ADEN (Reuters) – Yemen received its first COVID-19 vaccines on Wednesday, a week after the war-ravaged country’s internationally-recognised government declared a health emergency in response to a second wave of the pandemic.
The 360,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine arrived by plane at Aden, part of a consignment from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme expected to total 1.9 million doses, U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF said.
In the southern city – the government’s interim capital – patients at an isolation centre in the grounds of a hospital lie on temporary beds in tents next to oxygen cylinders, breathing heavily.
“We need more staff, because the rise in cases is not normal. We are exhausted from work, exhausted,” said Zainab al-Qaisi, a doctor and director of the centre, set up by the Red Cross last year.
“The centre is overwhelmed. We need oxygen, to expand intensive care across all provinces.”
The COVAX vaccines will be free, and distributed across the divided country, spokesman for the government’s health ministry Ali al-Walidi confirmed last week, two days after it declared the health emergency in areas under its control.
Walidi also said more shots would arrive in May.
Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said last week it has seen a dramatic influx of critically ill COVID-19 patients in various parts of the country, and that all aspects of the COVID-19 response were lacking.
“While some countries have successfully vaccinated half of their population, Yemen finds itself at the back of the queue,” said MSF’s Head of Mission in Yemen, Raphael Veicht.
Yemen’s health system has been battered by war, economic collapse and, recently, a shortfall in humanitarian aid funding.
Assessing the true spread of COVID-19 there has been hard.
Its six-year war has restricted testing and reporting, with the Houthi movement that is battling a pro-government coalition, and which controls most large urban centres, having provided no figures since an initial few in May.
But numbers of confirmed cases have risen rapidly since mid-February.
Yemen’s emergency coronavirus committee reported 132 confirmed and 19 deaths on Tuesday. It has recorded more than 4,100 coronavirus infections and 864 deaths so far.
Walidi said the true figures were likely much higher, a view shared by the U.N. and aid agencies.
COVAX is co-led by the GAVI alliance, which secures vaccines for poor countries, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and UNICEF.
(Reporting by Reuters Yemen team and Lisa Barrington in Dubai; editing by John Stonestreet)
