Beyond India, a growing number of Asian countries are being ravaged by fresh coronavirus waves
AP
As India’s coronavirus catastrophe worsens, new waves of infections are fast engulfing a growing number of nations across South and Southeast Asia with some grappling with their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that India had accounted for nearly half of all global infections and a quarter of deaths reported in the past week.
But cases have also skyrocketed in countries around India, from Nepal in the north to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the south. And it’s not just India’s neighbors further away in Southeast Asia, infections are also surging in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.
India’s COVID-19 Cases Worsen As 4,187 Die Within Last 24 Hours
The rise follows several days of falling case numbers that had raised government hopes that the virus surge may have been easing.
by SaharaReporters, New York
May 08, 2021
India reported 4,187 fatalities on Friday, only the third country after the US and Brazil to report more than 4,000 deaths in a day.
There have been more than 82,000 recorded Coronavirus deaths in the country since February 14, more than half of all earlier fatalities.
Google
India has recorded more cases in 82 days of the second covid wave than in over a year prior to that.
Displaced by disasters
May 8, 2021
In September 2018, heavy rains caused the banks of Bangladesh’s Padma River to collapse. The resulting floods swallowed as many as 100 homes a day in the Shariatpur District, an area south of Dhaka. The event was outlined in a recent report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that looks at instances of climate-related displacement in Asia.
Over the past half-century, an area roughly five times the size of Dhaka has been lost to riverbank erosion along to the Padma and Jamuna rivers, according to a 2018 report. Floods have created a migration pipeline from rural areas to the capital s poorest neighborhoods, where displaced people continue to face floods. The report said that residents of urban slums have been hit especially hard by riverbank erosion.