Lebanon has eased and then re-imposed coronavirus lockdown – this merry-go-round shows what the future holds for other countries

To see your world shrunk again after a taste of freedom is difficult – but businesses are in a much more burdensome position, writes Bel Trew

People shop at a crowded souk in Beirut last week, prior to another lockdown (Reuters)

Freedom from the coronavirus lockdown lasted just a few days but tasted of joy. Emerging from homes like the forgotten player in a game of hide-and-seek, residents of Beirut last week began unfurling their days beyond stunted trips to the supermarket and pharmacy.

Alongside countries like Spain and Italy, whose strict lockdowns had also started in March and banned exercise outside, Lebanon moved into the first stage of lifting restrictions. It has been kind of crystal ball for the rest of the world, including the UK, whose curves are several weeks behind ours.

Here the situation has been particularly prophetic, and not necessarily for the happiest of reasons. On 4 May small and medium businesses were permitted to open, cafes and restaurants to operate at minimum capacity.

The corniche, which licks its way around glistening teeth of rocks, was finally opened to families that gathered along the yawning waterfront to play, cycle and fish. Further in town, cocktails were sold by mask-wearing waiters, who took your temperatures and phone number (for contact tracing) before you sat down. Clothes shop owners shook their mannequins out blinking onto the street.

But it was not quite the light at the end of this gruelling tunnel. Just one week in, shutters across the country were forced down again. There was a disturbing jump in cases over last weekend, with 36 recorded on Sunday alone (a high number for Lebanon, where the health care system has been ravaged by economic collapse).

The Lebanese prime minister blamed the people for not taking enough care. The data showed most of the infections traced back to a returning Lebanese expatriate who had tested positive and, instead of going into self-isolation, held a welcome home reception, accidentally infecting more than 20 people. And so just as quickly as our freedom had been gifted to us, it was taken away.

I write this on day four of full lockdown reimposed – we are told it may be lifted tomorrow (Monday). We understand even if that is the case, the restrictions may be re-imposed again further down the line. And so, this is the start of the seesaw – of what has been called “the hammer and the dance” – that will become the new normal for all of us until a vaccine is discovered.

It feels familiar and exhausting, like the phase of learning to swim when your parent keeps edging away from you and you wonder why you’re angrily drowning. For those of us able to work from home, the focus is on the physiological battle of your world shrunk again to a window overlooking life on other people’s balconies – when just the day before yesterday you ran 11km down a glorious seafront with a heart full of sunshine.

For those with businesses, like the little family-run sweet shop down my street, it is infinitely more terrifying. “We don’t know when they lift restrictions if it makes sense to reopen,” the owner says to me from the emptiness of her shop. “What if this happens again, and again?”

This will be a problem the world has to grapple with, and right now no one has complete answers. The decision to reverse the lifting of restrictions may be quicker and cruder in Lebanon, which does not have the testing, contract tracing or policing resources to battle the spread of this virus. But the re-application of lockdowns will come to most countries across the world.

There has been talk of this in South Korea (once praised for its handling of the virus) after more than 100 new cases were discovered from newly opened night clubs – forcing the authorities to test more than 20,000 people. Wuhan, the birthplace of the virus and the entrepreneur of tough lockdowns, has reported a cluster of new cases over the weekend. They are now screening 11 million people.

There are also surges in Japan and in Singapore where on Saturday alone there were 465 new infections, mostly among the migrant worker population, who are particularly vulnerable. Algeria and Saudi Arabia have already announced fresh restrictions.

“Opening the economy and lifting restrictions is not a linear path forward,” says Dr Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist based out of the University of Toronto and Toronto General Hospital who has been monitoring the spread in countries like Egypt. “Unless we have widespread vaccine that can mitigate some risk, we are not going to go back to what we remember as the pre-Covid-19 era.” He says this seesaw, between relaxing restrictions and keeping people inside, will likely last more than a year

However, Dr Bogoch is surprisingly upbeat. Before a vaccine is developed (if it ever is) the new “normal” may not need to consist of days locked up inside, like life now in Lebanon. There are ongoing clinical trials across the world for other treatments that may at least make the disease less deadly.

Within the next three months, he says, we will get the results of several trials on pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis drugs, which could prevent people contracting Covid-19 before or after exposure to someone infected. Researchers also hope that giving convalescent plasma – packed with antibodies – to people with severe Covid-19 may boost their ability to fight the virus, an idea that was first tried for influenza in the 1800s.

All of this could help countries open up and ease restrictions.

“There are over 90 different teams working on vaccines. We only expect 2 or 3 per cent of those teams will be successful,” Dr Bogoch says. “But I bet on human ingenuity. I think with the infinite brain power and infinite resources that is being deployed on this, we will have a solution – and a solution sooner rather than later.”