(NEW YORK) — Firefighters are still battling a large blaze on the island of Evia in Greece, where fires closed in on the beaches, forcing residents to flee via boats and ferries.
More than 1,100 were transported from the island to safety overnight on boats, after authorities issued evacuation alerts in dozens of towns.
People were trapped in villages on the island and calling for help on Greek television on Saturday morning, including a mother and her baby pleading for air tankers to be sent to her home.
Greek authorities reported the first casualties, with two dead including one volunteer and dozens injured. Volunteers rode in on motorcycles to bring water and help put out fires in the suburbs of Athens. A Kryoneri resident called them “a gift from God,” as firefighters are spread thin across the country.
Reinforcement coming in from Europe and the U.S. — 90 helicopters and planes, 23 vehicles and roughly 400 firefighters — are continuing to arrive on Saturday. Residents of Kryoneri, 14 miles north of Athens, were still undecided on what to do and whether to leave their home behind.
“I’m very scared,” Eleni Glibti, a resident of Kryoneri told ABC News. “I don’t know what to do, it’s illegal to be here.”
Sixty-four fires were still active overnight.
Weather conditions slightly improved in north of Athens on Saturday morning, with temperatures dropping to 91 Fahrenheit, giving firefighters a break and allowing them to get control over fires in the Attica region and the north of Athens.
Temperatures are expected to pick back up again next week.
Fires have raged across the Mediterranean for the past 11 days, including in Italy, France and Turkey, where the fires killed at least eight people.
The vast majority of the fires in Turkey had been brought under control on Friday evening, 198 out of 208 fires nationally, per the Turkish Forest and Agricultural Ministry.
Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that a total of 252 million tree saplings — three saplings for each citizen — will be planted before the end of the year, as part of the Breath for the Future campaign, launched in 2019 among several countries as part of an environmental effort.
(LONDON) — At least 330 cats in the United Kingdom have died from a rare illness that could be linked to toxins in cat foods that have been recently recalled.
The condition, called feline pancytopenia, is when the number of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets decreases rapidly and results in serious illness, according to the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London.
As of Monday, Aug. 2, at least 528 cases of feline pancytopenia have been reported, according to the RVC.
The RVC said the mortality rate among reported cases is 63.5% and the actual number of cases is likely much higher.
The RVC first raised the alarm about the spike in severe feline pancytopenia cases in late May. To date, the cause of the deaths is yet to be officially identified.
The RVC and Food Standards Agency in the UK (FSA) are investigating the cat deaths and possible causes.
The agencies are looking into several cat food brands — including Sainsbury’s hypoallergenic cat foods and Pets at Home’s Applaws and AVA cat foods — that were recalled in June. The FSA said the outbreak of pancytopenia could be linked to the recalled cat products.
“Our investigations are ongoing and we are still collecting data from practicing veterinarians, as well as testing food samples associated with affected and unaffected cats to determine the significance of these findings. We have shared our results with the FSA in order to assist them with their investigations into this matter,” RVC said in a statement.
The dry cat food brands pulled off shelves were manufactured by Fold Hill Foods. The company told ABC it “issued a voluntary and precautionary recall of selected cat food products after the FSA made us aware they were investigating a potential link between these cases and diet. This was fully supported by the FSA.”
“As stated by the FSA, there is no definitive evidence to confirm a link at this stage between the cat food products and feline pancytopenia,” a spokesperson for Fold Hill Foods said, noting it is cooperating with the investigation. “As cat owners ourselves, we fully understand how upsetting and stressful this situation is and the urgent need to establish why there has been an increase in cases of Pancytopenia in the U.K.”
The FSA said in a July 16 update that the presence of mycotoxins was identified “in a small number of samples of recalled cat food tested to date.”
Mycotoxins are toxic compounds naturally produced by some kinds of fungi, according to RVC. They can grow on different crops like grains and vegetables and appear on foods like cereals, nuts, and dried fruits, often under warm and humid conditions, the RVC said.
“Mycotoxins are widely found in some types of feed and food and do not, in themselves, indicate they are the cause of feline pancytopenia,” the FSA said.
The FSA and other regulators are continuing to investigate and will conduct wider samples and screenings for any possible toxins in cat feed.
Sainsbury told ABC News it is supporting the investigation. Pets at Home said in a statement it voluntarily recalled its products and supports the investigation as well.
