by AP -- BEIRUT: Authorities in Lebanon on Thursday extended a nationwide lockdown by a week, to Feb. 8, amid a steep rise in coronavirus deaths and infections that has overwhelmed the health care system. Despite increasing the number of hospital beds in the country of nearly 6 million, doctors and nurses have struggled to keep pace with patients flooding their facilities. Intensive care unit bed occupancy has been rising, hitting 91% late Wednesday, according to the World Health Organization. Registered daily infections have hovered around 5,000 since the holiday season, up from nearly 1,000 in November. The overall death toll has surpassed 2,000, with new fatalities numbering between 40 and 60 deaths a day in the past week.

Doctors say with increased testing, the number of confirmed infections has also increased, recording a positivity rate of over 20% for every 100 tests. Nurses and doctors are overwhelmed, and more than 2,300 health care workers have been infected since February. Lebanon has yet to carry out any vaccinations. The government finalized a deal with Pfizer last week for vaccines that will arrive in early February. The World Bank said Thursday it approved $34 million to help pay for vaccines for Lebanon that will inoculate over 2 million people. The steep rise in infections and deaths comes despite the strict lockdown in place since Jan. 14. On Thursday, the government decided to extend that lockdown, which was due to expire Feb. 1, by a week.

By Najia Houssari - Arabnews.com -- The rift between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri over the formation of Lebanon’s new government widened on Friday. Hariri was instructed to form a new government on Oct. 22, but no progress has yet been made, leaving the country in a political deadlock to add to its economic woes and the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Video footage was broadcast on Jan. 11 of a meeting between Aoun and the caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, in which Aoun accused Hariri of lying when he claimed that his proposed government lineup had been approved. Commentators have claimed that, in doing so, Aoun insulted the office of prime minister and head of government, thus widening the gulf between the president and the prime minister-designate. Over the past 10 days, several attempts to bridge that gap have failed.

On Friday, Aoun’s media office issued a statement in response to what it described as “analyses and articles suggesting that the president is the one who is putting obstacles in the face of the PM-designate to obstruct the government formation process.” “The president did not ask for the obstructing third in the government,” the statement said, adding that “the head of the Strong Lebanon bloc, MP Gebran Bassil, did not obstruct the formation of the government, nor was he involved in this process at all.” Bassil is the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and Aoun’s son-in-law. The media office also denied that Hezbollah is “putting pressure on the president in the government formation matter.” The statement said that “naming, nominating, and distributing the ministers to ministerial portfolios is not an exclusive right for the prime minister-designate, based on two articles in the Constitution,” adding that the president “has a constitutional right to approve the entire government before signing.” “The president does not have to repeat his call on the prime minister-designate to go to the Baabda Palace, which is waiting for his arrival with a government lineup that takes into account the standards of fair representation in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, especially in light of the extremely pressing circumstances — on more than one level — to form the government,” the statement continued.

by arabnews.com — DUBAI: Former presidential Tiffany Trump’s fiancée proposed to her with a 13-carat emerald-cut diamond by Lebanese designer Samer Halimeh. …

By JOSHUA SHUMAN -- themedialine.org -- The World Bank approved $34 million in emergency financing to Lebanon to allow the country to purchase vaccines against the coronavirus. Under a reallocation of funds from the Lebanon Health Resilience Project, which was launched in June 2017 to shore up the Eastern Mediterranean country’s struggling health care sector, the funds will provide the country with the ability to obtain enough vaccine doses for over two million people. This the first time the World Bank has financed a program to fund the purchase of vaccines for a sovereign state. World Bank Group President David Malpass said in a statement that the bank will continue to offer “our support to many more countries in their vaccination efforts. Our goal remains to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in order to save lives and improve livelihoods.”

Coronavirus infections are at record levels in Lebanon. Since the beginning of 2021, the country’s active cases have more than doubled from 52,000 to over 105,000, while total deaths have increased by 40% from 1,479 to 2,084. One nursing student at the American University in Beirut, who is aware of the depth of the crisis aid that she and her fellow students are having a tough time but “this pandemic is also one of the challenges nurses must face in their career, so we must get accustomed to it.” Lamenting the ongoing crisis, nursing student Carine Dichjknian told The Media Line that “having more than 5,000 positive cases per day for a small country like Lebanon, that lacks the needed medical supplies and hospital beds, is terrible. Almost everyone I know has had the virus or has had contact with a COVID-19 positive person.”