Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan announced that Lebanon “will be one of the first countries to benefit from the Pfizer vaccine when it is soon approved by the World Health Organization.”
In a televised interview with LBCI on Tuesday, Hassan said that “the necessary correspondence was provided for the transfer of the first batch of vaccine costs” in cooperation with Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni.
He added: “The Ministry of Public Health has also reserved twenty percent of Lebanon’s additional planned Corona vaccine from the COVAX (Global Corona Vaccine Assembly) platform, and 4 million and 367 thousand dollars have been transferred.”
This comes as good news following the latest development with the American multinational pharmaceutical company Pfizer, revealing on Monday that early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial proved that the vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19.
The Lebanese health ministry has reported 95,355 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 732 associated deaths since the start of the pandemic.
In the past month 42,000 people have been infected and 277 have died, despite local lockdowns in dozens of towns and villages, night-time curfews across the country, and the closure of all bars and nightclubs.
From November 14 until November 29, Lebanon will undergo a full lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus after the number of cases reached a critical point, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced on Tuesday.
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