About OFID Young Professional Development Program: The YPDP will allow participants to become acquainted with OFID’s operations and how the different departments/units contribute to the achievement of the institution’s overall strategic and operational goals. Based on an Individual Development Plan, YPDP participants should spend at least 50% of the duration of the Program in the home department/unit. Through this Program, participants will gain valuable on-the-job experience, and they will also benefit from a coaching/counselling arrangement as well as a wide range of relevant training and developmental opportunities.
Upon completion of the Program, a participant may be offered employment at OFID, based on job availability, OFID’s manpower needs and the outcomes of his/her performance appraisal reviews.
Type: Internship/Job
Eligibility: To be selected for the OFID Young Professional Development Program, applicants must:
be an OPEC Fund member country national;
be 30 years of age, or younger;
hold a Master’s degree;
be able to demonstrate outstanding academic credentials;
be fluent in English and proficient in at least one other language;
specialize in development, engineering, economics, finance, business administration, law, information technology, human resources or any other discipline relevant to the OPEC Fund’s operations;
be able to work in an international, multicultural and diverse environment;
understand the OPEC Fund’s mandate; and
be willing to work with the OPEC Fund in Vienna for a minimum of two years upon completion of the YPDP, if offered a position.
Selection Process: Young Professionals are chosen through an intensive and rigorous selection process. Applicants accepted will join the Program in the last quarter of the year. Candidates who are offered a position in the YPDP shall respond within 2 weeks. Only candidates who meet the eligibility criteria may be contacted for interviews.
Number of Awardees: Not specified
Value of OFID Young Professional Development Program: OFID offers a compensation and benefits package that is internationally competitive and comparable with other multilateral institutions. Participants will also be entitled to benefits of internationally recruited staff members which include; housing allowance, dependency allowance, relocation grant, home leave allowance, medical benefits plan, children’s education subsidy, accident insurance plan and retirement benefits, amongst others.
Duration of Program: 2 years
How to Apply for OFID Young Professional Development Program: To apply, candidates must submit:
A YPDP online application form
A Curriculum Vitae (CV)
An application essay (in Word or PDF format)
Academic certificates and transcripts.
Important considerations
Please ensure you meet the minimum eligibility criteria, outlined above;
Please upload the Application essay and transcripts under the “Additional documents” section of the application form;
Please submit a valid and current email address. Email us at csd-hrpp@opecfund.org with new contact details should they change during the application process;
Answer all the questions in the application form; and
Please ensure that your application essay adheres to the below guidelines.
Application essay
The OPEC Fund works in cooperation with developing country partners and the international donor community to stimulate economic growth and alleviate poverty in all disadvantaged regions of the world. It does this by providing financing to build essential infrastructure, strengthen social services and promote productivity, competitiveness and trade. The OPEC Fund’s work is people-centered, focusing on projects that meet basic needs – such as food, energy, infrastructure, employment (particularly relating to MSMEs), clean water and sanitation, healthcare and education.
In fewer than 1,000 words, please write an original essay addressing (i) the potential of development actors such as the OPEC Fund to help developing countries overcome obstacles to social, environmental and economic progress, and (ii) how you would hope to contribute to development if you were selected to work for the OPEC Fund. You may focus on a region or set of countries and / or your area of expertise to formulate your essay.
Please remember, the OPEC Fund will only consider applications from candidates who meet the above criteria and submit an official online application before the deadline of February 2022.
Also, please note that we will only reach out to short-listed candidates.
Rapidly rising infection levels are having an increasingly serious impact on the situation in health and care facilities.
On Friday alone, more than 206,000 people in Germany became infected and 196 died. At the same time, the German government is preparing to lift the remaining, already completely inadequate, protective measures. Like governments across Europe, the federal coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) is deliberately accepting mass illness and death.
Protest for better care in front of the Berlin Senate Administration on 29 May 2020 (Photo: Leonhard Lenz/CC0 1.0)
Massive outbreaks are already commonplace. In a nursing home in Heidelberg, 34 residents and two employees recently tested positive for coronavirus. In a care facility in Lichtenfels, Bavaria, 75 people have been infected. In addition, 42 residents and 33 employees have tested positive, according to the operator.
In Schleswig-Holstein, a coronavirus outbreak was reported in a retirement home in the municipality of Tarp, with 65 residents and 19 employees becoming infected. In a facility in Wahlstedt, 54 of the 89 residents and 30 of 39 employees were infected. Here, the outbreak was caused by the significantly more contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 20 percent of infections in Germany are now due to this variant.
