Lebanon Approves Russian Vaccine, Embassy to Donate 200k Jabs

By Staff, Agencies

The Russian embassy to Lebanon will donate 200,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines to Lebanon, to assist with the country's inoculation program due to begin this month, the head of the emergency coronavirus committee said Friday.

Dr. Abdul Rahman Bizri, made the announcement after inspecting a new coronavirus vaccination center at the Turkish Hospital in Sidon in preparation for the arrival of the country's first doses of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech.

"Today, as a technical committee, we approved the Russian vaccine, and as a result, the Russian embassy kindly presented a donation of 200,000 vaccines to Lebanon. There will be an agreement to import more doses to Lebanon in the future."

The Health Ministry later confirmed that the Russian vaccine Sputnik V had been approved. The vaccine was met with initial criticism from the global scientific community after the jab was rolled out without final data being released.

However, data published this week in the respected British medical journal The Lancet of the vaccine's phase 3 clinical trials revealed it to have a 91.6 percent efficacy level at preventing coronavirus infection, and complete protection against hospitalization and death.

In addition, Bizri revealed that the Lebanese Army will be receiving a donation of vaccines: "Yesterday, with the Lebanese Army and in agreement with the Ministry of Health, I finished arranging the issue of vaccinating the Lebanese Army; and there is a special donation coming to the army that will be announced soon."

It has been alleged that the Army has secured doses of the Chinese-developed Sinopharm vaccine, which has already been rolled out for use in other Middle Eastern nations including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The vaccine holds an 86 percent efficacy level against COVID-19, according to the results of final trials held in Dubai.

Lebanon's vaccination program is due to begin in mid-February with the arrival of 30,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine; followed by further shipments in March of the British-made Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Researchers from the University of Oxford revealed Friday that in recent trials the jab has a similar efficacy level against the new highly contagious variant of the virus first detected in the South-East of England, which has since spread to countries across the world, including Lebanon.

The Health Ministry last week invited citizens to sign up to register for the jab through an online registration system, which then allocates each patient to one of 42 vaccination centers in the country.