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.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
BEIJING/WUHAN, China (Reuters) – China on Saturday mourned the thousands of “martyrs” who have died in the new coronavirus outbreak, flying the national flag at half mast throughout the country and suspending all forms of entertainment.
The Chinese national flag flies at half-mast at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, as China holds a national mourning for those who died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), on the Qingming tomb sweeping festival, April 4, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
The day of mourning coincided with the start of the annual Qingming tomb-sweeping festival, when millions of Chinese families pay respects to their ancestors.
At 10 a.m. (0200 GMT) Beijing time, the country observed three minutes of silence to mourn those who died, including frontline medical workers and doctors. Cars, trains and ships sounded their horns and air raid sirens wailed.
In Zhongnanhai, the seat of political power in Beijing, President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders paid silent tribute in front of the national flag, with white flowers pinned to their chest as a mark of mourning, state media reported.
More than 3,300 people in mainland China have died in the epidemic, which first surfaced in the central province of Hubei late last year, according to statistics published by the National Health Commission.
In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and the epicentre of the outbreak, all traffic lights in urban areas turned red at 10 a.m. and all road traffic ceased for three minutes.
Some 2,567 people have died in Wuhan, a megacity of 11 million people located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river. The Wuhan deaths account for more than 75% of the country’s fatalities.
Among those who died was Li Wenliang, a young doctor who tried to raise the alarm about the disease. Li was honoured by the Hubei government earlier this week, after initially being reprimanded by police in Wuhan for “spreading rumours”.
Gui Yihong, 27, who was among thousands of Wuhan locals who volunteered to deliver food supplies to hospitals during the city’s months-long lockdown, recalled the fear, frustration and pain at Wuhan Central Hospital, where Li worked.
“If you weren’t at the frontlines you wouldn’t be able to experience this,” said Gui, as he laid some flowers next to Wuhan’s 1954 flood memorial by the Yangtze.
“I had to (come) and bear witness. For the last 80 days we had fought between life and death, and finally gained victory. It was not easy at all to come by.”
While the worst was behind Wuhan, the virus has spread to all corners of the globe since January, sickening more than a million people, killing more than 55,000 and paralysing the world economy.
Wuhan banned all tomb-sweeping activities in its cemeteries until at least April 30, curtailing one of the most important dates in the traditional Chinese lunar new year calendar which usually sees millions of families travel to tend to their ancestral graves, offer flowers and burn incense.
They have also told residents, most stuck at home due to lockdown restrictions, to use online streaming services to watch cemetery staff carry out those tasks live.
ASYMPTOMATIC CASES
Online, celebrities including “X-Men: Days of Future Past” star Fan Bingbing swapped their glamorous social media profile pictures for sombre photos in grey or black, garnering millions of “likes” from fans.
Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent (0700.HK) suspended all online games on Saturday.
As of Friday, the total number of confirmed cases across the country stood at 81,639, including 19 new infections, the National Health Commission said.
Eighteen of the new cases involved travellers arriving from abroad. The remaining one new infection was a local case in Wuhan, a patient who was previously asymptomatic.
Asymptomatic people exhibit few signs of infection such as fevers or coughs, and are not included in the tally of confirmed cases by Chinese authorities until they do.
However, they are still infectious, and the government has warned of possible local transmissions if such asymptomatic cases are not properly monitored.
China reported 64 new asymptomatic cases as of Friday, including 26 travellers arriving in the country from overseas. That takes the total number of asymptomatic people currently under medical observation to 1,030, including 729 in Hubei.
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.”
TAIPEI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Taiwan and the United States this week discussed how to get “closer coordination” between the island and the World Health Organization (WHO) during the coronavirus outbreak, drawing a rebuke from China for “political manipulation” of the epidemic.
Taiwan’s is excluded from the WHO due to diplomatic pressure from China, which considers it merely a wayward province with no right to the trappings of state.
Its omission has become a major source of anger for the Taiwan, which says it has been unable to get first hand information from the WHO, putting lives on the island in danger for the sake of politics. Both the WHO and China say Taiwan has been given the help it needs.
The U.S. State Department said on Thursday senior officials from the United States and Taiwan on Tuesday held a “virtual forum on expanding Taiwan’s participation on the global stage”, with particular focus on the WHO and how to share Taiwan’s successful model of fighting the coronavirus.
