UN fears ‘massive’ COVID transmission in Ethiopia’s Tigray

The United Nations fears “massive community transmission” of COVID-19 in Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region, increased by displacement and the collapse of health services, as humanitarian workers finally begin to access the region two months after fighting began.

A UN report published on Thursday based on the first on-the-ground assessments confirms some of the grim concerns around Tigray’s some six million people since the conflict erupted on November 4 between Ethiopian forces and those of the Tigray region.

Hospitals have been looted, some have been destroyed, and some fighting continues.

The crisis has threatened to destabilise one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries and to pull in neighbours like Sudan. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly 30 years before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power and sidelined them amid sweeping reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Abiy has rejected international “interference” in the conflict even as the UN and others pleaded for weeks for unhindered access to Tigray as food, medicines and other supplies ran out.

Now, COVID-19 has emerged as the latest source of alarm.

“Only five out of 40 hospitals in Tigray are physically accessible, with another four reachable by mobile networks,” the new UN report said.

“Apart from those in (the Tigray capital) Mekele, the remaining hospitals are looted and many reportedly destroyed.” It does not say who did the looting.

COVID-19 surveillance and control work was interrupted for more than a month in Tigray, and that, along with the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, “is feared to have facilitated massive community transmission of the pandemic”, the report added.

Ethiopia has one of the highest COVID-19 caseloads on the African continent with more than 127,227 confirmed infections. While its rate of daily cases has declined in recent weeks, officials have not said whether they have been receiving any data from the Tigray region.

“Health facilities outside of major cities are nonfunctional and those in the major cities are partially working with limited to no stock of supplies and absence of health workers,” the UN report said.

The report also says the Tigray region remains volatile. “Localised fighting and insecurity continues, with fighting reported in rural areas and in the peripheries of Mekele, Shiraro and Shire among other locations, as of last week,” the UN said.

The overall humanitarian situation is “dire”, with food supplies “very limited” and widespread looting reported. “Only locally produced food items are available and at increasing prices, making basic goods unaffordable.” Most Tigray residents are subsistence farmers, and the conflict disrupted the harvest.

Ethiopia’s own estimates of people in need of aid are even higher than UN figures. The UN said 950,000 needed aid before the conflict and another 1.3 million would now need help.

However, the report said the government-run Tigray Emergency Coordination Center estimated that more than 4.5 million people needed emergency food assistance, including 2.2 million people who had been forced to flee their homes within Tigray.