In fact, Prude’s death has raised questions about how authorities respond to mental health emergencies.

NEW YORK: Not five minutes after police slipped a “spit hood” over Daniel Prude’s head, the 41-year-old Black man went limp. A week later, he was taken off life support.

Prude’s suffocation in Rochester, New York, in March has drawn new attention to the hoods — mesh bags that have been linked to other deaths — and the frequent reliance on police to respond to mental health emergencies.

His death has underscored one of the top demands of the police reform movement: that certain duties should not be handled by law enforcement but by social workers or mental health experts. Seven officers involved in the encounter were suspended with pay Thursday.

While many in law enforcement defend the hoods as vital to prevent officers from being spit on or even bitten — a concern that has taken on new importance during the coronavirus pandemic — critics have denounced them as dangerous and inhumane. For some, they evoke hoods used on prisoners at U.S. government overseas detention sites or “black sites.”

Amnesty International condemned the use of spit hoods Thursday, a day after Prude’s family made public body camera video, and police reports it obtained from the Rochester department. The organization said the hoods are particularly dangerous when a person is already in distress, as Prude appeared to be.

Police use of spit hoods often “looks like something out of Abu Ghraib,” said Adanté Pointer, an Oakland civil rights lawyer who has handled several cases involving the devices. “They’re often used in a punitive way.”

Prude, in Rochester to visit his brother, was taken by police for a mental health evaluation just hours before the fatal encounter after he was said to have expressed suicidal thoughts. Prude’s brother told police he was calm when he returned to his house but later got high on PCP and ran away, prompting the brother to call 911.

Police found Prude wandering the street naked after allegedly smashing a storefront window, and he could be seen on body camera footage spitting in the direction of officers and heard claiming to be infected with coronavirus. Officers said that led them to employ the hood.

Prude, handcuffed by this point, can be seen continuing to spit through the mesh and saying that he wanted an officer’s gun. The officers then pinned him to the ground, one of them keeping a knee on his back and another pressing his face into the pavement for two minutes. Both appeared white.

Minutes later, an officer could be heard saying, “Ugh, he’s puking.” After realizing Prude had stopped breathing, paramedics who had arrived at some point, began CPR.

“They put a bag over his head, and they squeezed the air out of him,” said Nicolette Ward, a lawyer for one of Prude’s daughters. “He spent the last moments of his life breathing in his own vomit.”

At a news conference Thursday announcing the officers’ suspensions, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said: “Mr. Daniel Prude was failed by the police department, our mental healthcare system, our society and he was failed by me.”

In fact, Prude’s death has raised questions about how authorities respond to mental health emergencies. Many other deaths at the hands of police have resulted from an encounter that began with a call about someone’s mental health and then devolved.

In many departments — New York City for example — there has been a push to better train police on how to manage the mentally ill or to bring in experts who do, but it remains a major issue.

Spit hoods vary in design, but Park City, Utah, police chief Wade Carpenter said the ones he’s seen are made to be breathable and held in place with an elastic around the neck that can easily be broken.

“It wouldn’t put any pressure on the carotid arteries in the neck. It wouldn’t restrict blood flow to the brain and certainly wouldn’t block the mouth or nose,” said Carpenter, adding that officers in the ski town have used the devices for years without issues.

University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey Alpert said the hoods have reduced the risk of officers and bystanders getting spit on for decades.

“Take away COVID, it’s just a nasty thing anyway,” Alpert said.

But Prude’s death is the second one involving spit hoods to surface since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked a national reckoning on racism and policing. Floyd’s death did not involve a spit hood.

Just three weeks after Prude’s deadly encounter, a similar one happened in Tucson, Arizona. Police handcuffed and placed a spit hood on the head of a naked man also in distress. Carlos Ingram Lopez died after gasping for air and pleading for water.

In both cases, details about that death didn’t emerge until weeks after.

In another similar episode, a 45-year-old man died in 2015 after police in Bernalillo, New Mexico, placed him in a spit hood, possibly incorrectly.

A responding sergeant from a neighboring community told investigators a thick cotton part of the hood was covering Ben C de Baca’s face, nose and mouth and that he hadn’t seen the device “used in that fashion before.”

A medical investigator’s report concluded that improperly placed spit hoods have the potential to cause suffocation and that in this case, the possibility of asphyxia from use of the hood could not be ruled out. Bernalillo settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the man’s family for an undisclosed sum.

