AL-MUKALLA: More than 700 people died in Yemen’s southern city of Aden in August following the third wave of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the war-torn country, health officials said.
Based on burial permits from the city’s civil records office, 705 people died in August in Aden compared to 535 in July.
In 2020, 510 and 514 died in Aden in August and July, respectively. During normal days, the city’s civil records office records roughly 250 deaths per month.
Yemeni health officials and experts called for more studies and investigations into the sudden surge in deaths in Aden and the other Yemeni cities.
“We cannot say for sure that those people died from COVID-19 but what we can say is that deaths increase during each new wave of the pandemic,” Abdullah bin Ghouth, a professor of community medicine and epidemiology at Hadramout University’s College of Medicine, and an adviser to the health minister told Arab News on Tuesday.
When the government-controlled areas recorded in August the highest number of confirmed cases in months, Yemen Health Minister Dr. Qasem Buhaibeh announced the country had entered the third wave of the pandemic. He then put health facilities and healthcare workers on high alert to handle the predicted influx of cases.
Shortly after the announcement, quarantine centers across the liberated provinces announced reaching full capacity due to the growing number of patients. The Yemeni government sent many appeals to international donors to scale up humanitarian assistance and vaccine shipments to help the country battle the third wave.
This week, Buhaibeh said the third wave peaked as the country recorded a high number of confirmed cases and deaths. He also slammed Yemenis for flouting health precautions and guidelines.
“We ask everyone to abide by necessary health measures to protect themselves and support the ministry to fight off the pandemic,” the minister said, adding that his ministry has begun rolling out the latest shipment of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines to the provinces.
The ministry also distributed more than 1,000 oxygen cylinders to quarantine centers and allocated financial incentives to health workers.
In Aden, local officials told Arab News that health facilities and quarantine centers have registered 10 to 15 coronavirus deaths per day during the continuing third wave of the pandemic amid a chronic shortage of medical supplies.
“The virus has significantly transmitted in Aden and people have ignored health warnings,” a local health official, who preferred to be unknown, said.
Three weeks after thousands of students returned to their schools with no considerable adherence to health guidelines, local health officials have reported detecting new confirmed cases of the virus among students.
Dr. Rola Saeed Badhurais, an epidemiological surveillance coordinator at the provincial office of the health ministry in Hadramout, told Arab News on Tuesday that her teams recently recorded 13 new cases of infections among primary school and nursery students.
“No one was taken to hospital as they recovered after receiving medication at home,” Badhurais said.
Despite rapidly spreading across the country, Bin Ghouth said cases and deaths from the third wave have been lower than the second wave.
During the third wave, 1,100 new cases and 390 deaths were recorded compared to 4,726 new cases and 732 deaths recorded during the second wave.
In the densely populated north, the Iran-backed Houthis continue to hide information about the scale of the pandemic in Sanaa and the other areas under their control.
Since the beginning of the outbreak in April 2020, the Houthis have announced just two COVID-19-related deaths, opposed many suggestions to share information with local or international health bodies, and refused to vaccinate healthcare workers and people.
Many doctors and nurses were forced to sneak into the government-controlled areas such as Aden and Lahj to receive vaccines.
