Understaffed Tunisian hospital battles coronavirus spike

KAIROUAN, Tunisia (AP) — A man wearing a protective suit quickly yet carefully places a black sheet over a COVID-19 victim laid out in a coffin in a courtyard at Ibn Jazzar Hospital in the Tunisian town of Kairouan. He then folds a white sheet on top and sprinkles the body with disinfectant from a small bottle, while loved ones and other hospital visitors cry out “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” in Arabic.

Patients in the hospital’s overfilled COVID-19 ward are dying daily amid a spike in coronavirus infections in the North African country, with Kairouan and three other regions especially hard hit. At the regional hospital, tensions mount as personnel try to cope with scarce means.

“I’m shocked,” said Sana Kraiem, whose mother was put in a wheelchair in a roomful of COVID-19 patients, “like a dog", she described.

“They told me they can’t free up a bed occupied by a dead person,” a distressed Kraiem said in an interview with The Associated Press during a visit this week to the hospital.

The half-dozen rooms devoted to COVID-19 patients each packs in five or six beds. A patient who recently died was seen still occupying one of the beds in each room visited. A special service eventually removes the body.

Over the past month, confirmed virus infections in Tunisia have reached the highest daily levels since the pandemic began, but the vaccination rate remains low, according to data from John’s Hopkins University. Tunisia has reported Africa’s highest per-capita death toll from the pandemic, and is currently recording one of the highest per-capita infection rates in Africa, the data indicates.

The Kairouan region is living through “a real horror movie,” Mohamed Rouis, the regional health director in Kairouan, was quoted saying in Tunisian media earlier this month.

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