Pet owners should check their cat food at home to make sure they’re not using recalled items. If yes, stop feeding the food immediately and contact local vets if concerned about a pet’s wellbeing, the FSA said.
It’s unclear if pets in the U.S. have been impacted.
(ATHENS) — Firefighters are working to extinguish dozens of fires across Greece, where over 100 wildfires have started in the past day.
In the town of Evia, 90 miles from Athens, the Greek coast guard and private-owned boats are evacuating people from the beach where residents and tourists fled the flames. According to the Athens News Agency, 90 people have been transported to safety so far.
Greece is facing what has been described as its worst heat wave in more than three decades.
Greece’s Civil Protection Chief Nikos Hardalias said 118 wildfires broke out over the past 24 hours in the country. An EU disaster response group said firefighters and water-dropping planes were being sent to Greece, as well as Italy, Albania and North Macedonia, where fires have also broken out.
“Following the situation with great concern,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted. “European solidarity is at work to fight these terrible fires.”
More than 500 firefighters, 150 vehicles, five aircraft and nine water-dropping helicopters have been mobilized, as well as several groups of volunteers.
Thousands were evacuated in several suburbs north of Athens, including in the town of Varympompi, where several properties were burnt to the ground. Firefighters sprayed water on burned cars and metal structures to prevent another fire from starting.
“A lot of people were scared,” Alex, a volunteer firefighter, told ABC News. “We saw houses after houses burnt, there’s a lot of damage.”
The Hellenic Army is assisting with foot patrols and airborne firefighting assets.
An initial calculation by the National Observatory of Athens indicates that between Aug. 1 and Aug. 4, around 14,826 acres were burned in Greece’s wildfires. That’s more than 50% of the area burned in entire fire seasons of previous years: 25,639 acres burned during the 2020 fire season in Greece, and 23,240 acres burned in 2019.
Athens saw temperatures climb as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday and nearly 108 on Wednesday.
“It’s hell … unbelievable,” said Varympompi resident Vasilis Michelas, who lost his vintage car workshop in the fires. “Thirty-five years … it’s all gone.”
Authorities reported no serious injuries. An assessment of the damage caused so far is yet to be completed, but the national grid operator has warned that the capital’s power supply could be “endangered” after part of the transmission system shut down.
Now, the danger is that the blaze could reach archeological sites in the western Peloponnese. Greek authorities ordered evacuations in the nearby villages, according to Reuters.
(New York) — The availability of food and how crops will fare as a result of climate change has long been of interest to environmental researchers, but scientists are now finding other threats to food supplies that can severely impact global food security.
Climate change may pose an increased risk for crops to become infected with pests and pathogens, leaving the yields inedible and risking quantities of the world’s food supply, according to a study published Thursday in Nature Climate Change.
Researchers at the University of Exeter in England studied models for the production of four major commodity crops — maize, wheat, soybean and rice — as well as eight temperate and tropical crops, to predict how the crops would respond to future climate scenarios.
The researchers found that, overall, the yield of the crops will increase at high latitudes, such as North America and parts of Europe and Asia. However, the findings also suggest that risk of infection from 80 fungal and oomycete, or fungal-like, pathogens will increase at high latitudes as temperatures increase, according to the paper.
As global temperatures warm, pest outbreaks are common, and pathogens can more easily attack crops, scientists said. Temperature is a “major determinant” of disease risk, and global distribution of plant pathogens have already shifted with the current warming, according to the study.
Climate change will not only affect the number of pathogens able to infect crops, but the composition of how the pathogens are assembled as well, the scientists said.
The higher temperatures also pose the possibility of major shifts in species composition within pathogen communities in some regions, such as the United States, Europe and China.
Food scarcity is a “continuous concern” as global populations expand, the amount of arable land decreases and the threat of climate change increases.
The researchers concluded that plant pathogens represent a “major threat” to crop production and food security, which reinforces the need for “careful crop management.”
(CALIFORNIA) — For her 40th birthday, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, launched a mentorship initiative for women re-entering the workforce after losing their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The campaign — from the duchess’ nonprofit foundation, Archewell, which she founded with husband Prince Harry — is named 40×40 and is meant to encourage people around the world to give 40 minutes of their time to support women going back to work.
“In reflecting on my 40th birthday and the many things I am grateful for, I’m struck that time is among our greatest and most essential gifts: Time with our loved ones, time doing the things we love, time spent learning, laughing, growing, and the sacred time we have on this earth,” Meghan wrote. “Amongst the most valuable gifts of time is also time spent in service to others knowing that it can contribute to incredible change.”
