Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
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Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption More than a billion people have been staying at home during the lockdown
Will India extend its rigorous 21-day lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus beyond its end date next week? By all accounts, yes.
On 24 March, India shut its $2.9 trillion economy, closing its businesses and issuing strict stay-at-home orders to more than a billion people. Air, road and rail transport systems were suspended.
Now, more than two months after the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the country, more than 5,000 people have tested positive and some 150 people have died. As testing has ramped up, the true picture is emerging. The virus is beginning to spread through dense communities and new clusters of infection are being reported every day. Lifting the lockdown could easily risk triggering a fresh wave of infections.
A harsh lockdown is certain to slow down the disease. Virologists I spoke to believe India is still at an early stage of the infection. The country still doesn’t have enough data on the transmissibility of the virus or even how many people could have been infected and recovered to develop adequate herd immunity. (It is slowly beginning finger prick blood tests to look at the presence of protective antibodies.)
More than 250 of India’s 700-odd districts have reported the infection. Reports say at least seven states have a third of all infections, and want the lockdown extended. Six states have reported clusters of rapidly growing infections – from the capital Delhi in the north to Maharashtra in the west and Tamil Nadu in the south.
Economic fallout
Not surprisingly, the lockdown is already hurting the economy. Many of the early hotspots are economic growth engines and contribute heavily in revenues to the exchequer. Mumbai, India’s financial capital and Maharashtra’s main city, accounts for more than a third of overall tax collection. The densely populated city has reported more than 500 cases and 45 deaths, and numbers are steadily rising. Authorities say the infection is now spreading through the community. Mumbai has made wearing face masks mandatory.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India has ramped up testing during the lockdown
Many of these hotspot clusters are also thriving manufacturing bases. The spread of infection means that they will be under lockdown for a longer period of time.
The services industry, which generates almost half of India’s GDP, is also likely to remain shut for some more time. Construction, which employs a bulk of migrant workers, will remain similarly suspended. The unemployment rate may have already climbed to more than 20% after the lockdown, according to a report by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy.
For the moment, economists say, the government will have to prioritise farming over everything else to ensure the livelihoods of millions and secure the country’s future food supplies.
Half of India’s labour force work on farms. The lockdown happened at a time when a bumper winter crop had to be harvested and sold, and the rain-fed summer crop had to be sowed. The immediate challenge is to harvest and market the first crop, and secure the second.
Moving trucks to pick up produce and take them to markets, with adequate social distancing and hand washing will be something the government will have to move on quickly.
“The immediate challenge is to ensure that rural India is not hit,” says Rathin Ray, an economist. “Realistically, a complete lockdown cannot be continuously maintained beyond early May. We don’t have a choice but to reopen gradually after that.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India has been under a lockdown from 24 March
There is little doubt about that. For his part, SK Sarin, who heads a government advisory panel on combating the disease, says the lockdown can be only eased in a “graded manner in areas that are not hotspots” and that the hotspots remained cordoned off.
Like other affected countries, India will have to prepare itself for what Gabriel Leung, an infectious disease epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, describes as several rounds of “suppress and lift” cycles.
During these periods “restrictions are applied and relaxed, applied again and relaxed again, in ways that can keep the pandemic under control but at an acceptable economic and social cost.”
Also, Dr Leung observes, “how best to do that will vary by country, depending on its means, tolerance for disruption and its people’s collective will. In all cases, however, the challenge essentially is a three-way tug of war between combating the disease, protecting the economy and keeping society at an even keel”.
It is now clear that shutdowns need to continue until transmission has slowed down markedly, and testing and health infrastructure has been scaled up to manage the outbreak.
Experts from the southern state of Kerala, a striking outlier that is containing the infection thanks to a transparent government and a robust public health system, say it isn’t time to lift the lockdown yet and have recommended a three-phase relaxation.
For most countries, easing the lockdown is a tricky policy choice. It sparks fears of triggering a fresh wave of infection and presents the inevitable trade-off between lives and livelihoods. French Prime Minister Edouard Phillipe, says relaxing the lockdown in his country is going to be “fearsomely complex”. In a crisis like this, according to his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, leaders have to “make 100% of the decisions with 50% of the knowledge, and bear the consequences.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is emerging as a hotspot
It is going to be tougher for India with its vast size, densely packed population and enfeebled public health system. Also, no country in the world possibly has so much inter-state migration of casual workers, who are the backbone of the services and construction industries.
How will India manage to return these workers to their work places – factories, farms, building sites, shops – without a substantial easing of public transport at a time when crowded trains and buses can be a vector of transmission and easily neutralise the gains of the lockdown? Even allowing restricted mobility – allowing social distancing, temperature checks and passenger hygiene – would put considerable pressure on the public transport system.
The policy choices are fiendishly tough, and the answers are far from easy. India bungled the lockdown by not anticipating the exodus of millions of migrant workers from cities. The weeks ahead will tell whether the fleeing men, women and children carried the infection to their villages. The country simply cannot afford to make similar mistakes again while trying to relax the lockdown. Nitin Pai of The Takshashila Institution, a think tank, believes states should be left to decide on easing restrictions, and decisions “should be based on threat [of infection], which should be determined by extensive testing”.
This week Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the “situation in the country is akin to a social emergency”. His government now needs make sure that the looming threat to the nation’s health and economic progress is tackled skilfully.
Lockdown may have been lifted, but shops, bars and restaurants remain empty in Beijing, showing struggle facing economic recovery
Controls have been returning in other parts of China, where cinemas and tourist attractions shut amid fears of new wave of infections
The nearly two month-long lockdown has changed the consumption behaviour of Chinese residents, many of whom have turned to home cooking to cut their spending. Photo: AFP
China’s urban lockdown may have eased, but deserted streets and stores in the capital Beijing this week suggest that for the services sector, the impact of the coronavirus outbreak could be deeper and longer than expected.
Many restaurants, cafes and pubs remained closed in the city, where vigilance remains high about a second wave of infections. Among those that were open, there were few customers to be seen.
The usually crowded Wangfujing shopping street was quiet on Wednesday, with just a few shoppers patronising what is usually the heartbeat of the city’s commerce and tourism. There were more staff than consumers at the Apple store, while everyone wore a mask. Shops along the pedestrianised zone closed their doors before sunset, but many did not open at all.
In a downtown food court, a handful of people dined during what would usually be the lunch rush hour, each restricted to their own small table to maintain social distancing, in great contrast with the usual frantic dash for seats.
Coronavirus: What impact will the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic have on you?
While China has largely stemmed the domestic spread of Covid-19, threats of imported cases, with the virus having infected over one million people worldwide, and asymptomatic carriers continue to hamper the recovery in China’s
A survey published on Friday showed that in March, sentiment among small service sector firms remained depressed. The Caixin / Markit services purchasing managers’ index (PMI) was 43.0 for last month, with a number below 50 meaning the sector is shrinking. “There are too few people now. We only sold about a hundred bowls of noodles, that was just half of our normal level,” said one Beijing street vendor, who had also cut many items from the menu due to insufficient demand.
A bookstore in the city centre held an official opening ceremony after a soft opening followed by a two and a half month-long forced shutdown, but received only four visitors on a morning, one of which was the South China Morning Post reporter. All four were required to go through a body temperature check and write down their personal contact details before entering.
Service sector workers said the situation was surreal and that they were worried that there was no end in sight.
“I have never seen KFC look like this,” said an employee of the fast food chain restaurant at Wangfujing, pointing to the virtually empty dining hall.
A grocer at a nearby food market continually shook her head when talking about the decline in customers, but said she felt lucky that she could come back to Beijing from her hometown before the 14-day mandatory quarantine requirement was imposed on February 14.
This situation is not restricted to Beijing. When the Chinese government reopened around 500 cinemas nationwide in March, each one attracted on average
Now, many places across China are reimposing controls amid fears of a new spike in infections, the same fear leading people to stay home instead of going to those venues which have reopened.
Shanghai has closed tourist attractions while Sichuan has again closed karaoke lounges. Cinemas have also been reclosed across the country.
President Xi Jinping said during a visit to Hangzhou last Sunday that China must remain alert. “If you want to watch a movie, rather than going to a cinema, you can watch it online,” Xi said.
Services account for 60 per cent of China’s economy and the majority of employment. The slowness of the sector’s recovery is placing huge pressure on the world’s second
at a time when manufacturers are seeing export orders nosedive.
