The number of coronavirus cases has surged in Libya this month, with health authorities blaming the biggest outbreak in a southern city on the repatriation of nationals stranded abroad.

The National Centre for Disease Control last week announced more than 90 new cases in the southern city of Sebha after weeks with only a few dozen confirmed cases across the whole country.

By Tuesday, Libya had confirmed 332 cases of COVID-19, of which 142 were in Sebha and the others mostly in the northwest.

The disease control centre attributed the cases in Sebha to people returning home, though the city medical centre’s media office manager Mohamed Grain said they had not yet identified the “patient zero” who triggered the outbreak.

“The fear, if cases rise, is that citizens will not follow social distancing procedures. Then we will be unable to deal with all the cases,” said Ali Saidi, head of Sebha’s quarantine centre where three out of 16 intensive care beds are occupied.