UPDATE 1-First COVID-19 vaccines land in Lebanon under World Bank's watch

The bank said it had signed an agreement with the Red Cross to be in charge of monitoring the vaccination drive. Lebanon's caretaker health minister, Hamad Hassan, told reporters at the airport it was a "dream come true" that the first vaccines had arrived nearly a year after Lebanon detected its first case of the virus.

Lebanon received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines on Saturday with aid from the World Bank, which said it would monitor the inoculation drive to ensure the shots go to those most in need. About 28,500 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed at Beirut airport, the first of 2.1 million doses the health ministry has secured from the company, with arrivals expected in stages throughout the year.

The vaccination programme aims to ease the pressure on hospitals, battered by Lebanon's financial crisis and the huge Beirut port explosion in August last year, and now fighting some of the region's highest infection rates. In its first operation funding the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines, the World Bank reallocated $34 million from an existing health project in Lebanon to help the country launch the vaccination programme.

"We will MONITOR fair and transparent distribution to PRIORITY groups," Ferid Belhaj, the lender's regional vice president for MENA, wrote in a tweet. He said that included health workers and people aged over 65. The bank said it had signed an agreement with the Red Cross to be in charge of monitoring the vaccination drive.

Lebanon's caretaker health minister, Hamad Hassan, told reporters at the airport it was a "dream come true" that the first vaccines had arrived nearly a year after Lebanon detected its first case of the virus. He pledged that the vaccines would eventually reach everyone "in every corner of this wounded nation," seeking to dispel fears that politicians would use their influence to jump the queue.

Lebanon's economic collapse, rooted in decades of state corruption, has crashed the currency and doomed many to poverty since late 2019. The country has booked an additional 2.7 million doses through the global COVAX scheme for poorer countries, and officials say talks are underway for some 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The total number of doses ordered so far would allow Lebanon to vaccinate about half of its population of more than six million, which includes at least a million Syrian refugees. Firass Abiad, head of Rafik Hariri hospital, Beirut's largest public coronavirus facility, said its medical staff would get their shots within 24 hours.

"The best gift one can ask for on Valentine's day," he said on Twitter on Saturday. Hassan has also said Lebanon's president, parliament speaker and premier would get the first vaccines to boost morale.

Nearly a month into a strict lockdown, the government began easing some restrictions this week. Still, most businesses are closed and a 24-hour curfew remains in effect. Since January, as several countries in the region began rolling out vaccines, a surge in infections has flooded Lebanese hospitals after lax measures during Christmas, taking the nation's total death toll to almost 4,000.

Many ICU wards have filled up, as shortages of dollars and medical supplies spawned a black market for oxygen tanks. 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)