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.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Indore is a bustling commercial city
In early March, 40-year-old Ravi Dosi, a chest specialist in India, saw a baffling surge in patients with respiratory problems at outpatient clinics.
“There was almost a 50% jump in patients with upper respiratory issues and sore throat. They were not responding to antibiotics. Testing was still low and we didn’t really know what was going on,” Dr Dosi, who works at Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences, a 1,156-bed private medical college in the central city of Indore, told me.
Less than a fortnight later, Dr Dosi began seeing an uptick in admissions of Covid-19 patients. Around the end of March, the hospital was receiving 28 infected patients every day.
They had dry cough, fever, and difficulty breathing. Their blood oxygen levels were low. They were reporting loss of taste and smell.
In the first wave of patients, nearly a dozen came from far-flung districts, more than 150km (93 miles) from Indore, a bustling commercial city in Madhya Pradesh state. The state has now become a hotspot, with nearly 400 confirmed infections out of the more than 6,400 infections and nearly 200 deaths across the country so far.
By the second week of April, Dr Dosi and his team of 100 doctors and nearly an equal number of nursing staff working 24/7 in three shifts, were treating 144 Covid-19 patients. (Thirty-one had been treated and sent home already.)
A total of 38 patients were in intensive care. Twenty-one of them were critical. There had been seven deaths. “We are handling the largest number of Covid-19 patients in India,” Vinod Bhandari, a surgeon and chairman of the hospital, told me.
Doctors now believe that the infection was spreading in the community long before the government admitted to it, and testing slowly ramped up. Until two weeks ago, Indian health authorities had been denying community transmission.
Image caption The hospital in Indore has more than 140 patients
Now a new study by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) using surveillance data from 41 labs in the country has hinted at community transmission: 52 districts in 20 states and union territories reported Covid-19 patients. Some 40% of the cases did not report any history of international travel or contact with a known case. (The survey was based on swabs collected from nearly 6,000 patients who tested positive between 15 February and 19 March.)
Back in the hospital in Indore, the doctors are battling the surge in infections.
Three isolation wards spread over two floors floors are stacked with patients. (The hospital has earmarked 525 beds for Covid-19 patients.) Isolation wards have younger patients with mild infection, while elderly patients with more severe symptoms are in intensive care. The oldest patient is a 95-year-old man, and the youngest is a four-month-old boy.
The team of doctors handling patients includes chest specialists, anaesthetists, microbiologists, and dermatologists. There are patients with a lot of underlying medical conditions – diabetes, hypertension, even cancer – so all the specialists have been called in to help with the treatment.
Dr Dosi wakes up early, puts on protective gear – scrubs, face masks and shields, N95 masks, gowns, double gloves and shoe covers – before going on his rounds of the patients. Doctors say they are not facing a shortage of gear yet.
They are using 22 ventilators to help the critical patients breathe, and also providing oxygen supplies to others using nasal cannulas (nose prongs).
In the isolation wards, patients are given oral medication – antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine (commonly known as HCQ), an anti-malarial drug – and directed to maintain social distancing and wash their hands regularly.
Image caption The isolation wards are packed with patients
“I have never seen a challenge and crisis like this in my career. I have heard stories about an outbreak of plague in Surat [in 1994]. But this seems to be much bigger. The biggest challenge is to keep hopes alive and be positive,” says Dr Dosi.
Keeping hopes up for patients in isolation can be taxing. Three tests, say doctors, are being done for the infection – if the first test comes out positive, the patient remains in isolation for two weeks, and is tested twice on two days after the quarantine period. If the last two tests come back negative, the patient is discharged. If not, the patient has to stay in isolation for another two weeks. “It is a tough grind, mentally,” says one doctor.
For the last three weeks, Dr Dosi has been living in the hospital, away from his wife, two sons and parents. His father is a retired pathologist. They communicate via hurried video calls, between his frantic trips to the isolation wards and intensive care.
I ask him when does he expect this to “get over”, so that he can go home.
“In a couple of weeks,” he says. “The lockdown should have helped to slow down the infection.”
Dr Dosi is alluding to the strict 21-day lockdown India imposed on 24 March to halt the spread of the infection.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Health officials have been denying community transmission
Things are getting better, he says.
“I am getting 10 patients for admission in isolation wards, and two patients severe enough for intensive care every day now. Earlier this week, it was 50:50.”