In a care facility in Horb (Baden-Württemberg), 15 residents and 10 staff members have been infected in a new outbreak. A few weeks ago, nine residents died following an outbreak. The list could go on and on.
The numerous infections lead to an enormous loss of staff, which further aggravates the staff shortage that has been rampant in the nursing professions for years.
In Thuringia, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs, this is no longer achieved in 40 percent of facilities. In 129 of 328 homes, the staff quota is below 50 percent, as reported by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Among them are 49 facilities that employ only between 30 and 45 percent specialised staff. Many facilities are not accepting new residents due to a lack of staff. According to broadcaster rbb, several facilities in Cottbus, Brandenburg and the surrounding area have already done so.
The situation is similar in hospitals. At the Bonhoeffer Hospital in Neubrandenburg, for example, one in 10 employees is absent because of a coronavirus infection or is in quarantine. Only urgent emergencies are currently admitted there. At the Südstadtklinikum in Rostock, so many doctors and nurses are absent due to COVID-19 that one ward has already been closed. According to the medical director, there are plans to close another ward.
The situation in Berlin is equally dire. Here, the hospitalisation incidence rate is over 25 per 100,000 inhabitants, which means it has risen by 5 points within one week. This is also associated with a strong increase in bed occupancy in normal wards. The state-owned Vivantes hospitals are currently treating 331 COVID-19 patients, 53 more than a week ago (as of Friday). At the same time, the sickness rate among staff is twice as high as usual.
The picture is similar at the Charité, which cares for most coronavirus patients in the capital. According to the German Red Cross (DRK), its hospitals also do not expect the situation to ease in the short term.
Nevertheless, the SPD-Left Party-Green Berlin Senate (state executive) is pushing ahead with its reopening course. The SPD, the Greens and the Left Party have decided on generous relaxations of protective measures for large events, which came into force on February 12. Others are to follow from February 19.
Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) said that the Senate was currently consulting with virologist Christian Drosten on an “exit strategy” from the coronavirus measures. Drosten had recently claimed there was no alternative to the unscrupulous herd immunity policies of the federal and state governments.
While the governing parties continue to push the policy of deliberate mass infection, even the existing vaccination options are being cut back on cost grounds. Plans are currently being discussed to close five state-run vaccination centres. This would reduce capacity in vaccination centres from 17,000 vaccinations to only 3,600. Of 23 mobile vaccination teams, only 12 are to be retained.
The emerging discussion about compulsory vaccination for medical and nursing professions must also be seen against this background. More and more politicians and media outlets are running up a storm against the introduction of compulsory vaccination, according to which, from March 15, employees in hospitals and nursing homes must be fully vaccinated and otherwise are no longer allowed to work in those settings.
It is not possible to stop the pandemic through vaccination alone. Nevertheless, mass vaccination is imperative, especially in the health sector. As outbreaks have shown time and again, if an infected person works with elderly or sick people in a home or hospital, the consequences can be disastrous. Therefore, the requirement that they be vaccinated is legitimate and necessary. Anyone who refuses to be inoculated despite having access to a vaccine will inevitably not be allowed to work in these areas.
Numerous media outlets and politicians are now arguing that compulsory vaccination would lead to mass layoffs in nursing homes and further aggravate the staffing situation. Bavaria’s head of government Markus Söder (Christian Social Union, CSU) had announced that there would be “generous transitional arrangements,” which is tantamount to refusing to implement the law.
Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) has also pleaded for a postponement of compulsory vaccination. The trade unions are also largely in favour of this course. Frank Werneke, head of the Verdi union, warned last year against stigmatising unvaccinated people in this context.
This argumentation is mendacious and reactionary. In fact, more than 85 percent of medical and nursing staff are already fully vaccinated, which is well above the general vaccination rate. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the rate is over 92 percent. In some cities it is over 95 percent.
That there is a significant proportion of vaccination sceptics among nurses and doctors is simply not true. The fact that employees are still not vaccinated is usually because there is no systematic vaccination campaign. Many auxiliary workers in the care sector live under precarious conditions, have a migration background, and lack German language skills.
Moreover, it is not because of compulsory vaccination that dismissals occur, but exactly the opposite. The complete inaction of those responsible has led to thousands of dismissals and career changes by nurses in the last two years. For decades, public health care has been privatised and cut to the bone. The pandemic has added the constant threat of infection and its possible consequences to the mix of poor pay and miserable working conditions.
In the past week France has recorded over 650 daily deaths on two occasions. On February 8, 691 deaths were recorded. On February 10, 655 further deaths were reported. The 7-day average of 324 daily deaths is the highest figure since April 1, when just 4.4 percent of the French population was fully vaccinated against the virus, compared to over 77 percent today.
