Beirut, Lebanon – Lebanon’s COVID-19 vaccination roll-out has begun, but there remain concerns the most vulnerable people in the country may be left out of the campaign or excluded altogether.
Regardless of nationality or legal status, anyone living in Lebanon is supposed to be covered under its vaccination campaign, including refugees and migrant labourers, who count for about 1.5 million of the estimated six million people living here.
“For refugees, one of the problems that we’ve noticed are very low registration it could be a lack of awareness, or a lack of trust in the process,” said Aya Majzoub, Human Rights Watch’s Lebanon and Bahrain researcher.
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At the vulnerable age of 93, popular Lebanese actor Salah Tizany was the perfect person to kick off the country s coronavirus inoculation campaign.
Holding his cane with one hand and waving his index with the other, he said on Sunday at the public Rafik Hariri University Hospital that he was proud to be “number one”.
“I am very happy to be the first person to take the vaccine,” he told The National. “I want to encourage people who are scared to take the shot.”
Lebanon rolled out the vaccination drive nearly one year to the day after the country recorded its first Covid-19 case.
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Lebanon has administered its first jabs of COVID-19 vaccine, with an intensive care unit physician and a well-known 93-year-old comedian becoming the first to receive Pfizer-BioNTech doses
A healthcare worker receives Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during a nationwide vaccination program at the American University Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
By
SARAH EL DEEB Associated Press
BEIRUT Lebanon administered Sunday its first jabs of COVID-19 vaccine, with an intensive care unit physician and a well-known 93-year-old comedian becoming the first to receive Pfizer-BioNTech doses.
Lebanon launched its inoculation campaign a day after receiving the first batch of the vaccine 28,500 doses from Brussels, near where Pfizer has a manufacturing facility. More were expected to arrive in the coming weeks.