War-ravaged Syrian rebel area struggles with virus surge
Al Jazeera
The total number of COVID-19 cases in Idlib province has more than doubled since the beginning of August.
Coronavirus cases are surging to the worst levels of the pandemic in a rebel stronghold in Syria, a particularly devastating development in a region where dozens of hospitals have been bombed and that doctors and nurses have fled in droves during 10 years of war.
The total number of cases seen in Idlib province, an overcrowded enclave with a population of four million, many of them internally displaced, has more than doubled since the beginning of August to more than 61,000.
In recent weeks, daily new infections have repeatedly shot past 1,500, and authorities reported 34 deaths on Sunday alone, figures that are still believed to be undercounted because many infected people do not tell the authorities they are sick.