Despite a level of death that has not been seen for almost a year and one of the highest of the entire pandemic, there has been no mention of the figure in any of the major French newspapers or by the government.
Teachers gather during a protest in Lille, northern France, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. French teachers have walked out in a nationwide strike Thursday to express anger at the way the government is handling the virus situation in schools, denouncing confusing rules and calling for remote learning. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)
The rise in deaths in the country has occurred after five consecutive weeks where daily infections have averaged over 100,000. Although average cases are now falling from the peak of 365,000 on January 26, the 7-day average is still above 100,000. Since Omicron became dominant in France on December 31, 2021, 11.5 million people have been infected in the country. This means that in a little over a month there have been more infections than the rest of the pandemic combined.
Citing the fall in cases, the Macron government is moving to remove all restrictions against COVID-19, as has already been done in Denmark and the UK. From February 28, masks will no longer be required in most indoor settings. On February 12, the requirement to present a recent negative test result upon arrival into France was also removed for vaccinated travelers.
According to Junior Minister of Transportation Jean Baptiste Djebbari, the end of the requirement to wear masks on public transport will be discussed at this week’s Defense Council meeting.
The explosion of infections since mid-December shows that the health measures taken by the French government were never sufficient to protect the population. However, the end of even the most minimal public health measures will allow the virus to spread further throughout the population and allow for surges of other variants and Omicron sub-lineages known to be widely circulating in France, across Europe and internationally.
Beyond the current level of death, such high levels of infection are a catastrophe for millions condemned to live with the long-term consequences of COVID-19. The experience from sufferers of Long COVID from the first wave of the pandemic shows that millions will suffer from at least shortness of breath, brain fog and fatigue.
Unfortunately, thousands who survived the initial symptoms of COVID-19 will likely meet an early end in the coming year. Fatal diseases are more common among individuals who have survived COVID-19 infection in the previous 12 months. One recent study found that individuals with a confirmed COVID-19 infection were 63 percent more likely to suffer from 20 cardiovascular diseases, including strokes and heart attacks, in the 12 months after infection.
While such high levels of infection have created a limited amount of “natural” protection against the virus, this is far outweighed by the cost of the mass infection policy. Over the past 2 months alone, there have been 15,000 preventable deaths, in addition to the millions who will suffer from the long-term consequences of COVID-19 infection.
Furthermore, the “protection” gained will not shield the population against further waves driven by newer variants. Such massive rates of infection in France and worldwide entail high rates of mutation in the virus. Newer variants that evade both natural and vaccine-induced immunity more effectively than Omicron will inevitably spread throughout the population, undermining whatever protection has been gained.
Unvaccinated school children are at particular risk from long-term complications of the virus. They are the least vaccinated group in society and have borne the brunt of the most recent wave. In the most recent data from French public health agency, in the week beginning January 31, among 10- to 19-year-olds the incidence rate was 3,954 per 100,000 (the highest of any age group), and among 0 to 9-year-olds it was 2,707. More than 90 percent of French children under 12 remain unprotected, even though child vaccinations started in early December 2021.
Nevertheless, the Macron government is determined to extend its purge of any last COVID-19 measures to schools. A new COVID-19 protocol will come into effect beginning February 21.
Now children and staff will only be required to show a negative self-test on Day 2 of isolation to return to classrooms. Parents will also no longer be required to pledge that their child has taken a test at all. Relying on single self-tests, which are notoriously unreliable and unfit for tracking and tracing cases, and effectively eliminating the testing rules mean French classrooms will be flooded with even larger numbers of children testing positive for COVID-19.
Macron has only been able to enforce such a murderous policy in schools due to the criminal role played by the so-called teachers unions. Acting as a police force throughout the pandemic, they isolated and extinguished all eruptions of struggle by rank-and-file teachers while enforcing each intensification of the government’s herd immunity policy in the schools and universities. The most recent protocol was only announced by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer after it was signed off by the teachers unions in a closed-door meeting on February 8.
In the last two months alone, hundreds of thousands of French children have been infected with COVID-19. A whole generation has been condemned to struggle with the long-term effects of a virus which damages vital organs. Preliminary evidence indicates COVID-19 infection increases the risk of diabetes in children. The true extent of these long-term effects will only become clear over a period of years and decades.
The mass infection policy pursued by the Macron government and its counterparts throughout Europe will go down in history as a great social crime.