Liang Zhonghua, chief macro analyst at Zhongtai Securities, a brokerage, said that China’s damaged consumption alone could drag economic growth down by 4.5 per cent in the second quarter.
“(Chinese) residents’ fear of the epidemic is not over,” he wrote in a note this week.
Beijing’s malls still empty after coronavirus lockdown lifted
In Beijing all travellers entering the city are required to undergo a 14-day quarantine, while mass gatherings are still forbidden.
The containment measures have stopped many migrant workers from getting back to
, if they still exist. Many local residents still choose to work from home, even though authorities had been trying to encourage people to go out and spend money.
On April 1, the traffic flow on Beijing’s subway system was 3.05 million passengers a day, less than a third of the level a year ago, according to the operator, while car traffic was still about 15 per cent less than it was last year, government data showed.
I will keep cooking for myself, even when everything goes back to normal, it is much healthier and cheaper – Beijing resident
The nearly two month-long lockdown has changed the consumption behaviour of Chinese residents, many of whom have turned to home cooking to cut their spending.
“I will keep cooking for myself, even when everything goes back to normal, it is much healthier and cheaper,” said a Beijing lawyer whose family name is Li.
The effect of this behavioural shift is borne out in the 17.9 per cent drop in retail sales in the capital over the first two months of the year, only slightly better than the nationwide drop of 20.5 per cent.
Beijing businesses have clubbed together to issue some 150 million yuan in
The US saw 1,169 deaths in 24 hours and its infections are 20 per cent of the global total
China to hold day of mourning for victims; Singapore announces fifth death and school closures; Boris Johnson says he’s still ill; Angela Merkel ends quarantine
A group of nurses gather in the Bronx, New York, for a strike about the lack of personal protective equipment, on April 2, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the world soared past one million on Thursday and deaths topped 50,000 as Europe reeled from the pandemic and the
reported the highest daily death toll so far of any country.
Despite more than half the planet imposing some form of lockdown, the virus claimed thousands more lives, with the US, Spain and Britain seeing the highest number of daily fatalities yet.
Covid-19 is currently spreading the most rapidly in the US, where there have been 243,453 infections and 5,926 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The US saw 1,169 deaths in 24 hours, the highest one-day toll recorded in any country since the global pandemic began. The grim record was previously held by Italy, where 969 people died on March 27.
Here are other developments:
Singapore shuts schools, workplaces in ‘circuit-breaking’ move
Singapore’s coronavirus case number hits 1,000 after city state reports biggest single-day spike
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday afternoon announced most workplaces would be shut from April 7, and schools would be closed from April 8, in its
The city state has 1,114 infections and five people have died. More than 200 have recovered.
Essential services such as food establishments, markets and supermarkets, clinics, hospitals, utilities, transport and banking services will remain open.
Coronavirus: what’s behind Singapore’s U-turn on wearing masks?
4 Apr 2020
Lee on Friday said instead of tightening measures incrementally over the next few weeks, Singapore should “make a decisive move now, to pre-empt escalating infections”.
“Looking at the trend, I am worried that unless we take further steps, things will gradually get worse, or another big cluster may push things over the edge,” Lee said, describing the new measures as a “circuit breaker”.
Medical experts say the stringent measures require the cooperation of citizens to stay at home, given that local infection clusters have ballooned from six at the end of February to more than 20 currently.
People stand behind markers as they practice physical distancing while queuing up to buy food at a Singapore supermarket on April 3, 2020. Photo: Reuters
The Lion City has launched a website to help individuals with symptoms that might be related to Covid-19 decide whether they should see a doctor or not.
On the Covid-19 Symptom Checker website, individuals will be prompted to answer a short list of questions including their age, if they have any chronic diseases, if they have travelled outside Singapore in the past 14 days, or have been in touch with a suspected or confirmed Covid-19 case.
They will also be asked to choose which symptoms they are experiencing from a predetermined list including symptoms such as cough, difficulty breathing and the loss of taste/smell. The site will then recommend what the person should do next. This includes whether they should see a doctor or continue to monitor their symptoms.
China to hold day of mourning for Covid-19 victims
At 10am on April 4, 2020, the public will be asked to observe three minutes of silence. Photo: EPA-EFE
Flags will be flown at half-mast across the country and at embassies overseas, while all public entertainment will be halted for the day, said the State Council, China’s cabinet, on Friday.
At 10am, the public will be asked to observe three minutes of silence, during which sirens will blast out across the country and the owners of cars and boats should sound their vehicles’ horns, the council said.
Saturday also coincides with Ching Ming, or the Tomb-sweeping Festival, when Chinese traditionally gather to remember their ancestors.
China to stage day of mourning for the thousands lost to Covid-19
4 Apr 2020
Mainland China on Friday reported 31 new confirmed coronavirus cases, including two locally transmitted infections, the country’s National Health Commission said.
It also reported four new deaths as of Thursday, all in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began, the commission said in a statement. The total number of infections now stands at 81,620 and 3,322 deaths have been reported from mainland China to date.
The commission said 60 new asymptomatic coronavirus patients were also reported on Thursday.
UK’s Boris Johnson still ill with virus fever
Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives
✔@BorisJohnson
Another quick update from me on our campaign against #coronavirus.
You are saving lives by staying at home, so I urge you to stick with it this weekend, even if we do have some fine weather.#StayHomeSaveLives
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson remains in isolation with a high temperature, more than a week after testing positive for coronavirus.
Johnson made the announcement in a video posted on Twitter on Friday, saying that even after seven days, “alas I still have one of the symptoms, a minor symptom: I still have a temperature”.
“In accordance with government advice I must continue my self-isolation,” he said.
As virus rages, British love for NHS could make or break Boris Johnson
3 Apr 2020
With coronavirus deaths still rising, the PM is anxious to drum home his message that Britons must obey government orders to stay in their homes as much as possible.
On March 23 he ordered a national lockdown, with the closure of schools, stores, restaurants and leisure facilities. Under emergency laws, police have the power to fine individuals who flout the rules and break up gatherings of more than two people in public.
Germany to crack down on people flouting physical distancing rules
Police officers ask people to disperse as they gather at a park in Berlin, Germany, on March 28, 2020. Photo: Reuters
People in Germany risk being fined up to €500 (US$540) for standing too close to each other from Friday, as officials crack down on people flouting rules brought in to control the coronavirus outbreak.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has ordered people not leave their homes unless they have an exceptional reason such as grocery shopping, exercise or medical appointments.
Gatherings of more than two people are banned and a distance of at least 1.5 metres must be kept from others at all times.
Local governments have the power to set fines for transgressors, with city officials in Berlin saying their fines would be as high as 500 euros. Similar announcements have come from across Germany’s 16 states.
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According to figures by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Friday, Germany has recorded more than 79,000 cases of the novel coronavirus, and 1,017 deaths, although RKI president Lothar Wieler warned on Friday that the actual number of casualties could be much higher.
“We won’t manage to test every single person … I assume we will have more deaths than are officially recorded,” he said.
Wieler said the mortality rate would “continue to rise” in Germany. German minister’s suicide linked to coronavirus crisis
30 Mar 2020
Meanwhile, Merkel on Friday left her Berlin home for the first time in almost two weeks, after she was forced into quarantine following contact with an infected doctor.
Merkel was tested several times, with all tests coming back negative.
The 65-year-old leader has returned to her office, where she will continue to observe social distancing rules and lead the country via video and audio conferencing, her spokesman said.
Spain records over 900 virus deaths
Members of the Red Cross prepare food for families in need at a food bank in Ronda, Spain, on April 3, 2020. Photo: Reuters
on Friday recorded over 900 new coronavirus deaths over the past day, bringing the number of casualties to 10,935, in the first decline in new Covid-19 deaths in four days.
The country has the world’s second-highest death toll after Italy, but health ministry figures confirm a consistent downward trend in the rate of new cases and fatalities.
The 932 deaths on Friday was a smaller gain than Thursday’s 950, according to Health Ministry data. The number of confirmed cases also increased by less than the previous day, with 7,472 new infections taking the total to 117,710.
Why Europe’s hospitals – among world’s best – are struggling with virus
1 Apr 2020
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government has been struggling to bring the virus under control. Hospitals are overwhelmed, nursing homes have been especially hard hit in a nation with one of the world’s oldest populations, and the army has been mobilised.
Sanchez may extend the current four-week lockdown for another two weeks beyond April 11, Spanish media reported on Friday. The stay-at-home order limits people’s movement to shopping for food and essentials, while some workers are also allowed to circulate.
