Yemeni gravediggers overwhelmed in virus deaths

ADEN, Yemen — At a cemetery in Yemen’s largest southern city, dozens of fresh graves were a testament to a spike in deaths amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The cemetery workers who bury them don’t know what killed the newly deceased. But there’s no denying there’s been an increasing number of people getting sick in the port city of Aden — likely from the coronavirus.

Many are buried with few precautions and only a small number of attendees. Workers wear masks or cover their faces with a cloth.

Mohammed Ebeid, a gravedigger in Aden, said there’s been five times the normal traffic, with 51 burials in the last week at the cemetery where he works.

“This is something strange, we’ve never seen it before,” he told The Associated Press late last week.

The international aid group Doctors Without Borders has reported a spike in deaths and infections from coronavirus, including health workers at a facility it runs in the city. Residents of Aden had previously said several hospitals shut their doors, as health care workers feared contracting the virus while lacking protective equipment.

The spike has also exposed the extent of the virus’s spread in the wartorn country.

Caroline Seguin, Doctors Without Borders’ operations manager for Yemen, told the AP on Friday the mortality rate at their facility treating COVID-19 patients was “very, very high,” and that a lot of people have arrived “almost dead, or already dead.”

The group, which is known by its French acronym MSF, said in a statement last week the high number of deaths at its COVID-19 treatment center in Aden “speaks to a wider catastrophe unfolding in the city.” The key southern port has recently witnessed a new chapter of political infighting between and government forces and southern separatists who declared self-rule last month, leaving health authorizes in disarray.