For most of the pandemic, governments across Europe pursued a mitigation strategy, which the WSWS has described as “an amorphous collection of measures that tries to negotiate between the realities of the virus and the financial interests of the ruling elites.” Seizing on the false pretext that Omicron variant is “milder,” this has shifted to an open policy of herd immunity in the past two months.
France is one of the most extreme examples of the consequences of this shift, as not a finger was raised by the government in response to eye-watering daily case figures that reached 500,000. Infections have been so high that even among a highly vaccinated population, serious illness and death have reached levels seen before mass inoculation was possible.
As far as the French and European ruling class is concerned, even limited health measures must be avoided at all costs. From here on in, in the face of new surges and more dangerous variants they intend to tolerate no barrier to the extraction of profit from the working class.
The French ruling class has been united in its response to the fascist-organized and -led “Freedom Convoy” that tried to occupy Paris on Saturday. Although this small movement was easily quashed by Paris police, its demands for the end of measures against COVID-19 were sympathetically welcomed by all sections of the ruling class and its representatives, from fascistic presidential candidate Eric Zemmour to pseudoleft candidate Jean Luc Mélenchon. Macron himself described their calls for a policy of mass infection as “legitimate.”
Amid an ongoing war frenzy in the American media, the US cleared out its embassy in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and relocated its diplomatic staff 340 miles west to Lviv, near the border with Poland. Since Thursday, the Biden administration and the corporate press have peddled unsubstantiated allegations that a Russian invasion is “imminent,” naming Wednesday as a potential date for the military offensive.
A view of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022 [Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko]
According to the Wall Street Journal, the State Department has ordered the destruction of networking equipment and computer workstations and the dismantling of the embassy telephone system. Classified material, along with 56 of the embassy’s workers, were moved to Washington on Sunday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented, “These prudent precautions in no way undermine our support for or our commitment to Ukraine.”
The move of the US embassy came as dozens of countries have called upon their citizens to immediately leave Ukraine and numerous other states have announced the closure or downsizing of their embassies. The OSCE Special Mission to Ukraine has received orders from the US and UK to withdraw its forces from the Donbass and has begun to do so on Sunday. Several airlines have suspended service to Ukraine while others are struggling to receive insurance coverage for their flights over Ukrainian airspace.
Over the weekend, some 20 charter flights and private jets carried Ukraine’s oligarchs out of the country, including the two richest Ukrainians, Rinat Akhmetov ($11.54 billion) and Viktor Pinchuk ($2.6 billion), as well as many other members of Ukraine’s “richest 100” list.
In yet another sign of growing frictions between Kiev and Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had earlier rejected the latest US allegations of an impending invasion by Moscow, denounced the moving of the US embassy as a “big mistake,” adding, “I think they have to return, otherwise we as a state have to draw certain conclusions. Believe me, we will draw these conclusions.”
A source in Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party told the Ukrainian outlet strana.ua that the president had told the parliamentary caucus on Monday that “three friendly countries are making up a story about war. He tried to explain to us in the caucus that we are being played with, but that we are resisting.”
The secretary of Ukraine’s Council of National Security and Defense, Alexei Danilov, backed Zelensky’s line on Monday, stating that Ukrainian intelligence has found no evidence substantiating the Western warnings of an invasion by Russia in Ukraine in the near future.
In an address to the nation on Monday, Zelensky said that, “We are being told that February 16 will be the day of the attack, we are turning it into the day of national unity.” Zelensky stressed that the Ukrainian government was preparing for all possible scenarios and that the Ukrainian army was ready to defend the state. He also emphasized that East Ukraine and Crimea would “return to Ukraine” but “exclusively through diplomatic means.” This statement directly contradicts the military strategy to “retake” Crimea and East Ukraine that his government adopted in early 2021.
As the CIA and State Department have made one unsubstantiated allegation about a “Russian false-flag operation” after another, the Kremlin and pro-Russian separatists have warned that the Ukrainian army is planning a provocation in East Ukraine. According to Russian news reports, the Ukrainian military has amassed about half of its 250,000 troops near the front line in East Ukraine. This would amount to roughly the same size as Russia’s reported troop deployment near Ukraine’s border.
While Zelensky has been denying both war plans by Kiev and the threat of an imminent invasion by Russia, it is far from clear that his government is in control of the Ukrainian military, let alone the substantial fascist paramilitary forces in the country. Last summer, Zelensky, formally the commander-in-chief, was banned by the military leadership from visiting the front line in East Ukraine for several days, a highly unusual move that was never fully explained.
Earlier this month, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry claimed to have thwarted a plot to stage violent demonstrations against the government, which would have demanded a military offensive in the Donbass and Crimea. It is to be assumed that these plans involved forces either actively or formerly employed by the Ukrainian security forces as well as the far right.
