‘Lives are at stake’ – Pelosi
United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has slammed Donald Trump for his administration’s ‘‘opaque and often chaotic’’ response to the coronavirus as stock markets tumbled.
The US Centre for Diseases and Control Prevention yesterday confirmed what appears to be the first American case of a ‘‘community spread’’ of the virus in California, adding to the 60 confirmed US cases of illness caused by Covid-19.
A day after the US President labelled her ‘‘incompetent’’ and accused her of trying to create panic, Pelosi told reporters in Washington: ‘‘Lives are at stake – this is not a time for name-calling or playing politics.
‘‘The first step the Congress must take is to ensure that the government has the resources it needs to combat this deadly virus and keep Americans safe . . . Unfortunately, up until now, the Trump administration has mounted an opaque and often chaotic response to this outbreak.’’
Pelosi said she had told VicePresident Mike Pence during a phone call that she had concerns about Trump’s decision to put him in charge of the administration’s response to the outbreak. ‘‘I expressed to him the concern that I had of his being in this position.’’
Pelosi said she was concerned about Pence’s handling of an HIV outbreak in Indiana in 2014 when he was the state’s governor.
Pence resisted expert advice to introduce a needle exchange programme, before eventually agreeing to it. A study in The Lancet medical journal found that if Pence had acted sooner it would have substantially reduced the total number of HIV infections.
She called on the Trump administration to make any coronavirus vaccine available to everyone, rather than only those who can afford to pay.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial indexes both tumbled as much as 3.5 per cent in early trading yesterday before recovering to around 2 per cent in early afternoon trading.
The California Department of Public Health confirmed that a patient being treated in Sacramento, the state’s capital, ‘‘had no known exposure to the virus through travel or close contact with a known infected individual’’.
On Thursday Trump downplayed the risk of the virus, saying : ‘‘Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.’’ Referring to Pelosi, Trump said: ‘‘She’s trying to create a panic and there’s no reason to panic because we have done so good.’’
Looking for connections
From California to Italy, France, Germany, Spain and beyond, more cases are popping up in which the source of the virus remains a mystery. People who weren’t exposed through travel or contact with someone previously infected are testing positive. Health authorities in all these places are working hard to find the original source of infection using what’s called contact tracing, or finding all the people the latest patients were in contact with. In a highly mobile world, that’s increasingly difficult.
Pope indisposed
Vatican officials have refused to comment on whether Pope Francis has been tested for coronavirus, confirming only that the pontiff skipped a planned Mass for the start of Lent due to a slight illness.
‘‘This morning the pontiff did not go to St John Lateran basilica for the penitential Mass with Roman clergy,’’ Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, said. ‘‘Due to a light indisposition he preferred to stay near [his Vatican residence] Santa Marta.’’
Bruni declined to respond to the question of whether or not the pontiff had been or will be tested for coronavirus, which has infected 650 people and caused disruption in northern Italy.
Concern over his well-being circulated on social media after he was seen coughing and blowing his nose during Ash Wednesday celebrations, in which he greeted people without a mask.
Stay away, foreign pilgrims
Saudi Arabia has responded to the fears by banning foreign pilgrims from visiting Islam’s holiest shrines. That will change the face of this year’s annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and disrupt plans for millions of faithful from around the world who come to the kingdom to pray together. The decision illustrates how tense the situation is across the Gulf region and the wider Middle East as a whole largely as a result of the spike in deaths and infections in Iran. Iran has now seen more virus deaths than anywhere except China.
Japan skips school
Japan, too, is increasingly worried, and made a decision Thursday that’s sure to have its 12.8 million schoolchildren secretly celebrating. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he wants all elementary, middle and high schools nationwide to remain closed until spring holidays in late March. Japan now has more than 900 cases. France, Germany, Monaco and other countries near Italy are telling parents to keep children home from school if they’ve been anywhere near the growing number of zones worldwide hit by virus outbreaks.
Beefing up borders
Germany is thinking ahead. To retroactively track down everyone who may have been exposed to an infected individual, the German government is introducing airport landing cards for passengers arriving from the countries hit hardest by the virus. The procedure started with China but has been expanded to include South Korea, Iran, Japan and Italy. Elsewhere, authorities are struggling to keep the virus away. Pakistan halted flights to and from neighbouring Iran. Slovakia is checking cars coming from Austria and everyone on flights into its three airports. Cyprus has a special problem: the Mediterranean island nation is ethnically divided, with an internationally recognised state in the south and a self-declared Turkish Cypriot state in the north. Authorities in the south are deploying police and health officials at the dividing line.
China’s growing confidence
Now that there are more cases being reported outside China than inside, Chinese authorities are eager to shed the virus stigma and questions about its early handling of the epidemic. President Xi Jinping said Thursday: ‘‘We have the confidence, the ability and the certainty to win this war against the epidemic.’’ And famed Chinese respiratory disease specialist Zhong Nanshan predicted China’s outbreak should be ‘‘basically under control’’ by the end of April. – Nine, AP