Yemen's medical infrastructure is already handicapped by war, and the country is now struggling to trace Covid-19 in the country
A health worker measures temperature of a man, amid fear of the spread of the coronavirus disease, on the outskirts of Taiz, Yemen April 12, 2020
Split into rival power centres, its medical infrastructure shattered by war and seen by the United Nations as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, Yemen is handicapped by its own destitution in its fight against the new coronavirus. Health officials then scrambled to identify more than 150 people in the southern Hadhramout region who had met and dealt with the 60-year-old in the two weeks before he was diagnosed, the head of the national coronavirus committee said.
"We spent an hour-and-a-half with him in the ambulance to transfer him to an isolation room in another hospital, it felt like a year-and-a half," said nurse Majdi Baqhoum, worried to be dealing with a Covid-19 patient for the first time. "At the height of coronavirus infections in Yemen, the country could need 18,000 beds and 2,500 ICU units for Covid-19 only, so you can imagine the gap," he said.As part of his job at Ash Shihr, Saleh had met and dealt with government and military officials and traders on dozens of the wooden dhows that dock each day with commercial goods, mostly from Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
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