US-armed and funded far-right paramilitary forces like the Azov Battalion have staged multiple demonstrations against Zelensky over the years with similar demands, several of which were addressed by former president and oligarch Petro Poroshenko (net worth $1.5 billion).
Poroshenko returned to Ukraine in January and only avoided arrest in a treason case thanks to the direct intervention of the US and Canada. He has since been engaged in a press campaign, attacking Zelensky for his supposedly soft line on Russia. Zelensky’s former interior minister, Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to both Washington and Ukraine’s far right, recently called for early elections, threatening Zelensky that, otherwise, he might be ousted in another “Maidan”—the name of the right-wing protests in the leadup to the February 2014 coup.
In a clear indication that Washington is eyeing Zelensky’s removal, the New York Times claimed Zelensky’s attempts to “caution against panic and overreaction” made him appear “nearly delusional about the grave risks his country faces.”
In another remarkable shift, Zelensky indicated on Monday that his government may give up on its goal to join NATO in the near future, stating: “Maybe the question of open doors [to NATO] is for us like a dream.” In his address to the nation, Zelensky only mentioned Ukraine’s efforts to join the EU, but not NATO. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, visiting Kiev, said at a joint press conference with Zelensky, “The question of [Ukraine’s] membership in alliances is basically not on the table, that’s why it’s very strange to see that the Russian government has made something that is basically not on the agenda the subject of a major political problem.”
In reality, Ukraine’s joining of NATO was a central goal of the US-orchestrated February 2014 coup in Kiev. Over the past three years, the Zelensky government has pushed for an acceleration of the process of including Ukraine in the alliance. The Kremlin has long denounced such a move, with Putin recently declaring that Ukraine in NATO would mean war between Russia and NATO. A guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO was one of the principal demands that the Kremlin submitted to NATO in December that the US has flat-out rejected.
While avoiding any clear statement on the controversial Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, which both the US and Ukraine want to see stopped, Scholz said on Monday that Berlin was working, together with the US and EU, “very intensely” on a “package of sanctions” that would have “substantial influence on the potential for Russia’s further economic development.” He also announced that Germany would give Ukraine another $150 million in financial aid.
Scholz has come under significant pressure from both the US and within his own coalition with the Greens and Liberal Democrats to tell Putin, during his visit to Moscow Tuesday, that a war between Russia and Ukraine would mean the end of Nord Stream 2. Germany is one of the biggest importers of Russian gas; overall, 40 percent of Europe’s gas supplies come from Russia, with some countries like Hungary depending almost entirely on these deliveries for their gas consumption.
On Monday, gas prices in Europe rose to over $1,000 for 1,000 cubic meters, while oil prices passed the $95 per barrel mark. Since January, Europe has also significantly increased its imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). In a recent piece, the German news magazine Der Spiegel pointed out that America’s LNG industry, which became the world’s largest exporter of LNG in December, was making hefty profits off the Ukraine war crisis.
Meanwhile, the US and NATO continue to ratchet up military tensions in a clear attempt to provoke all-out war. In a phone conversation with UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who has been co-leading the NATO provocations against Russia with the US—US President Joe Biden discussed further reinforcements to NATO’s eastern flank. Johnson and Biden also stressed again that the EU must decrease its dependence on Russian gas.
On Monday, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin had a public discussion stressing the need for further diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. A day prior, Russia launched military drills in the Black Sea involving over 30 warships, on top of ongoing joint military drills with Belarus. Pointing to the provocative moves and military exercises by NATO in the Black Sea last year, Dmitry Zhukov, a retired army captain of the first rank, told the Russian Gazeta.Ru, “The US lays claim to the Black Sea. Moscow has to either accept this or respond. A hypothetical situation in which NATO ships patrol the Black Sea while our military is sitting on the shore and just looking at it is unacceptable for Moscow.”
In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor on the pandemic, offered the following rosy assessment about the pandemic in the US. “As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of COVID-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”
Medics wearing suits to protect against coronavirus treat a patient with coronavirus, left, as others prepare a patent to move at an ICU at the Moscow City Clinical Hospital 52, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko]
These remarks were made even as the number of new infections remain at pandemic highs and the death toll considerable. States, counties and individual people are on notice that they will be on their own. And despite his assurances, there is no indication that any conceivable measure will ever be carried out by local or federal agencies again if another surge of infections begins to inundate the population and incapacitates health systems.
