UN Braces For Covid-19 Carnage In Refugee Camps

Thermal detectors have just arrived in Idlib, in the Syrian border area with Turkey, teeming with internally displaced people. Humanitarian and medical workers fear populations will be decimated when coronavirus arrives in the camps. (Submitted by Osama al-Hussein)

Zero Hedge: "Tinderbox For Spread": UN Braces For Covid-19 Carnage In Refugee Camps

"Around 70 million people are suffering displacement in crowded camps, awaiting the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic," an alarming report in Foreign Policy begins.

It's been low on governments' radar considering many are bogged down battling the pandemic in their midst, but the UN High Commissioner has warned there's a looming coronavirus disaster soon to hit the over-crowded camps especially across the Middle East and Africa.

"We don't know, and that's largely because we haven't done any testing," Muhammad Zaman, a professor of bioengineering at Boston University, commented recently on the potential case numbers in the camps. "We need to know how acute the problem is before we come up with an intervention."

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Update: Aid workers brace for impact of coronavirus in refugee camps (CBC)

WNU Editor: A WNU reader who works for Doctor's Without Borders in the Horn of Africa and is based in Kenya sent me the following yesterday .... Mogadishu's refugees 'waiting for death' as Covid-19 reaches Somalia (The Guardian). But his biggest worry is that this disease is going to become endemic within the refugee population, and they will fuel future waves of this disease as they try their best to make their way to Europe or North America.