Passengers disembark from virus-hit cruise ship in Florida
The Zaandam cruise ship docked in Florida on Friday. Photo: TNS via ZUMA Wire/dpa
Passengers from an ill-fated cruise were carefully freed from their cabins and allowed to disembark on Friday, following the removal of 14 critically-ill people who were wheeled off to Florida hospitals bracing for an onslaught of coronavirus patients.
The exodus from the Zaandam and its sister ship the Rotterdam, both operated by Holland America Line, was expected to continue throughout the day.
Floridians were getting off first, followed by other passengers. Buses were taking people healthy enough to travel directly to the airport, where they will board chartered flights home without going through the terminal.
Coronavirus nightmare for passengers stuck on MS Zaandam ‘death ship’
30 Mar 2020
“This is a humanitarian situation, and the County Commission’s top priority is protecting our 1.9 million residents while providing a contained disembarkation option for people on board who need to get safely home,” Broward County Mayor Dale Holness said in a statement late on Thursday.
Four people have died on the Zaandam, for reasons not yet disclosed. All told, 107 passengers and 143 crew reported flu-like symptoms during the voyage, but many have since recovered.
It was unclear when the bodies of four passengers who died on the Zaandam would be removed from the ship, which set sail on March 7, the day before the US State Department warned people against cruising during the pandemic.
South Korea’s infections top 10,000
South Korean hospital’s ‘phone booth’ coronavirus tests
on Friday said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country has surpassed 10,000, with 174 deaths linked to Covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus.
The Health and Welfare Ministry reported 86 new coronavirus infections over 24 hours to the end of Thursday, taking the total to 10,062 cases. It also logged five more deaths.
The numbers confirmed an encouraging stabilisation of numbers, which have hovered around the 100 mark for the past three weeks, a clear downward trend which began in March after numbers peaked at the end of February with over 900 cases recorded in a day.
South Korea’s virus response is the opposite of China’s – and it works
15 Mar 2020
For a fourth straight day, more new cases were recorded from Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi province, than in what has so far been the outbreak epicentre in the country – North Gyeongsang province and city of Daegu – with the capital area registering 34 new cases, and the latter recording 23.
Imported cases in patients recently returned from abroad also continued to increase, with 22 new infections bringing the total to 264.
Japan to give US$2,800 payouts to households
A man seen in a protective mask at Shinjuku in Tokyo, Japan, on April 2, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE
Japanese ruling party executive Fumio Kishida said on Friday he has agreed with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to offer 300,000 yen (US$2,800) in cash payments per household that suffers a certain degree of income declines from the coronavirus pandemic.
About 10 million of Japan’s 58 million households are expected to be eligible for the cash programme, a key pillar of an emergency economic package that the government plans to compile possibly on Tuesday.
The relief measure will be funded by a supplementary budget for this fiscal year that the government wants to pass in parliament before Japan’s Golden Week holiday starts in early May.
Coronavirus: Tokyo’s nightlife districts linked to rise in cases
2 Apr 2020
The government will not set a household income limit for the cash handout, which will be tax free, officials said.
“If we set an income limit, we would have to check individual incomes, which would take a lot of time,” Yasutoshi Nishimura, minister in charge of economic and fiscal policy, told a press conference. “Instead of that, we’ll come up with an unprecedented way (to judge who should receive cash).”
Nishimura said recipients will be limited to those who are facing livelihood difficulties, and that civil servants, politicians and major corporate executives who have not been significantly affected by the economic impact of the virus outbreak, for example, will be excluded from the scheme.
Japan weighs cost of Tokyo lockdown and Wagyu beef coupons for households
31 Mar 2020
Abe said the government will provide cash “as soon as possible” not only to households but also to small-and mid-sized business operators that have seen their revenues drop.
Abe has said the package to tackle the coronavirus will be larger than the 56.8 trillion yen emergency package compiled in April 2009 following the previous year’s global financial crisis.
Indonesian Muslims banned from travelling home for Eid al-Fitr
A police officer in a coronavirus helmet sprays disinfectant at a motorcycle in East Java, Indonesia, on April 3, 2020. Photo: AP
Islamic scholars in Indonesia on Friday issued an edict to forbid people from travelling home for Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, as the country recorded nearly 2,000 infections during the
decided to allow millions of Muslims to travel to celebrate Eid in their hometowns next month, despite fears that they could spread the Covid-19 disease.
“The virus spreads very easily. Doing something like that at a time of a pandemic is haram [forbidden],” the council’s sectary general Anwar Abbas said.
Eid al-Fitr is expected to start on May 23, depending on the sighting of the new moon.
Indonesia frees 18,000 prisoners as virus death toll surges to 170
2 Apr 2020
Indonesia confirmed 196 new infections on Friday, bringing the total number of cases to 1,986.
The death toll rose to 181 after 11 new deaths, making Indonesia the the country with the highest number of fatalities in Asia outside China.
The State Intelligence Agency warned that the outbreak in Indonesia could peak in June with more than 105,000 cases.
Thailand’s night curfew to begin; people banned from making virus pranks
An officer checks the temperature of a passenger in a bus at a health checkpoint in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 3, 2020. Photo: AP
Thailand will on Friday night begin a daily nationwide curfew to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
The 10pm-4am curfew, which will run indefinitely, is the latest measure by the government to curb gatherings and have people stay at home as much as possible.
Exceptions include those people transporting medical supplies and health workers travelling to and from work, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said.
“We prioritise health over freedom,” Prayuth said. “We might not feel as comfortable as before, but we all need to adapt for survival and have social responsibility, so that we can make it through this crisis.”
In a televised address, Prayuth also asked all Thai citizens abroad to “delay” returning to
until after April 15 in a bid to stop imported cases.
Thai king remains in Germany during pandemic, prompting criticism online
23 Mar 2020
Thais have also been banned from making public gatherings, in an order signed on Friday by defence forces chief General Pornpipat Benyasri.
The order prohibits people from public gatherings, carrying out activities, or gathering for unlawful purposes in a manner that risks spreading the coronavirus.
It also bans any act that aggravates people’s suffering and pranks to spread the virus. Family gatherings at residences and civic activities carried out according to safe social distancing guidelines are allowed.
Violation of the order carries a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 40,000 baht (US$1,215).
Pakistan’s mosques remain open amid shutdowns
Coronavirus: In Pakistan food aid is distributed to the poor in Karachi
Mosques in Pakistan were allowed to remain open on Friday, when adherents gather for weekly prayers, even as much of the country had shut down.
Pakistan, with 2,450 confirmed coronavirus cases and 35 deaths, has been sharply criticised for moving too slowly to curb large gatherings.
Prime Minister Imran Khan was relying on restricting the size of congregations attending mosques and advice to stay at home from religious groups like the country’s Islamic Ideology Council.
Coronavirus: Pakistan quarantines pilgrims returning from Iran
4 Mar 2020
However, some provinces had issued their own lockdown orders to prevent Muslims from gathering for Friday prayers.
In southern Sindh province, a complete lockdown was being enforced from noon until 3pm, the time when the faithful gather for prayers. Anyone found on the streets would be arrested, according to the provincial local government minister in a statement.
In eastern Punjab province, where 60 per cent of Pakistan’s 220 million people live, checkpoints had been set up in major cities stopping people from congregating.
Tunisia ‘robocop’ enforces virus lockdown
The PGuard robot patrols the streets of Tunis, in Tunisia, on April 1, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE
Tunisia’s interior ministry has deployed a police robot to patrol the streets of the capital and enforce a lockdown as the country battles the spread of coronavirus.
Known as PGuard, the “robocop” is remotely operated and equipped with infrared and thermal imaging cameras, in addition to a sound and light alarm system.
In images and a soundtrack posted on the interior ministry’s website last month, PGuard calls out to suspected violators of the lockdown: “What are you doing? Show me your ID. You don’t know there’s a lockdown?”
The PGuard robot checks the exit permit of a citizen in Tunis on April 1, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE
Tunisia has been under night-time curfew since March 17 and authorities imposed stricter lockdown orders from March 22.
Fourteen people have died from coronavirus in Tunisia, where 455 confirmed cases have tested positive for the disease.
The robot’s Tunisian creator Anis Sahbani said the machine was first produced in 2015 essentially to carry out security patrols and it also operates autonomously through artificial intelligence.
