Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan on Sunday signed a “final agreement” with the Pfizer company for securing more than 2.1 million Covid-19 vaccines that will begin gradually arriving in Lebanon as of early February, his press office said.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has asked caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan to move a donated Qatari field hospital from the Tyre region to the Rafik Hariri University Hospital or the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium, Hassan’s press office said.

The Health Ministry received at dawn Sunday 18 ICU ventilators for use in intensive care units, which are the last batch of a series of batches purchased by the Ministry in late March through the World Bank loan, the health minister’s press office said.

Head of the national scientific committee for COVID-19, Dr. Abdul Rahman Bizri said on Saturday, the countdown to receiving the coronavirus vaccine has begun, but noted that Pfizer “is not lenient” with Lebanon on the financial issue.

After the leaked “video crisis” between President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri, “prominent” politicians sought France’s intervention to mitigate the lingering tension between the two men, in a bid to ease the government formation deadlock, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday.

As Lebanon witnesses a full lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus, the U.S. embassy in Beirut made a notable gesture on its official Twitter account urging the Lebanese to "stay home."

The U.N. Security Council has given a green light for former Slovak Foreign Minister Jan Kubis, the current U.N. envoy in Lebanon, to lead the U.N. political mission in conflict-stricken Libya, a post that has been vacant for nearly a year, diplomats said Friday night.

The council had until 5 p.m. EST to object to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' selection of the veteran diplomat, who previously served as the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, but diplomats said there were no objections. They spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an official U.N. announcement.

Lebanon hit new daily records of 44 coronavirus deaths and over 6,000 new infections Friday, the second day of a lockdown aimed at preventing the country's creaking healthcare system from collapsing.

Parliament on Friday approved a law regulating the novel use of medical products to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, which aims to reassure international companies that they will not be responsible in case of side effects for the anti-virus vaccines.

Israel on Friday said it freed the Lebanese shepherd, Hassan Zahra, after kidnapping him on Tuesday in the outskirts of Kfarshouba.