Choosing not to constrain himself by the term endemic, he then told the FT that the country could soon reach a state of “equilibrium” where tracking infections will become unnecessary. These sentiments are not unique to the United States. The pandemic, regardless of how many people it infects and kills, is to be summarily “ended” by declaring it endemic, a scientific term borrowed illegitimately from epidemiology in order to justify ending all metrics that offer the population an indication of the level of infection and risks to their communities.
According to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 dashboard, there were almost 2.5 million new cases yesterday. Since the WHO declared the Omicron strain a variant of concern at the end of November 2021, more than 140 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported with almost 600,000 deaths.
In the week beginning January 31, 2022, more than 71,000 people lost their lives worldwide. Yet, despite the continued high rates of transmission and deaths, governments throughout the globe are taking every opportunity to end all pandemic restrictions and return to economic normalcy, taking advantage of the pandemic fatigue that has afflicted millions, a phenomenon not dissimilar to weary combatants sludging it out in endless and senseless trench warfare.
In the two years since the WHO declared the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic a public health emergency of international concern, there have been 405 million confirmed cases and nearly 5.8 million deaths. In the more than a year since the COVID-19 vaccines have been publicly available, some 10.1 billion doses have been administered. In that period, more than 4 million have perished from a disease that can only be stopped through an elimination strategy.
Entering the third year, there has been a unanimous consensus on the part of the ruling elites to abandon all such efforts. Fauci, in his usual bland manner, told the FT, “There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus. But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the COVID restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.”
His choice of the term eradication instead of elimination is a sleight of hand. He knows full well that many countries have successfully held at bay the coronavirus at their borders through a Zero COVID elimination policy, but eradication requires the adoption of such policies all over the world.
Only China has remained determined to adhere to this strategy. Since Omicron was declared a variant of concern, there have been fewer than 10,000 COVID-19 cases reported there with zero deaths, demonstrating once again that even a contagious variant like Omicron can be controlled and suppressed.
Across the globe, China alone has taken the measures to continue protecting the population against the varied long-term risks posed by the infection, which include heart disease, pulmonary dysfunction, diabetes, and mental health disorders such as brain fog and chronic headaches and fatigue. Other systemic complications include kidney disease, vascular clots and dysregulated immune system. Even the vaccinated face the prospect of dying from their infection due to adaptations made by the virus to evade immunity from vaccines, as well as a rapid decline in antibody levels in the months after immunization.
COVID-19 in Africa
In Africa, Mateshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for the continent, told reporters, “The pandemic is moving into a different phase. … We think that we’re moving now, especially with the vaccination expected to increase, into what might become a kind of endemic living with the virus.”
Only 11.3 million on the continent have reportedly been infected and close to 242,000 have died for a case fatality rate of over 2 percent. However, due to lack of broad-based testing and accurate accounting of the cause of deaths, the actual figures may be significantly higher. Only 11 percent of Africa’s adult population have been fully vaccinated. The Economist’s excess deaths tracker places Africa’s excess deaths during the pandemic at 2.46 million, a figure 10 times higher than official COVID-19 deaths.
Moeti wrote in the WHO Africa brief of February 10, 2022: “Over the past two years, the African continent has gotten smarter, faster and better at responding to each new surge in cases of COVID-19. Against the odds, including huge inequities in access to vaccination, we’ve weathered the COVID-19 storm with resilience and determination, informed by Africa’s long history and experience with controlling outbreaks. But COVID-19 has cost us dearly, with more than 242,000 lives lost and tremendous damage to our economies.”
In reality, the excess deaths underscore that the pandemic has been catastrophic on the continent. As she noted, more than 40 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty. Moeti added, “And every month of delay in lifting containment measures is estimated to cost Africa $13.8 billion in lost gross domestic product.”
COVID-19 in Asia
Across Asia, India saw around 75 million people slip into extreme poverty in 2020. During the early waves of the pandemic, millions of migrant workers returned to their home villages creating a tremendous “drag on growth,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “unless India can pull millions of workers into productive nonfarm jobs.”
Inflationary pressures and rise in basic goods are leading to social upheavals as exemplified by the 10 million applicants for roughly 36,000 railway jobs being offered by India’s northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which led to violent clashes as groups protesting mass unemployment blocked roads and railway lines, according to Deutsche Welle. The unemployment rate across Asia’s third largest economy has risen to nearly 8 percent, impacting 35 million people.
Despite the recent waves of infections and deaths across the country, the Times of India quoted virologist Dr. Gangandeep Kang that COVID-19 is already in an endemic stage in India, where “the virus is and will continue to be.” She proceeded to add that the population, who will have to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2, “should not be forced to face irrational measures such as lockdowns or curfews.” Excess deaths in India have been estimated at 5.6 million.
