BEIRUT: Lebanon registered 1,520 new coronavirus cases and 12 new deaths Thursday, as caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan warned that the country would not be able to cope with increasing cases.

Among the new cases, 20 were from travelers arriving from abroad, bringing the total number of cases to 132,776 since Feb. 21 when the disease was first detected. The total number of deaths now stands at 1,067.

A total of 14,192 PCR tests had been administered in the last 24 hours. The positivity rate of the tests in the last two weeks stood at 15.1 percent.

The Health Ministry provided the Army and General Security with 100,000 masks to level up their readiness against the virus, according to the state-run National News Agency.

Meanwhile, Hasan in a tweet warned that Lebanon did not have enough hospital beds to face the increasing number of coronavirus cases even though more beds were recently added.

Hasan also noted the absence of full compliance with virus measures during the two-week full lockdown that ended on Nov. 30.

Lebanon eased the lockdown measures Monday to cater to the countrys economic woes and an increasingly distressed population, with many struggling to put food on the table.

However, the full lockdown failed to yield the desired results, with cases remaining well over the 1,000 mark daily, alongside insufficient ICU bed capacity in hospitals and an overworked medical workforce.

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