The coronavirus pandemic is having heavy repercussions on millions of people in Yemen, where international aid has been cut by half, while an ever-increasing portion of the population depends on this aid for survival, said Oxfam on Tuesday.

It is appealing to the international community to reactivate funding, which has been reduced to 25 cents on a dollar per day for each of the 24.3 million Yemenis, compared to 46 cents per person in 2019.

"The dramatic cut has caused more than a third of the UN's humanitarian programmes to be cut back, if not completely shut down, with the result that food is no longer distributed in the country and vital services to 300 health facilities have been interrupted," Oxfam said in a statement.

"Even more absurd and serious in a country where the hospitals are on the verge of collapse, is that there are nearly 150,000 new cases of cholera since the start of the year and over 2,000 Covid-19 infections registered in 11 governorates, a number that is underestimated, given the almost total lack of tests," it said.

"More than five years of conflict generated the worst humanitarian emergency in the world," said Paolo Pezzati, Oxfam policy advisor for humanitarian emergencies.

"The exponential increase of food prices and the lack of jobs have brought 80% of the population to depend on humanitarian aid. Right now, over 20 million people don't have access to clean water and health and hygiene services, and over seven million people are on the verge of famine, including 2.1 million children and 1.2 million pregnant women," Pezzati said.

Currently, the United Nations' appeal to respond to the emergency is financed at less than 40%, or 1.6 billion dollars, compared to the more than four billion allocated last year and more than five billion in 2018.

All of the donor countries, including the four largest - the US, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates - allocated less aid.

"Italy, which in the conference of donor countries in June promised an increase in aid of just 160,000 euros in addition to the five million already allocated in 2019, can and must do much more," the non-profit organisation said.

"It's an extremely low figure, able to provide just two months of humanitarian aid to an organisation like Oxfam in the country," it said.

It said, meanwhile, "many donor countries from the start of the conflict made billions from the sale of weapons".