World Bank backs vaccine rollout in hard-hit Lebanon

World Bank backs vaccine rollout in hard-hit Lebanon

WASHINGTON – The World Bank announced Thursday it will put $34 million into a programme to provide coronavirus vaccines for more than two million people in Lebanon, which extended on Thursday a nationwide lockdown by a week to February 8.

“This is the first World Bank-financed operation to fund the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines,” the Washington-based institution said in a statement.

Lebanon, a country of more than six million, has been logging some 5,500 cases a day since the start of the year, the World Bank said.

A total of 264,647 COVID-19 deaths and 2,084 deaths have been recorded so far.

It entered a strict 11-day lockdown last Thursday after recording a 70% uptick in infections in one of the steepest increases in transmission worldwide.

An eye on vaccines

Under the World Bank plan, the vaccines would arrive by early February. It did not specify which lab it was partnering with.

The $34 million are being reallocated under the existing Lebanon Health Resilience Project, funded by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Beyond the human toll, the pandemic is exacerbating the economic crisis in Lebanon, the World Bank said.

The vaccine will go first to “priority groups”: high-risk health care workers, those over the age of 65, “epidemiological and