Vietnam is presently seeing a pandemic high of more than 27,000 new infections per day. Since Delta first derailed its elimination strategy in July 2021, nearly 40,000 people have died. The recent wave of Omicron had pushed the health care system into overcapacity despite 76 percent of the population having received at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
However, the Vietnamese government plans to end COVID-19 curbs on international flights this week allowing foreign tourists to once again travel to the country. Factories are remaining open despite a rise in COVID-19 cases to continue production. Sweeping lockdowns throughout much of the world in 2020 that had protected the population of many countries from infections in part contributed to a crippling of global supply chains.
Adam Sitkoff, the executive director for the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi, told the press, “I do not expect to see additional countrywide lockdowns as serious cases in most parts of the country are at manageable levels and the authorities have learned that economy-crippling restrictions are not sustainable.” As Vietnam is the second biggest exporter of clothes and footwear to the US after China, the effects of calculations and profit margins on public health policies are evident. Duc Minh Nguyen, a partner at accounting firm Ernst & Young, noted, “If Vietnam can maintain a strong production capability and factory output, this will really support the global supply chain, in particular for sectors like agriculture, textiles and electronics consumers.”
Meanwhile, Japan which is in the midst of the worst wave of infections and deaths is looking to ease restrictions at the border, citing the impact the measures have had on the economy and its reputation. South Korea is attempting to counter the recent deluge of infections that has impacted its nursing homes by offering the elderly and immunocompromised individuals a fourth jab.
COVID-19 in Latin America
Countries throughout Latin America are facing similar predicaments where decisions by governments to keep their economies open have led to new waves of infections and deaths. Mexico’s fourth wave had seen cases reach 60,000 per day. Last Thursday, the health minister reported 927 COVID-19 deaths. Though the country has the fifth highest death toll at 311,554, the excess deaths are at a staggering 680,000.
Though Omicron has been declining in several major countries in South America, hospitalizations and deaths in Bolivia and Venezuela continue to rise. Many of the lowest income countries in the region have barely vaccinated half their populations. In many parts of the continent, the impact of the massive disinformation campaigns has significantly contributed to the current rise in hospitalizations and deaths.
COVID-19 in Europe
Despite 1.4 million COVID-19 cases and 24,447 deaths in Europe last week, every country is proceeding with lifting their restrictions. As Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s European regional director, continues to impress on reporters that as winter is ending and Omicron’s mild severity is being countered by the high degree of population immunity, these conditions make it ripe for a “ceasefire that could bring enduring peace.”
However, solitary voices continue to warn that accepting the assumption that variants will become milder with each iteration was a dangerous supposition. Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist from Edinburgh University, told the Guardian, “The Omicron variant did not come from the Delta variant. It came from a completely different part of the virus’s family tree. And since we don’t know where in the virus’s family tree a new variant is going to come from, we cannot know how pathogenic it might be. It could be less pathogenic, but it could, just as easily, be more pathogenic.”
These warnings were echoed by virologist professor Lawrence Young of Warwick University and David Nabarro, a special envoy on COVID-19 for the WHO: “There will be more variants after Omicron and if they are more transmissible, they will dominate. In addition, they may cause different patterns of illness, in other words they may turn out to be more lethal or have long-term consequences.”
As UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called to lift all COVID-19 restrictions, including isolating after testing positive, after February 24. The country’s official Health Security Agency has reported tracking a new variant as a serious threat. It harbors mutations that appear to be a combination of Delta and Omicron variants and is deemed a hybrid. Such a mutation was first reported in Cyprus. Little is yet known about the new strain.
And though recombinant variants are quite rare, they have occurred during the pandemic. However, fears of such a recombination in the face of the complete abandon of all restriction measures may prove even more catastrophic than what has already occurred.
As Fauci admitted in a recent interview, “Everything I am saying is based on a big caveat. We must be prepared for the eventuality that we might get a completely different variant that breaks through all of the protection that you get from prior infection.”
Eligible Countries:Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman and Tunisia.
To be taken at (country): The Netherlands
Accepted Subject Areas: You can use an MSP scholarship for a number of selected short courses in one of the following fields of study:
Economics
Commerce
Management and Accounting
Agriculture and Environment
Mathematics
Natural sciences and Computer sciences
Engineering
Law Public Administration
Public order and Safety
Humanities
Social sciences
Communication and Arts
About Scholarship: The MENA Scholarship Programme (MSP) enables professionals from ten selected countries to participate in a short course in the Netherlands. The overall aim of the MSP is to contribute to the democratic transition in the participating countries. It also aims at building capacity within organisations, by enabling employees to take part in short courses in various fields of study. There are scholarships available for short courses with a duration of two to twelve weeks.
