TIMBUKTU – Harandane Toure started taking malaria pills when he first spiked a fever but as the days passed his illness only worsened.Doctors ultimately told him he was among the hundreds now infected with the coronavirus in this town long fabled for being inaccessible from the rest of the world.There are no commercial flights to Timbuktu, whose remote location in the Sahara Desert has long made the town's name synonymous with the ends of the Earth.Health officials say the global pandemic has managed to reach here all the same.
Already there are more than 500 cases including at least nine deaths, making it Mali’s largest outbreak outside the capital.At the local hospital, a cluster of tents set up outside now houses 32 COVID-19 patients..