It has now been more than five months since COVID-19 has officially began spreading in this country.

“We are experiencing the sharpest decline in per capita income since 1870,” United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) António Guterres pointed out in a recent speech, warning that the COVID-19 crisis has put 70-100 million people at risk of being pushed into extreme poverty.

Trillions of dollars have already been spent on the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and no one knows what the final bill will be.

Africa is becoming a new COVID-19 epicenter. In the recent weeks, South Africa reported a 60 percent increase in natural deaths, suggesting a higher COVID death toll than reported.

Global digital platform surpasses 3.3 billion video views across all platforms From providing content surrounding the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) Lausanne 2020 and creating localized coverage ahead of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, to launching worldwide digital campaigns that engage fans at home during the COVID-19 pandemic; the fourth year of operation proved to be ground-breaking for the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Channel.

Siham Ayele is the Program Director at Dereja.com – a business unit of Ethiojobs.net. On the verge of launching Dereja’s Virtual Career Expo and HR Conference, she reflects with Samuel Getachew of The Reporter on it, on helping young graduates get opportunities for employment, on finding partnership and using her own experience to share wisdom for others to secure sustainable employment. Excerpt:

On top of everything else, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global education emergency.

In 2017, I was a candidate to become the next Director-General of the World Health Organization. At the 70th World Health Assembly, I stood before health ministers from around the world and warned that three things could destroy the planet: a celestial event, a third world war, or a pandemic.

A global debt crisis is looming. Even before COVID-19 swept the world, the International Monetary Fund had issued a warning about developing countries’ public debt burdens, noting that half of all lower-income countries were “at high risk of or already in debt distress.”

The World Athletics (WA) has announced a new round of updates relating to international competitions, ranging from cancellations to postponements and confirmations. The governing body has confirmed that more than 15 international competitions were cancelled due to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.