health
Haiti’s future uncertain after brazen slaying of president
An already struggling and chaotic Haiti stumbled into an uncertain future Thursday, reeling from the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse followed by a reported gunbattle in which authorities said police killed four suspects in the murder, detained two others and freed three officers being held hostage.
Officials pledged to find all those responsible for the predawn raid on Moïse’s house early Wednesday that left the president shot to death and his wife, Martine Moïse, critically wounded. She was flown to Miami for treatment.
“The pursuit of the mercenaries continues,” Léon Charles, director of Haiti’s National Police, said Wednesday night in announcing the arrests of suspects. “Their fate is fixed: They will fall in the fighting or will be arrested.”
Officials did not provide any details on the suspects, including their ages, names or nationalities, nor did they address a motive or what led police to the suspects. They said only that the attack condemned by Haiti’s main opposition parties and the international community was carried out by “a highly trained and heavily armed group” whose members spoke Spanish or English.
Read: Haiti in upheaval: President Moïse assassinated at home
Prime Minister Claude Joseph assumed leadership of Haiti with help of police and the military and decreed a two-week state of siege following Moïse’s killing, which stunned a nation grappling with some of the Western Hemisphere’s highest poverty, violence and political instability.
Inflation and gang violence are spiraling upward as food and fuel becomes scarcer, while 60% of Haitian workers earn less than $2 a day. The increasingly dire situation comes as Haiti is still trying to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 following a history of dictatorship and political upheaval.
Those in Haiti and family and friends living abroad wondered what is next.
“There is this void now, and they are scared about what will happen to their loved ones,” said Marlene Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement, a group that helps people in Miami’s Little Haiti community.
She said it was important for the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to take a much more active role in supporting attempts at national dialogue in Haiti with the aim of holding free, fair and credible elections.
Bastien said she also wants to see participation of the extensive Haitian diaspora: “No more band-aids. The Haitian people have been crying and suffering for too long.”
Read:Haiti President Jovenel Moïse assassinated at home
Haiti had grown increasingly unstable under Moïse, who had been ruling by decree for more than a year and faced violent protests as critics accused him of trying to amass more power while the opposition demanded he step down.
According to Haiti’s constitution, Moïse should be replaced by the president of Haiti’s Supreme Court, but the chief justice died in recent days from COVID-19, leaving open the question of who might rightfully succeed to the office.
Joseph, meanwhile, was supposed to be replaced by Ariel Henry, who had been named prime minister by Moïse a day before the assassination.
Henry told The Associated Press in a brief interview that he is the prime minister, calling it an exceptional and confusing situation. In another interview with Radio Zenith, he said there was no fight between him and Joseph: “I only disagree with the fact that people have taken hasty decisions ... when the moment demands a little more serenity and maturity.”
Moïse had faced large protests in recent months that turned violent as opposition leaders and their supporters rejected his plans to hold a constitutional referendum with proposals that would strengthen the presidency.
Hours after the assassination, public transportation and street vendors remained largely scarce, an unusual sight for the normally bustling streets of Port-au-Prince. Gunfire rang out intermittently across the city, a grim reminder of the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.
Read:Haiti fights large COVID-19 spike as it awaits vaccines
Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said gangs were a force to contend with and it isn’t certain Haiti’s security forces can enforce a state of siege.
“It’s a really explosive situation,” he said, adding that foreign intervention with a U.N.-type military presence is a possibility. “Whether Claude Joseph manages to stay in power is a huge question. It will be very difficult to do so if he doesn’t create a government of national unity.”
Joseph told The Associated Press that he supports an international investigation into the assassination and believes elections scheduled for later this year should be held as he promised to work with Moïse’s allies and opponents alike.
“Everything is under control,” he said.
Global COVID-19 deaths hit 4 million amid rush to vaccinate
The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 4 million Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
Read: Global Covid-19 incidence rises 3% over week: WHO
The toll is three times the number of people killed in traffic accidents around the globe every year. It is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is equivalent to more than half of Hong Kong or close to 50% of New York City.
Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment.
With the advent of the vaccine, deaths per day have plummeted to around 7,900, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January.
But in recent weeks, the mutant delta version of the virus first identified in India has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the U.S., Britain and Israel.
Read:Covid nightmare in Bangladesh: Daily-death toll crosses 200
Britain, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.
