Tunisian Health Minister Faouzi Mehdi announced Tuesday that his country was ready to face a fourth wave of the coronavirus as the death toll in the country topped 11,000.
The minister stressed that the government is rehabilitating the health sector, which is suffering from a shortage of medical cadres and a high demand for reanimation and oxygen beds.
“The Tunisian health sector has 400 reanimation beds and around 2,300 oxygen beds,” he said, adding that these numbers proved during previous COVID-19 waves to be insufficient.
Mehdi revealed that the government plans to tighten border controls to block the new Indian variant of the pandemic by asking all travels to show a negative PCR test before entering the country.
Tunisia imposed a general lockdown for a period of seven days starting from May 9 to 16 to contain the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the country.
In this regard, Dr. Hechmi Louzir, director of the Institute Pasteur in Tunis, said results of the lockdown will be noticed in two weeks, adding that new measures will be announced after the Eid al-Fitr holiday depending on the evolution of the pandemic situation in the country.
The Ministry of Health on Tuesday reported 88 coronavirus-related deaths and 1,161 new infections. This takes the overall fatalities to 11,556, while infections totaled 322,998.
The total number of recoveries reached 281,554.
The Health Ministry said 537,380 COVID-19 vaccines have been administered since the launch of the national drive on March 13, including 372,240 who received the first shot and 165,140 the second.
