Thu 26 March 2020:
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that systematic testing for COVID-19 has started in Syria’s last opposition stronghold, the northwestern province of Idlib.
Testing began “after a shipment of 300 tests reached a member of the World Health Organization’s health cluster. The first four tests came back negative,” the U.N. agency said in a statement.
“Some 600 additional tests will reach the laboratory in Idlib tomorrow on March 26, and a shipment of 5,000 tests is scheduled to arrive in Idlib next week,” the statement said.
The U.N. agency also said it was shipping 10,000 gloves, 1,200 gowns, 10,500 masks, 200 goggles and 900 face shields to northwestern Syria.
“Personal protective equipment has already been distributed to 21 health care facilities” to deal with any outbreak of COVID-19, the agency said.
On Tuesday, a U.N. envoy, Geir Pedersen, called on Syria’s warring parties to implement an immediate cease-fire across the entire country, to focus efforts on fighting the deadly COVID-19.
To date, the Syrian regime has announced that there are four coronavirus infections in areas under its control.
The fragile cease-fires in the Idlib region, as well as those in the northeast, should be expanded across the whole of Syria, Pedersen said in his statement.
The cease-fire deal, which ended rare direct fighting between the Syrian regime and Turkish troops, was brokered between Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict. The deal halted a three-month Syrian regime offensive into the country’s last opposition stronghold. During the Russian-backed offensive, hundreds of civilians were killed, and nearly a million people were displaced in Idlib province.
The risk of an outbreak is especially high and most alarming in Syria’s northwest, where overcrowded settlements are teeming with fresh arrivals, and many of the displaced are forced to sleep in freezing temperatures in open spaces.
