Syria's health minister has confirmed that the country has received its first known case of COVID-19. According to the authorities, this is a 20-year-old woman who traveled into Syria "from abroad".

Earlier, there were suspicions of infection in the war-affected country. Schools, parks and restaurants were closed for a couple of weeks, and today all public transport was also stopped. Starting tomorrow, traveling within Syria will be prohibited.

Prisoners have been released from prisons and bakeries have been ordered to close their sales as long bread queues are considered an infectious risk. Instead, bread should be delivered to the homes.

Can be spread quickly

At the same time, Syria's health care is in ruins after nine years of war. Humanitarian organizations now fear that the corona virus can spread rapidly among the millions of internal refugees living here.

Syria is closely allied with Iran, the Middle East country most affected by COVID - 19. So far, 1817 people have died from the virus in Iran

Many countries stopped air travel from Iran several weeks ago. But according to local sources, despite the pandemic, air traffic from Iran to Damascus has continued.

New crisis

In the Idlib province of northwestern Syria, one million people have been forced to flee escalated fighting since December. Many live in overcrowded camps near the border with Turkey. The UN has previously accused Syria's allied Russia of deliberately bombing hospitals, an act that could mean war crimes.

At the same time, sources in the Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria say that there is no opportunity to test for the Corona virus. A year has passed since Kurdish-led forces with the support of the United States triumphed over the terrorist organization IS in the area. The poor and isolated part of Syria now fears of a new crisis.

70,000 IS supporters and their families live in Al Hol camp in northeastern Syria. Half of the camp's residents are children. A doctor at the camp confirms to SVT that there are no test kits for Coronavirus throughout the vast Kurdish-controlled part of Syria. Here are simple things like blankets, clean water and medicines.

“The camp is like a quarantine in itself. Right now we just hope that the virus does not come here, ”he tells SVT.