Prison guards have also used spit hoods, sometimes to deadly effect. Their use varies by jurisdiction — police in Minneapolis deploy them but those in New York City don’t. The NYPD, the nation’s largest police force, said a team of police EMTs has only recently started testing their effectiveness in the wake of the pandemic.

When British police started using the hoods in recent years, civil liberties advocate Martha Spurrier slammed them as “primitive, cruel and degrading.” Even some senior police officers have agreed.

Colombo: The Sri Lankan Navy with assistance from Indian ships was battling for a second day on Friday to douse a major fire raging on an oil tanker carrying crude from Kuwait to India that left one of its 23 crew members dead.

The Sri Lankan Navy on Friday confirmed that a Filipino sailor died in a boiler explosion in the engine room of the Panama registered tanker MT New Diamond that caught fire on Thursday.

The Navy said that 22 of the 23 member crew had been safely rescued off the tanker.

The tanker was carrying 270,000 metric tonnes of crude oil from Kuwait to India when its engine room caught fire off the coast of Sangamankanda in the eastern district of Ampara.

The Navy said that so far the 270,000 metric tonnes of crude oil it was carrying had not been affected by the fire. Steps are currently being taken to stop the spread of fire to the cargo,” it said in a statement.

The Sri Lankan Navy is also taking steps to ensure that there will be no seepage of oil to the sea from the tanker.

The distressed vessel is in the waters 23 nautical miles off the eastern coast where the sea depth is measured at 3100 metres. The operation to douse the fire resumed early this morning under the supervision of the Greek national captain of the tanker.

The Indian Naval Frigate INS Sahyadri joined the operations by 0200 hours on Friday. The Navy said two more Indian Coast guard vessels are to join the rescue operations.

The Indian Coast Guard on Thursday said that it pressed into action three of its ships and a Dornier aircraft after the Sri Lankan Navy sought assistance to control the fire onboard the oil tanker.

In a swift sea and air coordinated Search and Rescue (SAR) operation, the Coast Guard said it immediately diverted ICG Ships Shaurya, Sarang and Samudra Paheredar, besides a Dornier aircraft for the firefight on the oil tanker.

The Sri Lankan Navy said that the two Russian vessels which were docked at the Hambantota port since August 31 and dispatched to the area to join the rescue operations departed Sri Lankan waters this morning.

On Thursday night, MV Helen, a vessel sailing in the area, rescued 3 Greeks and 16 Filipino crew members from the distressed vessel.

The Navy spokesman said that at least four ships had been dispatched to carry out the rescue operation. The naval ships were dispatched from the eastern port of Trincomalee and the southern port of Hambantota.

At the time the fire broke out, the Panamanian-registered ship was about 38 nautical miles (70 kilometres) east of Sri Lanka.

Washington: Bracing for a contentious election with no immediate results and possible civil unrest, Facebook is enacting a host of measures to ensure its platform is not used to sow chaos and spread misinformation before, during and after the U.S. presidential election.

But it’s not clear the changes are enough.

The company said Thursday it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election and remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting. It will also attach links with official results to posts by candidates and campaigns that prematurely declare victory.

This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Thursday.

That means helping people register and vote, clearing up confusion about how this election will work, and taking steps to reduce the chances of violence and unrest. Some activists hailed the new policies but said the onus will be on Facebook to enforce them. And others were skeptical that they’ll really make a difference.

Voting starts in North Carolina tomorrow. Election Day isn’t in two months, it’s tomorrow and every day after. Which means voters in that state and many others that vote early will be subject to months of dishonest ads on Facebook’s platform,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and executive director of UltraViolet, a women’s organization critical of Facebook.

She called the announcement a PR stunt designed to distract from the fact that Facebook is the single biggest vector of dangerous misinformation and voter suppression campaigns in the United States.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a Facebook expert at the University of Virginia, said the company again proved itself incapable of effectively snuffing out dangerous misinformation last week when it failed to remove postings by right-wing militia organizers urging supporters with rifles to converge on Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Facebook’s biggest problem has always been enforcement, he said. Even when it creates reasonable policies that seem well-meaning, it gets defeated by its own scale. So I am not optimistic that this will be terribly effective. Facebook and other social media companies are being scrutinized over how they handle misinformation, given problems with President Donald Trump and other candidates posting false information and Russia’s ongoing attempts to interfere in U.S. politics.

