Lebanon reopens again after four-day lockdown to beat Covid-19 rise

Lebanon began to again gradually reopen businesses on Monday following four days of severe restrictions brought back to slow the rising number of cases of Covid-19 as people flaunted eased social distancing rules last week, but end-of-year school exams might still be cancelled.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced the “partial reopening” of the country in a speech on Sunday evening, calling on the Lebanese to “be vigilant, to maintain social distancing, and to adhere to prevention and protection guidelines”.

“We do not want this stage to turn into a nightmare,” he added.

The Lebanese government had scheduled a gradual reopening of the country after a six-week-long lockdown announced on March 15. But the move was interrupted last week following a rapid increase in local infections and the emergence of new clusters.

“Over a period of 10 days, the number of new internal cases increased almost five times compared to the 10 previous days,” said Mr Diab on Sunday. “Accordingly, we decided to return to full closure for four days. During this period, the Health Ministry conducted extensive testing, tracking and isolation of all cases,” he said.

On Sunday, the Health Ministry had recorded a total of 911 cases of Covid19 in Lebanon, including 17 new cases in the past 24 hours. Although not comparable to the tens of thousands in other countries, it is a high figure in the small Mediterranean nation that has been relatively spared by the pandemic in recent months. The number of deaths remained stable at 26.

“Lebanon has succeeded in staying in the phase of containment since the outbreak of the virus and our goal is to remain at this stage,” said Mr Diab, who highlighted that tougher measures had been put in place to control the return of thousands of Lebanese expatriates despite the closure of the airport on March 18.

“We adopted tougher measures to reduce the percentage of positive cases from returnees by imposing PCR tests in some countries, intensifying the follow-up internally and repeating the PCR test on the 14h day of their arrival,” said Mr Diab referring to the most common swab method of screening for Covid-19.

In a decree, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday that the nightly curfew from 7pm to 5am would remain as well as a system to allow odd and even number plate cars on the road on alternate days. All cars can be driven on Sunday.

The Interior Ministry said restaurants and cafes can open at 50 per cent capacity but forbid them from serving the narguileh, or water pipe, which is particularly popular in the evening during Ramadan. Gathering along Beirut's corniche, swimming in the sea, going to the gym or the park remains banned.

In parallel, the Education Minister Tarek Al Majzoub announced on Sunday that he was considering cancelling the 2020 secondary school exams, or baccalaureate.

“All students will move on to the higher grade according to regulations. And for universities, we will set up a special mechanism for distance learning,” he said.

“Preserving peoples’ lives is a priority and we will make for what we lost this year in the next academic year,” said Mr Al Majzoub.

Local media reported that the education minister’s proposals must be approved by the Cabinet.

On Monday, the hashtag “the fate of Lebanese students” was trending on Twitter, with many students worrying over their academic future.

Many highlighted that the coronavirus pandemic was only the latest crisis to hit Lebanese universities that have been paralysed in recent years by repeated strikes as well as the nation-wide anti-government protests that shook the country last October, spurred by Lebanon’s worst-ever economic crisis.

“I have been a student at the Lebanese University for three years and praise be to God not a single year has been normal and ended peacefully,” tweeted Christelle El Chaer, a journalism student at the Lebanese University, the country’s only public university.