As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and transform everyday lives, Rose Nzyoka and Vikas Dwivedi argue that using digital tools to improve systems to manage real-time data and decision-support systems could help the response to COVID-19. In our most read post this month, they propose five initiatives that ministries of health in low-and-middle-income countries need to focus on to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Former Vice President Biden’s recent Foreign Affairs article on his proposed presidential policies hit on all major hot spots of U.S. interest globally but one, said Mike Sfraga, director of the Wilson Center’s Global Risk and Resilience Program and Polar Institute, in a recent episode of Wilson Center NOW.

“The Arctic should be a part of the foreign policy dynamic of the United States,” said Sfraga. Global politics, economics, security, and the environment connect in countless ways throughout the region, only some of which show up in headlines.

Since the onset of the pandemic, nurses and midwives have been asked in some facilities to work without personal protective equipment. Nurses have been sent home and lost their jobs simply because they insisted on following evidence-based practices, such as wearing masks. Some question whether the masks, gloves, gowns, and other commodities in short supply are more important than nurses who question the ethics of showing up when essentials aren’t available.

“While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc the world over, history has proven, and recent data agrees that the hardest hit will be the world’s women and girls and populations already impacted by racism and discrimination,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative and Women and Gender Advisor at the Wilson Center, at a recent event on the impact of COVID-19 on race and gender inequities. Coronavirus has hurt women and girls in many ways. Among them, women have been pushed back into the home.  And healthcare workers and caregivers who are mostly women are jeopardizing their own health, caring for others.

COVID-19 isn’t the only problem going viral. Economic insecurity is driving gold prices to record highs around $1,700 per ounce, causing levels of global mercury pollution to rise too. In the United States coal-fired power plants drive mercury pollution, but globally, the leading cause is small-scale ‘artisanal’ gold mining. Roughly 30 million men, women, and children in poor countries depend on mining for subsistence incomes. Unfortunately, the cheapest and easiest way to mine gold uses mercury, a highly toxic heavy metal the United Nations is striving to eliminate.

Refugees and migrants are the most vulnerable and will bear the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic, said James Hollifield, a Wilson Center Global Fellow, in a recent episode of Wilson NOW. These populations are often already at higher risk due to insufficient water and food supplies, and those confined in large camps are at greater risk of spreading the disease. According to Hollifield, although we have not yet seen the full extent of the damage, “we can see with both refugees and migrants in particular, especially seasonal migrants, that there’s a great danger here of the virus spreading like wildfire in the camps and in the dormitories.”

On March 20, the lawsuit filed by the three organizations successfully blocked the construction of the Jiasajiang I Hydropower Station in Yunnan Province, meaning that at least for now, these long-legged endangered birds are safe. This environmental victory for China’s birds builds on the designation of some of China’s Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the coast of the Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf as UNESCO World Heritage sites in July 2019, with more planned in the next two to three years. However, these highpoints in avian protection do not negate the fact that nearly 40 percent of China’s endemic birds are listed as threatened and require greater protection.