“To that last point, and with my 40th lap around the sun in mind, it made me wonder: What would happen if we all committed 40 minutes to helping someone else or to mentoring someone in need?” she continued. “And then what would happen if we asked our friends to do the same?”
The duchess went on to note that “tens of millions of women around the world have left the workforce” due to COVID-19, “including over 2 million in the U.S.” She also noted that “the latest research shows that fewer women than men will regain work” as society rebounds from the pandemic.
“I believe mentorship is one way to help women regain confidence and rebuild their economic strength,” Meghan added.
“The time that you donate can contribute to a global wave of service and set in motion meaningful impact in our own communities, and across the world,” she concluded.
Meghan asked 40 activists, athletes, artists and world leaders to join her in donating 40 minutes of mentorship. Among those who have agreed to participating include Adele, Amanda Gorman, Amanda Nguyen, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Gloria Steinem, José Andrés, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Stella McCartney.
For more information on 40×40, including how you can get involved, visit the Archewell site.
(LONDON) — The British government recorded a drop in COVID-19 cases for the fifth day in a row Tuesday. Daily deaths rose slightly to 138, but for almost a week had been under 100.
It’s a far cry from public warnings earlier in summer, when the country’s newly minted Health Secretary Sajid Javid warned the nation of the possibility of 100,000 daily cases.
Despite those warnings, the government lifted all remaining restrictions on social distancing and mandated mask-wearing in England on July 19. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “Freedom Day” was criticized as an irresponsible move in the midst of a third wave driven by the highly transmissible delta variant. “A murderous policy,” said Dr. Gabriel Scally, a leading public health expert at the University of Bristol. “Epidemiological stupidity,” a World Health Organization official said.
But then, cases dropped by around 40%, and deaths and hospitalizations have stayed low, despite the ending of all restrictions — and the world has been baffled as to why.
Many are pointing to the high vaccination rate in the U.K. More than 72% of all adults have received their full dose of vaccination, and the Office for National Statistics recently announced it estimated that 92% of the population in England has antibodies, either through vaccination or through previous infection of COVID-19.
Some experts, such as King’s College London professor of genetic epidemiology Tim Spector, have called foul on the data. Spector suggested in an interview with Sky News that the sudden drop in cases — “unheard of in pandemics” — was likely due to a lack of young people getting tested and asymptomatic cases not being counted in the official reported figures.
But that’s just not true, said John Edmunds, an epidemiologist and member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies committee that advises the British government on COVID-19 policy.
Edmunds told ABC News that several key circumstances appear to explain the sudden drop in cases.
End of Euro 2020 championships
A surge largely triggered by a return to normal, non-pandemic behavior during the Euro 2020 soccer championships has now mostly dissipated.
“The Euros was a glimpse of what would happen if we started to go back to much more normal behavior and went back to the pubs to watch football and so on,” Edmunds said. “Suddenly cases surge.”
But since the tournament is over, Brits aren’t going to the pubs and nightclubs as much, according to Edmunds’ behavioral surveys.
“People’s behavior at the moment is nowhere near normal behavior,” he said, even though there are no more restrictions in place.
The ‘pingdemic’
Shortly after the Euros, in mid-July, the British government’s contact tracing app also became embroiled in a situation that became known as the “pingdemic.”
Hundreds of thousands of people across the U.K. were suddenly ordered to self-isolate at home, after being notified by the app that they had come into contact with someone who had tested positive for the virus.
Businesses were faced with staffing shortages, and there were chaotic scenes at Heathrow Airport in London when suddenly hundreds of security staff were told to go home and isolate.
School vacations
Another key factor is the closure of schools during summer vacations. During the school year, schoolchildren and teachers are regularly tested, but they aren’t tested while on summer vacation. The break seems to account not just for a dip in daily tests but also in the virus spreading between children, parents and teachers, Edmunds said.
“School closure has been very important, and we’ve seen the effect of it throughout the pandemic, with schools opening and closing,” he said. “But it’s so important now because we’ve concentrated so much infection into the younger age groups because they are not vaccinated.”
The government has opened vaccination eligibility to young people within three months of turning 18. Health advisers say there is little benefit to vaccinating children because so few become seriously ill or die from the virus. There is currently no vaccine authorized for use in children younger than 12 years old, though some children deemed to be of particular risk to COVID-19 are allowed to be vaccinated under current rules.
