Head of the Rafik Hariri University Hospital Firass Abiad on Tuesday warned of rising virus rates after the holidays after the first case of new COVID-19 strain was detected.

U.N. Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis on Monday admonished Lebanon’s political leaders over the ongoing delay in the cabinet formation process despite the country’s multiple and unprecedented crises.

“The economy and financial, banking system is in shambles, social peace starts to crumble down, security incidents on the rise, the edifice of #Lebanon is shaking in its fundaments. And political leaders seem to wait for Biden. But this is Lebanon, not the USA,” Kubis said in a tweet.

President Michel Aoun met Monday in Baabda with caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan, who thanked the president for “authorizing him to negotiate with the Pfizer company on providing its anti-coronavirus vaccine,” the National News Agency said.

Aoun gave Hassan the necessary instructions for “finalizing the agreement with the aforementioned company to achieve this purpose,” NNA added.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has blamed the ongoing delay in the formation of the new government on President Michel Aoun, PM-designate Saad Hariri, Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement.

“So far I’m still positive, because there is still hope that France might be able to open the doors for negotiations with the World Bank and the international institutions should an acceptable government be formed,” Jumblat said in an interview with his party’s electronic newspaper al-Anbaa.

The Baabda camp is insisting on being allocated five key ministerial portfolios in the new government, a media report said.

In the 14th meeting between President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri, “the Baabda camp demanded the following portfolios: energy, telecommunications, interior, defense and justice, which means all the sensitive ministries in the period of opening files or the avoidance of opening other files,” sources told al-Liwaa newspaper in remarks published Monday.

France will directly intervene in the beginning of the year in a bid to resolve the ongoing dispute between President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri over some ministerial portfolios, media reports said.

Next month might witness “French visits to Beirut aimed at pressing for resolving this dispute through proposals specifically focused on the justice portfolio,” informed sources told the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper in remarks published Monday.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said overnight that his group now has twice as many precision-guided missiles as it had a year ago, noting that Israel's efforts to prevent it from acquiring them have failed.

Nasrallah, in an end-of-year interview with the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, said his group has the capability to strike anywhere in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

A year after Japan learned with horror that Carlos Ghosn had jumped bail to become the world's most famous fugitive, the fiasco and its repercussions continue to haunt the country.

Lebanon will receive its first shipment of coronavirus vaccines in February from Pfizer-BioNTech, the health ministry said Sunday.

"Lebanon will receive the vaccine in mid-February in instalments," it said in a statement.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of raising the issue of assassinating him with the U.S. administration.

“According to our information, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman raised during his visit to Washington the issue of assassinating me,” Nasrallah said in an interview on al-Mayadeen TV.