A cemetery in Syria reflects the horror of the Corona crisis...

Corona virus has spread in Syria amid a government and media blackout, claiming more lives, with a higher degree than what local authorities announce.

Official data indicate that the number of deaths in Syria due to the epidemic has reached 209, according to a report by the agency Reuters.

But over the summer months, burial notices were posted on city walls and social media almost daily, while professional groups mourned for missing doctors, academics, lawyers and politicians.

The sprawling Najha cemetery outside the capital, Damascus, and the resting place for thousands of deaths in the Syrian wars, is facing difficulties in absorbing the recently increasing Corona deaths.

Najha cemetery has been designated to accommodate Corona victims in the Syrian capital, and it can usually survive to accommodate 40 deaths per day.

The burial certificate officer in Nagha, Abd al-Rahim Badir, told Reuters that this absorption number had tripled during most of July, and there was an increase in August, while the numbers are still much higher than the average.

While there are no independent figures on the number of new cases and deaths in Corona in Syria, Badir’s census is consistent with reports of some NGOs and aid workers who say that official data reflects a small part of the real losses.

The medical sector in Syria suffers due to the nine-year war, which led to the lack of the necessary rate to detect the virus, in addition to the presence of millions of people who have become vulnerable to poverty, displacement, and the Corona virus.

Members of the Syrian Doctors Syndicate took an unusual step last August, by announcing the losses among their colleagues due to the Corona virus.

“This is a list of 61 of the best Syrian doctors that Syria has lost in the past few days,” the Syndicate said in a Facebook post published on August 16.

A source in the association also stated that since then, there have been at least 87 other confirmed deaths of members of medical staff, while other people from other professions have died.

In a letter dated August 9, the head of the Syrian Bar Association, Firas Fares, warned his colleagues of “the widespread spread of the epidemic in state courts and the death of a large number of lawyers.”

At the height of the crisis, the lack of medical services in Damascus hospitals led to the conversion of some middle-class homes into treatment centers, while private companies delivered oxygen.