XBB.1.5 Covid variant has caused a huge rise in new cases in which country?

The year 2022 was yet another reminder that Asia Pacific is the world`s most disaster prone region, and the floods were the deadliest, accounting for 74.4 per cent of disaster events in the region and 88.4 per cent of total deaths globally, a United Nations report said on January 4, 2023. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) says the year 2022 also witnessed cascading disasters where a chain of hazard events took place followed by the initial and residual impacts. Pakistan witnessed melting glaciers from the record spring heat and this combined with an unprecedented monsoon rain resulted in a historic flooding that devastated a large part of the country.

At least 68 people were killed on January 15, 2023 when a domestic flight of Yeti Airlines crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, the worst air crash in three decades in the small Himalayan nation. Hundreds of rescue workers scoured the hillside where the flight carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu went down.

On 3 January 2024, a commemorative ceremony marking the assassination of Qasem Soleimani at his grave in eastern Kerman, Iran, was attacked by two bomb explosions. The attacked killed at least 94 people and injured 284 others. The Iranian government declared the bombings a terrorist attack, making it the deadliest such incident in the country since the Cinema Rex attack of 1978.