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

• Yemen. A shift in frontlines around the strategic port city of Hodeidah on the west coast of Yemen has reportedly resulted in the displacement of close to 6,500 individuals.  The new displacement comes amidst the intense fighting in and around Marib Governorate, resulting in a deterioration of the humanitarian situation, with 2,271 households reportedly displaced in the first week of November alone (ERCC).
• Africa’s Lake Chad Basin region remains highly volatile, the UN peacekeeping chief told the Security Council on Friday, spotlighting a rising tide of extremist violence as a continuously crippling force (UN News). [The Lake Chad basin, located in Northern Central Africa, covers almost 8% of the continent and spreads over seven countries. It is shared among the countries of Algeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Algeria and Libya. The lake constitutes a strategic source of freshwater for the countries, which is also central to the livelihoods in the basin (GWP)]
• Myanmar. Rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the conviction and harsh sentencing of American journalist Danny Fenster was emblematic of a wider plight of journalists in the country who have faced constant repression, in the wake of a military coup in February (UN News).
• Burkina Faso. An attack by insurgents killed 19 Burkina Faso military police and a civilian on Sunday in the tri-border northern region with Niger and Mali (MSN).
• Ethiopia. Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has arrived in Ethiopia amid growing international efforts for a cessation of hostilities in the country’s war (Al Jazeera).
• Sudan. Sudanese security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas on Saturday to disperse protesters denouncing the military’s tightening grip on the country, killing at least five and wounding several, activists said (MSN).
• United Kingdom. UK police have declared the blast outside a hospital in Liverpool a terrorist incident and said they believed the explosion occurred when a man brought an improvised device into a taxi (CNN on MSN), and have raised its national threat level on Monday to severe, meaning an attack is seen as highly likely (Reuters).
• Afghanistan. At least one person has been killed and four others wounded in an explosion that hit a vehicle in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, officials said (Al Jazeera).
• Mexico. Police are coming under attack by organized crime in the latest wave of violence in the central state of Zacatecas. Armed civilians kidnapped a municipal police director and two officers, following which another armed group attacked state police (MND).
• Canada. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said since the start of the pandemic, threats posed by extremists had “evolved with unprecedented multiplicity and fluidity”. “Online rhetoric that is increasingly violent and calls for the arrest and execution of specific individuals is of increasing concern,” CSIS said in a statement (Reuters).
• Vietnam. A court in Vietnam on Monday sentenced an aquaculture farmer to seven years in prison after finding him guilty of spreading “anti-state propaganda” on Facebook (Reuters).

Natural Disasters

• Iran. Two earthquakes of 6.0 and 6.3 M occurred in Bandar Abbas County (central Hormozgan Province, southern Iran) on 14 November at 12.07 and 12.08 UTC. According to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), one person died, 70 have been injured, 137 villages affected as well as the cities of Bandar Abbas and Fin (ERCC).
• Indonesia. Heavy rain has been affecting Sumatra and Java Islands since 12 November, causing floods and triggering landslides that have resulted in population displacements and damage (ERCC).
• Italy. Heavy rainfall has been affecting southern Italy (in particular southern Sardinia Island), and northern-central Italy (Emilia Romagna and Tuscany Regions) over the last 48 hours, causing floods, landslides and a number of severe weather-related incidents that have resulted in casualties and damage (ERCC).
• Egypt. Heavy rain and flooding in Aswan, Egypt, have driven drifts of scorpions to seek shelter in people’s homes. Three people died and more than 400 were hospitalised across the governorate to receive anti-venom treatment after being stung (Al Jazeera).

Health

• India‘s Supreme Court told authorities on Monday to shut offices in the capital and nearby cities, allowing millions to work from home as officials seek ways to reduce hazardous air pollution that led to the closure of schools (Reuters).
• World. Several outbreaks of severe bird flu in Europe and Asia have been reported in recent days to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), in a sign the virus is spreading quickly again. Previous outbreaks led to the culling of tens of millions of birds. Outbreaks also often lead to trade restrictions (Reuters).
• Belgium put the country on increased risk for bird flu as the virus spreads across Europe, the food safety agency AFSCA said in a statement (Reuters).

