UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th April, 2020) UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock said on Wednesday that the construction of an 80-bed isolation area for novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patients is underway in Syria's Al-Hawl refugee camp.
"At Al-Hawl camp in the north-east, an 80-bed isolation area is under construction and thermal screening has commenced," Lowcock said in a UN Security Council meeting.
Lowcock warned that while there are only 43 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Syira - a relatively low number compared to other parts of the world - the potential for the virus to spread poses a great danger for Syria and especially crowded areas like the refugee camps.
"If this virus is behaving similarly in Syria to how it has elsewhere - and that is our assumption for now - then tragedy beckons," he said.
Lowcock also said that to address the insufficient testing capacity in Syria, laboratories in Damascus, Lattakia, Aleppo, Homs and Qamishli had already been set up.
In Al-Hasakeh, efforts to establish a testing center are also underway, he added.
