The Coronavirus Pandemic: All of WPR’s Coverage Archive

Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, has emerged as Latin America’s epicenter in the COVID-19 pandemic. Though smaller in scale than the staggering outbreak in New York City, Guayaquil’s is no less devastating. Its 2.7 million inhabitants are enduring many of the same, wicked challenges that New Yorkers have been facing: a surge in confirmed cases, overwhelmed hospitals and mortuaries, and a national government that is trying to look like it is handling the crisis. Yet one thing is quite different: Guayas, the province surrounding Guayaquil, has been placed under military jurisdiction. To respond to the spread of the virus, […]

President Donald Trump’s aggressive unilateralism on trade appears to be driven by his belief that making imported goods more expensive will lead multinational companies—foreign and domestic, but especially American—to relocate production facilities to the United States. There is nascent evidence that Trump’s trade war with China has caused some reshuffling of supply chains, but mainly to other parts of Asia, not to America. Now, though, some trade hawks in the administration appear to view the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to encourage firms to move their supply chains to the U.S., no matter the cost. The Trump administration is not […]

If the April 7 Democratic presidential primary vote in Wisconsin was a test of American democracy’s ability to handle the coronavirus pandemic, then by many accounts, it failed. The lead-up to the election was marred by last-minute partisan wrangling and poor communication with the public. Thousands of absentee ballots went missing or undelivered. And when people showed up to vote, they encountered crowded, under-resourced and under-sanitized polling stations. The state’s leaders have been widely condemned for forcing voters to choose between their health and their democratic rights. Wisconsin’s example shows that without proper preparation, voters across the country could face […]

Throughout history, outbreaks of infectious disease have often been linked with illicit trade. A cholera outbreak in Mexico during the 1990s, for example, is believed to have originated with an infected person from South America who arrived on an illegal airstrip used for drug trafficking. The historian Julia Clancy-Smith writes that in mid-19th-century Tunisia, “contraband, quarantine, and cholera worked together.” And while the precise origin of the coronavirus pandemic currently sweeping the globe is unknown, the illicit wildlife trade in China may have been a major factor. Once they spread widely, infectious diseases also disrupt the illicit drug trade at […]

This Wednesday, most of us will commemorate the 50th Earth Day not by frolicking in nature but by hunkering down in the comforts of our built environment. That’s a pity, because it’s pretty out there. Suddenly blue skies and cleaner water are showing us what a healthier environment might look like, if only our governments took decisive action to decarbonize the global economy and if we stopped running down the natural capital assets upon which our prosperity and indeed survival depend. Beyond a chance to daydream of a greener future, our current quarantine provides an apt moment to reflect on […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the things we previously took for granted, didn’t sufficiently appreciate or simply didn’t know—whether on a national or international level—that the coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharper focus. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article every day of the week, plus three more complimentary articles in our weekly roundup […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Forty African nations will be eligible for a debt moratorium declared this week by the world’s richest countries. The decision by the G-20 to freeze the debt of the world’s poorest nations follows calls for an unprecedented effort to support the continent’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Demands for a debt freeze had been mounting as countries across Africa have scrambled to find the resources to respond to the pandemic. Oxfam had raised alarms that the world’s 76 poorest countries face $40.6 […]

Years from now, when historians and economists begin tallying the devastation wrought by COVID-19, it is likely only a few will focus much on world energy markets. Yet if there is one thing that has snapped into sharper view with the onset of this global pandemic, it is the extremely brittle state of OPEC and the autocratic governments that rely almost exclusively on the cartelization of oil markets to prop up their regimes. In September, OPEC will mark its 60-year anniversary as the world’s most preeminent price-fixing consortium. But it seems far from certain that the governments of the 13 […]

