Although nowhere close to India’s population or flare-up in scope, the reported spikes in these handful of nations have been far steeper, signaling the potential dangers of an uncontrolled spread. The resurgence — and first-time outbreaks in some places that largely avoided the scourge last year — heightens the urgency of delivering vaccine supplies to poorer, less influential countries and averting a protracted pandemic.

“It’s very important to realize that the situation in India can happen anywhere,” said Hans Kluge, the regional director at the World Health Organization for Europe, during a briefing last week. “This is still a huge challenge.”

Ranked by the change in newly recorded infections in the past month over the previous month, Laos came first with a 22,000% increase, followed by Nepal and Thailand, both of which saw fresh caseload skyrocketing more than 1,000% on a month-over-month basis.

Also on top of the list are Bhutan, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Cambodia and Fiji, as they witnessed the epidemic erupt at a high triple-digit pace.

“All countries are at risk,” said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “The disease appears to be becoming endemic and will therefore likely remain a risk to all countries for the foreseeable future.”

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“It’s very important to realize that the situation in India can happen anywhere. This is still a huge challenge,” said Hans Kluge, the regional director at the WHO for Europe. https://t.co/xY7Eof2iju

— The Japan Times (@japantimes) May 4, 2021

At a shelter in Cambodia, 16-year-old girl points to the scar where she tried to slit her wrist with a broken plate.

Two years before, she left her province when offered a job as a cleaning lady in South Korea. Instead, she was sold into marriage in Beijing, where her new husband kept her locked up and demanded she give him a child.

“It was like hell,” she tells CT through a translator. “I just wanted to die.”

When she got pregnant soon after, the teen bride escaped at her first doctor’s appointment and contacted her friends 2,000 miles away, who called a hotline to arrange her rescue and repatriation. She and her 11-month-old daughter live in a home operated by Agape International Missions (AIM), among dorm-style bunk beds with about 50 other girls.

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A thirteen hour time difference, over 9,000 miles, and the International dateline separate St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Texas from a new church plant in Cambodia’s province of Pursat.

That kind of distance might make a direct partnership between Cambodia and Texas seem nearly inconceivable, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, St. Vincent’s put up half the funds necessary to make the new church plant a reality and has sent teams over to work directly on the project.

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