It is possibly too early to hazard a guess about when admissions will slow down to single digits. As more people are tested, the number of patients can easily rise again.
It’s been unrelenting, Dr Dosi says.
Early, on Friday, I sent him a text to find out what was going on.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will promote the sales of export products in domestic markets, as foreign trade faces unprecedented challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic, an assistant commerce minister said on Friday.
As the coronavirus spreads to almost all of China’s trading partners, the world’s second-largest economy is set to reach a grim milestone for full year growth, with the pace of expansion likely to be the slowest since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. And, the export sector is facing millions of job losses and factory shutdowns.
“Due to the rapid spread of the epidemic in the world, foreign demand has slumped and the biggest difficulty facing foreign trade companies is the plunge in orders,” said Ren Hongbin, the assistant minister at the Ministry of Commerce.
He said firms across the board have had their orders cancelled or delayed, and new orders are “very hard to sign”.
“The uncertainty about the pandemic has become the biggest uncertainty for foreign trade development.”
Forecasters expect China’s 2020 growth could be nearer the 2.0% mark – the slowest in over 40 years – due to the sweeping impact of the pandemic both at home and overseas. The economy grew 6.1% last year.
China’s overseas shipments fell 17.2% in January-February from the same period a year earlier, marking the steepest fall since February 2019. Imports sank 4% from a year earlier.
Among the government measures to support the sector, China is accelerating efforts to build online trade fairs and guiding exporters to work with e-commerce retailers for sales in domestic markets and coordinating with its trading partners to stabilise supply chains, said Ren.
The Canton Fair, China’s oldest and biggest trade fair due to take place online, will feature live-streaming services for participants, Li Xingqian, another commerce ministry official, told the same briefing. The fair was originally scheduled to begin on April 15, but was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
China is willing to boost trade relations with other countries, including the United States, under the new circumstances, said Ren, adding that Beijing hopes to work together with Washington to promote bilateral trade.
Both countries have been engaged in a near two-year long trade war with tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s goods, before negotiators called a truce with an interim trade deal in January.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory gate prices fell the most in five months in March, with deflation deepening and set to worsen in coming months as the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus outbreak at home and worldwide shuts down many countries.
The world’s second-largest economy is trying to restart its engines after weeks of near paralysis to contain the pandemic that had severely restricted business activity, flow of goods and the daily life of people.
Friday’s data from the National Bureau of Statistics suggested a durable recovery was some way off, with China’s producer price index (PPI) falling 1.5% from a year earlier, the biggest decline since October last year. It compared with a median forecast of a 1.1% fall tipped by a Reuters poll of analysts and a 0.4% drop in February.
Headline consumer inflation also eased somewhat last month, partly led by government control measures, while core prices remained benign, leaving more room for monetary easing, some analysts said.
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The overall decline in the factory gate gauge was exacerbated by a slump in global oil and commodities prices, which filtered through to crude oil, steel and non-ferrous metal industries, the statistics bureau said in a statement accompanying the data.
“The issue of having more supply than demand, and persistently low oil prices, will intensify deflationary pressures,” said Yang Yewei, a Beijing-based analyst with Southwest Securities.
“Work resumptions on the production side are faster than the repair in demand. Downstream demand is recovering slowly and still remains weak,” he said.
The oil and gas extraction sector had the biggest year-on-year price fall of 21.7%, among the 40 major industrial sectors surveyed, deteriorating sharply from a 0.4% drop in the previous month.
The stringent travel and transport curbs have now been lifted across much of the country including Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak where the virus first emerged in late 2019. So far the virus has killed more than 3,300 and infected over 81,000 people in the country.
Analysts expect a deep first-quarter economic contraction in China and have grown increasingly pessimistic about the country’s prospects for 2020 due to the pandemic’s sweeping global impact.
Many economists and policymakers are forecasting a steep global recession this year as numerous countries are forced into lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus, severely curtailing business activity in a major blow to jobs and incomes.
Worldwide, the virus has killed around 95,000 people and infected more than 1.5 million. Policymakers globally have responded to the crisis by launching an unprecedented package of stimulus measures, injecting trillions of dollars to backstop their economies that have been brought to a virtual standstill.
Beijing has also rolled out a series of fiscal and monetary support steps, and sources have told Reuters that policymakers are readying more stimulus in the coming months to stabilise growth and prevent mass unemployment.
