COVID-19

Wealthy nations representing just 13 percent of the world’s population have already cornered more than half (51 percent) of the promised doses of leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, Oxfam warned today as the health and finance ministers of G20 countries meet to discuss the global pandemic. 

Despite being largely virtual, this year’s UN General Assembly opening week will remain a vital convening space where leaders and civil society can jointly discuss and tackle some of the gravest issues we face today.

Six months ago UN Secretary General called in March for a global ceasefire tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now sleepwalking towards a seventh year of war, and the people of Yemen can only surmise that the world has forgotten them.

Since March 2020, schools in Uganda have been closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Bidibidi refugee settlement, one of the largest in the world hosting over 280,000 refugees mainly from the Equatoria region in South Sudan, more than 80,000 children have been affected.

Thirty-two of the world’s largest companies stand to see their profits jump by $109 billion more in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare an economic model that delivers profits for the wealthiest on the back of the poorest, according to a new Oxfam report today.

The first case of the new coronavirus in Greece’s biggest refugee camp highlights the need for immediate and radical changes from the Greek government and its EU partners to the reception of people seeking asylum in Europe.

Hospitals and Palestinians in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on the planet, are bracing for the Coronavirus pandemic with only three to four hours of electricity per day, as fuel entry restriction by Israel, has forced Gaza’s single electricity plant to shut down and compounded the risk of infection for two million Palestinians, Oxfam warned today. 

The 21 billionaires in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), all of them men, saw their wealth increase by nearly $10 billion since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, almost double the estimated amount required to rebuild Lebanon's shattered capital, while 45 million more people in the region could be pushed to poverty as a result of the pandemic, a new Oxfam report revealed today.

Today the tally of COVID-19 deaths has surpassed 100,000 in Brazil ―the second country in the world to do so after the United States― with many of these deaths avoidable but for the Brazilian government’s inefficient and disoriented response to the pandemic.

Thousands of people in Yemen could be dying from undetected cases of cholera because COVID-19 has overwhelmed the country’s health facilities and people are too frightened to seek treatment for fear of the virus, Oxfam said today.

The number of coronavirus cases in Yemen is likely to peak in the coming weeks while the heaviest rains are expected in August which could deepen a hidden cholera crisis.