Every morning at 5:30 a.m., Dr. Marwan Al-Ghafory checks into his personal Facebook page. Over coffee, he surveys the latest news and answers questions about the coronavirus pandemic back home in Yemen, posting responses to more than 156,000 followers. Then, after a 10-hour shift at the Catholic Clinic in the western German city of Essen, he logs back in until midnight.

“My aim is to warn our society about this pandemic and show them how to defend themselves against it. Because, believe it or not, there is a big problem,” he said.

Ghafory, 39, left Yemen in 1998 on a national scholarship to attend medical school in Cairo, then moved to Germany in 2011. He became known as a reliable source of Covid-19 information in late March, after publishing an article on Al-Mawqea Post, a Yemeni daily news website. 

The piece detailed how the virus was spreading in Sana’a, the nation’s capital, and explained that the authorities were trying to pass it off as swine flu. It would take officials more than a month to publicly announce the first case in the city.