Other countries have reimposed preventive measures, and authorities are rushing to step up the campaign to dispense shots.
At the same time, the disaster has exposed the gap between the haves and the have-nots, with vaccination drives barely getting started in Africa and other desperately poor corners of the world because of extreme shortages of shots.
The U.S. and other wealthy countries have agreed to share at least 1 billion doses with struggling countries.
The U.S. has the world’s highest reported death toll, at over 600,000, or nearly 1 in 7 deaths, followed by Brazil at more than 520,000, though the real numbers are believed to be much higher in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government has long downplayed the virus.
Read:Global Covid cases top 184.5 million
The variants, uneven access to vaccines and the relaxation of precautions in wealthier countries are “a toxic combination that is very dangerous,” warned Ann Lindstrand, a top immunization official at the World Health Organization.
Instead of treating the crisis as a “me-and-myself-and-my-country” problem, she said, “we need to get serious that this is a worldwide problem that needs worldwide solutions.”
Zimbabwe returns to strict lockdown to fight virus surge
Zimbabwe has returned to strict lockdown measures to combat a resurgence of COVID-19 amid vaccine shortages, the country’s information minister announced Tuesday.
Infections have dramatically increased in recent weeks despite a night curfew, reduced business hours, localized lockdowns in hotspot areas, and a ban on inter-city travel. The virus has spread to rural areas which have sparse health facilities.
Read:Virus infections surging in Africa’s vulnerable rural areas
To try to contain the spread, most people must stay at home, similar to restrictions on movement adopted in March last year when towns and cities became almost deserted, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa announced after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
People will now need letters from employers to justify why they must venture out of their neighborhoods “with immediate effect,” said Mutsvangwa.
“Stiffer penalties will be imposed for violations,” including revoking the licenses of offending businesses, she said.
Read:Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care
Zimbabwe is one of more than 14 African countries where the delta variant is quickly spreading.
Infections are shooting up. Zimbabwe’s 7-day rolling average of daily new cases quadrupled over the past two weeks from 2.04 new cases per 100,000 people on June 21 to 8.39 new cases per 100,000 people on July 5, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Previously the country’s crowded cities were the centers of infection, but now rural areas are hard hit, said Mutsvangwa.
Read:Ethiopia declares immediate, unilateral cease-fire in Tigray
Government officials reported shortages of personal protective equipment, misinformation discouraging people from getting vaccines and shortages of health care workers. Some rural district hospitals require bulk oxygen tanks, while others need “functional” isolation centers, Mutsvangwa said.
Zimbabwe is one of many African countries suffering a resurgence of the disease, in contrast to other parts of the world where vaccines have allowed a return to something like normal life. To date, 9% of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people have received at least one vaccine dose and 3.7% have received two doses. Across Africa, less than 2% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people have received at least one vaccine jab, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health workers vaccinate Kashmir nomads
Young health worker Masrat Farid has trekked long distances through remote Himalayan meadows in Indian-controlled Kashmir to vaccinate nomadic herders in a campaign launched in June. Her challenge isn’t the treacherous terrain, she says, but persuading people to get inoculated against the coronavirus.
Read: Twin blasts rock Indian Air Force base in first-ever drone attack
“Everywhere we go it seems rumors reach earlier than we do, and it makes our job difficult,” Farid said during a recent vaccination campaign in a high altitude meadow. She said most people are hesitant to get vaccinated because of the rumors.
And the rumors are plentiful.
Fueled by misinformation and mistrust, many residents, particularly in remote areas, believe that the vaccines cause impotence, serious side effects and could even kill. Some simply say they don’t need the shots because they’re immune to the coronavirus.
Still, Kashmir has done better than the rest of India. Scores of health workers like Farid have fully vaccinated over 9% of the eligible people among the region’s 14 million population, compared to less than 5% for India’s nearly 1.4 billion people. Almost 53% in Kashmir have had a first shot.
Read:India’s covid curve could raise the world’s
Mukhti Khan, an elderly woman, belongs to a family of nomads who have traveled for centuries between summer mountain pastures and winter grazing grounds in the lowland plains, herding their goats, sheep and horses.
On a recent day, Mukhti expressed her gratitude as a medical team visited the village near the remote pasture where she and her extended family have camped with their cattle. They can travel on foot to the village but must walk for hours to the nearest town for any medical emergency.
