Houthis keeping lid on virus figures
Rumors trigger panic in regions held by Yemeni rebels
CAIRO — In the darkness, the bodies of suspected victims of coronavirus are carried in silence, one after the other, to be buried in cemeteries across northern Yemen. Flashlights flicker as mourners make their way through the shadows.
The corpses are washed with disinfectants, wrapped in layers of plastic sheets and white linen before being laid to rest in 6-feet deep pits. There is no one around except for a handful of relatives in masks, gloves and white gowns. Phones are not allowed.
Gravediggers and guards at the cemeteries are warned not to speak about the causes of the deaths. If asked, they are told to say that the dead are “unidentified bodies from the war,” according to several residents and one gravedigger. Families are never really told if their relatives died from the coronavirus, which is believed to be the culprit. Test results are never released.
These daily rituals come as condolences and photographs of the dead flood social media.
The coronavirus is spreading throughout Yemen, a country that has been devastated by five years of civil war. The fighting is between the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who control the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, and a U.S.-backed, Saudiled coalition fighting on behalf of the internationally recognized government.
The fighting has already killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions. Years of aerial bombings and intense ground fighting has destroyed thousands of buildings, leaving half of the health facilities dysfunctional. About 18% of the country’s 333 districts have no doctors. Water and sanitation systems have collapsed.
The COVID-19 pandemic has added to the deadly toll of the war in Yemen, crippling a health system already in shambles with little capacity to test those suspected of having the virus. The country has no more than 500 ventilators and 700 ICU beds nationwide. There is one oxygen cylinder per month for every 2.5 million people.
The situation is exacerbated in the Houthi-controlled north; the rebels have hidden information about the virus, severely punished those who speak out, enforced little mitigation measures, and promoted conspiracies and claims by the Houthi minister of health that their scientists are working on developing a cure for COVID-19 to present to the world.
Officially, the rebels say that only four cases of coronavirus have been detected in the regions they control.
“We don’t publish the numbers to the society because such publicity has a heavy and terrifying toll on people’s psychological health,” said Youssef al-Hadhari, spokesman for the Houthi health ministry, in response to questions by The Associated Press.
His comments come two months after Houthi Minister of Health Taha al-Motawakel painted a bleak picture of the country’s readiness to deal with the virus, saying that at some point Houthi officials will have to deal with 1 million people in need of hospital admissions in a twomonth period.
The World Health Organization believes there is a significant undercount of total number of people affected by the coronavirus outbreak, which officials say could further hinder efforts to get the medical supplies needed to contain the virus.
Richard Brennan, the WHO’s regional emergency director, said he believes the COVID-19 deaths are in the hundreds and cases are in the thousands, based on what he has heard from health providers in Yemen.
Health officials, aid workers, residents and community activists say the situation in the war-torn country is worsening fast. They all spoke on condition of anonymity. Local unions, who have kept their own death tallies from the coronavirus, report that 46 medical staffers, 28 judges and 13 lawyers died in a three-week period between mid-May and early June, well above the Houthis’ official count.
The lack of information about the true number of people infected by the coronavirus in Houthi-controlled areas has led to wild speculation about the nature of the disease, and the rebel’s response to dealing with the infections and deaths has only added to the confusion.
One rumor suggested Houthi rebels have instructed doctors to kill suspected COVID-19 patients with a “mercy injection.”
The rumor, which was given credibility because of a supposedly confidential document allegedly signed by the health minister, gained so much traction that Houthi leaders took the unusual step of issuing an official denial, calling the rumor “lies aimed at spreading fear.”
The Houthis have also spread rumors that the virus was spread by outsiders.
Some hospitals, like the Jibla hospital in the northern province of Ibb, one of the worst hit areas, have been referred to as “injection hospitals” because of the high number of deaths happening there, residents and local activists said.
These rumors have caused widespread panic, and residents say they are less likely to notify health officials about suspected cases of COVID-19.
“People don’t go to hospitals for fear of the mercy injection,” said a local activist, referring to the Jibla hospital. “We can’t tell the truth from the fallacy, but I know many people who died in mysterious ways inside this hospital.”
A lawmaker in Sanaa said people are afraid to report coronavirus cases, fearing retaliation from Houthi officials.
“The suspected cases are treated like war criminals,” he said.
Secretly filming burials on smartphones in defiance of the Houthi orders has become an act of heroism, local resident said in interviews, adding that the amateur videos give Yemenis the only true glimpse of the true impact of COVID-19 in the region.