International Education > Archive > Category: World Status Report

World Status Report

June 24, 2021

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

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

With all the major indicators for Afghanistan’s security and development looking “negative or stagnant” as international troops withdraw, the threats that lie ahead cannot be overstated, the top UN official in the country told the Security Council on Tuesday (UN News).  In Sri Lanka, the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating ethnic and religious tensions (UN Dispatch). Apple Daily, which had long supported Hong Kong‘s pro-democracy movement, will cease publication after twenty-six years, the directors of its parent company announced. The newspaper’s website cited concerns over employee safety and a worker shortage after police raided its office last week and arrested several staff members (Nikkei).

Natural Disasters

Severe weather has impacted various countries resulting in casualties, displacement, and damage.  A tornado in the Montreal city area in Canada.  Wildfires in eastern United States. Floods and landslides in northern France (ERCC).

Health

Egypt accounts an estimated presence of more than 262,000 refugees and asylum seekers, of which roughly half are from Syria while others migrated from Horn of Africa countries, Sudan and South Sudan. These individuals face the challenges of a protracted refugee situation in an impoverished urban setting with multiple barriers to access basic services (ERCC).

COVID-19

International preventative measures against COVID-19, including entry restrictions and in-country mobility remain very fluid, and can be imposed without prior notice. Details 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.  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.

As notable cases: Israel is considering postponing entry for vaccinated tourists – ministry. Among the measures that the government has taken to control the new outbreak, driven by the delta variant, the Health Ministry announced that vaccinated or recovered individuals may be ordered to enter quarantine in specific situations (JPost). Japan will only allow domestic spectators to the Olympics (Guardian). Taiwan has extended its level 3 restrictions for another fortnight, five days before they were due to end (Guardian). In China, direct flights from the southern city of Shenzhen to Beijing have been suspended until at least 1 July ahead of celebrations in the capital on that date. The city is located in the Guangdong province, which is one of China’s most populous and has been battling a Covid outbreak (Guardian).  New restrictions on gatherings have been introduced in Wellington after a Covid-infected Australian travelled to the New Zealand capital and visited a range of popular tourist locations (Guardian). China has signaled that it will keep its border restrictions for another year, due to worries over more transmissible variants (WSJ).

Globally, as of 23 June, Johns Hopkins University counts 179,232,891 COVID-19 cases and 3,884,162 deaths, and the WHO COVID-19 dashboard reports  178,701,170 cases and 3,877,316 deaths.

As notable cases: The Covid Delta variant, which experts deem more infectious than other variants, currently represents 9-10% of confirmed new cases in France, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said (Guardian). US federal authorities have seized unauthorised versions of the COVID-19 treatment remdesivir destined for distribution in Mexico, the Wall Street Journal reported (Guardian). The Red Cross called for faster vaccine rollouts in vulnerable Pacific island nations as a record Covid-19 surge threatens to overload Fiji’s health system (Guardian). Colombia becomes tenth country in the world to reach 100,000 covid deaths (Guardian).  In Thailand, state-run hospitals in Bangkok are on the brink of running out of space for critically ill patients (Guardian). India has declared a new COVID-19 variant to be of concern, saying nearly two dozen cases have been detected in three states (Reuters). Multiple nations battle COVID-19 surges as Delta variant advances in Israel (CIDRAP). Globally,  variant  Alpha  has  been  reported  in  170  countries,  territories  or  areas  (hereafter  countries; seven new countries in the past week), Beta in 119 countries (four new countries), Gamma in 71 countries (three new countries) and Delta in 85 countries (six new countries) (WHO). WHO expert: COVID-19 variants are ‘going to go on coming’ and some will be ‘troublesome’ (SkyNews).

Vaccination campaigns around the world continue.  As of 22 June, Our World in Data reports 2.75 billion administered vaccine doses globally. The WHO COVID-19 dashboard reports over 2.41 billion administered vaccine doses.

As notable cases: AstraZeneca, Pfizer vaccines effective against Delta COVID-19 variants-study (Reuters). Slovakia plans to sell or donate 160,000 doses of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine to other countries, offering up much of the first batch it had available after months of wrangling and a political crisis (Guardian). Australia has announced it will shelve the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine by October, suggesting it will have enough supplies of other vaccines to meet “allocation horizons” for vaccinating the population by the end of the year (Guardian). AP reports that the capital of the United Arab Emirates has apparently started offering free coronavirus vaccines to tourists flying into the emirate (Guardian). Fewer than one percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose – Infographic (AlJazeera).

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.