The VB for February interviews has been released.

RegionAll DV Chargeability Areas Except
Those Listed Separately
AFRICA13,800Except: Egypt  9,500
ASIA4,400Except: Iran    3,400
            Nepal  2,800
EUROPE10,000
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS) 12
OCEANIA450
SOUTH AMERICA,
and the CARIBBEAN		625

This is for February 2019 interviews. 

Again the numbers are low, which is most likely because of the number of people that were current for January, but were not scheduled. The new document procedure has had some impact because as KCC warned, they did not schedule cases where people had not provided the documents by the new procedure. That meant there were significant numbers of people that could not be scheduled in January, and those people will need a large proportion of the available visa interview slots for February. Additionally KCC have to take into account the Christmas season, and that they do not have as many staff available to schedule interviews as a normal month. 

Those that are current, and have forms processed early enough, they can expect their 2NL in about 1 to 2  weeks from now. This is the same every month. VB from the 8th to the 15th of each month, and 2NLs in the second half of the month. For the last few months there have been 2NLs sent in two main batches, some early (around the 15th to 20th) and then some in the later part of the month. But given the low numbers that may not be necessary. I would expect the 2NLs to have all been sent by the end of this month. 

To those new to looking at VBs, let me explain what the “except” XXX country means – and you can also read this post on how to read the visa bulletin.

Processing is spread out over the full year. You can see the progress of the two previous years in this post about basic questions.  However, some countries have a high number of selectees and those selectees are concentrated in the lower case numbers. For various reasons, mainly to do with embassy capacity, KCC slow down certain countries as compared to the region. So – in Africa, any case with a case number shown as under the new number can be interviewed but for cases from Egypt, that number is lower. That isn’t a big problem, it just “slows down” those countries a little more than the rest of the region. Since selectees from those countries all have lower case numbers, this slowing down does not present any risk. It does not (at this point) mean they won’t allow all selectees an interview from those countries.

To understand why some countries get lower case numbers, read this article about the lottery draw process.