Target group: The MSP target group consists of professionals, aged up to 45, who are nationals of and work in one of the selected countries. Scholarships are awarded to individuals, but the need for training must be demonstrated within the context of the organisation for which the applicant works. The training must help the organisation develop its capacity. Therefore, applicants must be nominated by their employers who have to motivate their nomination in a supporting letter.
Selection Criteria: The candidates must be nationals of and working in one of the selected countries.
Who is qualified to apply for MENA Scholarship Programme:
must be a national of, and working and living in one of the countries on the MSP country list valid at the time of application;
must have an employer’s statement that complies with the format EP-Nuffic has provided. All information must be provided and all commitments that are included in the format must be endorsed in the statement;
must not be employed by an organisation that has its own means of staff-development. Organisations that are considered to have their own means for staff development are for example:
multilateral donor organisations, (e.g. a UN organization, the World Bank, the IMF, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, IADB),
international NGO’s (e.g. Oxfam, Plan, Care);
must have an official and valid passport (valid at least three months after the candidate’s submission date);
must have a government statement that meets the requirements of the country in which the employer is established (if applicable);
must not be over 45 years of age at the time of the grant submission.
Number of Scholarship: Several
Value of MENA Scholarship Programme: A MENA scholarship is a contribution to the costs of the selected short course and is intended to supplement the salary that the scholarship holder must continue to receive during the study period.
The following items are covered:
subsistence allowance
international travel costs
visa costs
course fee
medical insurance
allowance for study materials.
The allowances are considered to be sufficient to cover one person’s living expenses during the study period. The scholarship holders must cover any other costs from their own resources.
How to Apply for MENA Scholarship Programme: You need to apply directly at the Dutch higher education institution of your choice.
Check whether you are in the above mentioned target groups.
Check whether your employer will nominate you.
Contact the Dutch higher education institution that offers the course of your choice to find out whether this course is eligible for an MSP scholarship and how to apply.
It is important to go through the application information details on the Scholarship Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
About E4D Continuing Education Scholarship: The goal of the programme is to enhance the knowledge and skills of future leaders with the perspective of contributing to capacity development and poverty reduction in their home countries.
Field of Study: All programmes of the ETH Zurich continuing education programme (MAS/CAS/DAS) are eligible for the scholarship. But only some programmes offer a fee reduction.
The following programmes offer a fee reducation:
MAS Nutrition and Health, D-HEST Nutrition for Disease Prevention and Health (CAS ETH in Nutrition), D-HEST
Type: Short course
Eligibility:
The E4D Continuing Education Scholarship candidate must hold a completed and recognised Master’s degree from a university and proof professional working experience of at least 2 years.
A minimal English standard of TOEFL level C1. If the continuing education programme requires a minimal level in another language, proof of this level should also be submitted.
The scholarship is open to candidates from Least Developed Countries, Low Income Countries and Lower Middle Income Countries classified in the DAC-list of the OECD.
Candidates need to be accepted by the School for Continuing Education, ETH Zurich as well as the MAS, DAS or CAS programme office.
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value of E4D Continuing Education Scholarship: The following expenses will be covered by the scholarship:
Economy roundtrip ticket (max. 2’000 CHF)
Visa fees
Living allowance for the duration of the programme (2’000 CHF per month if the programme is longer than 3 weeks. 800 CHF per week if the programme duration is up to 3 weeks)
ETH general tuition fee waiver (660 CHF per semester)
The following expenses will NOT be covered by the scholarship: The programme fees of the MAS/CAS/DAS are not covered by the E4D Continuing Education Scholarship.
The registration fee for applications of 150 CHF cannot be covered, but will be reimbursed to candidates from low income countries in case an application is unsuccessful.
How to Apply:
CV of the candidate
MSc or Masters Diploma and academic transcript(s)
1-2 page application letter, stating the motivation to attend the programme and the impact for the candidate’s career development and beyond.
Two professional references
Formal admission letter by the School for Continuing Education confirming that the candidate is admitted to the MAS, DAS or CAS programme.
Certificate of employment. The certificate of employment letter must be sent to the E4D programme office directly through the employer (and not the candidate)
Certificate of English level (minimum TOEFL level C1) or other internationally recognised English certificates. If the programme requires a minimum level in another language, proof of this acquired level must also be submitted.
Applications must be submitted through the online portal below. Submissions by e-mail will not be considered.
