By Staff, Agencies Lebanon confirmed 684 new coronavirus cases and 10 further deaths Monday, as officials mulled imposing a fifth lockdown to bring the outbreak back under control. Community transmission of the virus within Lebanon accounted for 657 of the new infections, with 15 percent of the 4,396 tests carried out on the local population yielding a positive result.

The remaining 27 cases were found among inbound travelers to the country.

A total of 29,986 people have now caught the virus in Lebanon since February 21, with 309 of those dying.

Relatively, the number of COVID-19 cases in Lebanon’s crowded Roumieh Prison also maintained its sharp upward trajectory Monday.

The Internal Security Forces said in statement that a total of 325 cases had been detected in the facility out of 896 tests.

That equates to a positivity rate of over 36 percent.

The Interior Ministry on September 17 said that there were just over 250 cases at the prison.

Outgoing Health Minister Hamad Hasan met Monday with the Health Ministry’s Scientific Committee to discuss a proposal to completely close the country for two weeks.

He said in a televised news conference after the meeting that the lockdown would raise the authorities’ capacity to track and trace cases, while easing pressure on hospitals, which have had to deal with a sharp increase in COVID-19 admissions in recent weeks.

The committee once again called for more private hospitals to open coronavirus wards, but it has been an uphill battle to convince them to do this due to the dire financial circumstance in the country and the fact that they are already owed hundreds of millions of dollars by the government