Elderly man in Sharjah, UAE, wearing mask lifts his hands in prayer outside a mosque, which has been closed amid the pandemic. AFP
Elderly man in Sharjah, UAE, wearing mask lifts his hands in prayer outside a mosque, which has been closed amid the pandemic. AFP

2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic

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Updated 19 April 2025
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2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic

2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic
  • The emergence of the novel coronavirus in China brought the world to a standstill, starkly revealing the interconnectedness and fragility of the global system

LONDON: In his new-year message on Jan. 2, 2020, the director-general of the World Health Organization urged the world to “take a moment to thank all the brave health workers around the world.”

Within a few weeks, the words of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus would begin to take on an unexpectedly urgent meaning. It quickly became clear the modern world was about to be engulfed in a fight for its life with a microscopic organism capable of a virulence not seen since the flu pandemic of 1918-19.

It also swiftly became apparent that for all the advances in medicine and technology in the intervening century, still we remained at the mercy of wayward nature, thanks in part to the inability of the world’s governments to act as one even in the face of a deadly global crisis.

On Jan. 26, 2020, I wrote an op-ed article, syndicated throughout the region, urging Gulf and other states to, at the very least, screen incoming passengers from China, where the virus emerged.

“The only correct reaction at this stage,” I wrote, “is prudent overreaction.”

How we wrote it




Arab News dedicated multi-page coverage to global updates on the day the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

On Feb. 17, I hardened the message: The single most effective defense our interconnected world had against the new virus was to ground every aircraft.

At the time, I was a medical journalist, writing investigative articles for the British Medical Journal and other publications. But in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic I was not blessed with any special insight. The tragedy of what would soon unfold was the fact that all the steps we could have taken to prevent it at the outset were simply common sense.

Yet at first, few outside of the central Chinese city of Wuhan seemed overly alarmed by the cluster of more than 40 mysterious, pneumonia-like cases reported by China to the World Health Organization’s local country office on the last day of 2019.

A week after Tedros’ speech, which made no mention of anything untoward brewing in China, Chinese authorities announced they had identified the cause of the outbreak: a novel form of coronavirus, a family of viruses common in animals and humans.

Where did it originate? For years, the theories have spread thick and fast. At first, the finger was pointed at pangolins, a scaly mammal prized in Chinese folk medicine for the supposed healing powers of its scales, and often traded illegally.




Dubai’s Burj Khalifa lit up with a message “Stay Home” reminding citizens to stay home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 24, 2020. AFP

Conspiracy theorists suggested the origin of the virus was a Chinese lab, where it was deliberately engineered and then leaked out. This theory resurfaced as recently as January this year, when John Ratcliffe, US President Donald Trump’s newly appointed head of the CIA, revived a claim in which his own agency previously said it has “low confidence.”

The reality is we will almost certainly never know the true origins of the virus.

Most human coronavirus infections are mild but during the previous 20 years, two versions emerged that hinted at the family’s capacity to cause serious harm: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or SARS-CoV, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV. Together, they accounted for “only” 10,000 cases, with mortality rates of 10 percent and 37 percent respectively.

The new coronavirus that was emerging in early 2020 had far bigger, and more sinister, ambitions. On Jan. 11, China reported the first death caused by the virus, of a 61-year-old man with underlying health conditions who had been a customer at the market where, at first, the virus was thought to have jumped from animals to humans.

Over the coming days, and even weeks, the virus could still have been contained. But Chinese authorities were slow to introduce effective lockdown procedures. Aircraft continued to fly and, at first, the rest of the world looked on with a seemingly detached indifference that would soon prove fatal, to people and economies worldwide.

Even as the virus spread rapidly within China, the WHO played down the threat, declining to recommend the introduction of travel restrictions to the country or specific health precautions for travelers.

On Feb. 4, in fact, WHO chief Tedros even urged countries not to ban flights from Wuhan for fear of “increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”




Doctor attends to patients in intensive care in the COVID-19 ward of the Maria Pia Hospital in Turin. AFP

Few public-health pronouncements have proved to be so ill-judged.

On Feb. 11, the organization gave the virus its official name: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. The disease it caused was also named: COVID-19.

But it would be March 11 before the WHO finally declared the outbreak to be a pandemic, a state of affairs that was already blindingly obvious to the 114 countries that by then were already in the grip of the virus.

Saudi Arabia recorded its first case on March 2. The patient was a man who had traveled from Iran via Bahrain over the King Fahd Causeway and, like the Kingdom’s second patient two days later, he failed to declare he had been in Iran, where cases of the disease were rocketing.

