Al-Jazeera Net reporters - Sanaa, Taiz and Aden

As if Yemen lacked the Corona virus to spread, after five years during which it suffered from the trilogy of war, famine and cholera, the Corona pandemic would devastate a country exhausted by wars. War, cholera, malnutrition and the wave of viruses that hit the south of the country.

It seems that the Corona epidemic has known its way to spread all over Yemen, as Al-Jazeera Net obtained shocking numbers confirming the death of about a thousand people in the temporary capital of Aden due to a recent wave of viruses and diseases, including Corona.

In addition to about two hundred in Sanaa, as for Taiz - which suffers from neglect of the legal authority and the attacks of the Houthis - its battle with Corona has become wide open, amid fears that the epidemic will defeat a city that has stood up to war and letdown.

The most prominent result reached by the Al-Jazeera Net correspondents team in Yemen appears to be that the legal authority and the Houthis do not disclose the actual numbers of HIV infections, which is confirmed by international organizations.

Al-Jazeera Net followed the reality of the situation on the ground, far from what the official authorities announced, and the beginning was from Sana'a; Where doctors and private sources revealed to Al Jazeera Net that the number of confirmed injuries has so far reached more than five hundred cases, while the number of deaths reached more than two hundred, although the Houthi authorities only recognize the registration of four cases.

The Nakba disaster in Corona
The doctors working in Kuwait Hospital in Sana'a - they spoke to Al-Jazeera Net - that the hospital is currently treating more than four hundred cases infected with the virus.

According to the doctors, Zayed Hospital in Sana'a is the second hospital in which the suspected cases of corona are quarantined, as there are dozens of cases without health care.

And about the failure of families to disclose their deaths from the disease, Al-Jazeera Net spoke to family members of some of those who died of the virus, and stressed that the Houthis threatened them to abandon the care of their patients during their injury, in addition to threatening them with imprisonment if they talked about the deaths of their relatives in the virus.

And Al-Jazeera Net obtained lists of a number of patients who were confirmed to have symptoms of corona in the central laboratory near Kuwait Hospital, to which the infected cases were referred to.

Dr. Muhammad Al Kamali (Specialist in Neurosurgery) assures Al-Jazeera Net that they are taking care in Sana'a to take precautions in clinics and hospitals as much as possible, even though the tools for prevention and sterilization are almost non-existent, and the available ones are of poor, commercial and ineffective qualities.


Corona kills doctors,
and medical sources on the island revealed a request by the Houthi-controlled Ministry of Health for doctors who supervise the cases to remain in quarantine and not leave for nearly a month.

According to the testimony of doctors who spoke to Al Jazeera Net, four of the health team assigned to follow up on suspected cases of the virus died in recent days, after they were isolated in private rooms.

In search of the reasons for the blackout of the infected cases by the Houthi Ministry of Health in Sana'a, Al Jazeera Net spoke with the ministry's spokesperson Youssef Al-Hadhri, who denied reports of daily deaths of the virus in Sanaa.

He told Al Jazeera Net that what some people are talking about burial cases of deaths due to Corona is not correct, and he said, “They were bodies in government hospitals of unidentified people, and they had no family, in addition to the remains of those who were killed as a result of the coalition raids,” noting that directives were issued to them to make way In Sanaa hospital refrigerators, its capacity is small.


Al-Houthi and Investigation As
for suspected cases of corona, Al-Hadhri said that it is officially announced by the Ministry of Health (only four cases), and added, "We have our own method of investigation, discovery and examination according to our circumstances and capabilities."

The spokesman explained to Al-Jazeera Net that hospitals have been designated for suspected cases of corona, stressing that there are many chest diseases similar to the symptoms of Corona, and are distinguished by laboratory examination.

Concerning the capabilities of the Ministry of Health in Sanaa, Al-Hadri stated that it is very scarce by virtue of the siege imposed on Yemen for nearly five years, "after the entire world was defeated against Yemen, as the coalition destroyed infrastructure, in addition to service corruption during the past four decades," according to His expression, as Al-Hadari accused international organizations of shirking their responsibilities in assisting Yemen during the current period.

1000 deaths in Aden,
and the case of Aden is not very different from Sana'a; It is beset by - in addition to Corona - a wave of viral epidemics and deadly fevers that broke out following the torrential rains that took place in the city on April 21, leaving thousands of people infected, of whom, since the beginning of May this year, more than 950 people have died, amid a healthy reality It is difficult for the city, which is suffering from a kind of power vacuum, to live after the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council tightened its control.

And about this wave of deaths that the city is witnessing for the first time in its history, and the concerns it raised among the residents; The head of the Civil Status Authority, Major General Sanad Jamil, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net that the unusual increase in death numbers forced the authority to publish statistics of death numbers in a remarkable way, as on May 7, it exceeded 65 cases.

Jamil pointed out that the indicators of the number of deaths varied from that date until 18 of the same month, from 60 then 73 and 55 cases, until it reached a peak of 89 cases during the same day.

Al-Jazeera Net obtained a statement documenting the total deaths in Aden, which were granted by the Civil Status Authority until the 17th of this month, as they numbered more than a thousand deaths, including corona and other epidemics.

On Wednesday, the High National Committee to confront Corona, affiliated with the legitimate government in Yemen, announced the registration of 13 new cases, including one death, bringing the number to 180 cases, including 29 deaths and 5 recovery cases.

