Yemen confirms first coronavirus case

The war-torn country said the patient is in a stable condition

A police vehicle patrols a street after a curfew was declared in Al Sheher, a town in Yemen's Hadramawt province where the country's first coronavirus case was confirmed on April 10, 2020. Reuters

Yemen’s internationally recognised government on Friday announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the war-torn country, stoking fears of an outbreak that could devastate an already crippled healthcare system.

The Ministry of Public Health and Population said the individual who tested positive had been isolated and was being treated in a local hospital in Al Sheher in Hadramawt provice, where he is in a stable condition.

Yemen’s Minister of Health Nasser Baoum said the patient is a 73-year-old Yemeni national who worked at the port in Al Sheher.

Provincial governor Farag Al Bouhsni declared partial curfew and placed all workers at Al Sheher port under a 14-day quarantine. The adjacent province of Al Mahra sealed off its entry points just hours after the case was announced. Yemen’s Ministry of Religious Endowment in Aden said mosques would be closed to mass prayers as well as Quran lessons.

The World Health Organisation's office in Yemen said all known contacts with the patient were being traced and quarantined and that it was working with the health ministry to rapidly implement containment measures.

"For weeks we have feared this, and now it’s happened. Covid-19 is in Yemen,” said Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Yemen.

“After five years of war, people across the country have some of the lowest levels of immunity and highest levels of acute vulnerability in the world,” Ms Grande said in a statement released by the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “What’s facing Yemen is frightening. More people who become infected are likely to become severely ill than anywhere else.”

Repeated bombings and ground fighting over five years of civil war have destroyed or closed more than half of Yemen's health facilities. Deep poverty, dire water shortages and a lack of adequate sanitation have made the country a breeding ground for disease.

“This is one of the biggest threats in the past 100 years to face Yemen,” said Ms Grande. “It’s time for the parties to stop fighting each other and start fighting Covid together.”

The Saudi-led military coalition supporting the government against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels declared a ceasefire this week on humanitarian grounds to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The move was welcomed by the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, who is working to bring about about a ceasefire agreement with the Houthis. If he succeeds, it would be the first nationwide halt to the fighting, possibly paving the way to a peace agreement.

Yemen’s war erupted in 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and much of the country’s north. The US-backed, Saudi-led coalition intervened to oust the rebels and restore the internationally recognised government. The conflict has killed over 100,000 people and largely settled into a bloody stalemate.

The UN has described Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Cholera outbreaks are the worst in modern history. Over 24 million people in the country require humanitarian assistance, many of them on the brink of starvation.