China’s consumer prices rose 4.3% from a year earlier in March, compared with a 4.8% gain tipped by a Reuters poll and a 5.2% increase in February, as logistics and transport conditions improved and government price control measures kicked in.
But food prices still rose over 18% from a year earlier, led by a 116.4% jump in pork prices, the data showed. The virus outbreak has pushed up prices of some food items, such as pork and vegetables.
Core inflation – which excludes food and energy prices – remained benign last month at 1.2%，but it still edged up from 1% in February.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian and Pakistani troops in disputed Kashmir are engaged in their most frequent cross-border fighting of at least two years, official data shows, even as both nuclear-armed rivals battle surging coronavirus outbreaks.
Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between the neighbours but tension was renewed after New Delhi withdrew the autonomy of the Himalayan region last August and split it into federally-administered territories.
Both countries claim the region in full, but rule only parts, and often accuse each other of breaching a 2003 ceasefire pact by shelling and firing across the Line of Control (LoC), an informal border in Kashmir, and of killing dozens every year.
Indian Army data reviewed by Reuters shows 411 ceasefire violations by Pakistan’s military in March, the highest number in a single month since at least 2018. That compares with 267 violations in March last year recorded by the Indian Army.
“(The) Pakistan Army never initiates ceasefire violations along LoC, but it has always responded befittingly to Indian Army’s unprovoked firing,” said Major-General Babar Iftikhar, of the public relations wing of the Pakistan Army.
Iftikhar said Pakistan’s military had recorded 705 ceasefire violations by the Indian Army since the beginning of the year.
The Indian Army data showed 1,197 Pakistani violations during the same period.
Reuters is not in a position to independently verify the competing claims.
Four Indian army officials said the heightened border activity was a cover to help militants from Pakistan-backed groups infiltrate into Indian Kashmir, as some troops help to run health camps and hand out food in the battle on the virus.
“The increase in ceasefire violations is an indication that Pakistan is trying to push militants into the Kashmir valley,” said one of the officials, who all sought anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to media.
India has 5,734 infections, including 166 deaths, while Pakistan has reported 4,072 cases and 58 deaths, with the military of each helping its government’s efforts against the virus.
As summer approaches, infiltration into Kashmir typically picks up. An Indian security official said between 250 and 300 militants were estimated to be ready to cross over from Pakistan, citing intelligence reports.
“This is the time when our (border) fence is the weakest,” with damage caused by winter snows, said the official, who sought anonymity.
On Monday, the Indian Army said in a statement it killed five Pakistan-backed militants at the LoC during a firefight in heavy snow, with five of its special forces soldiers also killed.
Pakistan denies giving material support to militants in Kashmir but says it provides moral and diplomatic backing for the self-determination of Kashmiri people.
MUNICH (Reuters) – One January lunchtime in a car parts company, a worker turned to a colleague and asked to borrow the salt.
As well as the saltshaker, in that instant, they shared the new coronavirus, scientists have since concluded.
That their exchange was documented at all is the result of intense scrutiny, part of a rare success story in the global fight against the virus.
The co-workers were early links in what was to be the first documented chain of multiple human-to-human transmissions outside Asia of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
They are based in Stockdorf, a German town of 4,000 near Munich in Bavaria, and they work at car parts supplier Webasto Group. The company was thrust under a global microscope after it disclosed that one of its employees, a Chinese woman, caught the virus and brought it to Webasto headquarters. There, it was passed to colleagues – including, scientists would learn, a person lunching in the canteen with whom the Chinese patient had no contact.
The Jan. 22 canteen scene was one of dozens of mundane incidents that scientists have logged in a medical manhunt to trace, test and isolate infected workers so that the regional government of Bavaria could stop the virus from spreading.
That hunt has helped Germany win crucial time to build its COVID-19 defences.
The time Germany bought may have saved lives, scientists say. Its first outbreak of locally transmitted COVID-19 began earlier than Italy’s, but Germany has had many fewer deaths. Italy’s first detected local transmission was on Feb. 21. By then Germany had kicked off a health ministry information campaign and a government strategy to tackle the virus which would hinge on widespread testing. In Germany so far, more than 2,100 people have died of COVID-19. In Italy, with a smaller population, the total exceeds 17,600.
“We learned that we must meticulously trace chains of infection in order to interrupt them,” Clemens Wendtner, the doctor who treated the Munich patients, told Reuters.