Activist Abd al-Salam al-Qadi (a sick relative) describes the situation in Aden as "very frightening."

He told Al-Jazeera Net that there are many patients who were refused from more than one hospital, who went to it on the pretext of lack of beds due to the outbreak of the epidemic in the city, in addition to the weak capabilities of other hospitals in front of receiving suspected cases of corona.

According to the judge, an important part of the medical teams in Aden "disappeared," and indicates that some doctors face great difficulties in the absence of the necessary protective equipment.

As for the director of the dispensary of life (western Aden), Abd al-Latif al-Subaihi, he describes the health situation in the city as "very bad" because of the catastrophe that ravaged the city, and the accumulation of waste that played a large role in the spread of mosquitoes, which is the main carrier of chikungunya fever.

Taiz .. Disability after years of betrayal,
and the Director General of the Health Bureau in Taiz, Dr. Rajeh Dabwan, reveals that the city is the most populous in the population, and it only has two machines for artificial respiration in the isolation center.

And he adds to Al-Jazeera Net, "a large governorate like Taiz with a population of about one-fifth of Yemen's population needs at least between 200 and 250 ventilators."

Dabwan spoke to Al-Jazeera Net about the most important other urgent needs the city needs to face Corona, stressing that "the city urgently needs an apparatus for measuring gases in the blood, a moving beam, and a number of intensive care beds that the governorate is missing greatly."

He also indicated the need for the governorate to "environmental sanitation in the isolation center, and provide all means of personal protection for all health teams, from homes to emergency departments to the isolation center."

Taiz faces death,
and the Director General of Health warned that Taiz is "subject to death" with various diseases, due to "the lack of most health devices needed for work and examination," noting that the province - for example - does not have a single device for class examination. Axial "and" magnetic resonance ".

The governorate’s chief health official appealed to local and international humanitarian and health organizations - including philanthropists and Taiz merchants - to "extend aid to isolation centers, and equip quarantine centers in the districts."

Difficulty in estimating the scale of the disaster, and
 Taiz governorate - like most Yemeni cities - is going through a great debate about the size of the Corona virus outbreak, especially with the death toll rising significantly during the recent period.

However, prevailing in Yemen is that these increases, whether in Sana'a, Aden or Taiz, are not attributed to the new virus that has spread rapidly around the world, but they are attributed to other diseases such as cholera, dengue and celery, and shortness of breath (asthma).

The media official at the Health Bureau, Taiz Tayseer al-Sami'i, stressed the difficulty of estimating the extent of the disaster in the governorate regarding the Corona pandemic.

He explained to Al-Jazeera Net that "since the office does not have laboratory solutions for testing those infected with the virus, we are unable to accurately estimate the scale of the disaster."

He did not rule out cases of infection with the virus "that may be prevalent already, but we do not know it, and we will not teach it as long as we cannot perform laboratory tests because the test solutions are not available."

He said that during the past period - when they had a number of test solutions - they were satisfied with examining only the suspected cases that they received.

He pointed out that the Taiz Health Bureau previously obtained only one hundred swabs from the PCR solutions, and all of them were consumed on suspected cases, and some of the main contacts were of first degree.

He denied that the World Health Organization had provided any support to the governorate in this regard until now, stressing that they had contacted it - and we are still - to obtain support, especially the provision of laboratory test solutions, but that it had not yet responded.

Warnings of a disaster and
regarding the statistics they have for HIV infections, the Director General of Health, Taiz, confirmed that there are five confirmed cases, which had been announced previously, and there are about 150 cases of contact.

But he revealed to Al-Jazeera Net that there are about ten suspected cases that are present in a number of hospitals, "but it was not diagnosed because of the lack of the necessary solutions."

Besides, he indicated that there are twenty other samples isolated from the virus, and placed in refrigerators pending solutions for examination, expecting the arrival of a number of solutions.

Hence, he noted that the coming period may be full of shocking surprises; "We expect there will be alarming and frightening results."

Only hours have passed since the statements obtained by Al-Jazeera Net until the emergency committee to confront the Corona pandemic in Taiz Governorate (dawn on Tuesday) announced two new deaths, along with ten new infections with the Corona virus.

"The number of laboratory cases was twenty, and the result was ten positive and ten negative, bringing the total confirmed cases to Taiz to 15," the committee's spokesman, Dr. Ahmed Mansour, said in a statement.

The media official confirmed that fifty ambulatory smears from the laboratory test solution arrived in the governorate from Hadramout governorate, used to uncover these new declared cases.

The Director General of the Health Bureau in Taiz suggested that cases increase with the approaching Eid, then he added, "This is what we fear and warn of."

The absence of international organizations and in
search of the role of international organizations working in Yemen in the face of the Corona outbreak, Al-Jazeera Net spoke with an official source in the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the country, who stressed that there is an accelerated spread of the Corona virus in Yemen, and that efforts are being made to urge a number of Donors support the health sector in the country.

The source said to Al-Jazeera Net - who requested anonymity - that the issue of retaining the numbers of real injuries is the most worrying thing, adding that this behavior is not in the interest of the Yemenis or the parties to the conflict, as it may give citizens deceptive reassurance, at a time when the real situation must be disclosed For the disaster, whether in areas under the control of the government or the Houthis.

The source stressed the necessity for the Yemenis to stop any armed or hostile actions that may exacerbate the current situation in the country, and efforts should be intensified to confront the epidemic that may afflict half of the Yemeni population.