Coronavirus cases have been secretly recorded in several Syrian provinces, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group on Thursday.

Case were recorded in the provinces of Damascus, Tartus, Latakia, and Homs, and there have been some deaths from the virus in Syria, sources told the Britain-based observatory.

“Doctors confirmed that they were given strict orders from the authorities of the Syrian regime to remain silent and refrain from talking about the outbreak of the coronavirus,” the observatory said.

The Syrian government has not announced any official infections and has released no information about the possible spread of the coronavirus, which has hit close ally Iran hard and is spreading throughout much of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials said cases of coronavirus in their country had been traced to nationals returning from the Middle East, including from Syria.

"The eight cases were those that came from Doha. Before Doha, they were either coming from Iraq or Syria," Syed Murad Ali Shah, chief minister of Pakistan’s Sindh province, told Geo TV on Tuesday.

Pakistan’s health minister, Zafar Mirza, told Hum News that some of the 24 registered cases in Pakistan came from Syria, as well as Iran, Iraq, and Britain.

On Wednesday, Syrian doctors and aid workers told Reuters they feared the coronavirus would spread widely if it reached Syria with its healthcare system in ruins, especially in Syria’s northwest where people displaced by war are living in crowded camps.

“If the virus spreads in the camps, controlling it would be very difficult, with the tents so close to each other,” Omar Hammoud, a doctor in Azaz, told Reuters. “There is no safe distance between people here, there is overpopulation.”