The robot, built by Sahbani’s Enova Robotics firm, costs between 100,000 and 130,000 euros (US$100,000 and $140,000), and has been selling mostly overseas to companies for security uses.
France death tally passes 5,000
A cashier runs a store counter covered up with a plastic barrier in Paris, France, on April 3, 2020. Photo: Xinhua
reported a jump in coronavirus deaths on Thursday as the country included fatalities in some nursing homes for the first time. Still, a decline in intensive-care admissions suggest the country’s lockdown is starting to slow the pace of the outbreak.
The health ministry reported 471 new hospital deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday. In addition, it reported 884 deaths in a partial count from nursing homes, bringing the total number to 5,387. Nursing homes were not previously included in the statistics.
in number of deaths, behind Italy and Spain. The number of confirmed cases is now at 59,105.
Italy reported another 760 fatalities on Thursday. Its death toll, already the world’s highest, now stands at 13,915. Total infections, including recoveries and deaths, have reached 115,242.
Spain reported 950 more deaths from the coronavirus, the most in a single day, taking the total to 10,003.
India plans staggered exit from lockdown
Indian policemen in Hyderabad, India, wear virus-themed helmets for a campaign to raise awareness at preventing the spread of the coronavirus on April 2, 2020. Photo: AP
infections, but the world’s biggest shutdown has left millions without jobs and forced migrant workers to flee to their villages for food and shelter.
After violence, Indian police try humour to enforce virus lockdown
2 Apr 2020
He told state chief ministers that the shutdown had helped limit infections but that the situation remained far from satisfactory around the world and there could be a second wave.
“Prime minister said that it is important to formulate a common exit strategy to ensure staggered re-emergence of the population once lockdown ends,” the government quoted him as saying in a video conference.
India has had 2,069 confirmed infections, of whom 53 have died, low figures by comparison with the US, China, Italy and Spain. But the big worry is the
because of a gathering held by a Muslim missionary group last month that has spawned dozens of cases across the country, officials said.
Five-minute virus tests ‘may give inaccurate results’
A Chinese drug and diagnostic firm has cautioned that the slew of new test kits that promise to detect the coronavirus in just a few minutes may not be as accurate as conventional kits, a potential setback for countries seeking to rapidly test their citizens.
“Such rapid testing is not as accurate as the traditional nucleic acid test that takes about two hours to turn out results,” Wu Yifang, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group’s chief executive officer, said. The drugmaker also has a swift testing technology but it’s working on making the results more accurate, according to Wu.
Coronavirus nightmare of China’s ‘recovered’ patients
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Abbott Laboratories unveiled a coronavirus test on March 28 that can confirm if someone is infected in as little as five minutes. Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology has been supplying its version of rapid testing kits to the European Union even before getting regulatory approval in China for domestic use.
The faster and easy-to-deploy diagnostic kits seemingly save time and resources for nations under pressure to widen their testing efforts. But there have been reports of faulty kits, like those bought by Spain and the Czech Republic.
Shenzhen Bioeasy, which sold thousands of test kits to Spain, said in a statement on March 27 that false results could be due to improper use of its kits or faulty specimen collection.
Trump tests negative again
US President Donald Trump was was first tested last month after coming into contact with a Brazilian official who later tested positive. Photo: UPI/Bloomberg
US President Donald Trump on Thursday was tested again to determine whether he had been infected by the coronavirus, and the test came back negative, the White House said.
A letter from Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, said Trump had undergone what was a second test for coronavirus. He was tested last month after coming into contact with a Brazilian official who later tested positive.
Trump to urge Americans to wear masks when outside
3 Apr 2020
Conley said in a letter released by the White House that Trump was tested with a new, rapid point-of-contact test and the result came back in 15 minutes.
“He is healthy and without symptoms,” Conley said.
Trump said Americans should wear protective face masks if they wish. “If people want to wear them, they can” he said. Scarves work just as well, he said.
NRA sues NY governor over closure of gun stores
A pedestrian pushes a stroller as people wait in line outside a gun store to buy supplies on March 15, 2020. Photo: Reuters
The National Rifle Association (NRA) sued New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for closing gun shops during the coronavirus pandemic, saying the restriction is unconstitutional and leaves citizens defenceless while prisoners are being released early as a result of the crisis.
Cuomo’s March 20 executive order that included firearms retailers as non-essential businesses, which must close is a “pointless and arbitrary attack on the constitutional rights of New York citizens and residents,” the NRA said in a complaint filed late Thursday in Syracuse, New York.
New York ordered most businesses to close to prevent the spread of the virus, but deemed grocery stores, liquor stores, pharmacies and restaurants that do take-out as essential and allowed them to remain open.
The New York lawsuit follows similar action the NRA took in Northern California, where it sued several cities including San Jose for ordering gun stores to close.
Corona beer producer halts brewing
The Mexican brewer of Corona beer said on Thursday it was suspending production because of the health emergency in the country over the Covid-19 pandemic.
Grupo Modelo said the measure was in line with the Mexican government’s order to suspend all non-essential activities until April 30 to slow the spread of coronavirus.
“We are in the process of lowering production at our plants to the bare minimum,” the company said in a statement, adding it would complete the suspension in the following days.
Mexico’s government has said that only key sectors such as agribusiness will be able to continue to function.
US stops issuing passports, except in emergencies
The US State Department will not be processing new passports and renewals except for emergency cases because of the coronavirus pandemic, the agency’s website said.
“Due to public health measures to limit the spread of Covid-19, effective March 20, 2020, we are only able to offer service for customers with a qualified life-or-death emergency and who need a passport for immediate international travel within 72 hours,” said a March 27 online statement.
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Passport applications received on or before March 19 will be processed.
Travellers who paid extra for expedited service can expect to receive their passport in the next two to three weeks.
If you applied in-person at a passport agency or centre before March 19, the agency will contact you about getting your passport.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption North Korea says not a single person has the virus
North Korea’s claim that “not a single person” in the country has been infected with the coronavirus is facing growing scepticism.
It has credited strict containment measures and the shutting down of its borders for this success.
But the top US military commander in South Korea has said this is “untrue”, calling it an “impossible claim”.
A North Korean expert told the BBC it was likely there were cases but unlikely a mass outbreak had happened.
There are currently more than one million coronavirus cases across the world and 53,069 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.
Pak Myong-su, a director at North Korea’s Central Emergency Anti-epidemic headquarters, told news agency AFP on Friday: “Not one single person has been infected with the novel coronavirus in our country so far.”
“We have carried out pre-emptive and scientific measures such as inspections and quarantine for all personnel entering our country and thoroughly disinfecting all goods, as well as closing borders and blocking sea and air lanes.”
Could this be true?
US General Robert Abrams, head of the US military forces in South Korea, has said it is untrue that North Korea has no virus cases.
“I can tell you that is an impossible claim based on all of the intel that we have seen,” he said in a joint interview with news sites CNN and VOA.
However, he said he could not say exactly how many cases there were, not confirm where the information came from.
Oliver Hotham, managing editor of specialist news site NK News, agreed that North Korea has probably had cases.
“It’s very unlikely that it has seen no cases because it borders China and South Korea. [Especially with China], given the amount of cross border trade and the economic relationship I really don’t see how its possible they could have prevented it,” he said.
However, he adds that it is “unlikely” there is a full scale outbreak.
“They really did take precautions early. I think it’s possible they’ve prevented a full on outbreak.”
How has North Korea reacted to the crisis?
North Korea has indeed moved much more quickly against the virus than many other countries in the region.
In late January, it sealed off its borders and later quarantined hundreds of foreigners in the capital Pyongyang. During that time, the number of cases in China were growing exponentially.
An NK News report also suggests that up to 10,000 citizens had been placed under isolation in the country – around 500 still remain in quarantine.
Are those in North Korea even aware of the virus?
Most people in North Korea are “really aware” of what’s going on, says Mr Hotham.
“There’s been so much media coverage. Almost every day you have a whole page about the efforts the country is taking domestically and also the international situation,” he told the BBC.
Fyodor Tertitskiy, a senior researcher at Kookmin University, also adds the country is currently running an “ongoing propaganda campaign teaching people how to prevent the spread of the virus”.
The answer is, according to experts – better than you would think – depending on where in North Korea you are.
Mr Tertitsky says the North’s healthcare system is “much, much better than other countries with a similar GDP per capita”.
“What they did was to train a large number of doctors who, although less qualified and infinitely paid less than their colleagues in the West, can still provide basic healthcare to the population,” he told the BBC.
