DAMASCUS, Syria – Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife have tested positive for the coronavirus, the president’s office said Monday, with only mild symptoms of the disease.
In a statement, the Assad office said that the first couple did PCR tests after experiencing minor symptoms similar to COVID-19 disease. It is said that Assad, 55, and his wife Asma, who is ten years younger and announced in 2019 that he is recovering from breast cancer, will continue to work from home where they will be separated for between two and three weeks.
Both were in good health and in a stable condition.
Syria, which marks ten years of war next week, has recorded nearly 16,000 virus cases in parts of the country registered by the government, including 1,063 deaths. But the numbers are thought to be much higher, with limited amounts of PCR tests, especially in areas in northern Syria beyond government control.
The pandemic, which has severely tested even developed countries, has been a major challenge for Syria’s healthcare sector, which has already been exhausted by years of conflict.
Syria launched a vaccination campaign last week amid a growing number of infection cases, but no details were given about the process and local journalists were also not allowed to see the rollout. The health minister said the government had obtained the vaccines from a friendly country, which he did not want to name.
The announcement comes days after international and Israeli media reports revealed that Israel had paid $ 1.2 million to give the Syrian government coronavirus vaccines. It was apparently part of an agreement that ensured the release of an Israeli woman in Damascus. The terms of the clandestine compromise negotiated by Moscow have remained obscure. Damascus denied that this had happened and Russia did not comment.
Israel’s bank swap of Syria’s vaccination efforts would be an embarrassment to Assad’s government, which considers Israel its biggest regional enemy.
It was not immediately clear whether Assad, who has been in power since taking over from his late father in 2000, had been vaccinated or any of his family members.
Syria has been embroiled in civil war for the past ten years since protests against the government began as part of the Arab Spring uprisings to an uprising in response to military repression. A decade of fighting led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.