Wassim Al-Zuhairi - Beirut

In the midst of the Lebanese people 's preoccupation with the financial, economic, living and political crises, the health concern jumped to the list of interests after the official announcement in Beirut of the first infection with the Corona virus.

The announcement came from the Minister of Health, Hamad Hassan, who confirmed that a woman who was coming from the Iranian city of Qom was wounded, and that she was subject to medical isolation and receiving the necessary treatments.

This development was a warning to raise the level of preparedness at all levels, at a time when social media sites were filled with rumors and various comments amid calls for the necessity to deal with the issue with high responsibility.

On the official level, the meetings intensified by the ministerial crisis cell concerned with following up the issue of the Corona virus, headed by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, and a series of measures were taken, the most important of which was preventing citizens and other residents from traveling to cities and regions where the virus is spreading in a number of countries.

Stop flights
The committee also decided to stop the trips to isolated areas in China, South Korea, Iran and other countries, with the exception of the necessary travel cases, and affirmed the isolation of people who show symptoms of infection in the Rafic Hariri Governmental University Hospital in Beirut,

It also mandated the ministries of economy and health to prevent the export of individual protective medical equipment and the import of the necessary quantities thereof, and requested the Ministry of Health to allocate a government hospital in each governorate to be an exclusive center for receiving any infection with this virus.

For his part, the Minister of Health confirmed the adoption of absolute transparency in announcing information related to the Corona virus, and said in press interviews that his ministry is continuing its efforts to early detection of any infection with the symptoms of the virus among the citizens coming from abroad, and assured that careful follow-up is done to all cases that may be the subject of Doubt.

The minister said that the panic is permissible but only on the condition that it does not turn into an "excessive hysterical panic", considering that this panic led to the loss of necessary materials and supplies from pharmacies such as gums, and stressed that his ministry is keen on continuing to deal with the Corona file with precision, but without creating an additional crisis over the crises that It ravaged the country as he put it.

Hassan stressed that his ministry adopts full transparency on information related to the virus (Anatolia)

Preventative measurements
In turn, the Syndicate of Owners of Private Hospitals, Suleiman Haroun, said that the Corona virus requires first taking the necessary preventive measures to prevent its spread, and added that the Ministry of Health has taken good measures, especially with regard to allocating a hospital to receive cases infected with Corona virus because the distribution of infected people to all hospitals contributes to the spread of the disease, as he said.

Haroun praised Al-Jazeera Net for the measures taken at the Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, and explained that the medical staff in the hospitals are trained in the isolation of patients, but he pointed out that the role of these hospitals is to transfer those who prove to be injured to the Rafic Hariri University Hospital.

On what was raised about the lack of some preventive medical supplies, Haroun pointed to the existence of some problems in this regard, and said that the hospitals started with a kind of legalization in the use of some of these equipment, pointing out that he asked the Ministry of Health to check the warehouses of medical equipment dealers to make sure that no Commercial exploitation of the subject.

The President of the Private Hospitals Syndicate pointed out that the prices of some of these supplies were recently raised significantly by the merchants, pointing out that the shortage started before the exacerbation of the Corona virus due to the financial crisis in Lebanon, the shortage in the US dollar, and some traders exporting the stock abroad.