Mr Hotham agrees, but says that the number of doctors in North Korea enables the country to deal with basic illnesses, but perhaps not so much more serious illnesses which also need more healthcare equipment.
Sanctions have also restricted North Korea’s ability to obtain advanced medical equipment.
Mr Hotham adds that the care you receive largely depends on where you are. The capital, Pyongyang, for example, has various medical facilities, but those in rural areas might not be so lucky.
“Some provinces are desperately underfunded, where you’ll have hospitals with no running water or stable power.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Some international experts say North Korea’s health system is appalling
Why might North Korea be trying to cover up cases?
For North Korea to admit they have cases now could be a sign of “defeat”.
“The state has put a lot of stock into its response and there has been so much propaganda about how well they’re doing,” said Mr Hotham.
“I think for them to admit now that there were cases is essentially to admit defeat. I think it would also cause panic and people would freak out. If you have large movements of people trying to get away, that could create instability and even more infections.”
Mr Tertitskiy also puts this down to North Korea trying to preserve its self-image.
“The country is very paranoid about giving away any information that may make it look bad. Their basic rule is to say nothing unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.”
US death toll passes 3,000 as New York’s hospitals are pushed to breaking point
Italy extends lockdown as cases exceed 100,000; UN Security Council votes by email for first time
The USNS Comfort passes the Statue of Liberty as it enters New York Harbour on Monday. Photo: Reuters
Harsh lockdowns aimed at halting the march of the coronavirus pandemic extended worldwide Monday as the death toll soared toward 37,000 amid new waves of US outbreaks.
The tough measures that have confined some two-fifths of the globe’s population to their homes were broadened. Moscow and Lagos joined the roll call of cities around the globe with eerily empty streets, while Virginia and Maryland became the latest US states to announce emergency stay-at-home orders, followed quickly by the capital city Washington.
In a symbol of the scale of the challenge facing humanity, a US military medical ship sailed into New York to relieve the pressure on overwhelmed hospitals bracing for the peak of the pandemic.
France reported its highest daily number of deaths since the outbreak began, saying 418 more people had succumbed in hospital.
Spain, which announced another 812 virus deaths in 24 hours, joined the United States and Italy in surpassing the number of cases in China, where the disease was first detected in December.
On Tuesday, mainland China reported a rise in new confirmed coronavirus cases, reversing four days of declines, due to an uptick in infections involving travellers arriving from overseas.
Mainland China had 48 new cases on Monday, the National Health Commission said, up from 31 new infections a day earlier.
All of the 48 cases were imported, bringing the total number of imported cases in China to 771 as of Monday.
There was no reported new case of local infection on Monday, according to the National Health Commission. The total number of infections reported in mainland China stood at 81,518 and the death toll at 3,305. Globally, more than 760,000 have been infected, according to official figures.
Here are the developments:
Hospital ship arrives in New York
New York’s governor issued an urgent appeal for medical volunteers Monday amid a “staggering” number of deaths from the coronavirus, saying: “Please come help us in New York, now.”
The plea from Governor Andrew Cuomo came as the death toll in New York State climbed past 1,200 – with most of the victims in the big city – and authorities warned that the crisis pushing New York’s hospitals to the breaking point is just a preview of what other cities across the US could soon face.
Cuomo said the city needs 1 million additional health care workers.
“We’ve lost over 1,000 New Yorkers,” he said. “To me, we’re beyond staggering already. We’ve reached staggering.”
The governor’s plea came as a 1,000-bed US Navy hospital ship docked in Manhattan on Monday and a field hospital was going up in Central Park for coronavirus patients.
New York City reported 914 deaths from the virus as of 4:30pm local time Monday, a 16 per cent increase from an update six hours earlier. The city, the epicentre of the US outbreak, has 38,087 confirmed cases, up by more than 1,800 from earlier in the day.
Coronavirus field hospital set up in New York’s Central Park as city’s health crisis deepens
Gloom for 24 million people in Asia
The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic will prevent almost 24 million people from escaping poverty in East Asia and the Pacific this year, according to the World Bank.
In a report released on Monday, the Washington-based lender also warned of “substantially higher risk” among households that depend on industries particularly vulnerable to the impact of Covid-19. These include tourism in Thailand and the Pacific islands; manufacturing in Vietnam and Cambodia; and among people dependent on “informal labour” in all countries.
The World Bank urged the region to invest in expanding conventional health care and medical equipment factories, as well as taking innovative measures like converting ordinary hospital beds for ICU use and rapidly trining people to work in basic care.
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Indonesia bans entry of foreigners
Indonesia barred foreign nationals from entering the country as the world’s fourth-most populous country stepped up efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The travel ban, to be effective soon, will also cover foreigners transiting through the country, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said after a cabinet meeting in Jakarta Tuesday. The curbs will not apply to holders of work permits, diplomats and other official visitors, she said.
The curbs on foreign citizens is the latest in a raft of measures taken by Indonesia to combat the deadly virus that’s sickened more than 1,400 people and killed 122. President Joko Widodo’s administration previously banned flights to and from mainland China and some of the virus-hit regions in Italy, South Korea and Iran. The president on Monday ordered stricter implementation of social distancing and health quarantine amid calls for a lockdown to contain the pandemic.
Indonesia has highest coronavirus mortality rate in Southeast Asia
First US service member dies
The first US military service member has died from the coronavirus, the Pentagon said on Monday, as it reported another sharp hike in the number of infected troops.
The Pentagon said it was a New Jersey Army National Guardsman who had tested positive for Covid-19 and had been hospitalised since March 21. He died on Saturday, it said.
Earlier on Monday, the Pentagon said that 568 troops had tested positive for the coronavirus, up from 280 on Thursday. More than 450 Defence Department civilians, contractors and dependents have also tested positive, it said.
US military has decided to stop providing more granular data about coronavirus infections within its ranks, citing concern that the information might be used by adversaries as the virus spreads.
The new policy, which the Pentagon detailed in a statement on Monday, appears to underscore US military concerns about the potential trajectory of the virus over the coming months – both at home and abroad.
School to resume in South Korea … online
South Korean children will start the new school year on April 9 with only online classes, after repeated delays due to the outbreak of the new coronavirus, the government said Tuesday.
Prime Minister Chung Sye Kyun said that despite the nation’s utmost efforts to contain the virus and lower the risk of infection, there is consensus among teachers and others that it is too early to let children go back to school.
The nation’s elementary schools, and junior and senior high schools were supposed to start the new academic year in early March, but the government has repeatedly postponed it to keep the virus from spreading among children.
The start was last postponed until April 6, but has now been delayed three more days to allow preparations to be made for online classes.
The nation now has 9,786 confirmed cases in total, with 162 deaths.
Italy extends lockdown as cases exceed 100,000
Italy’s government on Monday said it would extend its nationwide lockdown measures
against a coronavirus outbreak, due to end on Friday, at least until the Easter season in April.
The Health Ministry did not give a date for the new end of the lockdown, but said it would be in a law the government would propose. Easter Sunday is April 12 this year. Italy is predominantly Roman Catholic and contains the Vatican, the heart of the church.
Italians have been under lockdown for three weeks, with most shops, bars and restaurants shut and people forbidden from leaving their homes for all but non-essential needs.
Italy, which is the world’s hardest hit country in terms of number of deaths and accounts for more than a third of all global fatalities, saw its total death tally rise to 11,591 since the outbreak emerged in northern regions on February 21.
The death toll has risen by 812 in the last 24 hours, the Civil Protection Agency said, reversing two days of declines, although the number of new cases rose by just 4,050, the lowest increase since March 17, reaching a total of 101,739.
Deadliest day in Italy and Spain shows worst not over yet
28 Mar 2020
Women stand near the body of a man who died on the sidewalk in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Photo: Reuters
Ecuador struggles to collect the dead
Ecuadorean authorities said they would improve the collection of corpses, as delays related to the rapid spread of the new coronavirus has left families keeping their loved ones’ bodies in their homes for days in some cases.
Residents of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, have complained they have no way to dispose of relatives’ remains due to strict quarantine and curfew measures designed to prevent spread of the disease. Last week, authorities said they had removed 100 corpses from homes in Guayaquil.
But delays in collecting bodies in the Andean country, which has reported 1,966 cases of the virus and 62 deaths, were evident midday on Monday in downtown Guayaquil, where a man’s dead body lay on a sidewalk under a blue plastic sheet. Police said the man had collapsed while waiting in line to enter a store. Hours later, the body had been removed.
