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| - Still reeling from a deadly port blast that ravaged their Beirut homes and businesses, Lebanese wearily entered into a new coronavirus lockdown Friday. "What now? On top of this disaster, a coronavirus catastrophe?" said 55-year-old Roxane Moukarzel, as she waved towards the devastated port from the balcony of her gutted home. Lebanon closed down for two weeks from Friday morning to stem a string of record daily infection rates that have brought the number of COVID-19 cases to 11,580, including 116 deaths. The new lockdown measures do not affect the clean-up or aid effort in areas of the capital ravaged by a massive explosion at Beirut's port on August 4 that killed 181 people and wounded thousands. The airport is to operate normally and ministries will be staffed at half capacity. Compliance with the measures varied across the country on the first day, the National News Agency said, but the capital's streets largely emptied of cars after a 12-hour night-time curfew came into force at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT). An AFP correspondent said the devastated Beirut neighbourhood of Gemmayzeh near the port looked like a ghost town, as authorities announced yet another record of 628 new coronavirus cases recorded in the past 24 hours. On her apartment balcony, Moukarzel said she supported the lockdown, especially after the explosion that laid waste to windows and doors across swathes of the capital. "Economically closing up the country is not good, as people want to sell, but let them lose out a little instead of getting sick and having to be carted off to hospital," she said. "There's no more space in the hospitals. If people suddenly start burning up, where will they put them?" Authorities fear Lebanon's fragile health sector would struggle to cope with a further spike in COVID-19 cases, especially after some hospitals near the port were damaged in the explosion. "We are back at square one," caretaker health minister Hamad Hassan warned Friday after the rapid rise in infections, calling on all hospitals -- private and public -- to help fight the virus. But on the near-empty seafront, runner Samer Harmoush said he was not convinced shuttering non-essential businesses would be effective. "There's no point in this lockdown," he said. "There's no general compliance. Some shops are complying completely, while others aren't at all." Lebanon imposed a months-long lockdown from mid-March, which it gradually lifted until the airport reopened on July 1. A new temporary lockdown in early August was scrapped in the wake of the explosion. The pandemic arrived on the heels of the country's worst economic crisis in decades, which has since last year trapped people's savings in banks, sent food prices soaring and caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs or a large part of their income. Even before the explosion of a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate at the port sparked popular rage against official negligence, Lebanon's crisis had doubled poverty rates to more than half of the population, according to UN estimates. Sitting inside his carpenter's shop in a Beirut neighbourhood inland from the port, Qassem Jaber said he did not see how a further lockdown was helpful after months of slow business and an explosion that blew away his workshop's shutter. "There's no work. People have no more money. They have nothing to eat," he said, determined to keep his business open to help people rebuild their homes. "What's coronavirus got to do with it? We all get better and then it's fine," the 75-year-old added. But the Shiite Muslim carpenter did welcome a call from the Hezbollah movement for followers to avoid large gatherings and instead commemorate the religious event of Ashura at home this year. The occasion, which marks the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein in battle by the forces of Caliph Yazid and usually draws thousands of Shiite Muslims into the streets, also falls on Friday. But Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has urged followers to suspend the usual public display of grief, due to the alarming spread of the coronavirus. "The situation has become out of control, there are many cases, and the hospitals are no longer able to cope," Nasrallah said on Monday, urging people instead to hoist black flags outside their homes and shops to mark the religious event. Jaber said he thought the decision was wise: "They cancelled Ashura so no one gets infected." "Every day we have 100, 200, 300 new cases. If they held Ashura, everybody would be glued to one another. It wouldn't do." bur-ah/sw/hkb
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