#COVID-19

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ press conference with Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau of Canada and Andrew Holness of Jamaica on the high-level event on debt and liquidity, in New York today:

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ closing remarks to the High-level Event on Debt and Liquidity, as delivered in New York and online by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed today:

With many countries continuing to struggle to overcome the human and economic devastation from COVID-19, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres convened a meeting of world leaders on Monday, 29 March, to urge the international community to take additional and urgent action to ensure a robust recovery.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Myanmar strongly condemns attacks on health-care providers and sites since the military takeover on 1 February.  WHO says 32 attacks on health-care facilities and staff resulted in two deaths and six injuries between 1 February and 24 March.

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, today released $14 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to provide shelter and emergency services to over 45,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh displaced by a devastating fire which destroyed critical infrastructure in Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar.

The World Food Programme said today it has begun providing emergency food aid to vulnerable people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and urgently needs $170 million to meet critical food and nutrition needs over the next six months.  The agency noted that the outbreak of conflict there coincided with the peak harvest period.

Acute hunger could soar in more than 20 countries over the coming months without urgent, scaled-up assistance, a report issued today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme warns.  Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria top the list, according to the “Hunger Hotspots” report.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks, as prepared for delivery, at a virtual meeting with the African Group today:

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has received its first shipment of more than 130,000 doses from the global COVAX Facility — the first batch of a total of 480,000 doses to arrive in the country this year to vaccinate approximately 20 per cent of the population.

More than 3 billion people globally are at risk of disease because the quality of their rivers, lakes and groundwater is unknown due to a lack of data, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.  UNEP’s survey of over 75,000 bodies of water in 89 countries found more than 40 per cent severely polluted.