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Lebanon Registers 50 Coronavirus Deaths, 3,373 More Cases

Lebanon Registers 50 Coronavirus Deaths, 3,373 More Cases
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By Staff, Agencies

Lebanon registered 50 more coronavirus-related deaths and 3,373 new cases Friday, as the vaccine rollout process was criticized.

The cases were detected among 19,399 tests, with only 11 cases found among travelers arriving at Beirut International Airport. The positivity rate throughout the last two weeks stood at 18.4 percent.

The total number of cases since coronavirus was first identified in Lebanon a year ago has risen to 369,675, according to the Health Ministry’s daily COVID-19 report. The total number of fatalities now stands at 4,610.

According to the ministry’s report 2,176 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19 and related complications, 915 are in ICUs and 287 on ventilators.

Head of the national coronavirus committee Dr. Abdel Rahman al-Bizri told local TV channel LBCI Thursday night that the country’s vaccination campaign so far has been flawed and that hospitals administering the jabs should get their act together.

Lebanon kicked off the national vaccination drive on Feb. 14 and has so far received around 60,000 jabs of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Another 41,000 doses are expected to arrive Saturday.

Bizri said that until Thursday night, the number of people that had taken the vaccine was 40,000. Between 70 and 75 percent of this number are registered on the online registration platform that in theory is the only official platform for registration and tracking.

At the Sidon Governmental Hospital, 1,922 people have so far taken the vaccine, with 300 being inoculated Friday.

Bizri said that the percentage of unregistered people who took the vaccine was high during the first week of the vaccination campaign because “communication was lost between the vaccination centers and the platform.”

The American University of Beirut Medical Center was one of the hospitals to come under fire for inoculating people who did not have appointments from the official vaccination platform. However AUBMC clarified these allegations in a statement Friday.

"AUBMC is keen to reaffirm that no person who was not registered on its electronic platform or on the system provided by the Ministry of Public Health and supervised by the National Committee for Corona vaccine has been vaccinated at its center," the statement said.

The hospital said that they resorted to vaccinating people - over the age of 75 - who were registered on the Health Ministry's official platform but did not have appointments due to technical issues that led to the malfunctioning of the platform.

AUBMC said that they provided the Health Ministry with a list of people vaccinated without appointments and that the ministry was aware that these people were vaccinated during the malfunctioning of the platform.

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