“It would have been quite an effort to go to the town for vaccinations,” she said as she received her first shot.
Apart from the hesitancy, the health workers have faced hostility as well.
“There are places where our colleagues have been attacked,” said Farid, who has vaccinated over 800 people so far.
Read:Experts warn of third wave of pandemic in India if health protocols ignored
Some of the attacks were fueled by fears that videos taken by officials of the vaccination campaign could be used by authorities to encourage support for the Indian government, which many Kashmiris deeply dislike. Most want independence or a merger with neighboring Pakistan, which controls another part of Kashmir. Both countries claim the entire disputed territory.
Mired in crises, Lebanon hopes summer arrivals bring relief
In a village in Lebanon’s scenic Chouf Mountains, 69-year-old Chafik Mershad pulls out a massive rectangular guestbook and reads out despairingly the date when he hosted his last visitor: Nov. 16, 2019.
A month earlier, anti-government protests had exploded across the country over taxes and a deteriorating currency crisis. Amid such uncertainty, few people visited his guesthouse. Then came the coronavirus and subsequent government-imposed lockdowns. The guesthouse officially closed its doors in February 2020. A year and a half later, he still has no plans to reopen amid the country’s current financial meltdown.
“Corona really affected us, but the biggest thing was the currency crisis,” Mershad said, speaking at his home above the guesthouse. “We used to offer meals for guests with Nescafe, tea, whatever they wanted for a cheap price. Now, one hamburger patty costs that much.”
Read:Taliban gains drive Afghan government to recruit militias
The dual shocks of the pandemic and a devastating financial crisis have gutted the hospitality sector of this Mediterranean nation, known for its beaches, mountain resorts and good food. Hundreds of businesses, including guesthouses like the Mershad Guesthouse, have been forced to close.
But as pandemic restrictions are being eased, the businesses that survived hope the dollars spent by visiting Lebanese expats and an increase in domestic tourism can get the wheels of the economy moving again.
Currently, most hotel reservations are from Lebanese expats and some foreigners from neighboring Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Airport arrivals are picking up: Every day for the past several weeks, the Beirut Airport has had four flights coming from Iraq, with more than 700 passengers in total, according to Jean Abboud, president of the Travel and Tourist Agents Union. Chaotic scenes have been reported at the arrivals lounge as people crowd for the obligatory PCR test.
Many Lebanese who traditionally vacationed abroad over the summer are now turning to domestic tourism. It’s the more practical option because of travel restrictions, dollars trapped in banks and a lack of functioning credit cards.
“In the past two years, the country has radically changed. It is no longer a destination for nightlife, for city tourism and for the things that people knew. There’s ... more interest from the Lebanese to travel inside their country,” said Joumana Brihi, board member of the Lebanese Mountain Trail Association. The association maintains a 290-mile (470-kilometer) hiking trail spanning the country from north to south.
Many in the industry say the number of domestic tourists has increased significantly since the country’s lockdown eased in April. They expect to see expats piling in and spending this summer despite the instability, partly because of the devalued Lebanese pound.
That will save a lot of places from shutting down or “at least prolong the life of some businesses,” said Maya Noun, general secretary of the syndicate of restaurant owners.
Since October 2019, Lebanon’s currency has lost more than 90% of its value, trading at around 17,000 Lebanese pounds to the dollar on the black market. The official exchange rate remains at 1,507 pounds to the dollar.
Read:Palestinians, settlers clash in tense Jerusalem neighborhood
Last year, Member of Parliament Michel Daher was chastised on social media for saying on TV that “Lebanon is really cheap, in every sense,” because of the crumbling currency.
“People were laughing at me then,” Daher told The Associated Press. “Now, there are lots of Lebanese expats coming because of the prices, but we also want foreigners.”
Still, the scene on the ground is no picturesque vacation destination. Electricity cuts last much of the day and privately run generators have had to be turned off for several hours to ration fuel. The country suffers from a shortage of vital products, including medicine, medical products and gasoline.
For weeks, frustrated citizens have been lining up to fill up at gas stations, with occasional fistfights and shootings amid frayed nerves. More than half the population has been plunged into poverty, and with sectarian tensions on the rise, Lebanon feels ready to erupt.
