Former Lebanese Minister Survived an Assassination Attempt but Contracted COVID-19

Former Lebanese Minister of Administrative Reform, May Chidiac, announced this morning that she has contracted the novel coronavirus during a trip she made recently to France.

Chidiac, a prominent journalist and media figure who survived an assassination attempt that targeted her in 2005 by a car bomb, assured her followers on Twitter that she's in a stable condition and was only diagnosed after suffering some mild symptoms. After that she received positive COVID-19 test results.

The former minister's announcement prompted many reactions across Twitter, mostly from people wishing her a speedy recovery.

Many social media users also remembered the assassination attempt, Mai survived 15 years ago, and voiced out their hope that she survives this disease just as well.

Translation: "You've won your battle against an explosion, you'll easily do it again against a virus. We pray for you."

Lebanon is known to have an everlasting public-political debate between pro and anti-Iran citizens. Those anti-Iran are linking most confirmed cases to Shiite religious tourists visiting Iran, an epicenter for the virus.  At the same time, pro-Iran social media commentators pointed out "an irony" in the fact that Chidiac contracted the deadly virus while in France, a western country, highlighting her political ideology and describing it as "pro-Western, anti-Iranian".

Translation: "Former Minister Mai Chidiac announced that she has the coronavirus after coming back from France last week. Iran doesn't seem to be the reason, but the loving mother France. I wish her a speedy recovery."

Chidiac's 2005 assassination attempt was linked to a TV show she hosted at the time, in which she continuously criticized the Iranian-backed Syrian intervention in Lebanese affairs, most notably, the Syrian military presence in the country until 2005.