A quarter of households in Sri Lanka are headed by women, yet there is no comprehensive national strategy to address their needs, particularly during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Long-suffering Afghanistan is bracing for a new wave of misery caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The rise of COVID-19 cases coupled with health missteps in the war-torn country spread fear of a tragedy amid a still raging war. The country, which managed through the pandemic waves last summer, is at risk of developing its own variant of COVID-19.
In recent weeks, the Public Health Ministry of Afghanistan has recorded an increase in COVID-19 cases, including of the British variant of the COVID-19 virus. The Health Ministry said that over the last two weeks as many as 2,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 and 70 people died of COVID-19. The Health Ministry said that around 100 COVID-19 cases were of the British variant, which has appeared in different provinces of the country, including Kabul, the capital.
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Late last month Fiji ordered two of its largest cities into lockdown after the Pacific Island nation recorded its first cases of community transmission of COVID-19 since a handful of cases were identified early on in the pandemic.
With cases only reported in hotel quarantine in the past 12 months, the new community transmission caught many Fijian’s by surprise. Confirmed cases have risen steadily since a Fijian soldier was infected at a quarantine facility, with active cases jumping to 50 in the two weeks since. While seemingly trivial compared to the 400,000 recorded daily in India or the 300,000 cases recorded daily in the U.S. back in January, it’s a huge hit to a country that had high hopes of making it through the pandemic unscathed.
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Amid an unfolding COVID-19 catastrophe in India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke over telephone on April 26. The call came a day after the United States embarked on a large-scale campaign to assure India, a vital security partner, that it stands by the country amid a tsunami of new cases that has pushed India’s creaky healthcare system to its breaking point.
Over the last couple of weeks as the pandemic raged on, significant and influential sections of the Indian public not only lashed out at the Biden administration’s silence on the issue but also pointed out ways in which his – and former President Donald Trump’s invocation of the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) to manufacture COVID-19 in the U.S. could end up choking India’s own efforts in that direction by pulling raw materials and supplies toward U.S. efforts. (The DPA gives the U.S. president an “array of authorities to shape national defense preparedness pr