Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri University Hospital will send a medical team to test for the new coronavirus at a refugee camp on Wednesday after a female resident was found to be infected, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said.
A Palestinian refugee from Syria at the Wavel refugee camp in the Bekaa valley was transferred to hospital in Beirut for treatment that will be covered by the relief agency, a statement said.
UNRWA said it was “taking all necessary steps to provide the required assistance to the patient’s family to allow them to isolate themselves inside the house”.
The testing will focus on the woman's relatives and people she has interacted with, as well as 50 others chosen arbitrarily "inside the camp and its surroundings", AFP reported.
In coordination with Lebanese security forces, Palestinian factions in charge of security have imposed a lockdown on the camp, preventing anyone from entering or leaving.
More than 2,000 people live in Wavel, according to statistics released by Lebanon's government after a 2017 census, but the UN agency says the population of those registered in the camp are much higher.
According to the United Nations, Lebanon has 470,000 registered Palestinian refugees, but an official 2017 census put the number living in the country much lower, at around 175,000.
Meanwhile, Syrian refugees account for almost one million of the country's population of six million.
The Lebanese government has worried about the virus hitting camps for Syrian and Palestinian refugees where high population densities are likely to accelerate its spread, Reuters reported.
However, just one Palestinian, who lives outside a camp, and three Syrians have tested positive in Lebanon for COVID-19 compared to 677 infections and 21 deaths across the country, according to officials.