On March 25, just over three weeks after the first case in the Kingdom, COVID-19 claimed its first victim in Saudi Arabia, a 51-year-old Afghani who died in Madinah.

The genie was out of the bottle. Saudi authorities acted swiftly, forming a special action committee composed of representatives from 13 ministries, and introducing a broad range of measures including screening, quarantining all travelers when necessary, and fast-tracking production of essential medical supplies and equipment.

The Umrah pilgrimage was suspended, airports were closed, public gatherings were restricted and the Qatif region, where the Kingdom’s first cases had emerged, was swiftly locked down.

Key Dates

  • 1

    Chinese epidemiologists identify a group of patients in the city of Wuhan experiencing an unusual, treatment-resistant, pneumonia-like illness.

  • 2

    China notifies World Health Organization of “cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology.”

    Timeline Image Dec. 31, 2019

  • 3

    Chinese media report first known death.

  • 4

    The WHO names the new virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes COVID-19.

  • 5

    The WHO declares a global pandemic.

    Timeline Image Mar. 11, 2020

  • 6

    COVID-19’s single worst day, with 17,049 deaths reported worldwide.

    Timeline Image Jan. 21, 2021

  • 7

    After 3 years and 5 months, 767 million confirmed cases and 7 million deaths worldwide, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, declares COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency.

    Timeline Image May 5, 2023

On March 25, the speed of the Kingdom’s response earned praise from Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, the WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean. Saudi Arabia, he said, had learned lessons from its experience a decade earlier with the MERS-CoV coronavirus, and the country was “also drawing from its unique expertise in managing mass gatherings and emergency preparedness during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.”

Around the world, however, few governments reacted as quickly. There was little cohesion in the responses; the already tardy WHO advice was often shunned until it was far too late, ineffective measures were introduced in piecemeal fashion, and there was a failure to coordinate responses internationally.

In the parlance of epidemiology, aircraft served as the fatally efficient vector for the virus, in the same way that the mosquito is the vector that spreads malaria. Yet for too long, governments around the world hesitated to take the extreme, but obviously necessary, action of suspending all commercial air travel.

Eventually, and in an uncoordinated, haphazard fashion, flights were grounded around the world but this came too late to prevent the virus traveling the globe. Ultimately, the delay caused far more global economic disruption than if air travel had been halted early on.

Even then, even after the virus had been allowed to make its way around the world, in many countries there was continued reluctance to act swiftly and shutter shops, offices, restaurants and transport systems, and to confine people to their homes. Lacking firm guidance from their governments, many people continued to mingle at work, on trains, in restaurants, in each other’s homes and on beaches.

And, increasingly, in hospitals.




Healthcare workers ackwoledge applause in memory of their co-worker Esteban, a male nurse that died of COVID-19 at the Severo Ochoa Hospital in Leganes, near Madrid, on April 10, 2020. AFP

As the virus spread inexorably around the globe, it exposed a lack of long-term health planning and preparedness in many countries where authorities, caught flat-footed, found themselves desperately short of bed space and competing ruthlessly with other nations for scarce supplies of the personal protective equipment required by front-line medical staff, all-important mechanical ventilators and, as hastily developed drugs were developed, limited supplies of vaccines.

Around the world, major international events, from Dubai’s Expo 2020 to the Tokyo Olympics, tumbled like dominoes as governments and organizers finally acknowledged that any gathering of people was a recipe for magnifying the disaster.

From the perspective of the history books, in terms of everything other than the virus and the savage toll it exacted in lost lives and devastated economies, 2020 had become the year that never was.

By the beginning of April, just three months after the first victims had been identified in Wuhan, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 had passed 1 million, more than 50,000 people had died, and much of the world was living in isolation and fear.

Faced with agonizingly difficult life-or-death decisions, health systems worldwide found themselves forced to adopt triage systems of a kind more typically seen on battlefields, allocating limited resources to those most likely to survive.

Horror stories of loss and sacrifice emerged every day, in almost every country around the globe. On the front lines, some of the courageous health workers who had been honored in the WHO chief’s new-year speech paid for their continued dedication with their lives.

It would be May 5, 2023, more than three years after COVID-19 was designated a pandemic, before the WHO declared the global public health emergency to be over.

Victory over SARS-CoV-2 came at terrible cost: more than 14 million lives lost between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 3, 2021, alone; billions left seriously ill; and traumatic disruption imposed on economies and everyday life across much of the world.

In Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry signaled an early victory over the virus, lifting the bulk of precautionary and preventive measures on June 13, 2022.