Wendtner teamed up with some of Germany’s top scientists to tackle what became known as the ‘Munich cluster,’ and they advised the Bavarian government on how to respond. Bavaria led the way with the lockdowns, which went nationwide on March 22.
Scientists including England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty have credited Germany’s early, widespread testing with slowing the spread of the virus. “‘We all know Germany got ahead in terms of its ability to do testing for the virus and there’s a lot to learn from that,’” he said on TV earlier this week.
Christian Drosten, the top virologist at Berlin’s Charite hospital, said Germany was helped by having a clear early cluster. “Because we had this Munich cohort right at the start … it became clear that with a big push we could inhibit this spreading further,” he said in a daily podcast for NDR radio on the coronavirus.
Drosten, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was one of more than 40 scientists involved in scrutiny of the cluster. Their work was documented in preliminary form in a working paper at the end of last month, intended for The Lancet. The paper, not yet peer-reviewed, was shared on the NDR site.
ELECTRONIC DIARIES
It was on Monday, Jan. 27, that Holger Engelmann, Webasto’s CEO, told the authorities that one of his employees had tested positive for the new coronavirus. The woman, who was based in Shanghai, had facilitated several days of workshops and attended meetings at Webasto’s HQ.
The woman’s parents, from Wuhan, had visited her before she travelled on Jan. 19 to Stockdorf, the paper said. While in Germany, she felt unusual chest and back aches and was tired for her whole stay. But she put the symptoms down to jet lag.
She became feverish on the return flight to China, tested positive after landing and was hospitalised. Her parents also later tested positive. She told her managers of the result and they emailed the CEO.
In Germany, Engelmann said he immediately set up a crisis team that alerted the medical authorities and started trying to trace staff members who had been in contact with their Chinese colleague.
The CEO himself was among them. “Just four or five days before I received the news, I had shaken hands with her,” he said.
Now known as Germany’s “Case #0,” the Shanghai patient is a “long-standing, proven employee from project management” who Engelmann knows personally, he told Reuters. The company has not revealed her identity or that of others involved, saying anonymity has encouraged staff to co-operate in Germany’s effort to contain the virus.
The task of finding who had contact with her was made easier by Webasto workers’ electronic calendars – for the most part, all the doctors needed was to look at staff appointments.
“It was a stroke of luck,” said Wendtner, the doctor who treated the Munich patients. “We got all the information we needed from the staff to reconstruct the chains of infection.”
For example, case #1 – the first person in Germany to be infected by the Chinese woman – sat next to her in a meeting in a small room on Jan. 20, the scientists wrote.
Where calendar data was incomplete, the scientists said, they were often able to use whole genome sequencing, which analyses differences in the genetic code of the virus from different patients, to map its spread.
By following all these links, they discovered that case #4 had been in contact several times with the Shanghai patient. Then case #4 sat back-to-back with a colleague in the canteen.
When that colleague turned to borrow the salt, the scientists deduced, the virus passed between them. The colleague became case #5.
Webasto said on Jan. 28 it was temporarily closing its Stockdorf site. Between Jan. 27 and Feb. 11, a total of 16 COVID-19 cases were identified in the Munich cluster. All but one were to develop symptoms.
All those who tested positive were sent to hospital so they could be observed and doctors could learn from the disease.
Bavaria closed down public life in mid-March. Germany has since closed schools, shops, restaurants, playgrounds and sports facilities, and many companies have shut to aid the cause.
HAMMER AND DANCE
This is not to say Germany has defeated COVID-19.
Its coronavirus death rate of 1.9%, based on data collated by Reuters, is the lowest among the countries most affected and compares with 12.6% in Italy. But experts say more deaths in Germany are inevitable.
“The death rate will rise,” said Lothar Wieler, president of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
The difference between Germany and Italy is partly statistical: Germany’s rate seems so much lower because it has tested widely. Germany has carried out more than 1.3 million tests, according to the Robert Koch Institute. It is now carrying out up to 500,000 tests a week, Drosten said. Italy has conducted more than 807,000 tests since Feb. 21, according to its Civil Protection Agency. With a few local exceptions, Italy only tests people taken to hospital with clear and severe symptoms.
Germany’s government is using the weeks gained by the Munich experience to double the number of intensive care beds from about 28,000. The country already has Europe’s highest number of critical care beds per head of the population, according to a 2012 study.
