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Coronavirus Mideast Roundup
Rather than going out and celebrating among waves of people, residents of the Turkish city of Izmir remain in the safety of their balconies on Thursday evening to mark National Sovereignty and Children's Day on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the country’s parliament. (Mehmet Emin Menguarslan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Coronavirus Mideast Roundup

The latest COVID-19 information and statistics for the Middle East and North Africa

Underreporting coronavirus cases and deaths is a problem worldwide, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is not immune to distorting the figures.

Some public health experts say the actual number of cases in countries such as the US, Italy and China could be 10 times higher than what they are reporting. The reasons range from limited testing capacity to asymptomatic patients. But like a desert mirage – or a false negative coronavirus test – underreporting in MENA might not be so transparent.

Seth J. Frantzman, a Middle East Forum writing fellow and head of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis, told The Media Line that countries in the region might want to inflate their numbers in hopes of receiving more international support. However, at least early in the pandemic, the trend was to ignore the crisis.

Frantzman pointed to Iran and Turkey as examples of countries that early on were underreporting COVID-19 cases, or not reporting them at all.

On February 21, Turkish media leaked that Iran had 750 coronavirus cases when the Iranian government was claiming that the country was virus-free. But the pro-government Turkish media didn’t take a critical view domestically when on March 8, the Daily Sabah reported that Turkey itself was “virus-free.”

According to the latest update from the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine coronavirus tracker, the official numbers for Iran are 87,026 cases and 5,481 deaths, as of April 24. Turkey stands at 101,790 cases, with 2,491 deaths.

“I would say partly the reason the regimes tend to want to say, ‘Oh, we don’t have any cases,’ is to pretend that they have been successful and then point to countries around them and say, ‘Look, that country is a big failure,’” Frantzman said.

From the point of the view of these regimes, accurately reporting their coronavirus numbers could put their survival in peril, according to Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

“What they did is deny the coronavirus as something that was going to hit their country or the Arab world,” Rabi told The Media Line. “By doing that, they lost quite a valuable period of time that would make things actually easier.”

Rabi said that not just Iran and Turkey, but even states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt had been hesitant early on to acknowledge the number of domestic coronavirus infections.

The official number of cases in Saudi Arabia is 13,930, with 121 deaths, and in Egypt the number of infections stands at 3,891, with 287 fatalities.

Conflict zones such as Yemen and Syria are even more problematic when it comes to determining an accurate count of coronavirus cases and fatalities. Frantzman terms “nonsensical” the official tally in Yemen of just one coronavirus case.

“There’s no testing. You can’t have cases if you don’t test,” he said.

The official tally in Syria is 42 cases and three deaths.

Rabi says that coronavirus is becoming a kind of tool being used by warring factions in the MENA region.

“When it comes to failed states like Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya, where there is a war being waged through all these countries, corona is being used against the enemy,” he said.

There are officially 1,677 cases and 83 deaths in Iraq, and in Libya the official number of infections stands at 60, with two fatalities.

In the wider Arab world, Frantzman has observed a change in how the virus is perceived.

“I think that what has happened in the last week is that many countries realized that having the virus is not a stigma,” he said. “It’s not a measure of failure necessarily, because look at the United States or Europe. If having a lot of cases is a measure of failure, then Europe and the United States are the worst.”

Here are the latest COVID-19 numbers for the Middle East and North Africa as of 7 a.m. GMT on Friday.

Country Confirmed cases Deaths Recovered Active Cases
Afghanistan 1,279 42 179 1,058
Algeria 3,007 407 1,355 1,245
Bahrain 2,217 8 1,082 1,127
Cyprus 795 13 98 684
Djibouti 986 2 252 732
Egypt 3,891 287 1,004 2,600
Iran 87,026 5,481 64,843 16,702
Iraq 1,677 83 1,171 423
Israel 14,803 193 5,685 8,925
Jordan 437 7 318 112
Kuwait 2,399 14 498 1,887
Lebanon 688 22 140 526
Libya 60 2 15 43
Mauritania 7 1 6 0
Morocco 3,568 155 456 2,957
Oman 1,716 9 307 1,400
Pakistan 11,155 237 2,527 8,391
Palestinian Territories 480 4 92 384
Qatar 7,764 10 750 7,004
Saudi Arabia 13,930 121 1,925 11,884
Somalia 328 16 8 304
Sudan 174 16 14 144
Syria 42 3 6 33
Tunisia 918 38 190 690
Turkey 101,790 2,491 18,491 80,808
United Arab Emirates 8,756 56 1,637 7,063
Yemen 1 0 1 0
Total 269,894 9,718 103,050 157,126

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