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COVID-19

SIGAR reports Afghanistan heading for humanitarian disaster due to COVID-19

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(Last Updated On: October 25, 2022)

With limited resources to deal with the spread of COVID-19 in Afghanistan and high poverty levels inhibiting compliance with government-mandated lockdowns, experts have warned that the country is headed for a humanitarian disaster.

As of mid-July, Afghanistan had reached 35,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 1,094 deaths but public-health officials warned that actual cases are likely much higher given the government’s low testing capacity.

In addition, COVID-19 has likely pushed Afghanistan into a recession, overwhelmed the country’s basic health-care system and the numbers infected and dead are likely to be vastly undercounted, a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) stated this week. 

According to the report, released on Thursday, testing remains limited, but nearly 43 percent of samples were testing positive as of July 15, one of the highest rates in the world.

The overwhelming effect of the virus has, as UNAMA head Deborah Lyons put it, cast “a huge shadow” over Afghan daily life.

According to the report, as of July 15, the number of reported deaths remained low at just 1,094, but this figure may vastly undercount the true toll of the virus as not only has the testing capacity remained limited but many Afghans do not have access to medical facilities.

At the end of June, the Asia Foundation’s country director wrote: “I have been unable to keep track of the growing number of deaths among my own acquaintances, relatives, and friends’ families.”

While the governor of Kabul Mohammad Yaqub Haidari said at a press conference in June that the city’s ambulance service had reported an average of approximately 33 deaths per day.

SIGAR reported that commenting on the lack of an accurate death count, the head of a Kabul-based hospital dedicated to treating COVID-19 patients estimated that roughly 75 percent of those who died at the hospital had not been tested.

The report also stated that available COVID-19 data points to rapid spread with undetected infection.

As of early June, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health could test only 2,000 of the 10,000–20,000 samples received daily, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian-oriented nongovernmental organization.

“Consequently, up to 90 percent of potential cases are not being tested,” the report read. 

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s positivity rate – or the proportion of tests that return a positive result divided by the total number of tests conducted – was nearly 43 percent, as of July 15.

SIGAR stated that this was one of the highest positivity rates in the world, based on data collected by Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and, separately, by the IRC.

Overall, the IRC said, Afghanistan faced a “humanitarian disaster.”

“The potential for disaster is heightened by the probability that the pandemic will have secondary effects on broader health outcomes,” the report stated. 

In addition to this, SIGAR reported that the economic shock of the pandemic – including increased unemployment, food-supply disruptions due to border closures, and rising food prices – has exacerbated Afghans’ food insecurity, already impacted by the ongoing conflict and high poverty levels. 

In May, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a common global scale for classifying the severity and magnitude of food insecurity and malnutrition, warned that about one-third of Afghanistan’s estimated 32.2 million people remain in either a crisis or emergency state of food insecurity and require urgent action.

Another challenge the Afghan government is facing is the lack of public cooperation over public-health recommendations. 

SIGAR stated that although information campaigns have been launched to help curb the spread of the virus, Afghans are increasingly moving about in Kabul. 

Health officials have warned that the public was not paying sufficient attention to the crisis.

Meanwhile, public-health conditions in areas under Taliban control remain unclear, SIGAR reported. 

According to them, the group has released messages and videos as part of a public relations campaign highlighting its COVID-19 response, including enforcing quarantine. 

“Yet, as aid officials have argued, it has been difficult to assess the effectiveness of the Taliban’s actions,” the report stated. 

In addition to this Afghanistan also lacks the medical equipment necessary to treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19. 

SIGAR stated that while the Afghan government approved the purchase of 500 ventilators in April, the country’s hospitals currently have only 300 ventilators to help patients.

“Furthermore, Kabul hospitals have also reported a severe lack of oxygen, resulting in relatives bringing makeshift oxygen balloons to help suffering patients,” the report stated.

The pandemic meanwhile has also had a severe impact on the country’s economy. 

The IMF said that Afghanistan had likely entered a recession, forecasting that Afghanistan’s GDP would contract by three percent in 2020.

