The Syrian government isolated on Wednesday a town in the northern countryside of Damascus after the death of a woman from the coronavirus.
The Syrian Ministry of Health stated that the relevant authorities were asked to isolate the town of Minnin in Rif Dimashq.
The woman’s family members had breached the quarantine and maintained their usual activity at their store.
With the announcement of the slow spread of the virus in Syria, and the first two cases being recorded in the city of Hasakah, in the far northeast of the country, volunteers have launched individual and collective initiatives to produce 10,000 medical masks and open new medical centers in the war-ravaged country.
A team of tailors from the town of Al-Derbasiyah in Hasakah, launched a community initiative, making thousands of medical masks, which were distributed for free to encourage residents to wear them.
The team includes five tailors led by Assem Sheikh Sleiman, 55.
“We decided to produce the masks locally, and we sent them to the Kurdish Crescent Hospital in order to sterilize them. We distribute them to the residents for free,” Sleiman told Asharq Al-Awsat.
There is a plan to secure 10,000 masks in cooperation with the Health Authority of the Self-Administration and the Kurdish Red Crescent, he added.
The weak and collapsed “public health system” in a war-torn country represents a challenge for an effective response to the virus outbreak, according to a senior official at the Kurdish Crescent organization in Derbasiyah.
The official noted that the organization has set up tents and dedicated medical centers as part of preparations to deal with the spread of the virus. The organization’s educational teams also launched an awareness campaign, and distributed leaflets about the COVID-19 disease and its preventive measures.
