MR BROWN: Hey, everybody. Deputy Spokesperson Cale Brown here. Thanks for joining the call. The State Department continued its 24/7 unprecedented mission throughout this past weekend to bring Americans home from all corners of the world. We have flights coming in from Peru, India, and Egypt, among other places, and we brought home over 43,000 American citizens since January 29th.
To help us delve into some of the statistics and - we've got three briefers joining us for this on-the-record call: Ian Brownlee, our Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from the Bureau of Consular Affairs; Dr. William Walters, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Operations; and Alice Wells, Acting Assistant Secretary for our Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
You've been introduced already to PDAS Brownlee and Dr. Walters. Ambassador Wells has joined the call for the first time today to shed particular light on the historic repatriation effort from South and Central Asia. Dr. Walters will begin with some opening remarks and turn it over to Ambassador Wells. Following that, PDAS Brownlee will give the latest repatriation figures. Then we'll take a few of your questions.
Dr. Walters, go ahead.
MR WALTERS: Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks again for the opportunity to brief. I want to sort of credit our health units overseas for the work they continue to do both in support of our embassy communities in over 220 locations around the world, as well as their support to the ongoing consular effort to bring American citizens home. Current cases - domestically we're looking at 41 cases and no deaths. And overseas, in our overseas community 190 cases with one additional death bring total death overseas to three, all within locally employed staff. We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the families of those as well as the extended families - embassy family and all that are impacted. That's all I have.
MR BROWN: Ambassador Wells, please, go ahead.
AMBASSADOR WELLS: Thank you, and appreciate the opportunity to update you on how we're working with our partners in the South and Central Asia region. And I'll start off with the repatriation efforts, which in our countries present unique challenges. As of today, the United States has organized 13 flights from South and Central Asia, including special flights home for about 2,900 U.S. citizens from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.
In India, we're responding to requests for assistance from thousands of Americans located in cities and villages spread across a vast area. And so far, we've supported the repatriations of about 1,300 American citizens there despite what are lockdown conditions. In Nepal, we're bringing home Americans who have been located in remote and highly mountainous areas; for some of these Americans, coming out of the mountains after two or three weeks and seeing a transformed world. In addition to the heroic work of U.S. Government personnel throughout the region, we're really very grateful to our counterparts in South and Central Asia. Whether it's local, regional, national governments, health officials, customs and migration services, law enforcement agencies, civil aviation authorities, and airport workers, it really is a team effort.
In addition to protecting U.S. citizens, the U.S. Government is leading the world's humanitarian and health assistance response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 21 million in a first tranche has been provided to at-risk countries and peoples in South and Central Asia. But I think even more importantly, the United States has been investing in health systems across the region for decades. And it's that longstanding cooperation on health care that's the backbone of our current efforts to help SCA countries control the pandemic.
In Central Asia, our USAID and CDC regional missions are providing assistance and sharing information. In addition to the CDC regional hub in Almaty, Kazakhstan, we also have CDC offices in New Delhi, Dhaka, and Islamabad. And we're in close coordination with our South and Central Asian partners to ensure that global supply chains producing lifesaving drugs and protective equipment are optimized to meet rapidly changing needs around the world, including in the United States.
I would just add another issue we're tracking closely is food security. As countries around the world implement new measures to limit COVID, we're tracking whether interruptions to cross-border trade and logistics could threaten food security for some of the region's more vulnerable areas and groups. And we're certainly advocating that countries in the region keep their cross-border trade in basic foodstuffs and other humanitarian goods going in a safe manner so that this public health emergency doesn't become a food security emergency.
Finally, I would note we're working in close coordination with the IMF and other international financial institutions on the process of providing emergency response funding to countries in need of such support. And we're very pleased that the World Bank announced April 2nd a total of 1.9 billion in COVID-19-related emergency response loans, of which 1.46 billion will be extended to countries in South and Central Asia. The United States annually contributes nearly 16 percent of the overall World Bank funding.
For decades, really, the United States has been a reliable partner, investing in the people and economies of South and Central Asia, and we're certainly going to be there when the process of social and economic recovery begins as well. Thank you.
MR BROWNLEE: Thank you, Ambassador - oh, sorry. Thank you, Ambassador Wells. Good afternoon to you all. As you've been hearing, our repatriation efforts continued worldwide over the weekend, including flights from Peru, India, Egypt, Nepal, and Burundi, to name a few. To date we've brought back more than 45,000 Americans, about 8,000 more since I last spoke to you all last Friday, just three working days ago. These numbers represent the unprecedented and heroic efforts of department staff around the globe working to get these folks back here.
And while the demand numbers continue to fluctuate, as you've heard me say before, I can tell you that we're seeing the scales tip mightily toward the number of Americans who have been already brought home as opposed to those who still seek our assistance, which is why I want to remind everyone today that if you are an American overseas and you're still on the fence about whether to come home or not, it's time to get off that fence. Come home now or be ready to remain where you are. The Department of State always stands ready to assist our fellow citizens overseas, but we cannot guarantee that this worldwide repatriation effort will continue indefinitely. Some Americans are waiting to see how bad it's going to get before making that call. I cannot stress this enough: Make that call now.
You've heard me talk about step.state.gov. An example of why it's so important to be enrolled in our Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, or STEP: Last Friday, one of the last commercial flights out of Moscow was canceled as the flight was sitting on the tarmac waiting to take off. We're still trying to get to the bottom of what happened with that flight, but in the meantime, the U.S. embassy in Russia, including Ambassador Sullivan, have been doing a great job of communicating with U.S. citizens there about all the possibilities to come home and what the situation on the ground really is. They've been publicly updating U.S. citizens on the situation daily since March 26th. This includes important COVID-19-related information, travel restrictions, repatriation flight information, and other safety and security information. These messages are sent to all U.S. citizens enrolled in STEP at step.state.gov and are posted daily to the embassy website. Consular officers share the same information with all concerned U.S. citizens and their loved ones when they contact the embassy for assistance.
Right now we're working on over 80 flights worldwide. We're continuing to see heavy demand from South Asia, as the ambassador just said, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. We're working to get everyone who wants to come home a seat on a plane. We've repatriated about a thousand U.S. citizens from India alone. I'm glad the ambassador can join us today to talk about how the Department of State and the U.S. Government are working with our partners in South and Central Asia to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are also still seeing continued demand from Latin America and we continue to run multiple flights a day from Central and South America. We've repatriated over 5,600 Americans from Peru alone and we're working hard to get everyone - to get - we're working hard to get more flights scheduled from there beyond today. We've got flights leaving from Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, and others this week.
The message remains the same for U.S. citizens the world over: Enroll at step.state.gov to get the latest information from us. Keep checking your embassy's website and don't put off the decision to come home until it's too late. With that, I'm happy to take your questions.
MR BROWN: Just a reminder, everybody, if you want to get into the queue to ask a question, press 1 and 0. For our first question, can you open the line of Matt Lee?
QUESTION: Hello?
MR BROWN: Go ahead, Matt.
QUESTION: Okay, you can hear me? Good. Thank you. I just have one very brief question for Doc Walters: When you talked about the deaths overseas and you said three because there was an additional one, I thought there was three last week, but then I remembered that one of them was determined not to have been COVID-related. So does this mean now, with the three that a new - there was a new fatality, and that was confirmed to be COVID? Thanks.
