(MENAFN – Asia Times) TRIPOLI — On the eve of a nationwide Covid-19 lockdown, a group of men blocked off the modern gates of Tripoli, the stretch of highway leading to Lebanon’s second-largest city. It was March 17, and the country’s neglected northern metropolis, which looks out to the Mediterranean and borders Syria, still had not recorded any novel coronavirus cases. The impoverished protesters were incensed the government was threatening their livelihoods with a nationwide lockdown. ‘Someone came to me asking for 1,000 LBP (50 cents) because he can’t even buy bread for his kids. I had a package, so I gave it to him and kept three slices for my own kids. This is where we’re at!? Isn’t it shameful!’ one man cried out in a video filmed on a mobile phone. ‘I swear to God, I saw a guy sell his cooking gas canister to buy milk for his kids!’ A young man, a struggling taxi driver in the city, lambasted the government for waiting a month after the first Covid-19 case was flagged to cut off air travel. ‘If they were smart, they would have shut down the airport from the beginning, because it came from the airport, not the land border,’ he said.
Lebanon’s first cases of coronavirus were citizens flying back from Shiite religious pilgrimages to Iran, with the first positive test result announced February 21. At the time, Iran was not yet a global epicenter for Covid-19 – with less than two dozen cases – but in the three-and-a-half weeks that followed, alarm grew over daily flights from Qom and other Iranian cities. Residents of Tripoli, with its population overwhelmingly Sunni, appeared initially more insulated, but the Beirut-based outbreak has since made its way up the coast and to the mountainous districts above the city. Other cases later arrived via Egypt. On Tuesday, the confirmed cases had risen above 300. ‘The government didn’t act from the beginning. Now they want to fix it and be smart. So they put us in this health lockdown,’ said the taxi driver. ‘But if you want to do a lockdown, you need to give people the means to survive it. Tripoli isn’t Beirut, we’re living day by day.’ ‘They’re saying it’s going to be a 15-day shutdown,’ another man chimed in. ‘How are people supposed to eat if their shops are closed and they don’t have work?’