Houthis try to conceal extent of coronavirus pandemic amid worsening situation

SANAA–International organisations warn that hundreds have died of the coronavirus pandemic in the Houthi-controlled territories where the pro-Iranian militias have been unable to cope with the disease.

Making things worse, the Houthis are intentionally undercounting the toll and trying to silence the local population so as not to reveal the true extent of the pandemic.

The Houthi militias are reported to have severely punished those who spoke out and promoted conspiracies to intimidate the population.The Houthi minister of health was even quoted as saying that the Houthi scientists are working on developing a cure for COVID-19 to present to the world.

Families are never really told if their relatives died from the coronavirus. Grave diggers and guards at the cemeteries, across northern Yemen, are warned not to speak about the causes of the deaths. If asked, they are told to say that the dead are “unidentified bodies from the war,” according to several residents and one gravedigger.

The lack of information about the true number of people infected by the coronavirus in Houthi-controlled areas has led to wild speculation about the scope of the disease and the rebel’s response to dealing with the infections and deaths has only added to the confusion.

Officially, the rebels say that only four cases of coronavirus have been detected in the regions they control, and have resisted making the number of positive cases and deaths public.

A Houthi official admitted to the Associated not publishing accurate figures about the toll. “We don’t publish the numbers to society because such publicity has a heavy and terrifying toll on people’s psychological health,” said Youssef al-Hadhari, spokesman for the Houthi health ministry said.

The World Health Organization believes that there is a significant undercount of total number of people affected by the coronavirus outbreak, which officials say could further hinder efforts to get the medical supplies needed to contain the virus.

Richard Brennan, the WHO’s regional emergency director, believes the COVID-19 deaths are in the hundreds and cases are in the thousands, based on what he has heard from numerous health providers in Yemen.

The United Nations announced, on Monday, that the situation is worsening on Yemen, as the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the deadly toll of the war in Yemen, crippling a health system already in shambles with little capacity to test those suspected of having the virus.

An investigation by the Associated Press found that deaths from suspected coronavirus cases have surged to the point that, at the end of May, the Houthi religious endowment ministry, which is in charge of cemeteries, hung a sign on one of Sana’a’s largest cemeteries that read: “Khazima cemetery is full”.

Yemen, which has been devastated by five years of civil war, is already gripped by what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands killed, an estimated four million people displaced by war and tens of thousands afflicted by malnutrition and disease.

The war-ravaged country, has no more than 500 ventilators and 700 ICU beds nationwide. There is one oxygen cylinder per month for every 2.5 million people. The World Health Organization (WHO) says there is a full-blown transmission of the virus in Yemen, with the disease spreading undetected among a population with some of the lowest levels of immunity to disease compared with other states.

Local health officials, aid workers, residents, and community activists who all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the pandemic, say the situation in the war-torn country is worsening fast.

Local unions, who have kept their own death tallies from the coronavirus, report that 46 medical staffers, 28 judges, and 13 lawyers died in a three-week period between mid-May and early June, well above the Houthis’ official count.

The fighting has already killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions. Years of aerial bombings and intense ground fighting has destroyed thousands of buildings, leaving half of Yemen’s health facilities dysfunctional.

About 18% of the country’s 333 districts have no doctors. Water and sanitation systems have collapsed. Many families, especially among the millions displaced by fighting, can barely afford one meal a day.

Secretly filming the burials on smartphones in defiance of the Houthi orders has become an act of heroism, local resident said in interviews, adding that the amateur videos give Yemenis the only true glimpse of the true impact of COVID-19 in the region.