It is the return of schools and businesses that worries Edmunds.
“My fear has always been September when schools open again, and I think at that point, businesses, companies, organizations will start to assess employees to come back in to the office,” he said. “I hope they don’t, but if they do I think we will see another surge in cases in the autumn.”
(NEW YORK) — One year after the blast that destroyed the port of Beirut and a large part of the city, the families of the dead are still looking for answers.
In the aftermath of the huge blast at a warehouse in the port of Beirut, where 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer which can also used as an explosive, had been left there for years, the authorities promised the results of an investigation within days. Instead, not only has the investigation barely advanced, the area around the port blast has barely been repaired, serving as a metaphor for the Lebanese capital’s recent woes.
At least 218 people were killed in what has been described as one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever recorded, causing billions of dollars in damage. A report by Human Rights Watch published on Aug. 3 has pointed the finger at some government officials, saying some “foresaw the death that the ammonium nitrate’s presence in the port could result in and tacitly accepted the risk of the deaths occurring.”
The caretaker government issued a statement saying the report was “faulty” and “deviates from the truth.”
The country’s problems run far deeper than rebuilding the city, once nicknamed the “Paris of the Middle East.” According to the World Bank, Lebanon is in the midst of an economic crisis that ranks in the top 10, and possible the top three, experienced in any single country since the mid-1800s.
Last year Lebanon entered hyperinflation — and each week the Lebanese pound depreciates in value, leaving goods unaffordable for the once affluent middle class, which has now, according to experts, ceased to exist.
According to the World Bank data, overall poverty in Lebanon was estimated at 27% in 2011, before the Syrian Civil War. Now, however, more than half the population is living below the poverty line, according to UNICEF. Over the past two years alone, the level of extreme poverty has risen threefold, according to the U.N. — and the price of food and drink has risen by 670%. That has left 1.5 million people in need of humanitarian and financial aid.
“For over a year, Lebanese authorities countered an assailment of compounded crises — namely, the country’s largest peace-time economic and financial crisis, COVID-19 and the Port of Beirut explosion — with deliberately inadequate policy responses,” according to the World Bank’s latest report in April 2021. “The inadequacy is less due to knowledge gaps and quality advice and more the result of a combination of (i) a lack of political consensus over effective policy initiatives; and (ii) political consensus in defense of a bankrupt economic system.”
The World Bank describes the collapse as a “deliberate depression,” and on the streets of Beirut Lebanese cannot hide their disdain for the ruling classes.
“This explosion was a disaster for all people,” Raghda Tawfik El-Ashry, 57, a clothes seller, told ABC News. “I was here when it happened, and I saw what nobody had seen. All my goods were damaged because the fire and the ashes fell on them. Where was the state?”
“They are all a bunch of criminals and it’s all about nepotism,” she said. “I won’t remain silent.”
The government, according to Maya Yahya, director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, a think tank, has created “no policy” since the Beirut blast. In the aftermath of the 1975-1990 Civil War, a political settlement was reached that has allowed sectarian groups and political actors to all be represented in government, “which basically took away oversight,” Yahya said.
“The militia heads [were allowed] to simply move into government positions,” she said. “They treated the state and its institutions as a war booty. They turned to state institutions into extensions of their own fiefdoms.”
That legacy has plagued the country to this day, she said, while political assassinations, beginning with the killing of Rafic Hariri in 2005, have become a regular feature of political life, she said.
“The message is quite clear. If you raise your voice too much, the threat of physical violence is an instrument we’re always ready to use,” she said.
Most families rely on backup fuel generators, medicine is increasingly scarce and long queues at gas stations are now a fact of daily life in the country.
Elie Jabbour, 24, a recent graduate with a civil engineering degree, told ABC News that of his class of 100, only two had gone on to find meaningful work, and around half at left the country. Each day comes a period, he said, there are hours without electricity, which has become a daily routine.
“We are fully relying on these generators, which are very toxic for the environment,” he told ABC News. “And they are they cannot stand this 24-hour supply of electricity. And this is affecting us since we are living in a [pandemic-induced] lockdown, kind of a lockdown. So our life is highly dependent on the Internet. And in the time where there’s no electricity, there’s no Internet, and there’s in this time, we cannot do anything.”