More than 70 per cent of the country’s coronavirus cases, which is among the highest tallies in Latin America, are in the southern province of Guayas, where Guayaquil is located.
Panama to restrict movement by gender
The government of Panama announced strict quarantine measures that separate citizens by gender in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
From Wednesday, men and women will only be able to leave their homes for two hours at a time, and on different days. Until now, quarantine regulations were not based on gender.
Men will be able to go to the supermarket or the pharmacy on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and women will be allowed out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
No one will be allowed to go out on Sundays. The new measures will last for 15 days.
Police in Kenya use tear gas to enforce coronavirus curfew
Remote vote first for UN Security Council
The UN Security Council on Monday for the first time approved resolutions remotely after painstaking negotiations among diplomats who are teleworking due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Security Council unanimously voted by email for four resolutions, including one that extended through April 2021 the expiring mandate of UN experts who are monitoring sanctions on North Korea, diplomats said.
The UN mission in Somalia was also prolonged, until the end of June, and the mission in Darfur until the end of May – two short periods decided due to uncertainty over the spread of the pandemic.
The Council also endorsed a fourth resolution aimed at improving the protection for peacekeepers.
The resolutions are the first approved by the Security Council since it began teleworking on March 12 and comes as Covid-19 rapidly spreads in New York, which has become the epicenter of the disease in the United States.
Congo ex-president dies in France
Former Republic of Congo president Jacques Joaquim Yhombi Opango died in France on Monday of the new coronavirus, his family said. He was 81.
Yhombi Opango, who led Congo-Brazzaville from 1977 until he was toppled in 1979, died at a Paris hospital of Covid-19, his son Jean-Jacques said. He had been ill before he contracted the virus.
Yhombi Opango was an army officer who rose to power after the assassination of president Marien Ngouabi.
Yhombi Opango was ousted by long-time ruler Denis Sassou Nguesso. Accused of taking part in a coup plot against Sassou Nguesso, Yhombi Opango was jailed from 1987 to 1990. He was released a few months before a 1991 national conference that introduced multiparty politics in the central African country.
When civil war broke out in Congo in 1997, Yhombi Opango fled into exile in France. He was finally able to return home in 2007, but then divided his time between France and Congo because of his health problems.
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EU asks Britain to extend Brexit talks
The European Union expects Britain to seek an extension of its post-Brexit transition period beyond the end of the year, diplomats and officials said on Monday, as negotiations on trade have ground to a halt due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Europe has gone into a deep lockdown in a bid to curb the spread of the disease, with more than 330,000 infections reported on the continent and nearly 21,000 deaths.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his health minister have both tested positive for the virus and the prime minister’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings – one of the masterminds behind Britain’s departure from the EU earlier this year – was self-isolating with symptoms.
London and the EU have been seeking to agree a new trade pact by the end of the year to kick in from 2021, even though the bloc has long said that such a time frame was extremely short to agree rules on everything from trade to security to fisheries.
The pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the Giza pyramid complex. Photo: Reuters
Great Pyramid in Egypt lights up in solidarity
Egypt’s famed Great Pyramid was emblazoned Monday evening with messages of unity and solidarity with those battling the novel coronavirus the world over.
“Stay safe”, “Stay at home” and “Thank you to those keeping us safe,” flashed in blue and green lights across the towering structure at the Giza plateau, southwest of the capital Cairo.
Egypt has so far registered 656 Covid-19 cases, including 41 deaths. Of the total infected, 150 reportedly recovered.
Egypt has carried out sweeping disinfection operations at archaeological sites, museums and other sites across the country.
In tandem, strict social distancing measures were imposed to reduce the risk of contagion among the country’s 100 million inhabitants.
Tourist and religious sites are shuttered, schools are closed and air traffic halted.
Myanmar braces for ‘big outbreak’ after migrant worker exodus from Thailand
30 Mar 2020
Saudi king to pay for all patients’ treatment
Saudi Arabia will finance treatment for anyone infected with the coronavirus in the country, the health minister said on Monday.
The kingdom has registered eight deaths among 1,453 infections, the highest among the six Gulf Arab states.
Health Minister Tawfiq Al Rabiah said King Salman would cover treatment for citizens and residents diagnosed with the virus, urging people with symptoms to get tested.
“We are all in the same boat,” he told a news conference, adding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was overseeing containment efforts “night and day”.
Denmark eyes gradual reopening after Easter
Denmark may gradually lift a lockdown after Easter if the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths remain stable, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday.
The Nordic country, which has reported 77 coronavirus-related deaths, last week extended until after Easter a two-week lockdown to limit physical contact between its citizens that began on March 11.
The number of daily deaths slowed to five on Sunday from eight and 11 on Saturday and Friday respectively. Denmark has reported a total of 2,577 coronavirus infections.
“If we over the next two weeks across Easter keep standing together by staying apart, and if the numbers remain stable for the next two weeks, then the government will begin a gradual, quiet and controlled opening of our society again, at the other side of Easter,” Frederiksen said.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Hundreds have been leaving the mosque to be monitored or tested for the virus
Officials across India are searching for hundreds of people who attended a religious event in the capital that has set off several Covid-19 clusters.
At least six regions have reported cases that can be directly traced to the days-long congregation at a mosque.
Delhi officials are now clearing the building, where more than 1,000 people have been stranded since the government imposed a lockdown last week.
At least 24 have tested positive so far, the state health minister said.
They are among some 300 people who showed symptoms and have been moved to various hospital to be tested, he told the media. Another 700 have been shifted into quarantine centres, he added.
It is believed that the infections were caused by preachers who attended the event from Indonesia.
State officials have called for action to be taken against mosque officials, but they have denied any wrongdoing.
Local media reports say that Nizamuddin – the locality where the mosque is located – has been cordoned off and more than 35 buses carrying people to hospitals or quarantine centres.
The congregation – part of a 20th Century Islamic movement called Tablighi Jamaat – began at the end of February, but some of the main events were held in early March.
It’s unclear if the event was ticketed or even if the organisers maintained a roster of visitors as people attended the event throughout, with some staying on and others leaving. Even overseas visitors, some of them preachers, travelled to other parts of the country where they stayed in local mosques and met people.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
So officials have no easy way of finding out how many people attended the event or where they went. But they have already begun to trace and test.
The southern state of Telangana reported on Sunday night that six people who had attended the event died from the virus. The state’s medical officer told the BBC that more than 40 of Telangana’s 71 cases were either directly or indirectly linked to the event.
Indian-administered Kashmir reported its first death from the virus last week – a 65-year-old who had been in Delhi for the congregation. Officials told BBC Urdu that more than 40 of the region’s 48 cases could be traced back to that one patient.
A cluster has even appeared in the distant Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where six of the nine who have tested positive, had returned from the Delhi event.
The southern states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have said more than 3,000 people from their states had attended the event, and Tamil Nadu has traced 16 positive patients to it.
States have also asked other people who attended to come forward for testing.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has asked for a police complaint to be registered against the head of the mosque.
However, the event’s organisers have issued a statement, saying they had suspended the event and asked everyone to leave as soon as Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that there would be a day-long national curfew on 22 March.
While many were able to leave, they say, others were stranded because states began to seal their borders the following day, and two days later, India imposed a 21-day lockdown, suspending buses and trains.
The mosque’s premises include dormitories that can house hundreds of people.
The organisers say they informed the local police about all of this and continued to cooperate with medical officers who came to inspect the premises.
The mosque, the statement says, “never violated any provision of law, and always tried to act with compassion and reason towards the visitors who came to Delhi from different states. It did not let them violate the medical guidelines by thronging ISBTs (bus stops) or roaming on streets.”
This is not the first time religious congregations have been blamed for the spread of coronavirus.
Tablighi Jamaat events have also been blamed for spreading cases in Indonesia and Malaysia.
And in South Korea, many positive cases were linked to the Schincheonji church, a secretive religious sect, that has since apologised for its role in the outbreak.
Airport staff unload medical materials donated by China to Laos from a chartered plane at the Wattay International Airport in Vientiane, Laos, March 29, 2020. A team of Chinese medical experts, along with medical materials, arrived in Lao capital Vientiane by a chartered plane Sunday morning to assist Laos to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)
VIENTIANE, March 29 (Xinhua) — A team of Chinese medical experts, along with medical materials, arrived in Lao capital Vientiane by a chartered plane Sunday morning to assist Laos to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Somdy Douangdy, Lao deputy prime minister and chair of the Task Force Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, and Chinese Ambassador to Laos Jiang Zaidong received the Chinese medical experts at the Wattay International Airport in Vientiane.
