by naharnet.com -- Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan broke his silence Wednesday evening over the controversy sparked by the vaccination of around two dozen MPs and parliament employees in apparent disregard for the national queue and the country’s electronic registration platform. Speaking in an interview with state-run Tele Liban, Hassan said he took a “sovereign decision” by asking medical teams to head to parliament to vaccinate the lawmakers “in appreciation of their efforts, after parliament convened for seven consecutive days to approve the vaccine’s emergency use law.” “There is a mobile clinic at the Health Ministry which will move between state institutions… and I will also visit the religious authorities to give them the vaccine the same as I gave it to MPs,” the minister added.

Noting that the age range of the MPs who received the vaccine was “not against logic,” Hassan described the uproar over the issue as “exaggerated” and “out of proportion.” He added: “The ministerial (anti-Covid) committee has jurisdiction and the head of the vaccine national committee Abdul Rahman al-Bizri is part of a consultative committee but the ministerial committee is the one that takes decisions.” As for the vaccines received by President Michel Aoun, First Lady Nadia Aoun and at least 10 of the president’s aides, Hassan said: “The vaccine received by President Michel Aoun is the same vaccine received by citizens in the Bekaa, Akkar, Beirut, the South and all Lebanese regions. This is justice.” The World Bank had threatened Tuesday to suspend financing for coronavirus vaccines in Lebanon over what it said were suspected violations by lawmakers who were inoculated in parliament.

by arabnews.com — LONDON: Britons and Lebanese are enduring some of the strictest lockdown conditions in the world, an analysis by Oxford …

By By Ben Hubbard -- nytimes.com -- BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Covid-19 vaccination drive in Lebanon erupted in scandal on Tuesday when 16 lawmakers received shots inside the parliament building, violating regulations aimed at keeping the process fair and transparent. The vaccination program, financed by $34 million from the World Bank, began earlier this month when the country received its first doses. To try to ensure accountability in a country known for corner-cutting and corruption, the government is requiring citizens to register for vaccination through an online portal. Medical workers and people over 75 are supposed to get the shots first, administered in official vaccination centers. On Tuesday, Adnan Daher, the parliamentary secretary, confirmed to reporters that 16 lawmakers had received shots. He said the lawmakers were all of the proper age and their turn to be vaccinated had come. But according to lists compiled by local news outlets, about half were younger than 75.

Elie Ferzli, a lawmaker in his early 70s who got the shot on Tuesday, denied in a telephone interview that he had jumped the line, and said he was “shocked” by the public outrage over the shots. “I have meetings every day in the parliament, so how am I supposed to keep doing my job normally and helping people?” he said. Officials overseeing the vaccination program, though, cried foul. Dr. Abdul Rahman Bizri, the head of Lebanon’s vaccine committee, threatened to resign over what he condemned as “a violation we cannot stay silent about,” but he decided to stay on. Saroj Kumar Jha, the World Bank’s director for the region that includes Lebanon, wrote on Twitter before the reports were confirmed that letting lawmakers jump the line was “not in line with the national plan,” and added, “Everyone has to register and wait for their turn!” He said that if the rules were broken, the World Bank could suspend its support for the vaccination program and Lebanon’s Covid-19 response generally. A World Bank spokeswoman did not respond to a query on Tuesday about how the bank would handle the incident.

Beirut (AsiaNews) – The call for a UN-sponsored international conference to get Lebanon out of its current constitutional crisis, issued by the head of the Maronite Church, Cardinal Beshara Al-Rahi last summer, is gaining traction at home and abroad. It received indirect support from Saudi Arabia yesterday. Back in Lebanon after a noticeable absence of two months, seen by Lebanese political circles as a sign of Saudi “disinterestedness” of the fate of Lebanon, the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Boukhari, is actively working to renew talks with Lebanese political leaders, from which the Prime Minister-designate, Saad Hariri, is still excluded for now. At the Patriarchal See in Bkerké, which he visited last Friday, the Saudi ambassador renewed his country's support for Lebanon’s national unity, civil peace and the Taif Accords. “The national and international community are paying attention to the views expressed by the Patriarch on national issues,” the ambassador said before stressing “the need for the proper application of the Taif agreement (1989) guaranteeing ‘national unity and civil peace in Lebanon’.” “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wants Lebanon to regain its former glory and its pioneering role,” Boukhari explained, “and will always remain the closest friend of the Lebanese people and their constitutional institutions.” The “country’s political memory is evidence that the Lebanese people never tire of fighting for the preservation of their living together in unity.”

Saudi Arabia has accused the prime minister-designate of complacency towards Hezbollah, and has joined the United States in demanding that this party be excluded from the new “mission government” demanded by President Emmanuel Macron, in exchange for structural economic aid to prevent the country’s economic collapse. Since late 2019, the Lebanese pound has lost 80 percent of its purchasing power. For his part, the Patriarch assured the diplomat of his attachment to the Taif agreements and to internal peace, informed sources close to Bkerké said. What is more, his call for an international conference to resolve Lebanon’s crisis, under the aegis of the UN, is peaceful in nature. In a recent homily, the head of the Maronite Church said that an international conference sponsored by the UN is now essential to “save” Lebanon and prevent it “from sinking into obscurantism and capitulating to transnational projects contrary to the essence of Lebanon,” a clear reference to extremist ideologies professed by certain Islamist groups.