Lebanese Minister Hamad Hasan warned of sliding toward a critical stage with a new surge in coronavirus infections as he announced new measures aimed at confronting the pandemic.
Following a cabinet session on Tuesday, Minister Hasan said new measures will be implemented as part of a plan to confront coronavirus.
Lebanese expats returning home from countries that don’t conduct PCR tests will be quarantined in hotels for 48 hours at their own expense, Al-Manar correspondent quoted the minister as saying.
In this context, Hasan said that this measure will be coordinated with the Ministry of Tourism and that the expats will pay with the Lebanese pound.
“The ministry decided to hire 25 doctors in a bid to supervise public hospitals and follow up on pandemic,” Hasan said, adding that the ministry will also sign contracts that worth 30 mn Lebanese pounds with hospitals.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Associated Press published an interview with the Lebanese minister, who warned that the country is sliding toward a critical stage with a new surge in infections.
The recently recorded double and triple digits of new infections were coupled with an increase in untraceable cases, raising concerns that a dangerous spread in the community could follow, Hasan told The Associated Press.
“The danger of community spread is still possible because the country has opened up,” Hasan said, noting that reopening of the Beirut airport and the subsequent failure of Lebanese returning from abroad and their relatives to adhere to strict isolation measures caused a spike in infections.
Despite a low death rate and low level of hospital bed occupancy, the minister warned that more than 20% of the new infections are untraceable.
“When they are untraceable and I can’t trace the clusters that I need to reach, then I start to worry that we are sliding into stage four,” he said. “We are still in the critical period between stage three to stage four.”
Stage four would necessitate return to more lockdown measures, though it’s “still too early” to consider that option, he added.
Source: Al-Manar and AP
