23/05/2020
LONDON (Reuters) – China has betrayed the people of Hong Kong so the West should stop kowtowing to Beijing for an illusory great pot of gold, said Chris Patten, the last governor of the former British colony.
Beijing is set to impose new national security legislation on Hong Kong after a sustained campaign of pro-democracy protests last year in the city, which enjoys many freedoms not allowed on mainland China.
“The Hong Kong people have been betrayed by China,” Patten was quoted as saying by The Times newspaper. Britain has a “moral, economic and legal” duty to stand up for Hong Kong, he said.
Patten watched as the British flag was lowered over Hong Kong when the colony was handed back to China in 1997 after more than 150 years of British rule.
Hong Kong’s autonomy was guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” agreement principle enshrined in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration signed by then Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
But China’s plans to impose national security laws on Hong Kong risk destroying the Declaration, Patten said. The United States has branded the laws a “death knell” for the city’s autonomy.
“What we are seeing is a new Chinese dictatorship,” Patten said. “The British government should make it clear that what we are seeing is a complete destruction of the Joint Declaration.”
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said her government will “fully cooperate” with the Chinese parliament to safeguard national security, which she said would not affect rights, freedoms or judicial independence.
Patten said the West should stop chasing the illusory promise of Chinese gold.
“We should stop being fooled that somehow at the end of the all the kowtowing there’s this great pot of gold waiting for us. It’s always been an illusion,” Patten said.
“We keep on kidding ourselves that unless we do everything that China wants we will somehow miss out on great trading opportunities. It’s drivel.”
The British government did not immediately comment on Saturday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said on Friday the government was monitoring the situation and as a party to the Joint Declaration the UK was committed to the upholding Hong Kong’s autonomy and respecting the one country, two systems model.
Source: Reuters
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15/03/2020
WUHAN, March 14 (Xinhua) — Temporary treating centers converted from public facilities have played a key role in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, the central Chinese city at the epicenter of the epidemic outbreak, a medical expert said.
The experience in setting up temporary hospitals in Wuhan should be drawn on in the future and could help other countries fight the pandemic of COVID-19, Wang Chen, a respiratory disease specialist and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The hospitals were converted from public venues such as exhibition centers and gymnasiums in early February in an effort to treat patients with mild symptoms and isolate the source of infections amid strained medical resources.
Over more than a month, the 16 temporary hospitals have received more than 12,000 patients until the last two of them were shut down Tuesday as the city sees more patients recover and a sharp drop in the number of new infection cases, according to Wang.
The temporary hospitals were set up in Wuhan at the grimmest moment of its fight against the virus, when medical institutions were overwhelmed by an influx of patients and over 10,000 infected patients were unable to receive proper medical treatment, Wang said.
Under the principle of “leaving no patients unattended” established by Chinese central authorities, these hospitals have performed three major functions — isolation, treatment and monitoring, Wang said.
“These hospitals can keep patients under quarantine to block household and social contacts, offer proper treatments to patients with mild symptoms and monitor their conditions in case of exacerbation,” he added.
“One of the characteristics of COVID-19 is that most patients have mild symptoms, but they need proper treatments to avoid possible exacerbation. And the key is to keep them isolated to stem the spread of the virus,” said Wang, explaining why temporary hospitals are important to curbing the epidemic in Wuhan.
Source: Xinhua
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19/02/2020
- Forty countries will be able to diagnose the disease, and the Africa CDC is training health workers
- Until two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories on the continent that could test for the virus, in Senegal and South Africa
A scientist researches the coronavirus at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, which until two weeks ago was one of just two labs in Africa that could test for the disease. Photo: AFP
Forty countries in Africa will be able to test for the
deadly new coronavirus
by the end of the week, the WHO said, after Egypt confirmed the first case on the continent last week.
The World Health Organisation said many of those nations had been sending samples elsewhere for testing and waiting several days for results.
“Now they can do it themselves, within 24 to 48 hours,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing on Tuesday.
Until about two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories in the continent of 54 countries – in Senegal and South Africa – with the reagents needed to test for the virus. That meant dozens of nations that had quarantined suspected patients were sending samples to South Africa or Senegal to be tested.
The WHO earlier this week sent reagent kits for coronavirus diagnosis to more than 20 countries in Africa to step up diagnosis of the virus, which causes a disease now known as Covid-19. The global health body said more countries in Africa were expected to receive testing kits this week.
In addition, the WHO last week sent testing kits to Cameroon, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.
Coronavirus: WHO urges caution over study showing ‘decline’ in new Covid-19 cases in China
Tedros said some countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, were using systems developed to test for the deadly Ebola virus to now test for the coronavirus.
“This is a great example of how investing in health systems can pay dividends for health security,” Tedros said.
Several countries, including Ethiopia and South Sudan, were prioritising surveillance and monitoring at ports of entry, he said. “We’re also working with partners in some of the most fragile contexts, from Syria to the Central African Republic, to prepare countries for the arrival of the virus,” he said.
The WHO and Egyptian health officials on Friday confirmed that a 33-year-old foreigner had tested positive for the coronavirus. Egypt’s health ministry said the patient had tested positive for the virus without any symptoms, raising concern that there could be undetected cases on the continent, as countries scramble to equip labs to test for the disease.
The asymptomatic patient in Egypt was identified through contact screening of an index case who travelled to Cairo on a business trip from January 21 to February 4 and tested positive for the virus on February 11 in China, the WHO regional office said.
The new virus strain has killed more than 2,000 people and infected over 74,000 since the outbreak began in central China in December. It has spread to more than 20 countries.
Screening measures have been stepped up across Africa, including quarantining all passengers arriving from Chinese cities, amid fears that poorer countries with weaker health systems may struggle to cope if the virus spreads on the continent. More than a dozen countries still do not have the capacity to test for the pneumonia-like illness.
There are concerns that Africa’s close links with China put it at high risk for the spread of the new virus. Africa has become home to millions of Chinese since Beijing started looking to the continent for raw materials for its industries and markets for its products. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner since 2009, after it overtook the United States, with two-way trade standing at US$108 billion last year, according to China’s commerce ministry.
Africa CDC director John Nkengasong said it had been “investing in preparedness and response to the disease”. Photo: Reuters
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said it was working closely with the WHO and other partners to ensure that Egypt had the diagnostic tools it needed, and that the right actions were taken to contain the spread of the virus.
“We anticipated that the Covid-19 outbreak would inevitably impact Africa. That is why the Africa CDC has been working actively with African Union member states and partners in the past four weeks and investing in preparedness and response to the disease,” he said.
“[Last week in Dakar, Senegal] we conducted training and supplied test kits to 16 African laboratories, including from Egypt. Egypt also received additional test kits from the WHO,” Nkengasong said.
The Africa CDC would train 40 health workers from nine countries, including Egypt, in Nairobi this week, he said, on “enhancing detection and investigation of Covid-19 at points of entry”.
The Chinese medical workers on the front line of the coronavirus fight in Wuhan
On Monday, Ethiopia, home to one of the continent’s busiest airports, said it had received equipment and reagents for virus detection and control. “We are working hard day and night with the government to improve the critical measures needed to ensure that the country is ready to effectively respond to an outbreak of Covid-19,” said Boureima Hama Sambo, the WHO representative in Ethiopia.
despite pressure for it to suspend services to the country. Many countries on the continent have restricted travel to and from mainland China, while six out of eight African airlines with Chinese routes have halted flights until the virus is contained, including EgyptAir.
Egypt has suspended all flights to and from the mainland until the end of the month and has evacuated more than 300 Egyptians from Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic.
Source: SCMP
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 