Facebook has long been criticized for not fact-checking political ads or limiting how they can be targeted at small groups of people.

With the nation divided, and election results potentially taking days or weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” Zuckerberg said.

Civil rights groups said they directly pitched Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives to make many of the changes announced Thursday.

These are really significant steps but everything is going to depend on the enforcement, said Vanita Gupta, who was head of the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

I think they’re going to be tested on it pretty soon.” In July, Trump refused to publicly commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election as he scoffed at polls that showed him lagging behind Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Trump also has made false claims that the increased use of mail-in voting because of the coronavirus pandemic allows for voter fraud. That has raised concern over the willingness of Trump and his supporters to abide by election results.

Under the new measures, Facebook says it will prohibit politicians and campaigns from running new election ads in the week before the election. However, they can still run existing ads and change how they are targeted. Many voters, however, are expected to vote by mail well ahead of Election Day.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager criticized the ban on new political ads, saying it would prevent Trump from defending himself on the platform in the last seven days of the presidential campaign.

Posts with obvious misinformation on voting policies and the coronavirus pandemic will also be removed. Users can only forward articles to a maximum of five others on Messenger, Facebook’s messaging app. The company also will work with Reuters to provide official election results and make the information available both on its platform and with push notifications.

After being caught off-guard by Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other companies put safeguards in place to prevent it from happening again. That includes taking down posts, groups and accounts that engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior” and strengthening verification procedures for political ads. Last year, Twitter banned political ads altogether.

Zuckerberg said Facebook had removed more than 100 networks worldwide engaging in such interference over the last few years.

Just this week, we took down a network of 13 accounts and two pages that were trying to mislead Americans and amplify division, he said.

But experts and Facebook’s own employees have said the measures have not been enough to stop the spread of misinformation, including from politicians. Internal dissent among Facebook employees might have helped influence Zuckerberg’s decision to do something, said Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher at Harvard University.

The UK-based global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is leading the trial as regulatory sponsor.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has announced that the vaccine for coronavirus being developed by AstraZeneca has reached phase three clinical trials in the country and is very close to being finalised for approval.

The phase 3 trial is being implemented as part of Operation Warp Speed, a multi-agency collaboration led by the US Health and Human Services, which aims at accelerating the development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures for COVID-19 and delivering 300 million doses of an effective vaccine by January 2021.

“I am pleased to announce that AstraZeneca vaccine has reached phase three clinical trials,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday.

“That’s joining another group of vaccines that are very close to the end, and hopefully, approval,” he added.

AstraZeneca is one of the leaders in the race to develop COVID-19 vaccine.

Other companies that have COVID-19 vaccines in phase 3 trials include Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc.

“In the United States, we’re doing things that nobody thought would have been even possible. This is a process that would have taken, in some cases, years, and we did it in a matter of months,” Trump said.

The National Institute of Health separately announced that Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating an investigational COVID-19 vaccine known as AZD1222 will enroll approximately 30,000 adult volunteers at 80 sites in the US to evaluate if the candidate vaccine can prevent symptomatic COVID-19.

The UK-based global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is leading the trial as regulatory sponsor.

“Safe and effective vaccines will be essential to meet the global need for widespread protection against COVID-19,” said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony S Fauci.

“Positive results from preclinical research led by NIH scientists supported the rapid development of this vaccine candidate, which has also showed promise in early-stage clinical trials,” he said.

Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group have developed AZD1222.

The candidate vaccine was licensed to AstraZeneca for further development.

Trump told reporters that the US remains on track to deliver a vaccine very rapidly in record time.

“Over the last month, new cases in the United States have declined by 38 per cent. Last week, we announced a breakthrough in testing that will allow us to have over 150 million rapid, point-of-care tests.

“These tests return results in less than 15 minutes, and many will be deployed to nursing homes,” he said.

“We’re focusing very strongly on nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other locations that serve high-risk populations.

“So we’re going to have the 15-minute, and less, tests, and we will have 150 million rapid point-of-care tests,” Trump said.

The US has so far recorded 6,030,782 coronavirus cases and 183,596 fatalities — both the numbers highest in the world.

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe

Tokyo: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his intention to step down due to his declining health, according to reports on Friday by NHK and other Japanese media.

The Prime Minister’s Office said the report could not be immediately confirmed, but that Abe was believed to be meeting top ruling officials at the party headquarters. The Liberal Democratic Party spokesman did not answer the phone.