Even that may not be enough, however. An Interior Ministry paper sent to other government departments on March 22 included a worst-case scenario with more than 1 million deaths.
Another scenario saw 12,000 deaths – with more testing after partial relaxation of restrictions. That scenario was dubbed “hammer and dance,” a term coined by blogger Tomas Pueyo. It refers to the ‘hammer’ of quick aggressive measures for some weeks, including heavy social distancing, followed by the ‘dance’ of calibrating such measures depending on the transmission rate.
The German government paper argued that in the ‘hammer and dance’ scenario, the use of big data and location tracking is inevitable. Such monitoring is already proving controversial in Germany, where memories of the East German Stasi secret police and its informants are still fresh in the minds of many.
A subsequent draft action plan compiled by the government proposes the rapid tracing of infection chains, mandatory mask-wearing in public and limits on gatherings to help enable a phased return to normal life after Germany’s lockdown. The government is backing the development of a smartphone app to help trace infections.
Germany has said it will re-evaluate the lockdown after the Easter holiday; for the car parts maker at the heart of its first outbreak, the immediate crisis is over. Webasto’s office has reopened.
All 16 people who caught COVID-19 there have recovered.
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.
The patients were all returning Chinese citizens who had flown from Moscow to Vladivostok, a Russian city around 100 miles south.
All the new patients were taken to hospital, with two in a serious condition.
In addition, another 86 people in Suifenhe – who came via the same route – were classed as “asymptomatic” but positive for the virus, which China counts separately.
What has Suifenhe done?
The border was closed to people on Tuesday, the local government said, although cargo can continue. Russia closed its border with China in February.
People in the city have been told to stay at home, although the lockdown isn’t as severe as Hubei province experienced. One person per house can shop for essentials every three days.
At the same time, the new hospital – in an existing building – is due to open this weekend, intended for patients with mild symptoms.
“Of course I’m very scared,” one woman who runs a bakery shop told the BBC.
“We don’t leave the house now. Many people already left the city. But we can’t do that, because we have a shop need to take care of.”
Image copyright SOVFOTOImage caption This picture from 2005 showed the extent of Russian timber exports passing through Suifenhe railway station
Meanwhile, a member of staff at a restaurant in the city said it was normally their high season, with around 1,000 customers a day.
Instead, they were told to close earlier this week, with “no idea” when they can open again.
But the staff member was not critical of the government. He said the lockdown made him feel “secure” – and that he was “very confident” the government would look after the situation.
What is the situation in the rest of China?
China’s recorded rate of Covid-19 infections has slowed dramatically in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, people were allowed to leave Wuhan – where the outbreak emerged – for the first time in 11 weeks if they were deemed virus-free.
There were 221 inbound and outbound flights, with more than 7,000 people leaving and 4,500 arriving. More than half a million used public transport, state media reported.
But although people from Wuhan can leave, they still face restrictions in other cities. In Beijing, for example, they will be tested upon arrival, according to local media.
Even if they pass, they will then be quarantined for 14 days – and tested again – before being released.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India’s railways are hoping to ease the burden on hospitals
India is preparing for a potential surge in Covid-19 patients by tapping into an unusual resource: its trains, which power the world’s fourth biggest rail network.
The country suspended its passenger trains for the first time after it announced a three-week lockdown on 25 March to contain the coronavirus. As of Wednesday, it had reported 4,643 active cases and 149 deaths, and the numbers are rapidly increasing.
“We, at the railways, thought: how can we contribute?” its spokesman, Rajesh Bajpai, told the BBC. “So we came up with this idea and everyone liked it.”
Work has already begun to convert 5,000 train coaches into quarantine or isolation wards, which amounts to 40,000 beds. And the railway ministry says it’s prepared to convert 15,000 more coaches.
The Indian railways – as the ministry is known – is a behemoth. Largely constructed during British rule, it’s still the mainstay of India’s public transport, and includes some of the world’s busiest urban rail systems. It transports 23 million passengers a day and its 12,000 trains crisscross 65,000km (40,389 miles) of tracks, connecting the remotest parts of India.
Mr Bajpai says the coaches can be spared as they are mostly trying to convert older ones, and passengers will be fewer than ever in the coming months even if restrictions are eased.
He adds that this is not unusual for the railways, which already runs several “special” trains, from luxury trains to exhibition trains to a hospital train, complete with operation theatres.
