Lebanon confirmed the country’s third case of coronavirus on Thursday, after a man arriving from Iran on Feb. 24 tested positive, the health ministry said, according to news agency NNA.
In a statement, the Ministry announced that the patient is 77 years old Iranian citizen who came to Lebanon aboard the Iran Air’s plane that landed in Beirut last week.
The man, born in 1943, was taken from his home by the Lebanese Red Cross and into quarantine at Rafik Hariri University Hospital after early symptoms appeared, the ministry statement said. His condition appeared to be stable, it said.
The previous two cases in Lebanon had been tied to an earlier flight from Iran that arrived last week carrying 150 passengers.
Iran said on Thursday its death toll from coronavirus had risen to 26 and the total number of infected people now stood at 245, the highest number of deaths from the virus outside China.
The Iranian city of Qom, the nation’s religious capital has a population of around 1 million, but it gets over 20 million visitors a year. So far, the city remains open to travelers, especially Muslim pilgrims aiming to pray at the holy sites there. Part of the reason for that is Tehran didn’t want to admit that an outbreak had begun there, even when a parliamentarian representing Qom said 50 people had been infected.
Iran is the hub of the Coronavirus in the Middle East and despite that Lebanon’s Hezbollah-backed government refuses to ban flights from Iran.
Several Arab countries have suspended flights to and from Iran and imposed shipping restrictions.
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