President Michel Aoun chaired a Cabinet meeting in the presence of PM Hassan Diab and the ministers at Baabda Palace to discuss eight items on the agenda, the National News Agency reported on Thursday.

President Michel Aoun received UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis at Baabda Palace, the National News Agency reported on Thursday.

NNA said the two men’s meeting came ahead of the report that Kubis would submit to the UN Secretary-General in the coming days on Lebanon’s action to address its economic crisis.

Lebanon’s National Social Security Fund set the cost of testing for coronavirus at 150,000 Lebanese pounds, a move criticized by many including MP Qassem Hashem who said it should be free for all.

The committee of the employees and contract workers of the state-run Rafik Hariri University Hospital on Wednesday declared an open-ended strike at a time the hospital is leading Lebanon’s medical response against the coronavirus epidemic.

The committee said it took its decision due to “all the threats, difficulties and hard circumstances that the hospital’s workers are going through and the blatant carelessness of the administration and the officials concerned.”

Lebanon on Wednesday banned all flights from Italy, Iran, South Korea and China as a precaution against the spread of the novel coronavirus, giving its citizens in France, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Germany, Spain and the UK a four-day deadline to return home.

The measures were announced by Prime Minister Hassan Diab following a meeting for the country’s anti-coronavirus committee.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday urged Lebanese authorities to “close the doors in the face of coronavirus from whichever country it may come, brotherly, friendly, near or far.”

Lebanon’s restaurants will close as a precaution against the COVID-19 coronavirus but delivery services will remain active, their syndicate announced on Wednesday.

The syndicate said the decision was taken despite “the syndicate’s readiness and the health precautions that have been taken” and following “several meetings with Tourism Minister Ramzi Msharrafiyeh.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Wednesday called for declaring a health emergency in Lebanon and said authorities’ response to the coronavirus crisis has been insufficient due to “political reasons.”

“A serious health emergency must be declared, especially as to providing public and private hospitals with all the necessary equipment and taking the maximum precaution measures,” Geagea tweeted.

A person coming the United States is infected with the coronavirus and there are 15 infected people at a quarantined ward at the Notre Dame des Secours hospital in Jbeil, Amchit municipal chief Antoine Issa told Radio Voice of Lebanon on Wednesday.

The radio network said a state of panic is engulfing the Jbeil district, amid calls for closing public and private institutions, restaurants, leisure places and assembly venues.

The Health Ministry on Wednesday released a report detailing how the country’s 61 coronavirus patients were infected and their ages.

It said 37% of them came from abroad -- Egypt, the UK, Iran and Switzerland. Fifty-eight percent were meanwhile infected by those coming from foreign countries.