Infections in camps in South Sudan and Greece’s Aegean Islands raise fears of rapid spread.

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Coronavirus testing in Juba, South Sudan, in April.Credit...Alex Mcbride/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The coronavirus has been detected for the first time among people living in a camp for displaced people in South Sudan, and in a migrant camp in Greece’s Aegean Islands, intensifying fears of a lethal outbreak among some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Public health officials have long warned that camps for people who have fled war and privation are ideal settings for the virus to spread fast — they are crowded, and often lacking in food, sanitation and medical resources.

The United Nations said that two people tested positive on Monday in a camp in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where two camps house about 29,600 of the roughly 4 million people who have been displaced by a brutal civil war.

“This community is an extension of the communities around them in Juba city where we know that Covid-19 already exists,” said David Shearer, head of the United Nations mission there.

South Sudan is a poor nation with a fragile health care system, and even with help from the World Health Organization, the capacity to test for and treat the infection is very limited. Officially, the country has recorded 174 cases, but the real figure is thought to be far higher.

Mr. Shearer said on Tuesday that his group had doubled water supplies at the camps to boost handwashing, broadcast awareness messages in multiple languages and distributed more than two months worth of food to keep people from visiting local markets.

In Greece, Migration Ministry officials confirmed two cases of Covid-19 in migrants on Lesbos, one of five Aegean Islands where nearly 40,000 migrants live in camps. They arrived on Lesbos last week from Turkey, which has had a far worse outbreak than Greece.

Coronavirus infections have been found among migrants on the Greek mainland, where they live in less dire conditions.