Lebanon’s currency crash has created a jarring schism between the comfortable minority whose income is in so-called fresh dollars that can be withdrawn from banks, and those being pushed farther into poverty, including former members of a vanishing middle class whose purchasing power has disappeared.
Resorts in the coastal cities of Batroun and Byblos are regularly packed and forecast to do well this summer after being closed last year because of the pandemic. Restaurants, pubs and rooftop bars are buzzing again and some mountain guesthouses and boutique hotels are fully booked.
Yet the idea that expats will help the economy is partially misleading, said Mike Azar, a Beirut-based financial adviser. “Foreign dollars coming from tourists is always going to be a positive thing, but does it make the lira (pound) appreciate or depreciate at a slower pace? It is not really something you can say.”
Many expats seem to be wavering on whether to visit Lebanon. Some yearn to reconnect with family after long separations caused by the pandemic. Others are not willing to risk it.
Joe Rizk, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student at UMass Lowell in the U.S. from the coastal village of Damour, said his family persuaded him to return for the month of August. He said he would bring medicines that are in short supply, like Advil, for family and friends.
Read: 'No Sweets': For Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a tough Ramadan
“I will not spend more than $300 or $400 this whole month even if I was going every night to a bar, or club or restaurant,” he said, adding he would be using the family house and car while in Lebanon.
But Hala al-Hachem, a 37-year-old assistant bank manager in Massachusetts, said she was too worried to visit Lebanon with two children, aged 8 and 6. Originally from south Lebanon, she used to return with her family every summer.
Not this time.
“Do I want to go there and not be able to put gas in my car and travel around? Do I want to go there and risk one of them getting sick and going to a hospital where they don’t have the medicine needed to treat them? Do I want my sons to wonder at night why there is no electricity?” she asked.
Pandemic tourism: Thailand launches Phuket ‘sandbox’ plan
Thailand embarked on an ambitious but risky plan Thursday that it hopes will breathe new life into a tourism industry devastated by the pandemic, opening the popular resort island of Phuket to fully vaccinated foreigners from lower-risk countries.
As the first flight arrived, airport fire trucks blasted their water canons to form an arch over the Etihad jet from Abu Dhabi as it taxied to its gate.
Leaving the airport, Frenchman Bruno Souillard said he had been dreaming for a year of returning to Thailand and jumped at the opportunity.
Read:Lava streams from crater as Indonesia's Mount Merapi erupts
“I am very, very happy,” the 60-year-old tourist said.
The so-called “Phuket sandbox” program comes as coronavirus infections are surging in Thailand, including a significant number of cases of the Delta variant, and many have questioned if it’s too early to woo tourists back, and whether they’ll come in significant numbers in any case due to the restrictions they’ll still face.
But the number of new cases on the island itself is extremely low, in the single digits daily, and more than 70% of its residents are fully vaccinated. The government is gambling that travelers will be willing to put up with coronavirus-related regulations for the opportunity for a beach holiday after being cooped up in their home countries for months.
Before the pandemic, the tourism sector made up some 20% of Thailand’s economy, and 95% of Phuket’s income.
The resort island off the southern coast saw fewer than a half million visitors in the first five months, and almost no foreigners, compared to more than 3 million during the same period last year including some 2 million foreigners.
Read:India’s covid curve could raise the world’s
In a nod to the importance of the “sandbox” plan, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha flew to Phuket to be on hand in person for the launch.
Last-minute hitches in some of the program details and cautions from authorities that if cases start to rise on the island more restrictions may be needed — or it may have to be shut down entirely — meant some cancelations before it even began. Fewer than 250 international travelers were expected on the first day compared to the initial target of 1,500.
But as the kinks are worked out and people report their first-hand experiences, authorities are hopeful for a steady increase in the numbers. From July 1-15, there are currently 1,101 hotel bookings for a total of 13,116 room overnights.
Travelers to other parts of Thailand are subject to a strict 14-day hotel room quarantine, but under the sandbox plan, visitors to Phuket will be allowed to roam the entire island — the country’s largest — where they can lounge on the white beaches, jet ski and enjoy evenings eating out in restaurants, although clubs and bars remain closed.
Only visitors from countries considered no higher than “low” or “medium” risk — a list currently including most of Europe and the Mideast, the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand — are permitted, and they must fly in directly to Phuket, though plans are in the works to allow carefully controlled transfers through Bangkok’s airport.
