and poverty.
El Líbano supera los cinco mil muertos por Covid-19 prensa-latina.cu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from prensa-latina.cu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published date: 3 March 2021 14:17 UTC | Last update: 3 weeks ago
The death of a Lebanese x-ray technician and former paramedic due to Covid-19 last week has shed new light on the plight of overwhelmed health workers battling the pandemic in the cash-strapped country.
Tributes to Fadi Abou Hassan, with an image of him in Lebanese Red Cross garb where he once volunteered, have poured out across social media, days after it was revealed that the health ministry bypassed the country s rollout policy to vaccinate a handful of MPs. This is shameful. They are frontline workers who protect us,
- Sharaf Abou Sharaf, head of the Doctors’ Syndicate
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Deputy parliament speaker Elie Ferzli, an ally of the Syrian regime and the Iranian backed Hezbollah militant group who is 71, tweeted that he got a shot. This created outrage in Lebanon since people who are much older have not been able to get vaccinated . This also prompted the World Bank to threaten to cut Lebanon’s vaccine funding after the reported violations. In this file photo which went viral , Ferzli attacked the world bank management
It was a Covid-19 vaccine scandal that graft-weary Lebanon was braced for yet its brazenness struck a nerve. In the second week of a national vaccine rollout, 16 lawmakers and a handful of staffers were inoculated with the BioNTech/Pfizer jab at the Lebanese parliament; days earlier, president Michel Aoun, his wife and 10 members of his entourage took the shots.
Lebanon is no longer a failing state. That is now history. The country has long hit rock bottom, collapsing from one low to another due to a variety of factors that includes poor government, corruption, nepotism, and a political elite that refuses to step down or take responsibility for failure.
The tiny Mediterranean state, once hailed as Switzerland of the Middle East, has failed to meet the demands of angry protesters, who took to the streets in October 2019, demanding better pay, more jobs, and rehaul of the sectarian political system. It failed at unblocking an $11 billion loan package from international donors, promised in France two years ago. It then failed at getting a smaller amount from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and thus was unable to save its once thriving, now collapsing banking sector. More recently it has also failed at identifying who was responsible for the massive explosion at the port of Beirut last August, which destroyed half the city and killed ove