Hundreds die in Yemen of suspected coronavirus outbreak

More than 500 people have died over the past eight days in southern Yemen’s main city, Aden, many with breathing difficulties, city officials say, raising fears the coronavirus is spreading out of control, feeding off a civil war that has left the country in ruins.

One gravedigger told The Associated Press he’d never seen such a constant flow of dead — in a city that has seen multiple bouts of bloody street battles during more than five years of war. Condolence messages for deaths in Aden have streamed out on Twitter and other social media for days. Some report multiple deaths within a single family.

With little protective equipment, health personnel are terrified of infection. Many medical facilities in Aden have closed as staffers flee. Others turn patients away. No one is answering a hotline set up by U.N.-trained Rapid Response Teams created to test suspected cases at home, residents and officials say.

“If you are suspected of having corona and you are in Aden, most probably you will wait at home for your death,” said Mohammed Roubaid, deputy head of the city’s health office.

Officially, the outbreak in war-fragmented Yemen is small. The official count from the south is 106 cases and 15 deaths. Houthi rebel authorities who control northern Yemen say there have been two infections, one of whom died, a Somali migrant.

In the north, the Houthi are suppressing any information about the scale of the outbreak, even as doctors tell the Associated Press of increasing cases and deaths. The Houthis refuse to release positive test results and are silencing medical staff, journalists and families who try to speak out about cases, doctors and other officials say.

A surge in deaths this month in north and south has raised the nightmare scenario that the virus is spreading swiftly in a country with almost no...