“Participants also discussed ongoing efforts to reinstate Taiwan’s observer status at the World Health Assembly, as well as other avenues for closer coordination between Taiwan and the World Health Organization,” it said.
The World Health Assembly is the WHO’s decision-making body.
Taiwan attended it as an observer from 2009-2016 when Taipei-Beijing relations warmed, but China blocked further participation after the election of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who China views as a separatist, charges she denies.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry expressed thanks to the United States on Friday for its “continued taking of concrete actions to support Taiwan’s participation in the WHO and other international organisations”.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the United States and Taiwan were both well aware that members of the WHO must be sovereign states, and accused Taiwan of seeking political capital from the outbreak.
“We hope they will not attempt to use this epidemic to engage in political manipulation,” she told a daily news briefing.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a new law last month requiring increased support for Taiwan’s international role. China threatened unspecified retaliation in response.
Like most countries the United States has only unofficial ties with the island, but is its strongest backer on the world stage.
Taiwan has been far more successful than many of its neighbours keeping the virus in check thanks to early and stringent steps to control its spread. It has reported 348 cases and five deaths to date.
In its latest measure, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said on Friday people who don’t wear face masks on public transport would face fines of up to T$15,000 (nearly $500).
Image copyright TAOBAO/SINA WEIBOImage caption Taobao confirmed that this was no April Fools joke
An online buyer has won an opportunity to launch a commercial rocket for 40 million yuan ($5.6m; £4.5m) in central China, it’s reported.
According to the official People’s Daily, popular online shopping platform Taobao live-streamed the sale of a commercial rocket yesterday evening.
The official China Daily said that the rocket was “a small launch vehicle” in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, which has already seen eight commercial launches.
Buyers were told that they could paint the body of the rocket and the launch platform, and that they could visit the launch site and control the launch.
Image copyrightT AOBAO/SINA WEIBOImage caption Celebrity sales anchor Wei Ya has more than seven million Weibo followers
Posters advertising the livestream, headed by celebrity shopping anchor Wei Ya, went viral on Wednesday 1 April, leading many to speculate they were part of an April Fools joke.
But national newspaper Global Times says that Taobao confirmed that “this is for real” in an online post.
It hints that the decision to sell a rocket experience, headed by Chinese entrepreneur Luo Yonghao, followed an earlier online poll where netizens were asked whether they’d rather win a “rocket, a satellite, a partner or a cleaning lady”.
‘How to choose the first rocket in your life?’
China Daily says that this was “the world’s first live broadcast of a rocket sale” and the livestream has attracted considerable attention online.
Media have noted that the livestream of the event, watched by millions, has been an opportunity to re-promote what Wuhan has to offer, since it made international attention as the original epicentre of the Covid-19 virus.
As well as promoting Wuhan’s Aerospace Science and Technology & Rocket Technology, the livestream was also interspersed by footage highlighting the hard-working efforts of medical workers in the city.
The name of the buyer has not been revealed, but this is not the first time that an online buyer has purchased an air vehicle for millions of dollars. In November 2017, two Boeing 747 jets were bought on Taobao in an online auction.
Image copyright TAOBAO/SINA WEIBOImage caption Taobao confirmed shoppers could buy a rocket on their platform
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Anger at being confused with China amid the coronavirus outbreak and Beijing’s stepped-up efforts to assert sovereignty is stirring heated debate in Taiwan about how to further distance itself from its giant and often threatening neighbour
At its core is a debate about whether to drop “China” from the island’s official name, the Republic of China.
During the virus crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO), which considers the island part of China, has listed Taiwan’s far lower case number under China’s, and China has repeatedly insisted only it has the right to speak for Taiwan on the global stage, including about health issues.
Taipei says this has confused countries and led them to impose the same restrictions on Taiwanese travellers as on Chinese, and has minimised Taiwan’s own successful efforts to control the virus.
Taiwan has been debating for years who it is and what exactly its relationship should be with China – including the island’s name. But the pandemic has shot the issue back into the spotlight.
Lin I-chin, a legislator for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said in parliament last month that Taiwan should change its English name to “Republic of Chunghwa”, an English rendering of the word Taiwan uses for China in its name.
“Taiwan has been brought to grief by China,” she said.
On Sunday, the New Power Party, one of Taiwan’s smaller opposition groups, released the results of a survey in which almost three-quarters of respondents said Taiwan passports should only have the word “Taiwan” on them, removing any reference to China.
