40,000 jabs given in Lebanon Covid vaccine weekend 'marathon'

40,000 jabs given in Lebanon Covid vaccine weekend 'marathon'
On Saturday and Sunday, nearly 50 centres across the country administered jabs on a walk-in basis to anyone over the age of 55 who had not yet received a single dose.
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The so-called 'Pfizer marathon' was the latest in a series of weekend vaccination drives organised this month. [Getty Images]

Lebanon administered more than 40,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in a weekend inoculation drive to contain the Covid pandemic.

On Saturday and Sunday, nearly 50 centres across the country administered jabs on a walk-in basis to anyone over the age of 55 who had not yet received a single dose.

Disabled people above the age of 16 were also eligible for vaccination.

As of 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) Sunday, 22,696 doses had been administered that day, the health ministry said on Twitter, following 19,089 jabs given the previous day.

Firass Abiad, the head of the Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut – Lebanon’s central hospital for coronavirus patients - called the drive "successful by all standards".

The so-called 'Pfizer marathon' was the latest in a series of weekend vaccination drives organised this month in an effort to contain the virus.

Lebanon, home to more than six million people, has recorded over 542,000 infections, including over 7,700 deaths since last year.

Its current coronavirus rates are the lowest they have been in months.

According to the health ministry, nearly 927,000 people had received at least one vaccine dose since inoculation started in February.