Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has said that he will not take a decision on whether or not to give up the mission of forming a new government without consulting with Speaker Nabih Berri, Dar al-Fatwa's juristic council and the former premiers.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is “open to all choices” and “the option of resignation has become on the table,” al-Mustaqbal Movement media coordinator Abdul Salam Moussa said on Sunday.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said after meeting Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan on Saturday, and after attending the meeting of the Higher Islamic Council, that he is keeping an eye on the country as it grapples with economic and social crises.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri visited Grand Mufti of the Republic Abdul Latif Daryan at Dar el-Fatwa on Saturday, amid reports that he plans to announce his resignation after the meeting.

After high hopes that the initiative of Speaker Nabih Berri could make a breakthrough in a deadlocked government formation, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper said on Saturday that the difficult counter conditions set by political parties are Likely to thwart any hope in that direction.

Quoting sources close to Berri, the daily said his initiative reached a “deadlock” and needs a “miracle to make any positive breach."

Pharmacies across Lebanon shuttered their doors on Friday to protest severe shortages of medicines as motorists lined up for hours outside gas stations since the crack of dawn.

The two-day strike called by pharmacists over lack of supplies, including infant milk, as well as gasoline shortages were the latest signs of Lebanon's economic and financial meltdown, which appears to be spinning out of control while the country's leaders seem unable, or unwilling, to rein in the crises.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Thursday criticized the caretaker government, accusing it of standing idly by in the face of the growing economic and financial crises, as he described Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s call for buying fuel from Iran as unrealistic.

“Is the caretaker government taking care of matters? I see that it is draining the Lebanese people,” Geagea said at a press conference.

Doctors around Lebanon on Thursday staged sit-ins outside hospitals protesting the dire conditions and sharp shortages in medical supplies, and called on the World Health Organization to step in and help the crisis-stricken country.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s latest remarks about the party’s readiness to rely on fuel imports from Iran if the Lebanese state fails to take action, raised concerns of U.S. sanctions on the crisis-stricken country, media reports said on Thursday.

Since 2018, Washington has imposed sanctions on anyone who knowingly enters into deals with Iranian oil companies in order to buy, possess, sell, transfer or market petroleum or petroleum products from the Iranian authorities.

Caretaker health minister Hamad Hassan inaugurated the country’s largest vaccination center at a shopping mall in Beirut as the government speeds up the inoculation campaign against the coronavirus.

Hassan says the center, at City Mall in Dora area, run by the Lebanese Red Cross can vaccinate more than 5,000 persons a day and aims to encourage more people to take the vaccines outside hospitals and clinics.