West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | May 2021
IA) Political Developments: Covid-19 Pandemic Regional Impact of Covid-19: Covid Comes Back For several reasons, most WANA countries saw a resurgence in covid-19 cases and deaths during April 2021. New and more virulent mutants of the virus gripped the population already fatigued by year-long pandemic vigil. The ignorance of social-distancing norms during Nowruz festivities (straddling March-April), as […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | April 2021
IA) Political Developments: Covid-19 Pandemic Regional Impact of Covid-19: Vaccination and Second Surge In March 2021, two distinct and opposite trends were evident about the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in the WANA countries. In overall terms, the region saw a doubling of the rate of infections which grew by 20.8% in March 2021 as compared to […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | March 2021
IA) Political Developments: Covid-19 Pandemic Regional Impact of Covid-19: Vaccines Begin Making the Difference In February 2021, there was a perceptible decline in the new Covid-19 cases and deaths in most of the WANA countries over the previous month. Thus the new cases which grew by 16.8% in January fell to 10.3% in February and the corresponding […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | February 2021
IA) Political Developments: Covid-19 Pandemic Regional Impact of Covid-19: Flattening the Curve In January 2021, most of the WANA countries managed to lower the growth in their daily number of the Covid-19 cases. Thus during the month, for the entire region number of confirmed cases went up by 16.8% and deaths by 13.5% when compared with statistics […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | January 2021
IA) Political Developments: Covid-19 Pandemic Regional Impact of Covid-19: Diverse Trends The month saw two divergent trends: Firstly, the mass vaccination against Covid-19 began in some relatively more developed WANA countries – where the disease was better contained anyway. This raised hopes for the beginning of the end of this devastating pandemic. In a contrarian mode, the […]
Special Issue: West Asia & North Africa Digest | From Histrionics to Hysteresis: White House Change, Middle East and India | January 2021
From Histrionics to Hysteresis: White House Change, Middle East and India The swearing-in of US President Joe Biden has unleashed a speculative frenzy about the likely changes in the US foreign policy in its wake. One of the regions to be most affected by this transition is the Middle East – where Trump Presidency upended […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | December 2020
IA) Political Developments Covid 19 Pandemic Regional Impact of Covid-19: Second Wave Persists While the regional rate of Covid-19 incidence went up over the last month to hover around the global level, the death rate came down marginally (Reference: Table on the next page). While many countries reported a surge, the figures for the Gulf Cooperation States […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | November 2020
I) Political Developments Regional Impact of Covid-19: Second Wave Persists The second wave of Covid-19 pandemic continued to roil the region during October 2020, with unchanged growth in confirmed cases and slightly higher death rate. The total number of affected cases in the WANA region on Oct 31 crossed 3.45 million with over 85,000 fatalities. The region […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | October 2020
I) Political Developments Regional Impact of Covid-19: Second Wave LingersThe second wave of Covid-19 pandemic had a mixed impact on various countries of the WANA region which saw nearly 31% increase in confirmed cases and 25% increase in cumulative deaths during September 2020. (For comparison, India’s two figures were up 71% and 51% respectively.) Some states, such as […]
West Asia & North Africa Digest by Ambassador Mahesh Sachdev | September 2020
I) Political Developments Regional Impact of Covid-19: Second Wave tapers offThough the region was, once again, afflicted by Covid-19 pandemic during August 2020, the worst fears were not realised in most countries. As the result, the pecking order of the affected countries (see table below) remained largely stable, albeit at a level higher by around a third. […]