COVID-19 IN LEBANON: DEMOGRAPHICS AND DISTRIBUTION

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has emerged over more than 200 countries leading to more than 117 million infection cases and more than 2.6 million deaths. Lebanon is one of the countries affected by this disease especially in the second half of 2020 reaching its peak early this year. In this study, we studied the impact of multiple factors on this surge and analyzed the positive tests among different age groups over a period of one year (from March 2020 to February 2021). Data was collected from one medical center in Beirut where more than 20,000 PCR tests were done using RT-PCR method between March 2020 and February 2021 and analyzed the pattern of increase of the rate of positivity over this period. The SARS-CoV-2 positivity rate was 13% over a period of one year. The highest number of positive PCR tests was in patients aged between 20 and 39 years. Furthermore, the number of positive tests was low in the first 4 months, which was followed by a dramatic increase in July 2020 reaching a peak in January 2021. Lebanon is among the countries affected lately by the COVID-19 pandemic with most cases arising after August 2020 affected by the blast of Beirut and emergence of new variants resulting in higher positivity rate. Moreover, our data shows a distribution of age similar to other countries and suggest its role in the rapid increase of positivity rate.