 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the major news developments from across the world. COVID-19 cases crossed 3 million mark, Wuhan releases its last patient, WHO warns against immunity passports says that there is no evidence of immunity among recovered patients. Mexico deports thousands of migrants over pandemics care, separatists in southern Yemen declare self-rule and Israeli military attack on Syria kills three civilians in Damascus. We begin with our daily COVID-19 update. As of today afternoon, the total number of reported infections has crossed 3 million with the number of deaths over 207,000. Despite the numbers, it is not an entirely grim picture as 883,000 of the infected patients are recovered, putting the number of active cases at 1.9 million. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization sent out a warning yesterday, advising against proposals of immunity passports. The proposed passport is supposed to be a mechanism to allow for international travel to resume by issuing passport clearances to those who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection. The proposal was made due to widespread speculation that once infected, patients develop an immunity to the disease. The WHO insisted that there is no evidence of immunity being developed among recovered patients. The warning was made over a tweet by the organization's official handle. It stated that while reports of those who recovered show that most of them have antibodies to the virus in their blood, there is no causal relationship established so far between the infection and the presence of these antibodies. On the other hand, the WHO said, many recovered patients have also shown a decrease in the antibody count. The UN agency has been investigating the effects of the virus on recovered patients and also studying reports of recurrence of the infection in East Asia. In our infocus section, we talk to newsflakes Prabhupur Kaisa on the spread of the disease so far. The number of cases is soon likely to touch around 3 million and we recently crossed the 200,000 deaths landmark also, so to speak. So what exactly is happening with the global spread of the disease? It's been almost three months now. Many of the countries in Europe and to some extent some states in the US are thinking about withdrawing lockdowns. In India, we've had some of these discussions. So have we reached a time where we can start looking at a very phased or gradual withdrawal of some of the severe restrictions? Well, one thing is, of course, we know much more about the pandemic today, about COVID-19, its progression than we did earlier. But the figures, and this is only about the ones who have found who have been infected, that feeds a number of people who have not tested, who are asymptomatic and could still have been infected. We don't know those numbers. Rough estimates are probably about, we are catching about maybe anything between 25 to 40% of the people. And large numbers are still not being detected, particularly in countries like the United States, where one in five cases when you test are found to be infected, which would seem to show that there are much larger numbers for asymptomatic and the population. As you said, it's 3 million figure, roughly that we are already in at. And if you take the number of infected cases, they're less than 2 million. So a number of these cases have also recovered. The really worrying part, and that's always been the COVID-19 issue, that we have very different death rates, depending on where the hospital system has been able to cope with it and where it has not. Germany, the death rates have been relatively much lower. The death rates in Italy, Spain, United States has been relatively much higher. So the issue really is, can the health system actually handle the overload that you're going to get? And it seems that unless you're prepared, unless you're willing to take measures, which are what's called mitigation. Quarantine, of course, is a strict measure. But mitigation also means that you look at who are the people infected, separating them and so on. And separate the infected, those who are in contact with the infected from the general population, then you will have a better handle. If we look at, for instance, infected charts, you will see that countries, and there are about five of them who are pretty high in terms of numbers. That's Italy, which in this particular case, led the pack, so to say. Spain, France, Germany, United Kingdom have almost all flattered their numbers. United Kingdom, not so much. The numbers are still rising in terms of deaths. They seem to have a much higher death rate than all the others, even though Germany has been, as I said, much lower than all the other countries. But UK death rate seems to stand out. Then you have Iran, which has also flattened its curves. All these countries have flattened their curves to have large numbers of infected. But they still do not look like they are going to go up much further. We see a doubling rate of maybe something like 15 to 20 days right now. And as the time progresses, I think this is going to even out, that the numbers are going to start coming down. The United States is still rising. That means, yes, there is some flattening of the curve from the initial phase, but you can see a much sharper rise. But if you look at what's happening now, it's not that it is as flat a curve as we will see in the other four or five countries I talked about. Iran is also a country which has done reasonably well. It's been able to control the numbers, the rise of numbers. It started almost at the same time as Italy did. And it seems to have almost controlled its epidemic. And the numbers are lower than what you were seeing in the Western European countries. So this brings me to the next point that, you know, if you look at, for instance, what Forbes chart had said somewhere near in February, that the best prepared countries, and they have a list of this best prepared countries, is US, UK, Netherlands. Now, also, you have been hit and hit pretty hard. And the hospital system in New York, particularly, has been hit really hard as has been United Kingdoms. Also, what's interesting in all this Western European countries, that there are a lot of deaths in what is called the care home, where the old people are, where they're together. And if an infection takes place, it's an immune compromised set of people because they're simply old. They have other diseases as well. And it seems to spread very fast there and leads to very high deaths. In fact, the figures that we are seeing now seem to indicate that 50% of the figure of people who are dead could be, at least Western Europe and the United States, could be from the care homes. Now, what is the reason for these kind of figures? And there are two explanations, both of which you can decide which to take and which not to take. One is, of course, what is called the climatic issue. That means humidity and heat has a strong correlation in the cold, dry country infection seems to spread faster. What is called the effective reproduction rate of the disease is around three. If it comes to