Ministry of Health: Compared to neighboring countries, Libya’s Covid situation is under control

According to the Minister, there have been 202,000 cases and 3400 deaths since the onset of the pandemic in March 2019.

During a joint press conference with the spokesman for the Government of National Unity, the Minister explained that statistics on the number of cases in isolation and care centres are few, if not non-existent, in some districts.

On the occasion of Eid Al-Adha, the Minister of Health urged prudence and social distance, as well as the wearing of face masks and strict adherence to social distancing rules, in order to safeguard as many people as possible.

The Minister of Health attributed the significant increase in positive results from the analysis to people’s awareness and sense of the importance of conducting the tests, which were limited to travellers. He also noted that repeated testing from citizens more than once and in more than one location will result in an inaccurate spike in positives.

According to Dr Al-Zanati, the Government of National Unity has mandated that extra attention and health procedures be taken at land and air outlets, particularly with neighbouring Tunisia.

The Minister of Health stated that 8 days after such safeguards were implemented and there was concern that positive cases would grow, a decrease in mortality and a decrease in oxygen demand were recorded, confirming that the majority of cases had been reported.

In a related context, the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has declared that it is preparing for next week’s vaccine campaign in towns where the epidemic situation has worsened.

According to the Libyan news agency (LANA), the Director of the Centre’s Vaccination Department, Abdalbaset Samiu, stated that the Centre had distributed the Sputnik V vaccine to the four branches (Tripoli-Benghazi-Sabha-Misrata) to begin distributing it to vaccination centres within its scope.

He also stated that 437,414 people have gotten vaccines thus far, with 905,000 people enrolled in the system.

“We anticipate a shipment of Russia’s Sputnik V comprising 500,000 dosages, which is expected to come Saturday or Sunday as promised by the contracted supplier,” he continued.