Migration

• Latvia has deployed 3,000 troops for a previously unannounced military exercise near its border with Belarus this weekend amid an escalating migrant crisis along the Belarusian-Polish border (US News).
• Iraq will begin repatriating its citizens stuck on the Poland-Belarus border, as people there face freezing conditions and lack vital supplies (Al Jazeera).

Of note

• World. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called on governments worldwide to review their laws regarding passengers’ behaviour to handle all types of unruly and disruptive passengers, as the number of incidents of such nature has doubled since 2020 and keeps increasing (SchengenVisaInfo).
• Tuvalu. The South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is disappointed with the outcome of the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, fearing it will fail to hold back global warming and worsen the threat of rising sea levels facing low lying countries. For Tuvalu, where the highest point is four metres above sea level, any rise in the sea level means parts of some islands will be washed away and other parts will be uninhabitable (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:

• Europe. The vaccination requirement has become a norm in several institutions throughout the European Union, including the universities. Institutions are widely applying the vaccinated, recovered, or tested model (SchengenVisaInfo).
• Singapore will extend its vaccinated travel lane (VTL) scheme to more countries starting from Nov 29, according to the Ministry of Health on Monday. The country intends to launch VTLs with India and Indonesia from Nov 29, and with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from Dec 6 (CNA).
• Morocco will conduct rapid COVID-19 tests to passengers arriving in its airports and ports, and will deny access to any visitor with a positive result, the government said on Saturday (Reuters).
• Cambodia became the latest country in Asia on Monday to end strict quarantine and travel measures for vaccinated arrivals (Reuters).
• Austria imposed a lockdown on people unvaccinated against the coronavirus on Monday as winter approaches and infections rise across Europe. But there is widespread scepticism about how the lockdown can be enforced (Reuters).
• China. People who have travelled in the previous two weeks to county-level administrative divisions with international overland ports of entry are advised not to enter China’s capital for non-essential purposes, effective from Nov. 17, Beijing Daily reported on Saturday (Reuters).

Global cases and deaths. As of 15 November, Johns Hopkins University counts 253,527,149 COVID-19 cases and 5,103,543 deaths. The WHO COVID-19 dashboard reports as of 15 November 252,902,685 confirmed cases, including 5,094,826 deaths.

As notable cases:

• Africa. A new analysis by WHO has concluded that the vast majority of cases of COVID-19 in Africa are not being detected. At time of the analysis, Oct 10, 2021, Africa had recorded around 8·4 million SARS-CoV-2 infections, and 217 000 deaths (the continent has since reported another 200 000 or so infections and 2000 deaths). WHO calculated that the true number of infections was seven times higher than the reported figure. The same analysis showed that two in three deaths from COVID-19 are not being registered in Africa. As The Lancet Respiratory Medicine went to press, 6% of Africans had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Although the supply of vaccines to the continent has accelerated over the past few months, it is still suboptimal and WHO has warned that 2022 could see a shortfall of syringes (The Lancet).
• China is battling the spread of its biggest COVID-19 outbreak caused by the Delta variant, according to numbers announced on Monday, with travellers from a city where infections have grown faster than elsewhere in the country subject to tough quarantine rules in nearby areas (Reuters).
• Germany‘s coronavirus infection rate has risen to its highest level since the start of the pandemic, public health figures showed on Monday, as the three parties in talks to form a new government plan an expansion of measures to tackle the pandemic (Reuters).
• Netherlands. Dutch hospitals are feeling the strain from a surge in COVID-19 patients but the worst has yet to come, the head of the country’s hospital association said on Monday (Reuters).

Vaccination campaigns around the world continue. As of 14 November, Our World in Data reports 52.1% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 7.51 billion doses have been administered globally, and 31.22 million are now administered each day. Only 4.5% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. The WHO COVID-19 dashboard reports as of 11 November over 7.16 billion administered vaccine doses.

As notable cases:

• Italy. Police in Italy are conducting searches against 17 anti-vaccine activists who were purportedly affiliated with a Telegram chat that espoused violence against government, medical and media figures for their perceived support of COVID-19 restrictions (US News).
• United Kingdom. Britain’s COVID-19 booster vaccine rollout is to be extended to people aged between 40 and 49, officials said on Monday (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.