“The coach is a shell and inside, you can provide anything – a drawing room, a dining room, a kitchen, a hospital.”
A looming crisis?
And India may well need the extra beds.
States have already turned all sorts of spaces – sports centres, stadiums, wedding venues, hotels, resorts – into quarantine or isolation centres. But officials fear they will run out of space as the country ramps up testing.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India suspended all passenger trains last month
For every person who tests positive, there are scores more who need to be traced, quarantined and, if necessary, isolated. But isolation at home is not always an option in India’s joint family households – and especially not in its densely-populated slums.
“There are so many options available and this [the coaches] is one of the options,” Mr Bajpai says.
He doesn’t foresee them being used until beds in existing quarantine or isolation centres are filled. But, he adds, they will keep them ready with the necessary facilities.
That includes converting one of the two toilets in each coach into a “bathing room”, providing oxygen cylinders in every coach, and modifying all the cabins so they can hold medical equipment. And then there are measures that are specific to Covid-19 – such as replacing taps that turn with those that have long handles, and fitting dustbins with foot pedals.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption It takes up to three days to turn a coach into an isolation ward
The ministry has also ordered extra coat hooks and mosquito nets for every cabin, and has instructed officials to make sure that charging points are working, the upholstery “is in good condition” and “broken panels are replaced”.
The coaches are being readied in 130 different locations across the country, but it’s yet to be decided where they will be stationed.
Mr Bajpai says it’s up to states to decide which stations they want the coaches in. But that in itself is a process because the coaches need regular water and electric supply.
And there are other concerns too. Summer has begun and large parts of India record scorching temperatures, often more than 40C. And the coaches that are being converted are not air-conditioned.
“The patient will be very uncomfortable. Doctors and nurses will be wearing protective gear, and they will find it very difficult,” says Vivek Sahai, a former chairman of the railway board.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Staff member of Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) prepare train coaches to convert them into isolation wards for COVID-19 patients.
He also says not everyone might be comfortable squatting to use Indian-style toilets; and he wonders if all the designated coaches have a proper system of waste management. (Indian coaches are designed to dispose of human waste onto the tracks although new technologies have begun to be adopted in recent years.)
“I am not saying it cannot be done but they have to take care of these things,” he says. “But if anybody can do it, it’s the railways.”
However, some experts say that this by itself is not going to help solve India’s problems.
“You don’t just need space,” says Dr Sumit Sengupta, a pulmonologist. “We need thousands of doctors and nurses if you really have to make a dent.”
India is severely short of both, and at least three hospitals have been sealed this week alone after members of the staff tested positive.
Media caption As cases of coronavirus rise and the virus hits India’s congested slums, will the country cope?
“Why isolate someone who has symptoms when there is no treatment? Because you don’t want them to spread the infection,” Dr Sengupta says.
But, he adds, the virus is spreading anyway because so many patients are asymptomatic. He says isolating symptomatic patients will not help unless India starts testing aggressively.
“This will work only as part of a larger strategy,” he adds. “Test, trace and isolate. Test should come first.”
TOKYO (Reuters) – Uncertainty over Japan’s economic outlook is “extremely high” as the coronavirus pandemic hits output and consumption, central bank Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said, stressing his readiness to take additional monetary steps to prevent a deep recession.
While aggressive central bank actions across the globe have eased financial market tensions somewhat, corporate funding strains were worsening, Kuroda told a quarterly meeting of the Bank of Japan’s regional branch managers on Thursday.
“The spread of the coronavirus is having a severe impact on Japan’s economy through declines in exports, output, demand from overseas tourists and private consumption,” he said.
Japan recorded 503 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday – its biggest daily increase since the start of the pandemic – as a state of emergency took effect giving governors stronger legal authority to urge people to stay home and businesses to close.
In contrast to stringent lockdowns in some countries, mandating fines and arrests for non-compliance, enforcement will rely more on peer pressure and a deep-rooted Japanese tradition of respect for authority.
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The balancing act underscores the difficulty authorities have in trying to contain the outbreak without imposing a mandatory lockdown that could deal a major blow to an economy already struggling to cope with the virus outbreak.
Hideaki Omura, the governor of the central Japan prefecture of Aichi, said he would declare a state of emergency for his prefecture on Friday.