Concerns about Abe’s chronic health issues, simmering since earlier this summer, intensified this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row for unspecified health checkups.

Abe, whose term ends in September 2021, is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament.

He had abruptly resigned from his first stint in office in 2007 due to his health, which was fueling concerns about his recent condition.

Abe on Monday became Japan’s longest serving prime minister by consecutive days in office, eclipsing the record of Eisaku Sato, his great-uncle, who served 2,798 days from 1964 to 1972.

But his second hospital visit on Monday eclipsed festivity for his record and has accelerated speculation and political maneuvering toward a post-Abe regime.

Abe has acknowledged having ulcerative colitis since he was a teenager and has said the condition was controlled with treatment. He has not made clear if it is related to his recent health issues or hospital visits.

After his recent hospital visits were reported, top officials from Abe’s Cabinet and the ruling party said Abe was overworked and badly needed rest.

His health concerns added to speculation that Abe’s days in office are numbered, when his support ratings are already at their lowest levels due to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its severe impact on the economy, on top of a slew of political scandals.

Shigeru Ishiba, a 63-year-old hawkish former defence minister and Abe’s archrival, is a favorite next leader in media surveys, though he is less popular within the ruling party.

A low-key former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, Defence Minister Taro Kono, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, and economic revitalisation minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is in charge of coronavirus measures, are widely speculated in Japanese media as his potential successors.

The end of his scandal-laden first stint as prime minister was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of revolving door politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.

When he returned to office in 2012, Abe vowed to revitalise the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his Abenomics formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.

Of the 818 new cases, Kathmandu valley alone accounted for 166 of them, Gautam said.

KATHMANDU: Nepal on Sunday recorded 818 new coronavirus cases, taking the country’s COVID-19 tally to 31,935, the health ministry said.

Health Ministry spokesperson Dr Jageshwor Gautam said three more people have died due to coronavirus in the last 24 hours.

Now the death toll stands at 149.

Of the 818 new cases, Kathmandu valley alone accounted for 166 of them, Gautam said.

“Two-eighty-one people, who had earlier tested positive for the virus, have been discharged after recovery from various health facilities across the country,” Gautam said.

The total number of recovered cases is 18,631, which is 58 per cent of total cases.

Gautam said so far 6,00,444 PCR tests have been conducted in the country, including 8,026 in the last 24 hours.

There are 13,155 active coronavirus cases in the country.

The outbreak has grown to 30 people and extended beyond Auckland for the first time.

WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s government on Friday extended a lockdown of its largest city Auckland for another 12 days as it tries to stamp out its first domestic coronavirus outbreak in more than three months.

The outbreak has grown to 30 people and extended beyond Auckland for the first time. Until the cluster was discovered Tuesday, New Zealand had gone 102 days without infections spreading in the community. The only known cases were travelers quarantined after arriving from abroad.Health authorities believe the virus must have been reintroduced from overseas, but genome testing hasn’t found a link with any of the quarantined travelers. That has prompted authorities to investigate whether shipping workers were a source, after several employees at a food storage Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said extending the Auckland lockdown, which began Wednesday, would give authorities time to get a handle on the viruscluster and isolate those infected

“Together, we have got rid of COVID before,” Ardern said in a highly anticipated address. “We have kept it out for 102 days, longer than any other country. We have been world-leading in our COVID response, with the result that many lives were saved and our economy was getting going faster than almost anywhere else. We can do all of that again.”

All of the new cases in the outbreak appear to be linked through family or work connections. The only known infections outside Auckland are two people in the central North Island town of Tokoroa who were visited by infected family members from Auckland. Officials said they thought the chances were low the virus would spread further in Tokoroa.

Several of those infected work at an Americold food storage facility in the Auckland suburb of Mt. Wellington. Officials are looking at the possibility that workers on a freight ship or at the port may have spread the infections, despite physical distancing requirements at those sites and orders preventing ship workers coming ashore.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said they were doing rigorous testing at Auckland’s port “as part of our investigation just to follow that chain of the Americold goods that might have come in through the port and been transported to that Mt. Wellington depot.”

Officials are also investigating the possibility the virus could have survived from abroad on chilled or frozen food boxes and then infected workers in New Zealand, a scenario they consider unlikely.

Bloomfield said they completed a record of more than 15,000 tests Thursday and they were getting a clearer picture of the outbreak’s contours.