Read:Companies give vaccines to workers, boosting Japan’s rollout
Following the inaugural flight from Abu Dhabi, passengers were expected to arrive later Thursday from Qatar, Israel and Singapore.
Adult foreign visitors must provide proof of two vaccinations, a negative COVID-19 test no more than 72 hours before departure, and proof of an insurance policy that covers treatment for the virus of at least $100,000, among other things. Once on the island, they have to follow mask and distancing regulations and take three COVID-19 tests at their own expense — about $300 total — and show negative results.
After 14 days, visitors can travel elsewhere in Thailand.
Virus infections surging in Africa’s vulnerable rural areas
For Pelagia Bvukura, who lives in a rural part of north-central Zimbabwe, COVID-19 had always been a “city disease,” affecting those in the capital, Harare, or other, distant big towns.
“There was no virus for us. We only used to hear it was in Harare or other towns or when city people died and we buried them here,” she said recently, referring to the custom in Zimbabwe where those who move to the city often are buried at their family’s rural home.
That is changing now. A new surge of the virus is finally penetrating Africa’s rural areas, where most of the continent’s people live, spreading to areas that once had been viewed as safe havens from infections that hit cities particularly hard.
Read:Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care
With facilities in the countryside ill-prepared to fight the coronavirus, residents like Bvukura worry that the next graves being dug could be for their neighbors — or even themselves.
Her village of Zvimba, 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Harare, has yet to record a major spike in infections, but it sits in a province that is the current epicenter of the virus.
“It is now on our doorsteps. It’s scary. We don’t know how to protect ourselves. We have never dealt with such a problem before,” she said.
Like many here, she wasn’t wearing a mask and is yet to be vaccinated.
Africa has recorded over 5.3 million cases and is experiencing the worst of a wave driven by more contagious and deadlier variants. The continent recorded a 39% increase in new cases in the week from June 14-20, according to the World Health Organization.
With homesteads spaced far apart, few visitors and rare public gatherings, rural areas appeared so insulated that they drew some people from cities to escape both infection and economic hardship.
“It was a dangerous, false sense of security. Now a tragedy is unfolding,” said Dr. Johannes Marisa, president of the Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association in Harare.
The delta variant that has devastated India has been detected in at least 14 African countries including Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and not just in the cities.
“We are starting to see an upward trend in the rural and marginalized areas,” said Edward Simiyu, Uganda country director of the charity group Mercy Corps, in a statement earlier in June.
In Zimbabwe, three of the four districts under strict lockdown and declared as epicenters of the outbreak are in the predominantly rural Mashonaland West province, which recorded over half of the 801 cases reported last weekend. Other hot spots also are largely rural, a first for this country.
“We are going to see a lot of deaths, especially arising from rural areas. COVID-19 is now coming from the rural areas,” said Marisa, attributing the spike to “a high degree of complacency,” a lack of information and few vaccinations, with urban areas prioritized.
Read:In poorest countries, surges worsen shortages of vaccines
The virus can also spread at funerals when city dwellers return to visit rural relatives.
“I was at a funeral in a rural area recently and people were surprised to see me wearing a mask,” he said.
Rural areas are ill-equipped to deal with the surge, and urban health care facilities are under strain in treating an increasing number of people from the countryside. Zimbabwe’s major referral hospital, Parirenyatwa in Harare, is prioritizing beds for COVID-19 patients.
“Parirenyatwa is almost full. These are not people from Harare. Health facilities in rural areas are miserable, so all those people are being referred to city hospitals,” Marisa said.
In Mozambique’s remote Tete province, a hotbed of infections where the delta variant was recorded, President Filipe Nyusi expressed worry.
“We don’t have many beds. … We don’t have many health staff in Tete either,” Nyusi said.
Because health care facilities in the countryside in places like Uganda are more poorly staffed than those in urban areas, “a penetration of COVID-19 infections in these rural and vulnerable regions is likely to be devastating, … risking more people slipping deeper into poverty, further worsening social inequities, divisions, and conflict,” said Simiyu of Mercy Corps.
Rural residents are finding it difficult to get vaccinated because of weak public health systems and vaccine distribution problems. Only 1% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, according to the WHO and the Africa Centers for Disease Control.