“[The Lebanese people] have lost hope,” he added. “They are trying to fight with whatever is remaining, they are losing money by the day and there’s no middle class anymore.”
Many young, educated Lebanese are now fleeing the country in search of “dignity,” Rani, a 25-year-old resident of Beirut, told ABC News. He is planning to join abroad.
“The situation right now in Lebanon is beyond horrendous,” he said. “We have multiple crises. We have the crisis of the pandemic, an economic crisis, an ethical crisis, a cultural crisis. Education is going down. Finding food — basic necessities — being able to supply yourself with basic necessities is growing more and more difficult.”
The decline has been rapid, although according to independent Lebanese economist Roy Badaro, can be attributed to decades of mismanagement from the political class. Particularly consequential was the pegging of the value of the Lebanese pound to the U.S. dollar, Badaro said, which hid the country’s structural imbalances and fiscal deficit.
“The demand is very high because of the crazy prices of the necessities,” Soha Zaiter, Head of the Lebanese Food Bank, told ABC News. “A lot of people lost their jobs in the crisis so they don’t have any income; on the other hand, for people that still have their jobs, the value of the salary is very low in comparison to the prices. People are in need of everything, literally everything. From the smallest things to the most important items, like milk, diapers, oil, rice.”
According to independent Lebanese economist Roy Badaro, Lebanon requires new leadership — a single unitary government that can navigate the competing interests of various groups, in order to pave the way out of the crisis.
“You have the Shia/Sunni problem. You have the Ottoman/Arab problem. You have the East and West issue. You have the Europeans and the U.S. All these interactions. I think that Lebanon suffers from that,” he told ABC News. “We need to be rowing in the same direction. At the moment we are in a boat where each oar is rowing in a different direction.”
(WASHINGTON) — Even as the delta variant is causing higher COVID-19 case rates and hospitalizations across the United States, President Joe Biden will discuss his push to help get people around the world vaccinated in remarks Tuesday, highlighting that the U.S. has already shipped 110 million doses abroad.
The push to share vaccines globally is an effort to halt the rise of any future variants of the virus, which global health experts warn could potentially compromise vaccine immunity.
Biden will announce that the first of 500 million Pfizer vaccine doses the administration ordered for global distribution will begin shipping at the end of August. Of those doses, 200 million are expected to ship in 2021, with the remaining 300 million to follow in 2022.
Biden announced the 500 million-dose commitment at the G-7 summit in the United Kingdom in June, as part of an effort to drum up additional contributions from allies.
“We’re gonna help lead the world out of this pandemic, working alongside our global partners,” Biden said in remarks ahead of the summit. He added that the U.S. had a “responsibility” and a “humanitarian obligation to save as many lives as we can.”
Biden will also tout a vaccine-sharing milestone Tuesday: that the U.S. has already shipped more than 110 million doses to more than 60 countries around the world, mostly through COVAX, the World Health Organization’s vaccine-sharing initiative. The U.S. has shared more doses than every other country combined, according to U.N. data.
In April, Biden first committed to sharing 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which were purchased by the U.S. but never received FDA emergency use authorization. Biden also pledged in May to share another 20 million doses of the three available vaccines in the U.S., totaling a pledge of 80 million doses. Tuesday’s remarks will highlight the fact that U.S. contributions worldwide have already outpaced that 80 million-dose pledge.
Still, global public health experts warn that wealthier nations need to step up their efforts, noting that the longer it takes for poorer countries to become vaccinated, the longer the pandemic will persist worldwide.
Various non-governmental agencies, including the Center for Strategic International Studies, the Duke University Global Health Institute and the Center for Global Development penned an open letter to the Biden administration Tuesday, calling on the U.S. to ramp up its efforts.
“The US and G7 allies have taken important but modest steps to close the global vaccine gap, including by accelerating large-scale production and delivery of high-quality vaccines, increasing financial support to COVAX, and committing to share roughly 900 million doses over the next year (including 580 million from the US). But these actions fall far short of the true scale and urgency required,” the letter says.
“Getting 110 million doses out is really helpful, but in the scale that we need to find a way to get 10 billion plus doses out, it’s not even in the order of magnitude to make a difference,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. “The U.S. has done more than any other country so far, but that’s more an indictment of the whole response, as opposed to the U.S. standing out in any positive way.”
Udayakumar warned that while the focus continues to be on worldwide vaccine supply, distribution challenges will soon come to the fore.