The Chinese medical team includes experts in various fields such as infection prevention and control, intensive care, epidemics, and laboratory testing. They also brought along with medical supplies.
The team came to Laos less than five days after the Lao side announced its first two confirmed COVID-19 cases and asked for assistance from China.
Laos has detected eight confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Saturday afternoon.
When welcoming the Chinese experts, Lao Deputy Prime Minister Somdy said that the Lao side is heartfully grateful for the Chinese medical expert team’s coming only in five days after Laos confirmed COVID-19 cases. China’s gesture reflects the profound friendship from the Chinese side to the Lao people, he said.
The medical team, made up of top experts in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province, brought Chinese experiences and solutions to Laos’ epidemic prevention and control, said the Lao deputy prime minister, adding that the Lao government will coordinate and ensure all possible conveniences for the Chinese medical expert team.
Somdy said the Lao side will make full use of the intellectual support and material assistance brought by the Chinese side, and will try its best to prevent COVID-19 from spreading.
“A friend in need is a friend indeed,” Jiang Zaidong said, adding that China will not forget in the early days of the outbreak, Laos donated money and multiple batches of anti-epidemic materials to China, and tried its best to successfully organize the China-ASEAN Special Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Coronavirus Disease in Vientiane.
The Chinese people are always ready to return the kindness, sand Jiang. Currently, the number of confirmed cases in Laos is increasing, and the pressure on prevention and control is rising. As a community with a shared future, China will go through the difficulties with the Lao people, jointly strengthen epidemic prevention and control, and steadily push forward bilateral cooperation, the ambassador said.
Huang Xingli, the head of the Chinese medical expert team, said to Xinhua on arrival that the main tasks of the expert team are to share experiences and exchange with Lao local hospitals and experts, to introduce China’s anti-epidemic experience, to provide consultation to the Lao side on epidemic prevention and control, diagnosis and treatment and laboratory work, and to provide training and guidance for the Lao medical staff and community staff.
Along with the team also came medical treatment, protective supplies and a batch of Chinese and Western medicines donated by China’s Yunnan Province.
Laos announced it had detected the first two confirmed COVID-19 cases on March 24. The total number has risen to eight till Saturday.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Millions are workers are defying a curfew and returning home
When I spoke to him on the phone, he had just returned home to his village in the northern state of Rajasthan from neighbouring Gujarat, where he worked as a mason.
In the rising heat, Goutam Lal Meena had walked on macadam in his sandals. He said he had survived on water and biscuits.
In Gujarat, Mr Meena earned up to 400 rupees ($5.34; £4.29) a day and sent most of his earnings home. Work and wages dried up after India declared a 21-day lockdown with four hours notice on the midnight of 24 March to prevent the spread of coronavirus. (India has reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 cases and 27 deaths so far.) The shutting down of all transport meant that he was forced to travel on foot.
“I walked through the day and I walked through the night. What option did I have? I had little money and almost no food,” Mr Meena told me, his voice raspy and strained.
He was not alone. All over India, millions of migrant workers are fleeing its shuttered cities and trekking home to their villages.
These informal workers are the backbone of the big city economy, constructing houses, cooking food, serving in eateries, delivering takeaways, cutting hair in salons, making automobiles, plumbing toilets and delivering newspapers, among other things. Escaping poverty in their villages, most of the estimated 100 million of them live in squalid housing in congested urban ghettos and aspire for upward mobility.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Informal workers are the backbone of India’s big city economies
Last week’s lockdown turned them into refugees overnight. Their workplaces were shut, and most employees and contractors who paid them vanished.
Sprawled together, men, women and children began their journeys at all hours of the day last week. They carried their paltry belongings – usually food, water and clothes – in cheap rexine and cloth bags. The young men carried tatty backpacks. When the children were too tired to walk, their parents carried them on their shoulders.
They walked under the sun and they walked under the stars. Most said they had run out of money and were afraid they would starve. “India is walking home,” headlined The Indian Express newspaper.
The staggering exodus was reminiscent of the flight of refugees during the bloody partition in 1947. Millions of bedraggled refugees had then trekked to east and west Pakistan, in a migration that displaced 15 million people.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Migrant labourers feel they have more social security in their villages
This time, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are desperately trying to return home in their own country. Battling hunger and fatigue, they are bound by a collective will to somehow get back to where they belong. Home in the village ensures food and the comfort of the family, they say.
Clearly, a lockdown to stave off a pandemic is turning into a humanitarian crisis.
Among the teeming refugees of the lockdown was a 90-year-old woman, whose family sold cheap toys at traffic lights in a suburb outside Delhi.
Kajodi was walking with her family to their native Rajasthan, some 100km (62 miles) away. They were eating biscuits and smoking beedis, – traditional hand-rolled cigarettes – to kill hunger. Leaning on a stick, she had been walking for three hours when journalist Salik Ahmed met her. The humiliating flight from the city had not robbed her off her pride. “She said she would have bought a ticket to go home if transport was available,” Mr Ahmed told me.
Others on the road included a five-year-old boy who was on a 700km (434 miles) journey by foot with his father, a construction worker, from Delhi to their home in Madhya Pradesh state in central India. “When the sun sets we will stop and sleep,” the father told journalist Barkha Dutt. Another woman walked with her husband and two-and-a-half year old daughter, her bag stuffed with food, clothes and water. “We had a place to stay but no money to buy food,” she said.
Then there was Rajneesh, a 26-year-old automobile worker who walking 250km (155 miles) to his village in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. It would take him four days, he reckoned. “We will die walking before coronavirus hits us,” the man told Ms Dutt.
He was not exaggerating. Last week, a 39-year-old man on a 300km (186 miles) trek from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh complained of chest pain and exhaustion and died; and a 62-year-old man, returning from a hospital by foot in Gujarat, collapsed outside his house and died. Four other migrants, turned away at the borders on their way to Rajasthan from Gujarat, were mowed down by a truck on a dark highway.
As the crisis worsened, state governments scrambled to arrange transport, shelter and food.
Image copyright SALIK AHMED/OUTLOOKImage caption Ninety-year-old Kajodi Devi is walking from Delhi to her village
But trying to transport them to their villages quickly turned into another nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of workers were pressed against each other at a major bus terminal in Delhi as buses rolled in to pick them up.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal implored the workers not to leave the capital. He asked them to “stay wherever you are, because in large gatherings, you are also at risk of being infected with the coronavirus.” He said his government would pay their rent, and announced the opening of 568 food distribution centres in the capital. Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologised for the lockdown “which has caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people”, adding these “tough measures were needed to win this battle.”
Whatever the reason, Mr Modi and state governments appeared to have bungled in not anticipating this exodus.
Mr Modi has been extremely responsive to the plight of Indian migrant workers stranded abroad: hundreds of them have been brought back home in special flights. But the plight of workers at home struck a jarring note.
“Wanting to go home in a crisis is natural. If Indian students, tourists, pilgrims stranded overseas want to return, so do labourers in big cities. They want to go home to their villages. We can’t be sending planes to bring home one lot, but leave the other to walk back home,” tweeted Shekhar Gupta, founder and editor of The Print.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption There is a precedent for this kind of exodus during crisis
The city, says Chinmay Tumbe, author of India Moving: A History of Migration, offers economic security to the poor migrant, but their social security lies in their villages, where they have assured food and accommodation. “With work coming to a halt and jobs gone, they are now looking for social security and trying to return home,” he told me.
Also there’s plenty of precedent for the flight of migrant workers during a crisis – the 2005 floods in Mumbai witnessed many workers fleeing the city. Half of the city’s population, mostly migrants, had also fled the city – then Bombay – in the wake of the 1918 Spanish flu.
When plague broke out in western India in 1994 there was an “almost biblical exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from the industrial city of Surat [in Gujarat]”, recounts historian Frank Snowden in his book Epidemics and Society.
Half of Bombay’s population deserted the city, during a previous plague epidemic in 1896. The draconian anti-plague measures imposed by the British rulers, writes Dr Snowden, turned out to be a “blunt sledgehammer rather than a surgical instrument of precision”. They had helped Bombay to survive the epidemic, but “the fleeing residents carried the disease with them, thereby spreading it.”
