Lebanese businessmen and politicians are planning on purchasing coronavirus vaccines even before the arrival of any of the 6 million state-ordered vaccines, of which 50,000 are due to arrive from Pfizer-BioNTech next month.
MP Fouad Makhzoumi and MP Michel Daher, both well-established businessmen, have expressed their readiness to purchase great amounts of the coronavirus vaccines at their own expense, to be distributed privately through their foundations.
Fouad Makhzoumi, A Beirut MP and founder of the National Dialogue Party. announced last week a plan to acquire 100,000 vaccines through his organization the “Makhzoumi Foundation”.
He wrote a letter to the Health Ministry, which has since granted the foundation a license to import the vaccine.
“Makhzoumi Foundation is currently working on a mechanism to secure vaccines and has not yet determined the source from which it will be imported. But, we are contacting more than one company to choose the entity that will provide the largest number of vaccines in a relatively short time,” the foundation said in a statement.
The foundation also refuted allegations of politicizing the country’s vaccination rollout, saying that the vaccine will be given to everyone who needs it and not limited to the electoral district of Makhzoumi.
Michel Daher, MP for Zahle district and founder of Daher Capital and Daher Foods in Lebanon, announced on his social media account that he was working on securing a quantity of 10,000 vaccines for the Michel Daher Social Foundation.
“I am working on importing ten thousand coronavirus vaccines, with the aim of distributing them free of charge to the elderly and workers in productive sectors,” Daher wrote on Twitter Sunday.
In response to a question from a Twitter user, Daher said he was in talks with Sinopharm, the Chinese-state owned pharmaceutical group about their vaccine.
Since the government passed a law on January 15th to authorize the emergency use of coronavirus vaccines in Lebanon, any individual or private company is legally allowed to purchase and import vaccines into the country.
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