“During this epidemic period, our people have been misunderstood by other countries, highlighting the urgency of changing the English name,” it said in a statement.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry has given a cautious response to the passport idea, noting that according to the constitution, the official name is Republic of China and that the word Taiwan was already added to passport covers in 2003.
“In the future, if there is consensus between the ruling and opposition parties on this new name, the Foreign Ministry shall cooperate in handling it,” spokeswoman Joanne Ou said.
But the government is wary of a name change for Taiwan, saying there is no consensus for such a radical move.
Although the DPP supports the island’s independence – theoretically meaning the official formation of a Republic of Taiwan – President Tsai Ing-wen says there is no need to do so, as the island is already an independent country called the Republic of China. She often refers to the island as the Republic of China, Taiwan.
‘REPUBLIC OF TAIWAN’
Premier Su Tseng-chang has said changing the island’s name isn’t the most urgent issue facing Taiwan.
“If we want to change then it might as well be to ‘Republic of Taiwan’. Taiwan is more well known,” Su said in parliament. “But if there’s no national consensus, a name change isn’t the most important thing for now.”
Taiwan’s official name is a throwback to when the Kuomintang party fled to the island after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists in 1949, and continued to claim to be China’s legitimate government.
“The Republic of China is a country, Taiwan is not,” Chen Yu-jen, a Kuomintang legislator from the island of Kinmen, which sits just offshore from the Chinese city of Xiamen, told parliament on Monday.
The statement drew a sharp rebuke from Su, who told reporters it meant Chen had no right to be a member of the legislature. Chen said she was simply stating the facts, and that Taiwan is a geographic name, not a national name.
China’s pressure on Taiwan diplomatically and militarily during the virus crisis has also reduced Beijing’s already low standing in the eyes of many Taiwanese.
A March poll commissioned by Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council and carried out by Taipei’s National Chengchi University showed more than three-quarters of respondents believed China’s government was unfriendly to Taiwan’s, the highest level in a decade.
Any name change would infuriate China, which has a law mandating the use of force to stop Taiwan independence.
not long ago – unless they have a child addicted to the wildly popular app, on which users make and share short, amusing videos.
It has grown explosively since its 2016 launch, with 800 million monthly active users now – 300 million of them outside China in places such as India (120 million) and the
(37 million). And many have no idea it is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.
The first Chinese app to mount a real global challenge to Facebook and Instagram, it is seen as one of the shiniest new weapons in the US-China technology war. And a boost, perhaps, to Chinese soft power.
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It experienced a growth spurt in 2019 that analysts predicted would slow a little this year. That, however, was before the coronavirus, which seems to be giving the app a bump, especially beyond its core teenage fan base.
As pandemic fears rise and millions are stuck indoors, major Hollywood celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, 50, have taken to posting their own all-singing, all-dancing videos, which then go viral on other media platforms.
Even the World Health Organisation has jumped on the bandwagon, joining the app in late February to share public health advice.
The TikTok logo on a smartphone. Photo: Getty Images
But to some, the growth of TikTok is far from benign.
Privacy advocates and several US congressmen want to rein in the app over concerns it may censor and monitor content for the Chinese government, and be used for misinformation and election interference. This despite the fact that TikTok keeps its servers outside China and swears it will not hand over user data.
Are these fears justified – or fuelled by political and anticompetitive motives?
Thinkers such as Yuval Noah Harari warn that the coronavirus pandemic could be a watershed in the history of mass surveillance.
But Eric Harwit, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii, does not buy such arguments against TikTok, especially given that 60 per cent of its US users are aged 16 to 24.
“ByteDance has done a pretty good job of having a firewall between TikTok and the Chinese version of it, Douyin.
TikTok, iPhone: all you need to escape Mumbai’s slums – for 15 seconds
1 Nov 2019
“Also, many users in the US are teens and they’re not a particularly useful source of national security information.
“So I’d say the concerns are motivated more by a general fear of any kind of Chinese telecommunication application rather than actual attempts to siphon off valuable US intelligence information.
“And Facebook and other American companies have similar products,” Harwit points out. “US government officials will always want to protect American commercial interests.”
Sarah Cook, a China analyst for Freedom House – the US government-funded think tank – disagrees.
“We have concerns about how Facebook and Twitter deal with information affecting electoral politics, and that’s magnified if you’re talking about a Chinese company that now has a user base that rivals theirs.”
