Concerns mount in Lebanon as the country’s health authorities register spike in coronavirus cases.

Health Ministry recorded on Saturday 843 new COVID-19 infections and one related death. The new infections included 810 local cases while the other 33 were imported cases.

The total number of infections reached 554,458 since February 2020, the ministry said in its daily report, as it put the total death toll of the respiratory disease in the country since February 2020 at 6,799.

Earlier this month, the country’s daily infections reached between 200 and 300 cases.

Meanwhile, a top hospital director has warned that Lebanon’s deepening economic crisis has piled pressure on hospitals, leaving them ill-equipped to face any new wave of the coronavirus.

Already struggling with shortages of medicine and an exodus of staff abroad, the country’s health facilities are now also having to contend with almost round-the-clock power cuts.

“All hospitals… are now less prepared than they were during the wave at the start of the year,” said Firass Abiad, the manager of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the largest public hospital in the country battling COVID.

Source: Agencies