Some 4 million people live in the northwest, 1.7 million of them in camps for those uprooted by the conflict. “The hospitals can no longer absorb this attack,” Fouad added, saying that younger people were being hit harder by this wave. This is the biggest spike we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic in northwest Syria. Vaccination campaigns have made slow progress more widely in Syria, where the overall population stands at around 18 million. At a Damascus hospital this week, medics in disposable gowns and face masks tended to patients hooked up to oxygen.
