São Paulo – Lebanon should be locked down for two weeks after a spike in coronavirus infections, the caretaker government’s health minister Hamad Hassan was quoted as saying on Monday (17), while the country still suffers the impacts of the Port of Beirut blast.
The country’s Ministry of Health registered a record 456 new cases and two deaths on Monday, taking the total number to 9,337 cases and 105 deaths since February.
“We declare today a state of general alert and we need a brave decision to close (the country) for two weeks,” Hamad Hassan told Voice of Lebanon radio.
Already in a deep financial crisis, Lebanon was fighting a COVID-19 spike before the explosion in August 4 that killed at least 178 people, destroyed areas of the capital and led its government to resign.
The warehouse explosion damaged many hospitals and overloaded them with over 6,000 wounded. The blast left 55 medical centers in Beirut “non-functional,” the World Health Organization reported last week.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
