In northern Syria, civil defense workers known as the “white helmets” have pivoted from responding to government bomb attacks to sanitizing camps for internally displaced people. The head of the opposition-controlled Idlib Health Directorate warns more than 100,000 people could die if the coronavirus sweeps through Syria’s crowded camps, which lack even basic medical infrastructure. This Ali Hallak, who fled Aleppo for a camp near the Turkish border.
Ali Hallak: “As you have seen the situation in the camps, we are afraid of corona. These tents are not able to protect us from the virus and we are not able to sanitize the tents.”