Muslim worshippers circumambulate the Holy Kaaba in Makkah’s Grand Mosque amid COVID-19 restrictions. AFP

During the 833-day war against the virus in the Kingdom there were 780,135 confirmed cases and 9,176 deaths. Almost 43 million COVID-19 tests were carried out and 66.5 million vaccinations administered.

The virus has not disappeared from the planet. But improved treatments and the fact that a critical mass of more than 70 percent of the world’s population has now been vaccinated means that the first great plague of modern times is now no more — or less — of a threat than the flu.

The “Keep Your Distance” stickers on pavements, shop floors and public transport have mostly faded away, and most of us have forgotten the advice we once followed so diligently: cover your cough, practice good hand hygiene and, if a home test reveals you have COVID-19, stay home until you have been fever-free for at least 24 hours.

But public-health agencies, at least, remain vigilant. XEC, one of the latest variants of the virus, caused concern when it emerged in the autumn of 2024. It seemed genetically equipped to evade both our immune defenses and the barriers erected by vaccines. But so far, hospitalizations in the US, where tests have revealed high levels of the XEC variant in wastewater, have not risen.

Either way, the next pandemic is only a matter of when, not if, whether it is a variant of SARS-CoV-2 or another virus altogether.




Woman has her temperature checked in an effort to contain COVID-19 spread in Nongchik district on the border of Thailand's southern province of Pattani. AFP

As a global reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, member states of the World Health Organization will gather at the World Health Assembly in May to agree a Pandemic Preparedness Treaty designed “to foster an all-of-government and all-of-society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics.”

Unfortunately, though, it seems that one of the world’s largest countries will not be there. On Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the WHO.

One immediate consequence of this could be that the US stops sending data on the occurrence of diseases to the organization and, especially in terms of monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that would be of great concern. In the 28 days to Jan. 12, 2025, there were 2,861 deaths from COVID-19 reported to the WHO, the vast majority of them in the US.

  • Jonathan Gornall, a writer for Arab News, was a former investigative medical journalist for the British Medical Journal.


Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’
Updated 3 min 12 sec ago
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Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’
  • Medical charity warns of new threat from escalation in fighting in Sudan civil war

KHARTOUM: Civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan face mass atrocities and ethnic violence in the civil war between the regular army and its paramilitary rivals, the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Thursday.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to consolidate their power in Darfur since losing control of the capital Khartoum in March. Their predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago.

The paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state which they have besieged since May 2024 in an effort to push the army out of its final stronghold in the region.
“People are not only caught in indiscriminate heavy fighting ... but also actively targeted by the Rapid Support Forces and their allies, notably on the basis of their ethnicity,” said Michel-Olivier Lacharite, Medecins Sans Frontieres’ head of emergencies. There were “threats of a full-blown assault,” on El-Fasher, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people largely cut off from food and water supplies and deprived of access to medical care, he said.


Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed
Updated 17 min ago
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Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia moved on Thursday to reassure Egypt about its water supply after completing work on a controversial giant $4 billion dam on the Blue Nile.

“To our neighbors downstream, our message is clear: the dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said.

“The energy and development it will generate stand to uplift not just Ethiopia. We believe in shared progress, shared energy, and shared water. Prosperity for one should mean prosperity for all.”

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is 1.8 km wide and 145 meters high, and is Africa's largest hydroelectric project. It can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water and generate more than 5,000 megawatts of power — more than double Ethiopia’s current output. It will begin full operations in September.

Egypt already suffers from severe water scarcity and sees the dam as an existential threat because the country relies on the Nile for 97 percent of its water. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan met last week and “stressed their rejection of any unilateral measures in the Blue Nile basin.” They were committed to safeguarding water security in the region, Sisi’s spokesman said.


Over 100 former senior officials warn against planned staff cuts at US State Department

Over 100 former senior officials warn against planned staff cuts at US State Department
Updated 04 July 2025
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Over 100 former senior officials warn against planned staff cuts at US State Department

Over 100 former senior officials warn against planned staff cuts at US State Department
  • State Secretary Rubio faulted for recklessness in amid "unprecedented challenges from strategic competitors, ongoing conflicts, and emerging security threats"

