The war ravaged Yemen doesn't seem to have an end to its mounting problems as it struggles to trace the COVID-19 infections in the country.?
When doctors first confirmed that a Yemeni port official Saleh had contracted the disease, authorities raced to trace his movements to try and protect one of the world's most vulnerable countries.
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But almost three weeks on, they still are clueless about whether Yemen's first laboratory-confirmed case is really the individual at the root of what could be an unusually devastating outbreak.
The lack of information available to country's populace reflects Yemen's inability to detect an infection humbling far wealthier nations.
Yemen has seen a civil war rage on for years now, leading to its medical infrastructure being shattered and seen by the United Nations as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.?
Altaf Musani, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Yemen mission, told Reuters that the said transmission of the disease in Yemen could be in what he called a phase of "individual cases", a possible prelude to clusters of infection.
But it is proving impossible to identify so-called "patient zero", an important step in tracking and tracing all those potentially exposed to infection and containing an outbreak.
Saleh, a heavy smoker with heart problems whose condition has been described as stable, was tested on April 7 at a medical facility in the southern Ash Shihr port after showing symptoms. On April 10, he was tested again: positive on both occasions.
Health officials then scrambled to identify more than 150 people in the southern Hadhramout region who had met and dealt with the 60-year-old in the two weeks before he was diagnosed, the head of the national coronavirus committee said.
"All the close contacts were monitored and some showed some symptoms but were negative when they were tested," Ali al-Walidi told Reuters. Instead, their coughs and fever were normal flu.??
Yemen has been marred by war and more than 100,000 people have been killed since the Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the internationally recognised government from the capital Sanaa in late 2014, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene.
The coalition announced a unilateral nationwide truce over the pandemic but the Houthis, who control most big urban centres, have not accepted it and violence has continued.