Covid-19 has reappeared in Yemen with the announcement of five new cases in the southern city of Aden. This could scarcely have come at a worse time. Last week the city was declared a disaster area after flash floods swept several people away and caused streets to be bathed in sewage. In the...
Blog archive: All
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30th April 2020
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29th April 2020Thousands of undocumented migrant workers are awaiting repatriation from Kuwait under a government scheme aimed at countering the spread of Covid-19. Crowded living conditions make migrant workers especially vulnerable to infection and the effect of the scheme will be to reduce their numbers...
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28th April 2020Worldwide, more than three million people are now known to have been infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus. Among those, slightly less than two million are currently recorded as "active" cases – the numbers are reduced by people recovering or, in some cases, dying. Changes in the number of active...
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27th April 2020In a controversial move to mark the start of Ramadan, the Algerian government has eased restrictions in Blida – the province at the centre of the country's Covid-19 epidemic. A total lockdown of Blida imposed on March 23 has now been reduced to a partial curfew running from 2pm to 7am daily....
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26th April 2020Saudi Arabia has announced an easing of its coronavirus restrictions to allow for "the return of some economic activities in line with health instructions". On the face of it, this could be a risky move because the Covid-19 virus is still spreading more rapidly in the kingdom than among any...
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25th April 2020So far, Libya has only 61 confirmed cases of Covid-19 but limited capacity for testing means an unknown number of infections are going undetected. At the same time, Libya faces a series of additional problems that make tackling the virus more difficult. The country is now in its ninth year of...
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24th April 2020Yemen is officially clear of coronavirus cases following the recovery of its first – and so far only – Covid-19 patient. A Yemeni man working in the port of ash-Shihr, on the Indian Ocean coast of Hadramaut province, was diagnosed with the virus on April 10. The town was immediately placed under...
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23rd April 2020In Saudi Arabia the number of known Covid-19 infections has more than doubled during the past week. Earlier this month, when the tally was just over 2,000, the health minister warned that expert studies were predicting a minimum of 10,000 and a maximum of 200,000 confirmed cases "over the next...
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22nd April 2020More than 60 cases of Covid-19 have been detected at a prison in Morocco. This is the third outbreak in the country's jails which altogether hold about 80,000 prisoners. On April 8, a staff member staff at the vast Loudaya prison in the desert near Marrakesh was taken ill with the virus and...
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21st April 2020Jordan is taking further steps to ease restrictions amid signs that the country's Covid-19 outbreak is subsiding. On Sunday, businesses and government offices were allowed to reopen in the southern province of Aqaba which has so far remained virus-free. From today, a specified range of...
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20th April 2020Kuwait's health ministry is discriminating between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis in its allocation of treatment for Covid-19 patients, according to a document circulated on social media. The document is a flow chart telling medical staff what to do when someone tests positive for the virus. It...
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19th April 2020Today, shops, businesses and government offices are re-opening in Jordan's southern province of Aqaba. This is the first step in what the government hopes will be a gradual return to something resembling normality in an area which is officially free of Covid-19 infections. There are still...