The Zvimba Rural District hospital only had just a small number of coronavirus vaccines, reserved for second doses, its staff said.
But even after the vaccine becomes available, “the ability of health systems to absorb those doses and get them distributed — particularly in rural communities — is the next huge problem on the horizon,” said Sean Granville-Ross, Africa regional director for Mercy Corps, in an interview with The Associated Press.
“There’s a risk vaccines could sit spoiling in warehouses across African capitals if countries aren’t ready to hit the ground running with mass vaccination campaigns, including in the hardest-to-reach rural areas where health infrastructure is already weak, as is trust in public health systems,” Granville-Ross said.
Read:‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
Those in rural areas who are desperate for the vaccines, including the elderly, live far from hospitals and clinics.
Matrida Tendayi, who is 100 years old, said she is too frail to walk to the nearest clinic in Dema, a rural area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Harare, even if a vaccine was available.
“I have been waiting and waiting,” she said. “But they are not coming.”
North Korea’s Kim berates officials for ‘grave’ virus lapse
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un berated senior ruling party and government officials for their failures in the fight against the coronavirus, which created a “huge crisis” for the country, state media reported.
The alleged “grave incident” in North Korea’s pandemic fight was not specified in the report Wednesday from the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea has claimed to have had no cases of coronavirus infections throughout the pandemic, despite testing thousands of people and sharing a porous border with its ally and economic lifeline China, where the first COVID-19 cases were confirmed in late 2019.
Read:North Korea's Kim vows to be ready for confrontation with US
KCNA said Kim made the comments during a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that he called to discuss the anti-virus failures. It said Kim criticized senior officials for supposed incompetence, irresponsibility and passiveness in planning and executing anti-virus measures amid a lengthening pandemic.
“In neglecting important decisions by the party that called for organizational, material and science and technological measures to support prolonged anti-epidemic work in face of a global health crisis, the officials in charge have caused a grave incident that created a huge crisis for the safety of the country and its people,” the KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying.
Read: State media: Kim has plans to stabilize N. Korean economy
While North Korea has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single coronavirus infection after testing more than 30,000 people, experts widely doubt its claim of a perfect record, considering the country’s poor health infrastructure and ties to China.
From the start of the pandemic, North Korea described its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely curtailed cross-border traffic and trade. The lockdown has further strained an economy already battered by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons program.
Read: China: US should push North Korea diplomacy, not pressure
Kim during a political conference earlier this month called for officials to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions, indicating that the country isn’t ready to open its borders anytime soon despite its economic woes.
The North’s extended border controls come amid uncertainties over the country’s vaccination prospects. COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, said in February that the North could receive 1.9 million doses in the first half of the year, but the plans have been delayed due to global shortages.
Virus outbreak in Fiji batters economy, tests health system
A growing coronavirus outbreak in Fiji is stretching the health system and devastating the economy. It has even prompted the government to offer jobless people tools and cash to become farmers.
The Pacific nation got through the first year of the pandemic without any significant outbreaks and just two virus deaths.
But an outbreak of the highly contagious delta variant two months ago has grown to the point where Fiji is adding about 250 new cases each day.
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The government has so far resisted calls for a lockdown, in part to try and protect an economy which had already shrunk by 19% last year after international tourism evaporated.
Nearly half of all jobs were connected to tourism in the island nation that’s known for its white-sand beaches, clear water and welcoming people.
“Business-wise, it’s very bad,” said George Bernard, who owns a business servicing fire extinguishers. He fears life will never be the same. “I’m just trying to survive,” he said.
A vaccination campaign is in full swing but has been hindered by misinformation that vaccines are unsafe or even evil. So far, about 29% of the population of just under 1 million have gotten their first dose, while 2% have been fully vaccinated.
Bernard, who has heard some of the rumors, said he is in no rush to get vaccinated. “Sometimes, I have second thoughts,” he said.
Nazia Hussain has been selling vegetables from her roadside stall, and she uses some of the profit to help her family members who lost their jobs at supermarkets and stores in the capital, Suva.
Read:Australia battles several clusters in new pandemic phase
“I have been doing this so I can save some money to do some shopping for my family,” she said. But business had been slow, and people had little money to spend.
Hussain said she’d believed the vaccine was a good thing and had taken the jab herself.