“We have under-invested on the ground in ensuring vaccines can turn into vaccinations. My biggest concern is we’re going to see vaccines sitting in freezers around the world.” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is expanding the group of Afghans who could be granted refugee status and flee to the United States to escape the growing threat of the Taliban across Afghanistan, the State Department announced Monday.
The militant group is increasingly gaining control of districts across the country, as the war-torn country teeters dangerously towards collapse into all-out civil war.
But while President Joe Biden has committed to helping Afghans who helped the U.S. military and diplomatic mission in the country for the last 20 years, the new policy will apply only to Afghans who have left the country and will take at least over a year for their cases to be processed, according to senior State Department officials — even as the risk to these Afghans is urgent.
The Biden administration has launched relocation flights for thousands of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides, and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas – some 20,000 applicants in total, according to a State Department spokesperson, although only a fraction of them will be evacuated by the U.S.
For interpreters and other contractors who did not meet the required two years of service for a Special Immigrant Visa, the State Department will now allow them to apply for refugee status instead. They’re also expanding the pool of potential refugees to any Afghan who worked for a U.S.-based media outlet, for a U.S. government-funded program, or for a U.S. government-supported project.
After 20 years of humanitarian development across the country, that’s a wide category of Afghans, along with their eligible family members. Senior State Department officials declined to provide an estimate, but said it was likely in the tens of thousands in total.
The administration has been under pressure, especially from Republican and Democrat lawmakers and U.S. veterans’ groups, to do more to help Afghans who worked with or for the U.S. during two decades of war and development – and who therefore may be at greater risk of retaliatory attacks by the Taliban.
While the militant group’s political leaders have said Afghans will not be harmed, the last year has seen a string of high-profile assassinations against journalists, women’s rights activists, minority leaders, and military and police chiefs. At least 300 interpreters have been killed by Taliban fighters since 2014, according to the advocacy group No One Left Behind.
“The U.S. objective remains a peaceful, secure Afghanistan. However, in light of increased levels of Taliban violence, the U.S. government is working to provide certain Afghans, including those who worked with the United States, the opportunity for refugee resettlement to the United States,” the State Department said in a statement.
But the refugee resettlement process takes several months, if not years, including intensive security vetting, and the process will require Afghan applicants to leave the country, according to senior State Department officials – something that many cannot afford, cannot risk, or cannot manage.
“This program is meant to expand the aperture of people who have an opportunity to be resettled in the United States beyond the SIVs. It is our attempt to try to offer an option to people,” said a senior State Department official.
The State Department has said it will evacuate nearly 5,000 of those “SIV’s,” or Special Immigrant Visa applicants, along with their eligible family members like spouses and children.
Some 750 and their dependents – 2,500 in total – who have been granted approval by the U.S. embassy in Kabul and cleared security vetting will be moved to Fort Lee, a U.S. Army base in central Virginia. The first of them arrived last Friday, with a second flight with 200 more arriving early Monday and now at Ft. Lee, according to a U.S. official.
In addition, 4,000 applicants who have been approved by the embassy, but are awaiting security clearances, will be moved to safe third countries. Along with their family members, the group could total approximately 20,000, and diplomatic discussions on where to house them all as they wait months for their applications to be processed remain underway with several countries, including Kuwait, Qatar, and Kazakhstan, according to U.S. officials.
But a senior State Department official said the administration does not plan to relocate any of the Afghans who now qualify for refugee status under this new designation, known as Priority 2, or P2. Instead, their employer will open a case with the embassy in Kabul, and once the U.S. government confirms it is ready to begin processing their case, they must find their own way to a third country and declare themselves a refugee.
“At this point in time, unfortunately, we do not anticipate relocating them, but we will continue to examine all the options to protect those who have served with or for us, and we will review the situation on the ground, and our planning will continue to evolve,” said the senior official.
Once outside of Afghanistan, it could take at least 12 to 14 months for their case to be adjudicated, per the senior official.
As the new designations could lead to thousands of Afghans fleeing the country and seeking refugee status, a second senior official said the U.S. government has had conversations with some of Afghanistan’s neighbors, like Pakistan, about preparing for refugee flows and keeping their borders open to refugees.
ABC News’s Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Israel is now the first in the world to give a third booster COVID-19 vaccine shot to those over 60 and other vulnerable people as cases rise.
The U.K. expected to roll out boosters next month.
Watch the full report from ABC’s Good Morning America:
