“There is no coordination between the concerned ministries about the preventative guidelines,” Araji told local channel Al-Jadeed. “I think we’ve lost control of coronavirus.”

Araji also told local newspaper Al-Anbaa that the tough economic circumstances made it difficult to impose a lockdown, but that “the dangerous pandemic situation makes it necessary to treat it as an option.” He added that the number of infections is expected to rise “in the coming days.”

Lebanon in September has so far seen three record breaking days in the number of new infections, with a high of 1,006 cases registered on Sept. 20. The cash strapped country, whose coronavirus hospital wards are nearly at capacity, surpassed 30,000 total cases Tuesday.

The number of people with COVID-19 in hospital also rose by 118 percent between Sept. 1 and 23, with in-patients up to 407 on Wednesday from 344 at the start of the month. There were 123 people in intensive care Wednesday, down slightly from the Sept. 17 peak of 128.

Rather than imposing a fifth full lockdown, as proposed Sunday by outgoing Health Minister Hamad Hasan, Araji told Al-Anbaa that the ministerial committee tasked with combating coronavirus was “heading toward increasing control measures on institutions in order to implement safety standards.”

He added that Hasan had been pushed toward suggesting a lockdown because of the “lack of preventative measures in various sectors, especially in the past two months, as well as citizens’ neglect of these measures.”

Araji said that Hasan had been pessimistic when he met the committee Monday about the ability of the authorities to convince people to stick to the health guidelines.

As news of a possible new lockdown broke, the Association of Traders in Jounieh and Kesrouan said Monday in a statement that its members would not close if the lockdown went ahead. The lockdown would lead traders to “bankruptcy and closure,” it said.

“The resistance to the lockdown was led by the business sectors, already suffering from the effects of the financial meltdown,” Lebanon’s leading voice on coronavirus Dr. Firass Abiad tweeted Wednesday. “The security forces also felt the public, already restless, would not respond well to the measure.”

Abiad questioned the rationale behind the committee pulling the brakes on a possible lockdown and trying to bolster the enforcement of existing measures.

“The alternative to a lockdown was a list of recommendations aimed at public compliance, hospital capacity, testing and tracing, etc. In short, it was a repeat of old recommendations with an emphasis on implementation. Why would the same approach lead to a different outcome?” he wrote.

“We are heading toward so-called ‘herd immunity’ because nobody is complying with the guidelines,” Araji warned Al-Jadeed.

Experts have said that a public health strategy based on obtaining herd immunity would have heavy consequences in the absence of a vaccine, even in countries with relatively robust health systems.

“For COVID-19, which has an estimated infection fatality ratio of 0.3-1.3%, the cost of reaching herd immunity through natural infection would be very high ... Assuming an optimistic herd immunity threshold of 50%, for countries such as France and the USA, this would translate into 100,000–450,000 and 500,000–2,100,000 deaths, respectively,” a recent article in leading science journal Nature said.

“Another question is what it would take to achieve 50% population immunity, given that we currently do not know how long naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 lasts (immunity to seasonal coronaviruses is usually relatively short-lived), particularly among those who had mild forms of disease, and whether it might take several rounds of re-infection before robust immunity is attained,” the authors continued.