World Status Report

This report intends to give the UTD Community a snapshot of international risks, and other issues as reported by the linked media and official sources from the U.S. and other countries.

More health and security information for each country can be found in the travel advisories issued by the governments of the United States, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, and the CDC, ECDC, and WHO sites. Not all advise in these sites will apply to US travelers.

Please note the publication date of this report and go to the direct sources linked for the most up-to-date information.  The information in this report may change without prior notice.

Security

• Congo (DRC), Uganda. Fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has forced at least 11,000 people to flee to neighbouring Uganda since Sunday night, representing the largest refugee influx in a single day for more than a year, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday (UN News).
• Ethiopia. A year-long conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has reached “disastrous proportions”, the UN political chief told the Security Council on Monday, warning of “grave uncertainty” surrounding the future of the country and stability of the whole Horn of Africa region. “But let me clear: What is certain is that the risk of Ethiopia descending into widening civil war is only too real. That would bring about a humanitarian catastrophe and consume the future of such an important country”, she said. (UN News).
• Afghanistan. A stark warning for the people of Afghanistan has been issued by UN migration agency chief António Vitorino who on Thursday said that ongoing conflict, grinding poverty and climate-related emergencies, have pushed the country to the brink of collapse (UN News).

Natural Disasters

• Sri Lanka, India. Since 7 November, heavy rain has been affecting south-eastern India and Sri Lanka, resulting in floods and landslides, and leading to an increased human impact (ERCC).
• China. Heavy snowfall has been affecting northern China since 5 November, leading to casualties and disruptions. According to media reports, at least one person died and more than 5,600 people have been affected in the Tongliao City area (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). In addition, classes have been suspended and some flights have been canceled across several Provinces of China (ERCC).
• Madagascar. Famine is almost always associated with armed conflict. As a consequence of civil war, Yemen and Ethiopia today are facing acute food emergencies. In Madagascar there is no war, yet thousands of people in the southern part of the country are experiencing famine-like conditions. Over a million more are considered to be on the brink of famine. This region has experienced successive droughts — the rainy season is shorter, the lean season is longer and subsistence farmers are unable to plant their crops.  This is widely considered to be the world’s first climate-change induced famine (UN Dispatch).

Health

• Germany, Italy.  Reported each one case of West Nile Virus (WNV) infections, and no deaths (ECDC).
• Ukraine. Reported on case of poliomyelitis in a 12 year old with acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) in the Transcarpathia region of Ukraine (ECDC).
• Congo (DRC). As of Nov 1, two new confirmed Ebola cases and two deaths were reported.  In total, as of Nov 1, eight confirmed cases, including six deaths were reported by WHO since the start of the outbreak (8 October 2021).  In total, 551 contacts were followed up (ECDC).
• Saudi Arabia.  As of Nov 3, one new MERS-CoV case has been reported (ECDC).
• Congo (DRC). As of 23 October 2021, a total of 2 395 suspected meningitis cases, including 14 confirmed cases and 200 deaths, have been reported in Banalia health district (ECDC).
• India. At least 89 people, including 17 children, have tested positive for the Zika virus in a surge of cases in the Indian city of Kanpur, its health department said on Monday (Reuters).
• Malaysia, Haiti. New Coronavirus, likely from dogs, infects people in Malaysia and Haiti (NPR). 

Migration

• Poland-Belarus. Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging migrants – from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa – to illegally cross the border into the EU in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Minsk over human rights abuses (Reuters). Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller said that there were currently 3,000-4,000 migrants near the border, and more than 10,000 others across Belarus ready to try and cross into Poland. “We expect that in the coming hours attacks on our border will be renewed by groups of several hundred people,” Pawel Soloch, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, told reporters (Reuters). The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called on EU authorities to approve the extended sanctions for Belarus and third-country airlines, following reports that thousands of migrants remain stuck in the Polish-Belarusian border amid freezing temperatures, which caused several people to die since this crisis has occurred. According to the Guardian, the Belarusian forces have accompanied 1,000 people towards the Polish border after the poor conditions and freezing temperatures left several people dead (SchengenVisaInfo).
• Lithuania-Belarus. Lithuania’s parliament on Tuesday declared a state of emergency at the country’s border with Belarus and at camps hosting migrants who arrived from there, a tally of votes showed. The state of emergency, which begins at midnight local time (2200 GMT) in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday and is to last a month, allows border guards to use “mental coercion” and “proportional physical violence” to prevent migrants from entering Lithuania (Reuters).

COVID-19

International preventative measures against COVID-19, including entry restrictions and in-country mobility remain fluid, and can be imposed without prior notice.  The UNWTO and IATA Destination Tracker offers relevant information on a destination status. The Timeline of EU Member States Reopening Their Borders offers a list of opened EU countries for travelers, and dates of warned opening. The University Vaccine Requirement Checker notes universities that require a COVID-19 Vaccine.

As notable cases:

• United States, Mexico. The Mexico-United States border opened on Monday to nonessential travel following a 20-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Reuters).

Global cases and deaths. As of 09 November, Johns Hopkins University counts 250,580,621 COVID-19 cases and 5,060,487 deaths, and the WHO COVID-19 dashboard reports as of 08 November 249,743,428 cases and 5,047,652 deaths.

As notable cases:

• Bulgaria reported a record number of daily coronavirus deaths on Tuesday as the European Union’s least vaccinated country grapples with a fourth wave of the pandemic, official data showed on Tuesday (Reuters).
• France health authorities said on Monday the number of people hospitalised because of COVID-19 went up by 156 over the past 24 hours, the highest daily rise since Aug. 23, to reach a one-month peak of 6,865 (Reuters).
• Germany‘s coronavirus infection rate has risen to its highest level since the start of the pandemic, public health figures showed on Monday, and doctors warned they will need to postpone scheduled operations in coming weeks to cope (Reuters).

Vaccination campaigns around the world continue. As of 08 November, Our World in Data reports 51.1% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 7.31 billion doses have been administered globally, and 27.36 million are now administered each day. Only 4.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. The WHO COVID-19 dashboard reports as of 08 November over 7.084 billion administered vaccine doses.

As notable cases:

• India could resume deliveries of COVID-19 shots to global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX in a few weeks for the first time since April, two health industry sources said, ending a suspension of supplies that has hurt poor countries (Reuters).
• India. India has placed an order for 10 million doses of Zydus Cadila’s (CADI.NS) DNA COVID-19 vaccine. The three-dose vaccine, ZyCoV-D, was approved by the country’s drug regulator in August for emergency use in adults and children aged 12 years and above (Reuters).
• United Kingdom. Health workers in England will have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by April 1, health minister Sajid Javid said on Tuesday, making it a mandatory condition of employment for those on the frontline of the National Health Service (NHS) (Reuters).
• United Kingdom. Britain said it would recognise COVID-19 vaccines on the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing later this month, adding China’s Sinovac (SVA.O), Sinopharm and India’s Covaxin to the country’s approved list of vaccines for inbound travellers (Reuters).

Please note the publication date of this report and go to the direct sources linked for the most up-to-date information.  The information in this report may change without prior notice.