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Despite this, Health Minister Hamad Hassan said that the closure remains “our last chance”, to face the continuous increase in the number of injuries and to give the health sector a chance to catch its breath. His statement coincided with the efforts led by the Minister of the Interior and Municipalities, Muhammad Fahmy, two days ago, to reconsider the closure of some sectors in response to demands from the Beirut Merchants Association and affected actors. As he was scheduled to decide on the reconsideration option yesterday, he postponed the figures announced this afternoon debate.
Furthermore, with increasing pressure on the healthcare and hospital sector and the growing need to “satisfy” private hospitals, Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni decided yesterday to pay between 50 and 75 billion pounds to the Social Security Fund to stimulate hospitals to receive guaranteed Corona patients.
The exacerbation of the epidemiological reality and the inability to control the growing number of daily infections coincide with the efforts being made to obtain from Lebanon a part of the vaccine that the American “Pfizer” and the German “Biontech” announced that it has reached and that it will soon obtain a license from the US Food and Drug Administration, amid calls to wait for approval of the vaccine was issued by various specialists.
A health committee to determine the categories that will be covered by the vaccine, once it is licensed.
Lebanon is known to have already reserved, through the Kovacs platform, a portion of any vaccine that is licensed by competent authorities (such as the World Health Organization, the International Vaccine Federation and others), and has paid for four million and 368 thousand dollars (a first payment was made, provided that the rest is paid from the World Bank loan) to obtain one million 365 thousand doses. Has the ministry begun to seriously investigate the criteria that will govern the approval of the vaccine? Have the groups to be dosed been determined?
According to the information, the Minister of Health Hassan has formed a scientific committee headed by Dr. Abdel-Rahman El-Bizri and the membership of several of his advisers and representatives of some of the interests interested in the ministry (Department of Medicine Preventive, Epidemiological Surveillance Authority …) and representatives of the Medical Union, the World Health Organization and the World Bank, whose task is to develop the necessary frameworks for “Receiving” the vaccine.
Al-Bizri explained to Al-Akhbar that Lebanon has started direct negotiations with the Pfizer company and that it has an indirect relationship (through the Kovacs platform) with both the American company Moderna and the British AstraZeneca, which they expect Pfizer to join. a Get a license. He noted that three basic criteria will govern the selection process: efficacy, safety and approval by the World Health Organization, the European Medicines Agency and the United States Food and Drug Administration. There are also other basic guiding criteria, “related to prices and adaptability, especially with the discussion on the difficulty of transporting vaccine doses in terms of their need for refrigeration, etc.”, noting that Lebanon will be at the forefront. of the countries that will receive the vaccine.
But will the doses be affordable for everyone? Al-Bizri responds that “the 20% of the population that is determined to receive the participation of each country is not arbitrary. According to specialists, it is the percentage that any country requires to protect itself, and takes into account those over 65, those who suffer from immune diseases, workers in the health sector, among others. But “this does not mean that Lebanon would be 20% satisfied, it is possible to believe in the rest of the doses of the rest of the companies”, noting that “the main challenge before the Commission is to identify the groups that will benefit from the first dose because the participation of Lebanon will not come a boost ».
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