Chinese officials, she argues, have shown a willingness to censor and manipulate information well beyond their country’s borders – for instance, regarding the scale of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, an obfuscation that may have exacerbated its impact abroad.
“For those who think Chinese government censorship is only Chinese people’s problem, this pandemic shows how much that’s not the case.
“And even if it’s not happening right now with TikTok, the concern is that Chinese companies are beholden to their government, whether they want to be or not.
“I’m not saying block TikTok entirely,” she says. “It’s a question of looking at it in a democratic system and deciding on reasonable oversight and safeguards to protect users and information flows when that time comes.”
When it comes to expanding China’s cultural influence, though, neither Cook nor Harwit believes the app is especially effective.
Most people are oblivious to its Chinese origins, which the user experience does not reflect in any way. So there is no goodwill-generating soft power of the sort wielded by, say,
If anything, TikTok often promotes the increasingly homogenous, Western-leaning culture seen on many globally popular social media apps.
So says Morten Bay, a lecturer in digital and social media at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
“A semi-Western culture, with small variations of local culture, is becoming the norm on social media. And Chinese soft power is difficult to assert because there’s no value difference.”
And even if Chinese tech companies keep taking bigger bites of the Western market, he is sceptical of China’s “ability to leverage that for soft power in a geopolitical sense”.
“Because there is a very big apparatus pushing against China in that regard. As soon as TikTok started gaining traction in the US, people came out against it, trying to make everyone aware of the privacy and geopolitical issues.
The #KaunsiBadiBaatHai campaign on TikTok aims to raise awareness about women’s safety issues in India. Image: TikTok
“So China faces a lot of resistance,” Bay concludes. “And I’m not sure a social media platform on its own can do much about that.”
Still, if you had to back a horse in this race, TikTok would be it, says Zhang Mengmeng.
When she and her colleagues from global industry analysis firm Counterpoint Research visited the company, they were impressed by its research and development capabilities.
“Because they’re a very young company, their pace for incubating new projects is a lot faster, especially compared to successful but older internet companies in China which have been around for 15 to 20 years.
Indian invasion of Chinese social media apps sparks fear and loathing in New Delhi
28 Apr 2019
“They have lots of little start-up projects within the company and their organisational structure is very flat – it doesn’t matter what your age is, if you have a good idea, you get promoted very quickly.”
TikTok’s rise is also emblematic of a broader role reversal in the US-China tech war, she believes.
“Before, the US was more advanced in terms of internet development and China seemed to just copy its new ideas. Now, this is reversing. There are so many people in China using the internet that start-ups there can test ideas very easily.
“So now it seems like a lot of US companies are trying to see what ideas are coming out of China.” ■
Education ministry says they will be held a month later than planned – on July 7 and 8 – when there is ‘a lower risk’ for students and staff
It will also give them more time to prepare after months of online learning due to school closures
Students were back in class at the Xian Middle School in Shaanxi province on Monday after a nationwide closure because of the coronavirus outbreak. Photo: Xinhua
China’s all-important annual college entrance exams have been postponed by a month because of the coronavirus crisis – the first time they have been disrupted since the Cultural Revolution.
Universities in mainland China base enrolments solely on the results of the gruelling examinations, known as the gaokao, and they are seen as tests that can make or break a student’s future.
This year, they will be held on July 7 and 8 for most of the country – a month later than planned, the Ministry of Education announced on Tuesday.
A date has not yet been set for the capital Beijing or for Hubei, the province worst-hit by the virus. The ministry said authorities in the two places would decide later when they would hold the gaokao, based on their public health situations.
Wang Hui, a ministry official who handles the university sector, said 10.71 million students were expected to sit the exams this summer.
He said the ministry decided to postpone this year’s gaokao to put students’ “health and fairness first”.
Coronavirus: Decoding Covid-19
Wang said although the spread of the coronavirus had slowed to almost a halt in the mainland, there was still a risk of isolated cases and localised outbreaks. China’s focus now is preventing imported cases among people who arrive in the country from overseas.
“[Disease control and] prevention experts suggest that if the gaokao is postponed for a month, there will be a lower risk from … the epidemic,” Wang said.
“We must adopt the most appropriate and the least risky plan in order to protect the safety and health of the students as well as the staff involved in the tests.”
The ministry official said the delay was also about fairness, by giving students more time to study at school and prepare for the exams.
