“These are unprecedented circumstances,” the State Department said in an emailed statement. “For me, it was really disheartening to see the embassy, the State Department, wasn’t able to help us,” said Ms. Stirrat, 20, a junior at Lewis & Clark who eventually got on the Boston University-chartered evacuation flight from Ecuador. The dearth of commercial flights has left students and their advisers with, at best, a patchwork of options. Mr. Neria, 21, the Arabic-language student from Lewis & Clark, was allowed to board a British government-sponsored evacuation flight from Morocco. In Peru, Jessica Buie, 25, a student at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, said she and her fellow students packed their bags and headed to the U.S. Consulate in Cusco as soon as they got word that the Peruvian government would close its border.

Source: International New York Times March 22, 2020 00:56 UTC