Southeast Asian countries, already struggling to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, are bracing for a new surge of COVID-19 cases. Most countries in the region, with the exception of Singapore and Vietnam, had sluggish initial responses to the virus. Most also are poor or middle-income states, which lack public health systems that can effectively track and trace coronavirus patients. Malaysia now has more than 5,000 known COVID-19 cases, although the true number is probably much higher, while the Philippines and Indonesia also have more than 5,000 known cases. With minimal testing in Indonesia, the region’s most populous country, […]

During normal times, if the world’s petroleum producers announced an agreement to slash output, oil prices would immediately spike. During normal times, lower crude prices would boost economic growth. During normal times, low oil prices might be reason to celebrate. But if there is one fact we can agree on, it is that these are not normal times. The global economic crisis triggered by efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic has not only upended some of the patterns we had grown accustomed to—it has also revealed that many long-standing preconceptions have become outdated. That is evident in the dramatic shifts […]

The dusty border town of Taftan in western Pakistan is a frequent stopover for religious pilgrims. Many members of the country’s Shiite minority pass through it en route to visit holy sites in neighboring Iran. But after Iran emerged as one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus, the Pakistani government set up a quarantine camp in Taftan to prevent further movement, inadvertently turning the town into an epicenter for the spread of COVID-19. Testing in the camp is sporadic at best, while health facilities are abysmal. Many pilgrims reportedly paid bribes to escape back into Pakistan, and as […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Governments across Africa lodged protests against Beijing this week after disturbing reports emerged from China, where Africans have been subjected to a xenophobic, racist campaign of harassment and mistreatment that is ostensibly aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus. Some African residents in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said they have been evicted from their apartments and barred from hotels and restaurants. Others reported being forced to self-quarantine and submit to coronavirus tests regardless of symptoms or […]

One of the many challenges facing governments and businesses during a disaster is ensuring the steady supply of food and other essential items. People’s natural impulses to stock up in preparation for shortages often kick in at the same time that complex supply chains are coming under immense strain. Add to this the direct impacts of COVID-19 on workers in the food industry and the export restrictions on agricultural products that some governments have put into place to ensure that their own populations stay well-fed, and you’ve potentially got the makings of a looming food security crisis. Robyn Metcalfe, a […]

With China having lifted the lockdown in place in Wuhan since the end of January, and many European countries and parts of the United States beginning to envisage how they, too, will gradually ease social distancing measures, the second phase of the response to the coronavirus pandemic is coming into focus. Central to already active debates in Western democracies, at least, is the balance to be struck between addressing the urgency of the public health crisis and managing the growing impact of social distancing on national economies and individual livelihoods. At first glance, the choice seems to be an obvious […]

Editor’s Note: You can find all of our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. If you would like to help support our work, please consider taking advantage of our subscription offer here. In a video uploaded to Twitter on March 16, Carol Yin talked through a white face mask as she explained to the camera what it was like to travel in a country that has turned cell phones into weapons to fight COVID-19. Yin, a Shanghai-based podcaster, described her trip to the nearby city of Wuxi, outside Shanghai, shedding light on how integral a phone’s location data has become […]

At a time when global cooperation is desperately needed, it seems to be scarcer than ever. G-20 leaders have effectively given up on trying to coordinate a global response to the coronavirus pandemic. Countries are beggaring their neighbors with export restrictions on medicines and food, and scrambling to snatch up medical supplies where they remain available. Among the various closures and cancellations to try to contain the spread of COVID-19, the World Trade Organization announced in March that it was cancelling the biennial ministerial meeting scheduled for June in Kazakhstan. The cancellation of a WTO ministerial meeting has barely registered […]

Jean Palou of the Chilean daily El Mercurio interviewed WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, by email last week for an article on the prospects for multilateralism and global governance institutions during and after the coronavirus pandemic. Grunstein outlined the challenges to the international system that predated the pandemic; why global governance still matters, even if it has been hampered; and the major questions going forward as the next phase of this global crisis unfolds. The following is the full transcript. El Mercurio: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the coronavirus pandemic the most challenging crisis since the organization’s founding after […]