Fiji’s government has delivered nearly 40,000 packages of food rations to people who have been isolating at home or are in targeted lockdown areas. It has also allowed people to spend money early from their retirement savings.
A new program starting next month offers people who have lost their jobs and have access to rural land about $200 worth of tools, planting materials and cash.
“Applicant must be an aspiring crop farmer with an intention to take on full-time farming as a core activity,” the program states.
During the current outbreak, 15 people have died and nearly 7% of those being tested are testing positive, indicating the virus is continuing to spread. Australia and New Zealand have sent vaccines, money and medical teams to help Fiji’s overburdened health system.
Read:As variant rises, vaccine plan targets ‘movable middle’
Fiji’s government has directed people in some areas, including Suva, to stay home and only go out for essential purposes. It has also imposed a nighttime curfew.
James Fong, the country’s permanent secretary for health, told reporters that a complete, nationwide lockdown would spark a socio-economic catastrophe in Fiji.
But many worry that will happen anyway if the outbreak isn’t brought under control.
“Our numbers are going through the roof now. We must unite against this virus,” wrote Fred Wesley, the editor-in-chief of the Fiji Times. “Together Fiji! United we must stand!”
US: Big drop in migrant kids at largest emergency shelter
The number of migrant children housed at the Biden administration’s largest emergency shelter for those who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone has dropped by more than 40% since mid-June, a top U.S. official said Monday, touting progress at the facility that has been criticized by child welfare advocates.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters that 790 boys were housed at Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, and the last girl left Monday. All the girls were reunited either with relatives in the U.S. or a sponsor such as a family friend or sent to licensed facilities, which have a higher standard of care, according to the agency responsible for caring for migrant children.
In mid-June, the administration reported about 2,000 boys and girls were at the Fort Bliss facility amid child welfare advocates’ concerns about inadequate conditions. A high of 4,800 children were housed there in May.
Becerra said his agency was evaluating whether it can close some of the emergency shelters that the government opened in the spring as record numbers of unaccompanied children crossed the border. He declined to say whether Fort Bliss would be among them.
Read:Uprooted again: Venezuela migrants cross US border in droves
“Because we’ve been successful in managing the flow, we are prepared to begin the demobilization of several of our emergency intake sites,” Becerra said.
He made his second visit to Fort Bliss since it opened in March and said more services and staffing have been added, including case managers who have helped get children released to relatives in the U.S. or placed in licensed facilities more quickly.
In transcripts of interviews done by attorneys and filed in federal court in Los Angeles last week, migrant children described their desperation to get out of Fort Bliss and the other large shelters set up by the Biden administration.
The children were interviewed from March to June by attorneys monitoring a longstanding settlement governing custody conditions for migrant children.
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Some of the children said they did not know if anyone was working to reunite them with their families, giving them anxiety. Others did not have enough access to a mental health counselor, had trouble sleeping because lights were kept on at night and were avoiding meals because the food smelled foul. Several said they spent their days sleeping and had been in the facilities, like Fort Bliss, for more than a month.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited El Paso on Friday, and her spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, told reporters that President Joe Biden has instructed Becerra to “do a thorough investigation” and report back about the conditions at Fort Bliss, which advocates have called particularly troubling.
“The administration is taking this very seriously. Extremely seriously,” Sanders said.
Shaw Drake, staff attorney and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, applauded the reduction in the number of children housed at Fort Bliss but questioned why it has taken this long to see real progress in releasing kids from the government’s unlicensed shelters.
Drake praised the Biden administration for helping get children out of overcrowded holding facilities for adult migrants by opening more than dozen emergency shelters quickly. But he said “immediately after that, the focus should have been to reunify children with sponsors, and it seemed like that languished and left kids in places like Fort Bliss far too long.”
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A rise in the number of migrant children crossing the southwest border alone has challenged the Biden administration. The Department of Health and Human Services has more than 14,200 migrant children in its care, down from 22,000 two months ago.
Becerra said more children are in licensed shelters now than unlicensed facilities, a reversal from a government report in May. He said officials are working to get more beds made available at licensed facilities.
“We have continued to expand our capacity, and as a result, we’re able to discharge more of these children into the hands of a responsible, vetted custodian, which then frees up a bed for another child,” he said.
Despite the improvements, Becerra said the shelters are not a solution and urged Congress to fix what he called a broken immigration system.