“All of the cases so far, at this point, are connected. They are all part of one Auckland-based cluster,” said Health Minister Chris Hipkins. “And that is good news.”

The outbreak has cast doubt on whether New Zealand’s general election will go ahead as planned next month and has halted political campaigning Ardern said she would decide by Sunday on whether to delay the election, which she can by up to about two months under New Zealand law. Opinion polls indicate Ardern’s Labour Party is favored to win a second term.

Kim said his country now faces a dual challenge of fending off COVID-19 amid a worsening global pandemic and repairing damage from torrential rain.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un lifted a lockdown in a major city near the border with South Korea where thousands had been quarantined for weeks over coronavirus worries, state media said Friday.

But Kim, during a key ruling party meeting on Thursday, also insisted the North will keep its borders shut and rejected any outside help as the country carries out an aggressive anti-virus campaign and rebuilds thousands of houses, roads and bridges damaged by heavy rain and floods in recent weeks.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency also said Kim replaced Kim Jae Ryong as premier following an evaluation of the Cabinet’s economic performance and appointed Kim Tok Hun as his successor.

Entering the last year of an ambitious five-year national development plan, Kim Jong Un in December declared a “frontal breakthrough” against international sanctions while urging his nation to stay resilient in a struggle for economic self-reliance.

But experts say the COVID-19 crisis likely thwarted some of Kim’s major economic goals by forcing the country into a lockdown that shut the border with China — the North’s major ally and economic lifeline — and potentially hampered his ability to mobilize people for labor.

During Thursday’s meeting, Kim said it was clear after three weeks of isolation measures and “scientific verification” that the virus situation in Kaesong was stable and expressed gratitude to residents for cooperating with the lockdown, KCNA reported.

Kim said his country now faces a dual challenge of fending off COVID-19 amid a worsening global pandemic and repairing damage from torrential rain that lashed the country in past weeks.

KCNA said 39,296 hectares (97,100 acres) of crops were ruined nationwide and 16,680 homes and 630 public buildings destroyed or flooded. It said many roads, bridges and railway sections were damaged and a dam of an unspecified power station gave way. There was no mention of any information related to injuries or deaths.

Kim expressed sympathy with people who were at temporary facilities after losing their houses to floods and called for swift recovery efforts so that none is “homeless” by the time the country celebrates the 75th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party’s founding on Oct. 10.

“The situation, in which the spread of the worldwide malignant virus has become worse, requires us not to allow any outside aid for the flood damage but shut the border tighter and carry out strict anti-epidemic work,” KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying.

Kim’s public rejection of international aid for flood recovery and his decision to release Kaesong from quarantine are negative indicators for inter-Korean cooperation as South Korea had hoped to restart diplomatic engagement by providing support in these areas, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

Cho Hey-sil, spokesperson of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the South remains willing to provide humanitarian assistance to the North.

North Korea in past months has severed virtually all cooperation with the South amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, which faltered over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament steps.

The North in June blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, following months of frustration over Seoul’s unwillingness to defy U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons program and restart joint economic projects that would help the North’s broken economy.

“The North Korean economy, while touting self-reliance, is increasingly dependent on China and will struggle to balance sanctions-busting efforts and COVID-19 prevention,” Easley said. “The job of North Korea’s new premier will be to show the country has recovered from recent flooding and has upgraded public health facilities” by the October party anniversary, he said.

In late July, Kim ordered a total lockdown of Kaesong and had the nation shift into a “maximum emergency system” after the North reported it found a person with COVID-19 symptoms.

The North’s state media said the suspected case was a North Korean who had earlier fled to the South before slipping back into Kaesong. But South Korean health authorities say the 24-year-old hadn’t tested positive in South Korea and never had contact with any known virus carrier.

North Korea later said the person’s test results were inconclusive and still maintains it is virus-free, a status widely doubted by outsiders. Some experts said the North was likely trying to shift the blame over a possible spread of the virus to South Korea.

In an email to The Associated Press last week, Dr. Edwin Salvador, the World Health Organization’s representative to North Korea, said the North has told the U.N. agency it quarantined 64 first contacts of the suspected Kaesong case and 3,571 secondary contacts in state-run facilities for 40 days.

Since the end of December, North Korea has quarantined and released 25,905 people, 382 of them foreigners, Salvador said.