countries which are relatively more humid and have a higher temperature, you will see that the number of countries affected are relatively much less. This is one explanation. And that would, of course, map quite closely with the temperate climates being the one which are more prone to the disease as of now. But there is also a separate explanation which comes from looking at how the disease really spreads and not looking at these kind of broad figures but looking at other ones. I'm not going to say that the agro, the climatic issues are not related. That means, yes, humidity and sunlight do have a role, but looking at what's happening in India, and we'll come to that just a little later, it doesn't seem to indicate that it has such a strong role as it's made out to be. I think what you need to look at when the epidemic spreads is spread to human beings. So what is the connectedness of the people in terms of people-to-people contacts, transport, air, travel, bus, car, train, all of this physical connectivity. How closely do people live to each other? Urban areas, how closely packed are they? These also would indicate how the epidemic would spread. And I think the fact that Western Europe went up first as well as the United States would seem to also show how connectedness plays an important role in the epidemic. And all the models that we have been talking about, most of them don't take this into account and therefore they're not catching the important element which is really people spread, it's a disease spreads to people because we are the ones who really reproduce a disease. In the meanwhile, in the US, which remains the epicenter of the pandemic, five more state governments are set to ease restrictions on businesses and public activities. This is despite warnings from public health experts. Colorado, Mississippi, Montana, Minnesota, and Tennessee will allow several businesses to reopen today. Colorado, Montana, and Tennessee will allow smaller businesses to reopen provided they put physical distancing measures in place while Mississippi and Minnesota are completely lifting lockdown measures and sending hundreds of thousands of workers back to their workplaces. Many in the US have raised concerns about the push to ease lockdowns and restrictions. In fact, opinion polls have shown that a vast majority of US citizens are concerned about lifting the lockdowns too early. All the states that have lifted the lockdown measures so far are led by governors of Donald Trump's Republican Party. The right wing and the conservatives in the US have called for a rollback of the restrictions. They've also organized massive protests to oppose such measures, arguing that it hurts businesses. Last week, after President Donald Trump outlined a plan calling for the reopening of businesses by the end of April, four states led by Republican governors have already done so. The US is currently facing an unprecedented rise in unemployment after 26 million workers reported loss of jobs during the lockdown, bringing the rate of unemployment to over 16%. On a more positive note, the last COVID-19 patient was released from Wuhan's hospital on Sunday. Wuhan, which reported the first case of the pandemic, has for the first time reported a total of zero active cases. According to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, the patient, a 77-year-old man, tested negative in two successive cases and had no clinical symptoms. Despite having witnessed the first major outbreak of the pandemic, China has successfully contained it within its borders. In our next story, Mexico's National Migration Institute, or the INM, announced that it will practically emptied all of its migrant centers and shelters across the country in a bid to contain the spread of the pandemic. In a statement, the INM said that in order to comply with health and safety regulations, it has been sending Central American migrants back to their countries since March 21st. Over the past five weeks, nearly 3,653 migrants were returned by road to Guatemala and by air to El Salvador and Honduras. The INM also specified that 65 migrant centers, which housed 3,759 migrants in March, currently house only 106 people. The measure was carried out following recommendations of the UN, Amnesty International and the National Human Rights Commission on the Protection of Migrants and Asylum Seekers in the face of the health emergency. Our next story from Yemen, the Separatist Southern Transitional Council has declared self-rule along with the state of emergency in parts of the region currently under its control. This includes the strategically important port city of Aden. In a statement, the STC announced that the state of emergency came into effect from midnight on Saturday. The STC was aligned with the Abdurah Bansur Hadi government's forces in fighting the Ansar Allah or the Houthis. But tensions last year saw a breakdown in ties resulting in the STC seizing control of Aden. A recent power-sharing peace agreement brokered by Saudi Arabia was seen as an attempt, as seen as an attempt at reconciliation. The deal signed in November 2019 made way for a national coalition government headed by Hadi with equal representation from the STC. It also provided for the reorganization and assimilation of STC fighters into the government arms forces. On Sunday, however, the STC accused the Hadi government of conspiring against the Southern cause and neglecting the region. This was in response to massive protests in Aden on Friday and Saturday over acute food shortages and complete breakdown in public services. Protesters also tried to set fire to several government buildings. The STC as an organization seeks to bring back a sovereign Southern Yemen, which roughly corresponds to the territories of the erstwhile socialist state of the Democratic People's Republic of Yemen. And finally, three civilians were killed and three others injured in an Israeli missile attack near Syria's capital Damascus early today morning. The missiles were fired by Israeli air force across the Southern Lebanon Territory reported Sana, the news agency. Among the injured is one child. The attack caused considerable damage to civilian houses in the towns of Al-Hujairah and Adillah. According to Sana, the Syrian air defense intercepted and destroyed a large number of missiles. This was the third such attack in the past 10 days. While Israel did not directly claim responsibility, its defense minister Naftali Bennett had claimed in the radio broadcast yesterday that Israel has to quote, gone from the policy of blocking Iran to pushing it out of Syria. Israel claims that Iranian forces are using Syrian territory to attack Israel. Syria and Iran have denied these allegations and instead claimed that Israel uses these attacks to provide cover for anti-Syrian forces which are prolonging the war in the country. Israeli officials have claimed in the past that they have carried out hundreds of thousands of such missile attacks in Syria since 2011. That's all we have in this episode of the International Daily Roundup. To know more about these stories, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks for watching.