Five members of Lebanese family dead from COVID-19
Bakhaoun, Lebanon, has been shocked by the news that five members of the same family from the town have died from COVID-19 in the last six weeks.
Abed Al-Jaleel Al-Samad, his wife Aisha and their youngest son Fady, 52, who worked for the Lebanese State Security, died from the virus in mid- October, while Fady’s older brother Bassam died on Oct. 27, and their brother Shadi died in hospital on Friday. Their sister has been undergoing treatment in a Tripoli hospital.
Bakhaoun is one of the most populous towns in Lebanon’s Dannieh district, with 15,000 people in an area of 8 square km. Despite strict lockdown measures, there have been 50 cases of COVID-19 in the town, including 25 cases in the AlSamad family alone.
Lebanon will enter its second week of a nationwide lockdown on Saturday. The measures are set to continue until the end of November. However, there have been thousands of curfew violations in the country — with a total of 19,245 fines issued up to Friday morning — and Thursday saw a record number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 — 1,900, bringing the country’s total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 111,905, with 868 deaths.
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, the highest number of deaths has occurred in the over-80 age group (252 deaths).
Lebanon’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic coincides with a severe economic crisis, the alleviation of which depends on implementing reforms requested by the international community and the resumption of talks with the International Monetary Fund.
On Friday, caretaker Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni was informed by Alvarez & Marsal that the consultancy has decided to void the contract it signed with the Finance Ministry for a forensic audit of Lebanon’s Central Bank.