Bashar and Asma Al-Assad 'recovering' from Covid-19, Syrian presidency says

Bashar and Asma Al-Assad 'recovering' from Covid-19, Syrian presidency says
Syria's presidency described test results from the president and his wife as 'reassuring'.
2 min read
17 March, 2021
Bashar al-Assad and his wife tested positive for the virus earlier this month [Getty]
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma al-Assad are recovering from Covid-19 after recent test results were conducted on the couple, pro-regime media reported on Wednesday.

A Syrian presidency statement published by state news agency SANA said Bashar and Asma Al-Assad's health conditions had returned "gradually to their normal values" after it was recently announced they had contracted the potentially deadly virus.

The statement said that test results from the couple were "reassuring", saying they were "continuing to work".

Wednesday's update on the Syrian leader's condition comes nine days after it was first announced that he and his wife had contracted the respiratory illness. 

Since mid-February, Syria has seen a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases, a member of Syria's coronavirus advisory committee told Reuters earlier this month.

A decade of war has devastated Syria's health infrastructure, with experts saying that it is currently difficult to gauge the full scale of the virus' impact in Syria due to the tightly controlled med. 

Earlier this month, Syrian authorities began a vaccination campaign after Damascus received shipments of vaccines from an unnamed friendly country.

Reports have emerged that Israel secretly agreed to purchase hundreds of thousands of Moscow's vaccines for Damascus as part of a prisoner exchange deal between it and Syria.

Officials from both sides have denied these reports.

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