The Director of the National Center for Disease Control, Badr al-Din Al-Najjar has said that the center lacks the mandate that enables it to effectively fulfill its duty in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, as its role now is limited to announcing the Covid-19 testing results, counting the new cases and the deaths from the disease, and supervising the monitoring teams.
Al-Najjar told a local media outlet that the coronavirus confrontation plans, guidelines, and decisions are all in the hands of the Supreme Scientific Consultative Committee, which have recently taken successive decisions to establish individual committees operating outside the broad umbrella of the center, citing that the decentralization of taking decisions and the exclusion and marginalization of the executive arms have contributed to the proliferation of the virus.
He explained that the center is operating with the support of "some parties" which he did not specify, despite the fact that the center has been allocated 15 million dinars, but according to Al-Najjar this sum only exists on paper, as they have received nothing of this allocation to date. "The center even lacks laboratory operators and clothing for its monitoring teams," he noted.
According to the National Disease Control update on Friday, the Covid-19 cases in the country have amounted to 1342 cases, including 977 active cases, 38 fatalities, while 307 have recovered from the disease.