“We hope to reduce the impact of the epidemic on students, especially those from rural and poverty-stricken regions, as much as possible,” Wang said.
“Third-year high school students have had to stay home [because of the coronavirus outbreak] so their preparation for the gaokao has been affected,” he said. “The internet [access] divide between urban and rural areas means some students in rural and poorer regions have been more affected by this epidemic.”
With schools remaining closed during coronavirus outbreak, China launches national remote learning platforms
18 Feb 2020
Beijing imposed a nationwide school closure after the Lunar New Year holiday in late January as the pneumonia-like illness rapidly spread. Schools were told to postpone the new term that was due to start in mid- or late February, meaning millions of students – from primary school to university – had to turn to online learning. Several provinces began reopening schools this month and more are set to follow in early to mid-April, but authorities in Beijing and Guangdong have yet to set a date for classes to resume.
The last time the gaokao was disrupted was during the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political and social turmoil that ended in 1976. It was cancelled during this time and since it resumed in 1979 until 2002 it has been held nearly every year from July 7 to 9. From 2003, the ministry moved the gaokao forward to June 7 and 8 to avoid hot weather and potential natural disasters. The severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak (Sars) in 2002-03 did not delay the exams.
China’s university entry exam, gaokao: elliptical, obscure and confusing
8 Jun 2018
According to an online survey conducted by microblogging website Sina Weibo on Tuesday, some 537,000 users said they were “shocked” by the ministry’s decision and were “experiencing history”.
About 282,000 people said it was a good thing for students since it gave them more time to prepare for the exams. But it was bad news for another 153,000 users, who said they would have to endure an extra month of exhausting preparation.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India has an estimated 48,000 ventilators and most of them are already in use
In an 8,000 sq ft (743 sq m) facility in the western Indian city of Pune, a bunch of young engineers are racing against time to develop a low-cost ventilator that could save thousands of lives if the coronavirus pandemic overwhelms the country’s hospitals.
These engineers – from some of India’s top engineering schools – belong to a barely two-year-old start-up which makes water-less robots that clean solar plants.
Last year, Nocca Robotics had a modest turnover of 2.7 million rupees ($36,000; £29,000). The average age of the mechanical, electronic and aerospace engineers who work for the firm is 26.
India, by most estimates, only has 48,000 ventilators. Nobody quite knows how many of these breathing assistance machines are working. But it is a fair assumption that all those available are being used in intensive care units on existing patients with other diseases.
About one in six people with Covid-19 gets seriously ill, which can include breathing difficulties. The country faces seeing its hospitals hobbled as others around the world have been, with doctors forced to choose who they try to save.
At least two Indian companies make ventilators at present, mostly from imported components. They cost around 150,000 ($1,987; £1,612) rupees each. One of them, AgVa Healthcare, plans to make 20,000 in a month’s time. India has also ordered 10,000 from China, but that will meet just a fraction of the potential demand.
The invasive ventilator being developed by the engineers at Nocca Robotics will cost 50,000 rupees ($662). Within five days of beginning work, a group of seven engineers at the start-up have three prototypes of a portable machine ready.
They are being tested on artificial lungs, a prosthetic device that provides oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from the blood. By 7 April, they plan to be ready with machines that can be tested on patients after approvals.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India is beefing up isolation beds in hospitals
“It is most certainly doable,” said Dr Deepak Padmanabhan, a cardiologist at Bangalore’s Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, and a key advisor on this project. “The simulations on artificial lungs have been done and seem to work well.”
Inspiring story
The race to develop this inexpensive, home-grown invasive breathing machine is an inspiring story of swift coordination and speedy action involving public and private institutions, something not common in India.
“The pandemic has brought us all together in ways I could never imagine,” says Amitabha Bandyopadhyay, a professor of biological sciences and bioengineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, and a key mover of the project.
The young engineers mined open source medical supplies groups on the internet to find information on how to make the ventilators. After securing permissions, it took them exactly eight hours to produce the first prototype. Of particular use, say doctors, were some designs by engineers at MIT. With imports stalled, the engineers picked up pressure sensors – a key component of the machine that helps supply oxygen to lungs at a pressure that doesn’t cause injury – from those used in drones and available in the market.
Image copyright AFPImage caption India needs thousands of ventilators to cope with a possible rush of patients
Local authorities helped open firms that stock components – each machine needs 150 to 200 parts – and made sure that a bunch of engineers who had returned home to Nanded after the lockdown were still able to travel 400km (248 miles) back to Pune to work on the machine.
