Cases could exceed 5,000 a day due to New Year partying The committee recommended a lockdown, excluding Beirut’s airport, for between three and six weeks BEIRUT: Lebanon has lost control of COVID-19 due to the chaos seen in the past few weeks, the head of the parliamentary health committee MP Assem Araji said on Saturday, and a nationwide closure of up to six weeks has been recommended to contain the crisis. The committee, which met on Saturday, has been monitoring the spread of the disease. It has recommended a lockdown, excluding Beirut’s international airport, for between three and six weeks. It also recommended imposing a curfew, with the hours to be determined later. A final decision will be made on Monday. Committee members said that the number of cases may exceed 5,000 per day due to social events held during the New Year period. “Hospital emergency departments are full of patients,” the committee said. “There are only 51 vacant intensive care units (ICUs) out of 515 rooms in all Lebanese hospitals. The remaining ICUs are filled with critical cases.” The secretary-general of the Lebanese Red Cross, Georges Kettaneh, said that hospitals in Beirut were no longer able to accommodate new cases. “We are contemplating with the concerned parties the possibility of transferring these patients to hospitals outside Beirut and Mount Lebanon.” Some hospitals were prioritizing young people and not the elderly, while others were left with no vacant beds at all to receive patients, he added. “Red Cross volunteers are transferring coronavirus patients from Beirut and Mount Lebanon to Nabatiyeh, Hermel, Akkar, and other areas. There are people who are dying in their homes.” Araji, who is a cardiologist, said that 100 patients had entered ICUs in the first two days of January. “The death toll has reached 422 in one month, and the occupancy rate of ICUs has become 95 percent, which necessitates imposing a three-week full closure across the country as soon as possible because the health sector is also in danger and heading toward disaster. There are about 2,000 doctors and nurses in quarantine as they have contracted COVID-19.” Former health minister, Mohamed Jawad Khalifa, said that “blunder” and a lack of planning had brought Lebanon to this point. “The closure to be imposed is pointless if the state has no plans to take responsibility,” he told Arab News. “One party in the state should have taken a decision, not 50 parties that express their opinions through committees. The large number of opinions has crippled us, and now we are following in the footsteps of Italy. What was required, as London and other capitals did, was to cancel elective surgeries in all public and private hospitals and have all hospitals receive COVID-19 cases. Then, the hospitals are responsible for them. In Britain, even kidney transplants have been canceled, but our country is run by a failed state.” He added that a number of doctors preferred to be quarantined rather than work for free – in light of the collapse of the Lebanese pound – and expose themselves to health risks. The Lebanese have been sharing videos of New Year COVID-19 violations. They also shared videos of people rushing to take PCR tests after the holidays. The Health, Labor, and Social Affairs Committee said that medical information from several sources was indicating a “catastrophic situation” in most Beirut hospitals and the rest of the governorates because the occupancy rates exceeded 95 percent, and there was an increasing demand for intensive care. The committee added that a full closure would “allow the health sector to catch its breath.” Sharaf Abou Sharaf, the head of the Lebanese Order of Physicians in Beirut, criticized the decision to prioritize the economy over health. “The economic collapse can be compensated for later, but the fear today is that Lebanon has started to enter the Italian scenario.” Dr. Firas Al-Abyad is director of the Hariri Governmental University Hospital, which is dedicated to receiving COVID-19 cases. He said: “The healthcare system will undergo a difficult test in the coming weeks, and time does not allow for crying. An urgent response is required.” There is disagreement and recrimination between people with economic interests and healthcare officials about who is responsible for the outbreak of COVID-19 during the holidays. The owners of tourist establishments, restaurants, and cafes refused to close during the festive period, and they sought to blame people who did not comply with the preventive measures. The secretary-general of the Tourism and Trade Unions Federation, Jean Beiruti, insisted on allowing tourist establishments that complied with the measures to continue operating and supported closing businesses that violated them. But Khalifa said a fragmented approach to the pandemic was to blame. “When we leave municipalities to decide which villages to isolate and which to open, and when ministers and unions express many opinions during the meetings of the committees concerned with the outbreak of COVID-19, each of which has its agenda, and recommendations are ping-ponged between committees, it becomes too late to fix things.”