More than a century later, that same fear haunts India today. Hundreds of thousands of the migrants will eventually reach home, either by foot, or in packed buses. There they will move into their joint family homes, often with ageing parents. Some 56 districts in nine Indian states account for half of inter-state migration of male workers, according to a government report. These could turn out to be potential hotspots as thousands of migrants return home.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The fleeing migrants could spread the disease all over the country
Partha Mukhopadhyay, a senior fellow at Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research, suggests that 35,000 village councils in these 56 potentially sensitive districts should be involved to test returning workers for the virus, and isolate infected people in local facilities.
In the end, India is facing daunting and predictable challenges in enforcing the lockdown and also making sure the poor and homeless are not fatally hurt. Much of it, Dr Snowden told me, will depend on whether the economic and living consequences of the lockdown strategy are carefully managed, and the consent of the people is won. “If not, there is a potential for very serious hardship, social tension and resistance.” India has already announced a $22bn relief package for those affected by the lockdown.
The next few days will determine whether the states are able to transport the workers home or keep them in the cities and provide them with food and money. “People are forgetting the big stakes amid the drama of the consequences of the lockdown: the risk of millions of people dying,” says Nitin Pai of Takshashila Institution, a prominent think tank.
“There too, likely the worst affected will be the poor.”
South Africa, Kenya latest to halt arrivals from ‘high-risk’ countries as cases across the continent double over the weekend
Concerns are growing over whether health care systems in some African nations will be able to cope
Masked volunteers provide soap and water for participants to wash their hands against the new coronavirus at a women’s 5km fun run in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Sunday. Photo: AP
Travel bans and school closures were announced in South Africa and Kenya on Sunday, as concerns grew over the capacity of the continent’s fragile health systems to cope with the spread of the deadly new coronavirus, with more than a dozen countries reporting their first cases.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster, banning arrivals by foreign nationals from high-risk countries including Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Germany, the United States, Britain and China, effective Wednesday.
“We have cancelled visas to visitors from those countries from today and previously granted visas are hereby revoked,” Ramaphosa said in a televised address on Sunday evening, adding that any foreign national who had visited high-risk countries in the past 20 days would be denied a visa.
South African schools will also be closed from Wednesday until after the Easter weekend. Gatherings of more than 100 people have been banned and mass celebrations for Human Rights Day and other events cancelled. “Never before in the history of our democracy has our country been confronted with such a severe situation,” Ramaphosa said.
In Kenya, where three cases of Covid-19 – the disease caused by the new coronavirus – have now been confirmed, President Uhuru Kenyatta suspended travel from any country with reported infections. Only Kenyan citizens and foreigners with valid residency permits would be allowed entry, provided they proceeded to self-quarantine or a government-designated quarantine facility, he said.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta reports two more cases of coronavirus in the country, bringing its total number of cases to three. Photo: DPA
Kenyatta also suspended learning in all educational institutions with immediate effect. “Some of the measures may cause inconvenience, but I want to assure you they are designed to ensure that we effectively contain the spread of the virus,” he said.
Kenya and South Africa join Ghana, Rwanda and Morocco in implementing travel restrictions or outright bans, while others are closing churches, museums, sporting activities, nightclubs and tourist attractions in a bid to curb the spread of the disease.
The continent was largely spared in the early days of the outbreak but has now recorded more than 300 cases and six deaths. Algeria, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia all reported more new cases over the weekend, which saw numbers of new infections across Africa more than double in just two days.
As numbers rise, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said there are around a dozen countries on the continent without the capacity to do their own testing.
They will have to send samples to countries like South Africa, which itself is struggling to contain the virus, with confirmed cases doubling to 61 on Sunday, a day after 114 of its citizens were repatriated from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicentre of the outbreak and the first to be placed in lockdown.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, warned that the risk of other African countries detecting new cases of Covid-19 remained high. “Our strategy is clear: we want to capacitate the member states, so they can quickly detect and mitigate the effects of the disease in Africa, and, if widespread transmission occurs, prevent severe illness and death,” he said.
The World Health Organisation has already warned that critical gaps remain in the capacity of many African nations to trace, detect and treat the disease. On Friday, the WHO Africa office said it was “striving to help member states fill these gaps” but warned of global shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE) including gloves, masks and hand sanitiser.
Major coronavirus outbreak in Africa ‘just a matter of time’
13 Mar 2020
WHO said its first blanket distribution of PPEs, to 24 African countries, had been completed and another wave of distributions was planned.
“With Covid-19 officially declared a pandemic, all countries in Africa must act,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa. “Every country can still change the course of this pandemic by scaling up their emergency preparedness or response.
“Cases may still be low in Africa and we can keep it that way with robust all-of-government actions to fight the new coronavirus.”
The 55 member states of the African Union have suspended meetings until May, while the six countries that make up the East African Community have suspended all planned meetings until further notice.
In Algeria – one of the worst-hit North African countries, with 48 cases and four deaths, as of Monday morning – all schools and universities have been closed, while Senegal, with 24 cases to date, has closed schools and cancelled its Independence Day festivities on April 4, which this year marks 60 years since its independence from France. Cruise ships have also been banned from docking in Senegal.
On Sunday, Rwanda closed all its places of worship and suspended large gatherings such as weddings and sporting activities. Schools and universities in the central African country are also closed. National airline RwandAir has also suspended flights between the capital Kigali and Mumbai until April 30.
This is in addition to earlier suspensions of its routes with Tel Aviv and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, which remain in place until further notice.
While most African airlines have suspended flights to cities in mainland China, Ethiopian Airlines has continued flying to most of its destinations, describing its China routes as among its most profitable. Nevertheless, chief executive Tewolde GebreMariam last week said coronavirus fears had cut demand by a fifth on most of its routes.
Image copyright EPAImage caption India has stopped exports of masks to make sure there are ample domestic supplies
A 68-year-old woman from Delhi has been confirmed as the second Indian to die from the coronavirus.
The woman, who had underlying health conditions, is thought to have been infected by her son who travelled to Switzerland and Italy last month.
India’s first fatality from the virus was confirmed on Thursday.
The 76-year-old man, from the southern state of Karnataka, died after returning from a month-long visit to Saudi Arabia on 29 February.
People who came in contact with the man are being traced and quarantined, the state’s health minister said. India has 82 confirmed cases of the virus, the health ministry says.
The Delhi woman’s son was “initially asymptomatic but developed a fever and cough after one day”, a government statement said. The family were then screened and the mother and son admitted to hospital.
The 76-year-old Karnataka man was screened at the airport on his return but showed no symptoms at the time. After he developed difficulties last week, he was taken to hospital. He died on Tuesday but it was not reported until Thursday.
India’s Supreme Court has said it will only hear urgent cases from Monday, and has restricted the number of people who can enter a courtroom.
Karnataka has banned all gatherings including weddings, sports events and conferences for a week as the country attempts to slow the spread of the virus.
Malls, movie theatres, pubs and night clubs have also been shut.
“The government will decide on further action after a week following a review,” the state’s chief minister BS Yediyurappa announced on Friday.
But he said that government offices would continue to function as normal.
India has taken a number of steps to halt the spread of Covid-19:
All visas, barring a select few categories, have been suspended for a month
Visa-free travel afforded to overseas citizens of the country has been suspended until 15 April and even those allowed in could be subject to 14 days of quarantine
Schools, colleges and movie theatres in the capital, Delhi, have been shut until 31 March
The Indian Premier League (IPL), featuring nearly 60 foreign players and scheduled to begin on 29 March, has been postponed to 15 April
Two one-day cricket matches between India and South Africa will be played behind closed doors
India’s health ministry says it was among the first countries in the world to prepare for an outbreak of the respiratory illness, and denied allegations that it was slow in testing suspected cases.
“Our surveillance system is strong and we are able to quickly identify any symptomatic patients,” RR Gangakhedkar from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) told reporters on Thursday.
However, there are concerns about whether the country will be fully equipped to prevent and treat an outbreak.
It would be near impossible for India to force its citizens into mass quarantine and hospitalise people in numbers like China, says the BBC’s Soutik Biswas.
Our correspondent says there are also concerns about the country’s poor healthcare data. India has a shoddy record in even recording deaths and disease – only 77% of deaths are registered, and doctors are more likely to get the cause of death wrong than right, according to a study the Toronto-based Centre for Global Research. There is patchy data for flu-related deaths.
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