Projected economic contraction by other experts ranged from three percent to 10 percent. 

Describing the outlook as “dire,” the World Bank said South Asia would likely experience its worst economic performance in the last four decades and predicted that Afghanistan would be the worst regional performer in 2020, other than the Maldives.

“The pandemic is inflicting severe economic and social damage, with its depth and duration subject to great uncertainty,” the IMF said.

COVID-19

WHO declares end to COVID global health emergency

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(Last Updated On: May 6, 2023)

The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions of people worldwide.

The announcement, made more than three years after WHO declared the coronavirus an international crisis, offers some relief, if not an ending, to a pandemic that stirred fear and suspicion, hand-wringing and finger-pointing across the globe, AP reported. 

The U.N. health agency’s officials said that even though the emergency phase was over, the pandemic hasn’t finished, noting recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

WHO says thousands of people are still dying from the virus every week, and millions of others are suffering from debilitating, long-term effects.

“It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat,” he said, warning that new variants could yet emerge. Tedros noted that while the official COVID-19 death toll was 7 million, the real figure was estimated to be at least 20 million.

Tedros said the pandemic had been on a downward trend for more than a year, acknowledging that most countries have already returned to life before COVID-19.

He bemoaned the damage that COVID-19 had done to the global community, saying the pandemic had shattered businesses, exacerbated political divisions, led to the spread of misinformation and plunged millions into poverty.

When the U.N. health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on Jan. 30, 2020, it hadn’t yet been named COVID-19 and there were no major outbreaks beyond China.

More than three years later, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million cases globally and about 5 billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.

In the U.S., the public health emergency declaration made regarding COVID-19 is set to expire on May 11, when wide-ranging measures to support the pandemic response, including vaccine mandates, will end. Many other countries, including Germany, France and Britain, dropped most of their provisions against the pandemic last year.

When Tedros declared COVID-19 to be an emergency in 2020, he said his greatest fear was the virus’ potential to spread in countries with weak health systems.

Most recently, WHO has struggled to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, a challenging scientific endeavor that has also become politically fraught.

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COVID-19

COVID-19 in Iran: Nearly 900 new cases, 24 deaths recorded

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(Last Updated On: March 27, 2023)

The Iranian health ministry announced on Sunday that more than 890 new cases of COVID-19 have been identified across the country during the past 24 hours, adding that 24 patients have died in the same period of time, Fars News Agency reported.

“A sum of 891 new patients infected with COVID-19 have been identified in the country based on confirmed diagnosis criteria during the past 24 hours,” the Iranian Health Ministry’s Public Relations Center said on Sunday, adding, “454 patients have been hospitalized during the same time span.”

The ministry’s public relations center said 611 people infected with COVID-19 are in critical condition.

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COVID-19

China says 200 million treated, pandemic ‘decisively’ beaten

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(Last Updated On: February 17, 2023)

China says more than 200 million of its citizens have been diagnosed and treated for COVID-19 since it lifted strict containment measures beginning in November.

With 800,000 of the most critically ill patients having recovered, China has “decisively beaten” the pandemic, according to notes from a meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by President and party leader Xi Jinping, AP reported. 

China enforced some of the world’s most draconian lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions and still faces questions about the origins of the virus that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Heavy-handed enforcement prompted rare anti-government protests and took a heavy toll on the world’s second-largest economy.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Xi as saying that policies to control the outbreak had been “entirely correct.” The abrupt lifting in November and December of the “zero COVID” policy that had sought to eliminate all cases of the virus led to a surge in infections that temporarily overwhelmed hospitals.

Case numbers have since peaked and life has largely returned to normal, although international travel in and out of China has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

China is now transitioning to a post-pandemic stage after a fight against the outbreak that was “extraordinary in the extreme,” Xinhua said.

The government will continue to “optimize and adjust prevention and control policies and measures according to the times and situations with a strong historical responsibility and strong strategic determination,” Xinhua said.

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