Yemen officially counts its first case of coronavirus

Yemeni health authorities officially confirmed in the last hours the first positive for coronavirus in the country, which had the status of being the only one in the Arab world not yet affected by COVID-19. It was a port worker in the southern enclave of Al-Sheher.

After the announcement of the diagnosis, Faraj Salmeen al-Bahsani, governor of the province of Hadramut, where the town of Al-Sheher is located, announced a complete and immediate curfew which was extended until this very day. The measure will continue but only at night until further notice, the governor said.

The Supreme Emergency Committee said through the social network Twitter that the patient "is stable and receiving medical attention" and that "medical teams and the agencies involved are taking the necessary measures.

Sources in the port town of Al-Sheher confirmed to Yemeni state television that the affected port operator may have contracted the virus through contact with people arriving from the United Arab Emirates.

After the case was reported, the population was called out of the mosques through loudspeakers to stay indoors, a message that is also being passed on by the police, according to videos posted on social networks.

The COVID-19 appears at a very complicated time for Yemen, a nation that does not have adequate health capacity to deal with the coronavirus given its status as the poorest country in the Middle East, and also taking into account the civil war it is going through. A warlike conflict that confronts the official government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, internationally recognized and supported on the ground by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis rebels, a Shiite militia that tries to undermine the Executive once and for all and oppose the Sunni expansion of the Kingdom, under the patronage of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and which controls large areas of Yemeni territory in its western and northwestern part, including the capital Sana'a.

The outbreak of the disease was feared by both the authorities of the internationally recognized Government and the Houthi insurgents; and there are already sources that speak of 16 cases currently diagnosed.

The United Nations (UN) had already reiterated to the parties to the conflict the urgency of reaching a truce to deal with the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the Saudi kingdom announced on Wednesday a two-week ceasefire that came into effect on Thursday at the request of the United Nations. 

The Houthis have not formally responded to the ceasefire, but both sides accused each other of continuing hostilities after the truce began.

Yemen, with 80 per cent of its 30 million people dependent on international aid to meet their needs, is one of the world's poorest countries and, in the words of the UN, the biggest humanitarian disaster on the planet, after suffering a bloody war that has devastated the nation since 2014.