Lebanon’s confirmed coronavirus cases surged to 446, as one elderly virus patient passed away, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

Former Prime Ministers Saad Hariri, Najib Miqati, Fouad Seniora and Tammam Salam issued a joint statement on Monday denouncing what they said were “goals to monopolize the State’s positions," as the government opts for a batch of key administrative appointments.

"At a time when Lebanon is enduring political, economic, financial, administrative and sectoral crises, the pandemic of coronavirus comes to deepen and complicate further the nation's crises. The Lebanese can see how their government tends to make appointments sensing an intention to grasp control of administrative, financial and monetary positions in the Lebanese state without adhering to the rules of competence and merit, as well as neglecting the reform demands of young women and men of the uprising,” the PMs said in their joint statement.

Agriculture Minister Abbas Mortada on Monday urged Lebanon’s farmers and citizens to grow their “own gardens if the crisis of the novel coronavirus drags on.”

Cheering erupted from balconies and windows in Lebanon on Sunday evening, as the country's citizens celebrated their "heroic" medical workers battling the coronavirus pandemic.

MP Ziad Aswad of the Free Patriotic Movement-led Strong Lebanon bloc on Sunday slammed calls for bringing home Lebanese expats amid the coronavirus crisis as a farce.

“More than four weeks into the anti-coronavirus measures, specifically abroad, and after everyone has coped with them and is taking precautions where they are inside Lebanon, the calls and threats for opening the borders cannot but have another reason that has nothing to do with the diaspora,” Aswad tweeted.

An army patrol came under gunfire Sunday during a raid to arrest fugitives from “the M. family” in the Baalbek district town of Maqneh, the National News Agency said.

“This prompted the patrol’s members to respond in kind, which resulted in the wounding in the leg of A.A.M. before he was arrested with another person,” NNA added.

A Lebanese Army helicopter has flown to Egypt and returned ten Lebanese officers and a non-commissioned officer to Lebanon amid the coronavirus pandemic, the army said on Sunday.

The military noted that the eleven personnel had been on a training mission.

Lebanon’s confirmed coronavirus cases surged 26 over the past 24 hours to reach 438, as two elderly virus patients passed away, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.

In a statement, the Ministry said the tally includes cases reported by the state-run Rafik Hariri University Hospital and private hospitals and laboratories.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday that the right of Lebanese stuck abroad to return home should not be subject to debate, as the country grapples with the novel coronavirus pandemic that killed six so far and infected 412.

Security forces on Saturday removed all the tents that protesters erected in Beirut’s Martyr Square and Riad al-Solh since Lebanon’s uprising on October 17.