African nations slowly resume air travel

ABUJA, Nigeria—The African Union said the continent has lost nearly $55 billion in travel and tourism in the last few months after countries shut down flights to slow the spread of COVID-19. The 15-member Economic Community of West African States will reopen its airspace on July 21. Flights within Nigeria are slated to resume on Wednesday, and Senegal plans to start international flights a week later. The continent has more than 476,500 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, which includes nearly 227,400 recoveries and close to 11,400 deaths.

How is the rest of the world doing? India passed Russia and moved into third place behind the United States and Brazil in the total number of confirmed cases, reporting close to 700,000 as of Monday. Australia on Tuesday is closing the border between New South Wales and Victoria, its two most populous states, after a surge of cases in Melbourne that caused the city to announce a 6-week lockdown starting on Wednesday. Serbian troops on Monday set up a 500-bed field hospital in the capital city of Belgrade as infections overwhelmed health facilities.

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s report in The Stew on why the pandemic has halted most immigration to the United States.

Editor’s note: WORLD has updated this report since its initial posting.