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Coronavirus Cases Tally Reaches 54,624 in Lebanon As Schools Reopen

Coronavirus Cases Tally Reaches 54,624 in Lebanon As Schools Reopen
folder_openLebanon access_time3 years ago
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By Staff, Agencies

The number of coronavirus cases in Lebanon took another jump Monday as schoolchildren returned to class, with the Health Ministry confirming an additional 1,056 cases in the past 24 hours.

The vast majority of the cases registered on Monday were detected among the local population - seven were inbound travelers – and a further seven people died from the disease.

The cumulative number of cases in Lebanon now stands at 54,624, with 466 deaths.

Despite the surge in cases, schools across Lebanon opened their doors once again Monday, prompting concerns that a further acceleration of the virus’ spread is imminent.

The Independent Lebanese Committee for the Elimination of COVID-19, which comprises five Lebanese public health experts, called on the authorities to reverse this decision.

It said in a Twitter post that opening schools would “very likely lead to an increase of cases” and cause “otherwise avoidable deaths and disease among children and adults.”

With a local positivity rate of 10.7 percent over the past 14 days, local authorities Monday enforced the lockdown of 169 villages and towns across Lebanon.

The Interior and Health ministries targeted “red” areas that have a rate of more than eight cases per 100,000 people in the lockdown.

The committee called upon the government to “fix” this system, saying that the current design of the authorities’ zonal approach is “inappropriate.”

“It should use the absolute number of cases, not rates [per 100,000 people], both because in Lebanon the denominator of inhabitants per location is unreliable [no census, refugees] and because it is not a matter of concentration rates, but decreasing cases to reach zero,” the committee’s statement read.

It went on to request that the “government publicly share its detailed strategy for ‘green zoning,’” noting that “no such guidance with the indicators and epidemiological thresholds used to monitor the situation has been published to date and/or distributed to municipalities.”

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