generalspeaking

COVID-19 Fears for Yemen

"Yemen is already considered to be the world's largest humanitarian crisis."

"The country is now also facing the overlapping threat of the coronavirus pandemic, and the impact of recent torrential rain and flooding."
UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo 

"There is now a very real probability that the virus has been circulating undetected and unmitigated within communities [based on transmission patterns and given the time passed since Yemen reported its first case]."
"Since the first confirmed COVID case, we have warned that the virus is now in Yemen and may quickly spread."
"The factors are all here. Low levels of general immunity, high levels of acute vulnerability and a fragile, overwhelmed health system."
Lise Grande, humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, UNHCR

"We urge all parties to the conflict in Yemen to immediately halt fighting, to implement a ceasefire on the ground without delay, to release all detainees and those forcibly disappeared, and to work with the UN special envoy to urgently restart comprehensive and inclusive political negotiations to end the conflict."
50 NGOs working in Yemen, including Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Tearfund and the International Rescue Committee

UN warns of new humanitarian crisis as COVID-19 looms over Yemen [Khaled Abdullah/Reuters]

One of the poorest countries in the world, and the most insecure in the Middle East, Yemen, in the midst of a civil war, with millions of internally displaced refugees, now faces the very real prospect of becoming the hot-spot for the novel coronavirus caused by SARS-CoV-2, in the region. In a country facing famine and millions living in refugee camps lacking medical care, the feared invasion of the highly contagious COVID-19 has the potential of destroying untold number of vulnerable lives.

The first infections are being detected in Aden, the interim headquarters of the legal government-in-exile, torn from the country's capital Sanaa five years earlier by the Shiite-Iran-sponsored Yemeni Houthi group, in a war that has succeeded in creating what is described as the world's largest humanitarian-crisis-in-waiting. According to United Nations figures, a crisis that would outdistance in refugee numbers and deaths even that of Syria under the dread rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The population of 28 million, according to international health officials warning that an outbreak among the vulnerability of an embattled, politically-regionally-exploited situation is set to result and yet faces detection difficulties in a country whose health infrastructure, such as it was, has been massively degraded by poverty and war.


The Aden-based government maintains an emergency committee for the coronavirus, in an effort, given its hopeless medical situation and the prospect of continued conflict, to advise and instruct, even in the face of the reality that implementation of any proposed method of attempted control would be futile, given the circumstances.

The first step in hoping to contain a potential outbreak is for authorities to be able to trace "patient zero", an issue that simply is not feasible with the tools at the government's disposal. There are also rumours of cases detected in the capital Sanaa under the control of the Houthis, who deny that any COVID-19 cases have surfaced there, whatever.

For the present, the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist group set on self-rule in southern Yemeni governorates including Aden, 24-hour temporary curfews have been announced. In Aden, mosques were closed until further notice, along with shopping centres and restaurants. Khat markets, a mildly stimulant green leaf chewed daily by many Yemenites, will be closed, the sale of khat banned. The equivalent of banning alcohol sales in Western countries struggling to contain the coronavirus.