WASHINGTON: More than 130 retired diplomats and other former senior US officials issued an open letter on Thursday criticizing a planned overhaul of the State Department that could see thousands of employees laid off.
“We strongly condemn Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announced decision to implement sweeping staff reductions and reorganization at the US Department of State,” the officials said in the letter.
The signatories included dozens of former ambassadors and senior officials, including Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser under President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
The timing of the cuts remains unclear, with the US Supreme Court expected to weigh in at any moment on a bid by US President Donald Trump’s administration to halt a judicial order blocking the firings.
The administration in late May notified Congress of a plan to overhaul its diplomatic corps that could cut thousands of jobs, including hundreds of members of its elite Foreign Service who advocate for US interests in the face of growing assertiveness from adversaries such as China and Russia.
Initial plans to send the notices last month were halted after a federal judge on June 13 temporarily blocked the State Department from implementing the reorganization plan.
The shake-up forms part of a push by Trump to shrink the federal bureaucracy, cut what he says is wasteful spending and align what remains with his “America First” priorities.
“At a time when the United States faces unprecedented challenges from strategic competitors, ongoing conflicts, and emerging security threats, Secretary Rubio’s decision to gut the State Department’s institutional knowledge and operational capacity is reckless,” the former officials wrote. 

 

 

 


US Supreme Court sides with Trump in South Sudan deportation fight

US Supreme Court sides with Trump in South Sudan deportation fight
Updated 04 July 2025
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US Supreme Court sides with Trump in South Sudan deportation fight

US Supreme Court sides with Trump in South Sudan deportation fight
  • Trump administration has sought to deport 8 migrants to unstable South Sudan
  • District judge had said the deportation attempt violated his injunction

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court again sided with President Donald Trump’s administration in a legal fight over deporting migrants to countries other than their own, lifting on Thursday limits a judge had imposed to protect eight men who the government sought to send to politically unstable South Sudan.
The court on June 23 put on hold Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy’s April 18 injunction requiring migrants set for removal to so-called “third countries” where they have no ties to get a chance to tell officials they are at risk of torture there, while a legal challenge plays out.
The court on Thursday granted a Justice Department request to clarify that its June 23 decision also extended to Murphy’s separate May 21 ruling that the administration had violated his injunction in attempting to send a group of migrants to South Sudan. The US State Department has urged Americans to avoid the African nation “due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.”
Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the decision.
The court said that Murphy should now “cease enforcing the April 18 injunction through the May 21 remedial order.”
Murphy’s May 21 order mandating further procedures for the South Sudan-destined migrants prompted the US government to keep the migrants at a military base in Djibouti. Murphy also clarified at the time that non-US citizens must be given at least 10 days to raise a claim that they fear for their safety.
After the Supreme Court lifted Murphy’s April injunction on June 23, the judge promptly ruled that his May 21 order “remains in full force and effect.” Calling that ruling by the judge a “lawless act of defiance,” the Justice Department the next day urged the Supreme Court to clarify that its action applied to Murphy’s May 21 decision as well.
Murphy’s ruling, the Justice Department said in court filings, has stalled its “lawful attempts to finalize the long-delayed removal of those aliens to South Sudan,” and disrupted diplomatic relations. Its agents are being “forced to house dangerous criminal aliens at a military base in the Horn of Africa that now lies on the borders of a regional conflict,” it added.
Even as it accused the judge of defying the Supreme Court, the administration itself has been accused of violating judicial orders including in the third-country deportation litigation.
The administration has said its third-country policy is critical for removing migrants who commit crimes because their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal members dissented from the June 23 decision pausing Murphy’s injunction, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor calling it a “gross abuse” of the court’s power that now exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death.”
After the Department of Homeland Security moved in February to step up rapid deportations to third countries, immigrant rights groups filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of migrants seeking to prevent their removal to such places without notice and a chance to assert the harms they could face.
In March, the administration issued guidance providing that if a third country has given credible diplomatic assurance that it will not persecute or torture migrants, individuals may be deported there “without the need for further procedures.”
Murphy found that the administration’s policy of “executing third-country removals without providing notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims” likely violates due process requirements under the US Constitution. Due process generally requires the government to provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain adverse actions.
The Justice Department on Tuesday noted in a filing that the administration has received credible diplomatic assurances from South Sudan that the aliens at issue will not be subject to torture.”
The Supreme Court has let Trump implement some contentious immigration policies while the fight over their legality continues to play out. In two decisions in May, it let Trump end humanitarian programs for hundreds of thousands of migrants to live and work in the United States temporarily. The justices, however, faulted the administration’s treatment of some migrants as inadequate under constitutional due process protections.

 


Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says

Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says
Updated 03 July 2025
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Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says

Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says
  • The “Flight operations at the airport continued normally,” the Irbil airport authority said

IRBIL, Iraq: An explosive drone was shot down near Irbil airport in northern Iraq on Thursday, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement.

There were no casualties reported, according to two security sources.

The “Flight operations at the airport continued normally and the airport was not affected by any damage,” the Irbil airport authority said in a statement.

The incident only caused a temporary delay in the landing of one aircraft, the statement added.