Some leading Indian industrialists, including a major medical device-making company, have offered their factories to manufacture the machines. The plan is to make 30,000 ventilators, at around 150-200 a day, by the middle of May.
Social media influencers joined the effort. Rahul Raj, a lithium battery-maker and an IIT alumnus, crowd-sourced a group called Caring Indians to “pool resources and experience” to cope with the pandemic. Within 24 hours, 1,000 people had signed up. “We tweeted to the local lawmaker and local police in Pune to help the developers, and made contacts with people who would be interested in the project,” Mr Raj said.
‘No-frills machine’
Expat Indian doctors and entrepreneurs who went to the same school – IIT is India’s leading engineering school and alumni include Google chief Sundar Pichai – held Zoom meetings with the young developers, advising them and asking questions about the machine’s development. The head of a US-based company gave them a 90-minute lecture on how to manage production. A former chief of an info-tech company told them how to source the components.
Lastly, a bunch of doctors vetted every development and asked hard questions. In the end, more than a dozen top professionals – pulmonologists, cardiologists, scientists, innovators, venture capitalists – have guided the young team.
Doctors say the goal is to develop a “no-frills” breathing machine tailored to Indian conditions.
Ventilators depend on pressurised oxygen supply from hospital plants. But in a country where piped oxygen is not available in many small towns and villages, developers are seeing whether they can also make the machine run on oxygen cylinders. “In a way we are trying to de-modernise the machine to what it was barely 20 years ago,” says Dr Padmanabhan.
“We are not experienced. But we are very good at making products easily. The robots that we make are much more complex to make. But this is a life-saving machine and carries risk, so we have to be very, very careful that we develop a perfect product which clears all approvals,” said Nikhil Kurele, the 26-year-old co-founder and chief executive officer of Nocca Robotics.
In just a week’s time, India will learn whether they pulled off the feat.
Volume of fuel extracted from gas hydrates is a new world record, natural resources ministry says
Month-long trial also sets a ‘solid technical foundation for commercial exploitation’, it says
China conducted its first operation to extract natural gas from gas hydrates in the South China Sea in 2017. Photo: Reuters
China said on Thursday it extracted 861,400 cubic metres of natural gas from gas hydrates found in the South China Sea during a month-long trial that ended last week.
The production process, which ran from February 17 to March 18, also set two world records: one for the largest total volume extracted and another for the most produced – 287,000 cubic metres – on a single day, the Ministry of Natural Resources said on its website.
The gas was extracted from an area in the north of the disputed waterway, and from a depth of about 1,225 metres, it said.
The success of the latest trial set a “solid technical foundation for commercial exploitation”, the ministry said, adding that China was the first country in the world to exploit gas hydrates using a horizontal well-drilling technique.
Also known as flammable ice, gas hydrates are icelike solids composed mostly of methane. According to figures from the US Department of Energy, one cubic metre of gas hydrate releases 164 cubic metres of conventional natural gas once extracted.
The South China Sea test coincided with sharp movements in global oil and gas prices. China, which is the world’s largest oil and gas importer, has been keen to identify alternative fuel sources, including gas hydrates, to strengthen its energy security.
The official Economic Daily reported in 2017 that China’s reserves of flammable ice were equivalent to about 100 billion tonnes of oil, of which 80 billion tonnes were in the South China Sea.
Yang Fuqiang, a senior energy adviser at the Beijing office of the National Resources Defence Council, an international environmental advocacy group, said that natural gas consumption in China was relatively low compared with that of other countries.
“The demand for natural gas is large and the prospect is promising, but it’s hard to say when China will have commercial development of flammable ice,” he said.
While the government has set a target for natural gas to account for 10 per cent of China’s annual energy consumption by the end of this year, in 2019, the figure was just 8.3 per cent.
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Fan Xiao, chief engineer with the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, said that compared to conventional fuels like oil and gas, flammable ice was still too costly to extract to make its widespread use commercially viable.
“It is an important resource, but exploiting it in a sustainable, economically viable way is still some way off,” he said.
There were also environmental concerns, such as methane leaking during the exploitation process, which increased greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Yang agreed, saying there would be leakage of methane during both mining and transport.
“If the leakage exceeds 5 per cent of the total, it will offset its contribution to carbon reduction,” he said.
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.
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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.
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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.
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