Published : 11-11-2020
The Syrian government has set up a temporary hospital for Covid-19 patients at a Damascus sports complex in preparation for what the World Health Organization (WHO) said was a possible second wave.
The facility at Al-Faiha Stadium will operate 120 beds for people requiring oxygen, but has capacity for 100 more.
The health ministry has reported about 4,800 cases of Covid-19 and 228 deaths in government-held areas since March. However, experts believe the actual figures are significantly higher.
Last month, researchers in the UK estimated that only a fraction of deaths due to Covid-19 in Damascus had been reported for various reasons, including limited testing capacity.
The UN warned that community transmission was widespread, as almost 90% of new cases could not be traced to a known source; infection rates among health workers were rising; and shortages of staff and supplies were putting even more pressure on a health system decimated by years of civil war.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that limited testing capacity has hidden the scale of the crisis.
"A lot of cases are still going unreported, and the actual number of Covid-19 cases is much higher," the WHO's Syria representative, Akjemal Magtymova, told Reuters news agency last week.
A senior official at a Western non-governmental organisation was also quoted as saying there had been a "major and unprecedented spike in July and most of August" in Syria, during which 120 people were dying each day on average.
That figure tallied with the number of burials that took place at the Najha cemetery, the designated site for Covid-19 victims in Damascus, Reuters said.
Researchers at Imperial College London recently estimated that only 1.25% of deaths due to Covid-19 had been reported in Damascus, and that 4,380 deaths in total in the capital might have been missed as of 2 September.
Given that Damascus was likely to have the most robust surveillance in Syria, the findings suggested that other regions could have experienced similar or worse mortality rates, the researchers said.
The health ministry has not commented on the discrepancies.
Front-line health workers have also accused the government of failing to protect them.
Doctors, nurses and aid workers have told Human Rights Watch that they face shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and restricted access to oxygen tanks, while in mid-August the doctors union reported that a total of 61 health workers had died since Covid-19 was first detected in Syria.
Over recent months, AGPS has warned of a projected outbreak of COVID-19 in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. Though campaigns to help spread awareness among the camps’ residents have seen the day, limited access to running water, pharmacies and medical facilities means displacement camps are more susceptible to the spread of the highly infectious virus.
Displacement camps set up in northern Syria are especially vulnerable as most hospitals and medical facilities have been bombed, rendering them out of order.
The Syrian government has set up a temporary hospital for Covid-19 patients at a Damascus sports complex in preparation for what the World Health Organization (WHO) said was a possible second wave.
The facility at Al-Faiha Stadium will operate 120 beds for people requiring oxygen, but has capacity for 100 more.
The health ministry has reported about 4,800 cases of Covid-19 and 228 deaths in government-held areas since March. However, experts believe the actual figures are significantly higher.
Last month, researchers in the UK estimated that only a fraction of deaths due to Covid-19 in Damascus had been reported for various reasons, including limited testing capacity.
The UN warned that community transmission was widespread, as almost 90% of new cases could not be traced to a known source; infection rates among health workers were rising; and shortages of staff and supplies were putting even more pressure on a health system decimated by years of civil war.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that limited testing capacity has hidden the scale of the crisis.
"A lot of cases are still going unreported, and the actual number of Covid-19 cases is much higher," the WHO's Syria representative, Akjemal Magtymova, told Reuters news agency last week.
A senior official at a Western non-governmental organisation was also quoted as saying there had been a "major and unprecedented spike in July and most of August" in Syria, during which 120 people were dying each day on average.
That figure tallied with the number of burials that took place at the Najha cemetery, the designated site for Covid-19 victims in Damascus, Reuters said.
Researchers at Imperial College London recently estimated that only 1.25% of deaths due to Covid-19 had been reported in Damascus, and that 4,380 deaths in total in the capital might have been missed as of 2 September.
Given that Damascus was likely to have the most robust surveillance in Syria, the findings suggested that other regions could have experienced similar or worse mortality rates, the researchers said.
The health ministry has not commented on the discrepancies.
Front-line health workers have also accused the government of failing to protect them.
Doctors, nurses and aid workers have told Human Rights Watch that they face shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and restricted access to oxygen tanks, while in mid-August the doctors union reported that a total of 61 health workers had died since Covid-19 was first detected in Syria.
Over recent months, AGPS has warned of a projected outbreak of COVID-19 in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. Though campaigns to help spread awareness among the camps’ residents have seen the day, limited access to running water, pharmacies and medical facilities means displacement camps are more susceptible to the spread of the highly infectious virus.
Displacement camps set up in northern Syria are especially vulnerable as most hospitals and medical facilities have been bombed, rendering them out of order.
