DAMASCUS, Syria – Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife have tested positive for coronavirus, the president’s office said Monday, both with mild symptoms of the disease.
In a statement, Assad’s office said the first couple underwent PCR tests after showing minor symptoms consistent with COVID-19 disease. It is said that Assad, 55, and his wife Asma, who is 10 years younger and announced her recovery from breast cancer in 2019, will continue to work from home, where they will isolate between two and three weeks.
Both were in “good health and stable,” she added.
Syria, which marks 10 years of war next week, has recorded nearly 16,000 cases of the virus in government-owned regions of the country, including 1,063 deaths. But the number is believed to be much higher, with a limited amount of PCR tests, especially in areas of northern Syria beyond government control.
The pandemic, which has severely tested even in developed countries, has been a major challenge for Syria’s already depleted years of conflict.
Syria launched a vaccination campaign last week amid a growing number of infections, but no details have been given about the process, and local journalists have not been allowed to attend the launch. The health minister said the government bought the vaccines from a friendly country, which it refused to name.
The announcement came just days after international and Israeli media reports revealed that Israel had paid $ 1.2 million to Russia to provide the Syrian government with coronavirus vaccines. It appears to have been part of an agreement to secure the release of an Israeli woman detained in Damascus. The terms of the clandestine compromise negotiated by Moscow remained unclear. Damascus denied that it happened and Russia had no comment.
Israeli funding of Syria’s vaccination efforts would be an embarrassment to the Assad government, which considers Israel its main regional enemy.
It was not immediately clear whether Assad, who had been in power since taking over his late father in 2000, or any of his family members had been vaccinated.
Syria has been plunged into civil war for the past 10 years since anti-government protests that began as part of the Arab Spring riots turned into an insurgency in response to military repression. A decade of fighting has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.