This news story was published by ‘Khaleej Times’ and has been shared here without any changes and alterations. 

Ajman (UAE): A massive fire that broke out in a fruits and vegetables market in Ajman on Wednesday evening has been put out. 

According to an official of the Ajman Civil Defence, the blaze was brought under control in three hours. A cooling operation is still ongoing at the site.

Firefighters from civil defence stations in Dubai, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain joined the Ajman force in battling the blaze.

The fire broke out in the emirate’s new industrial area. Several fire engines were seen rushing to the spot to put out the blaze.

The Ajman civil defence had earlier urged motorists to take alternative routes.

“Ajman firefighters cordoned off the site and used water and foam in extinguishing the blaze which spread to several shops at the market,” sources told Khaleej Times.

United Nations: The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion students in all countries and continents and an additional 23.8 million children and youth could drop out or not have access to school next year due to the pandemic’s economic impact alone, the UN Secretary General’s policy brief on education said.

Education is the key to personal development and the future of societies. It unlocks opportunities and narrows inequalities. It is the bedrock of informed, tolerant societies, and a primary driver of sustainable development. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the largest disruption of education ever, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a video statement launching his policy brief on Education and COVID19′ on Tuesday.

He said that in mid-July, schools were closed in more than 160 countries, affecting over 1 billion students and at least 40 million children worldwide have missed out on education in their critical pre-school year.

The policy brief said that the pandemic has exacerbated education disparities and learning losses due to prolonged school closures threaten to erase progress made in recent decades, not least for girls and young women.

Some 23.8 million additional children and youth (from pre-primary to tertiary) could drop out or not have access to school next year due to the pandemic’s economic impact alone, the brief said.

Guterres said as the world faces unsustainable levels of inequality, we need education the great equaliser more than ever. We must take bold steps now, to create inclusive, resilient, quality education systems fit for the future.

Guterres voiced concern that parents, especially women, have been forced to assume heavy care burdens in the home and despite the delivery of lessons by radio, television and online, and the best efforts of teachers and parents, many students remain out of reach.

Learners with disabilities, those in minority or disadvantaged communities, displaced and refugee students and those in remote areas are at highest risk of being left behind, he said.

The UN chief underlined that the world already faced a learning crisis before the pandemic as more than 250 million school-age children were out of school and only a quarter of secondary school children in developing countries were leaving school with basic skills.

Now we face a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities. The knock-on effects on child nutrition, child marriage and gender equality, among others, are deeply concerning, he said.

Launching the policy brief, he said it focuses on a new campaign with education partners and United Nations agencies called Save our Future’ and decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come.

The campaign will amplify the voices of children and young people and urge governments worldwide to recognise investment in education as critical to COVID-19 recovery.

The policy brief calls for action in four key areas of reopening schools, prioritising education in financing decisions, targeting the hardest to reach and future of education.

On reopening schools, the brief says that once local transmission of COVID-19 is under control, getting students back into schools and learning institutions as safely as possible must be a top priority.

The UN has issued guidance to help governments in this complex endeavour and Guterres said it will be essential to balance health risks against risks to children’s education and protection, and to factor in the impact on women’s labour force participation.

He also stressed that consultation with parents, carers, teachers and young people is fundamental.

On prioritising education in financing decisions, Guterres said that before the crisis hit, low and middle-income countries already faced an education funding gap of USD 1.5 trillion dollars a year and this gap has now grown further.

Education budgets need to be protected and increased. And it is critical that education is at the heart of international solidarity efforts, from debt management and stimulus packages to global humanitarian appeals and official development assistance, Guterres said.

The brief’s focus of targeting the hardest to reach emphasizes that education initiatives must seek to reach those at greatest risk of being left behind — people in emergencies and crises; minority groups of all kinds; displaced people and those with disabilities.

They should be sensitive to the specific challenges faced by girls, boys, women and men, and should urgently seek to bridge the digital divide, Guterres said.

The brief also highlights that the future of education is here and there is a generational opportunity to reimagine education.

We can take a leap towards forward-looking systems that deliver quality education for all as a springboard for the Sustainable Development Goals, Guterres said adding that to achieve this, there is a need to invest in digital literacy and infrastructure.

The brief notes that to cope better with future crises, governments should strengthen the resilience of education systems by placing a strong focus on equity and inclusion; and on reinforce capacities for risk management. Failure to do so poses major risks to international peace and stability, it said.