Omura said Aichi, which includes the city of Nagoya and hosts Toyota Motor Corp, was talking with the central government about being included in the national state of emergency as well, but felt he could not wait any longer to restrict movement.
“Looking at things the past week and watching the situation – the rise in patients, the number without any traceable cause – we judged that it was a very dangerous situation and wanted to make preparations,” he told a news conference.
Even with less stringent restrictions compared with other countries, analysts polled by Reuters expect Japan to slip into a deep recession this year as the virus outbreak wreaks havoc on business and daily life.
Shares of Oriental Land Co (4661.T) fell on Thursday after the operator of Tokyo Disneyland said it would keep the amusement park shut until mid-May.
Entertainment facility operator Uchiyama Holdings (6059.T) said it was closing 43 karaoke shops and 11 restaurants until May 6.
“For the time being, we won’t hesitate to take additional monetary easing steps if needed, with a close eye on developments regarding the coronavirus outbreak,” Kuroda said.
Kuroda’s remarks highlight the strong concern policymakers have over the outlook for Japan’s economy and how companies continue to struggle to generate cash, despite government and central bank promises to flood the economy with funds.
At its policy meeting later this month, the BOJ is likely to make a rare projection that the world’s third-largest economy will shrink this year, sources have told Reuters.
The BOJ eased monetary policy in March by pledging to boost purchases of assets ranging from government bonds, commercial paper, corporate bonds and trust funds investing in stocks.
The government also rolled out a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package to soften the economic blow.
Most of the relief fund earmarked to subsidise employees’ wages in affected industries
Lam and ministers slash their salaries following controversy over chief executive’s pay
Many businesses have been forced to close because of the coronavirus outbreak. Photo: Winson Wong
More than 1 million Hong Kong workers will have part of their wages paid for by the government under a HK$137.5 billion package of measures to help businesses and residents struggling during the Covid-19 crisis, while the city’s leader and her ministers have vowed to take a pay cut, the Post has learned.
Revealing the massive relief fund on Wednesday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said HK$80 billion would go towards the wage scheme, targeting coronavirus-hit industries over six months with individual payments capped at 50 per cent of salaries, up to HK$9,000 a month. The employers receiving the lifeline must pledge not to lay off workers, she added.
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Lam said the package, together with other recent pledges of financial relief, would cost a total of HK$287.5 billion, causing the budget deficit to surge from HK$139.1 billion this financial year to HK$276.6 billion, which is equivalent to 9.5 per cent of gross domestic product.
The relief deal is equivalent in size to 4.6 per cent of the city’s GDP.
Meanwhile, Lam’s monthly salary will fall to HK$390,000 after rising to HK$434,000 last July.
Lam and her 16 ministers had voluntarily agreed to a 10 per cent pay reduction for a year, the chief executive told the press conference.
The HK$137.5 billion deal – which was given the green light by her Executive Council earlier in the day – aims to safeguard employment and ease the woes of businesses, with the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the city reaching 960 on Wednesday.
A source said: “The scheme is aimed at coping with the economic hardship brought by the pandemic in the next six months. More than 1 million employees from various sectors, on top of those directly affected by the government’s social-distancing measures, will benefit.”
Staff affected by the latest social-distancing rules – including businesses forced to close – will benefit from the wage scheme, along with employees in sectors such as tourism and construction, two other sources said.
Some businesses set to benefit would be those related to education, such as tutorial centres, school bus operators and PE coaches contracted from outside, according to one.
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“The government is drawing reference from the British government’s recent practice of paying 80 per cent of salaries of employees in affected industries, although the percentage and cap are lower in Hong Kong,” one source said.
In an unprecedented step announced last month, the UK government said the state would pay grants covering up to 80 per cent of salaries if companies kept workers on the payroll rather than laying them off.
In Singapore, the government has offered to pay 75 per cent of workers’ April wages, capped at S$4,600 (HK$25,000) per person.
The Japanese government on Tuesday approved its largest-ever economic relief package, which includes grants of up to 2 million yen (US$18,350), for small and medium-sized businesses whose revenues had more than halved.
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With the Hong Kong government sitting on reserves of more than HK$1.1 trillion, the Professional Commons think tank said the authorities should spend HK$200 billion on businesses and workers, including handing HK$7,500 a month over six months to sacked staff and covering 80 per cent of salaries up to a monthly maximum of HK$25,000 for workers at struggling firms and the self-employed.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
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