COVID-19: GLOBAL IMPACT China lashes out at Oz PM as tensions grow
Luxembourg to test everyone
As part of its lockdown exit strategy, Luxembourg plans to test the whole of its population for Covid-19. The Luxembourg Government says tests will be conducted on a voluntary basis and aim at avoiding a second wave of infections. As of yesterday, 3741 people had tested positive for the coronavirus in the tiny country of 600,000 inhabitants, including 89 deaths.
Turkey sends medical gear to US
Turkey has dispatched a planeload of personal protective equipment to support the United States as it grapples with the coronavirus outbreak. A Turkish military cargo carrying the medical equipment took off from an air base near the capital Ankara yesterday, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. It was scheduled to land at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington today. Turkey has sent similar medical equipment aid to a total of 55 countries — including Britain, Italy and Spain — in an apparent attempt to improve its global standing by positioning itself as a provider of humanitarian aid in times of crisis.
Swiss allow grandparent hugs
Children in Switzerland under the age of 10 can once more hug their grandparents after public health officials announced that it was safe to do so. The change of advice came after Swiss scientists concluded that young children pose no risk of infection from Covid-19 because they do not have the “receptors” targeted by the virus. A study earlier this month showed a 9-year-old British schoolboy who caught the virus on a skiing holiday in France did not pass the virus on to anyone despite coming into contact with more than 170 people. But British experts have warned that there remained a lack of scientific data to make such a radical policy pronouncement.
Kenya locks down refugee camps
Kenya’s Interior minister Fred Matiangi has announced a ban on movement into and out of two of Africa’s largest refugee camps in a measure to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. The minister’s statement did not provide details, but aid organisation CARE said the camps have no capacity to deal with a possible outbreak of the virus. CARE said in a statement that Dadaab refugee camp, in Kenya’s east, has a quarantine facility for 2000. It has more than 270,000 refugees mainly from Somalia, and a further 20,000 refugees living with the host community. Kakuma camp in Kenya’s north hosts 60,000 refugees mainly from South Sudan.
UK govt PPE figures probed
Claims that a billion pieces of personal protective equipment have been delivered to the NHS are under scrutiny as it emerged the Government is counting each single glove as one item. Amid growing concern over the death of health and social care workers, ministers have repeatedly promised that huge
amounts of protective equipment has made its way to the front line. However, officials last night failed to explain why their actual figures were almost 150 million items short of their billion claim or why they were counting gloves individually. An investigation by BBC’s Panorama found the billion items frequently quoted by ministers includes items not usually classed as PPE including cleaning equipment, waste bags, detergent and paper towels.
Zimbabwe hunger crisis fears
Zimbabwe, where millions of people already face acute hunger, could sink deeper into crisis as the coronavirus pandemic takes a toll on the country’s troubled economy and food supply, United Nations agencies say in a new report. The southern African nation is “one of the world’s top global food crises”, the UN children’s agency, the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation said in the report released yesterday. More than half of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people need food assistance due to droughts, floods and worsening economic problems, according to WFP.
Syria supplies not getting through
Human Rights Watch said yesterday that medical supplies to prevent and treat the new coronavirus are not reaching northeast Syria because of restrictions imposed by the Syrian government and the Kurdish regional government. The international rights
organisation urged the UN Security Council to immediately adopt a resolution reopening the Al Yarubiyah border crossing from Iraq into the northeast. The crossing, which was used primarily to deliver medicine and medical supplies from the World Health Organisation, was closed in January at the insistence of Russia.
Woman survives two pandemics
A New York woman who was born during the Spanish Flu pandemic has survived Covid-19. Angelina Friedman, who lives in a nursing home in Lake Mohegan, was taken to a hospital for a minor medical procedure on March 21. But her procedure was postponed after she tested positive for Covid-19. After intermittently running a fever for several weeks, the 101-year-old cancer survivor tested negative for the virus on April 20.
Pence refuses to wear mask
US Vice President Mike Pence chose not to wear a face mask yesterday during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, a violation of the medical centre’s policy requiring them. Pence did not wear a mask when he met a Mayo employee who has recovered from Covid-19 and is now donating plasma, even though everyone else in the room was wearing one. He was also maskless when he visited a lab where Mayo conducts coronavirus tests. And Pence was the only participant not to wear a mask during a discussion on Mayo’s testing and research programmes.
China has lashed out at Scott Morrison as deserving “a slap in the face” for trying to blame the Covid-19 pandemic on the communist state, warning any push for an independent inquiry into the virus’ origins will spark a travel and trade boycott.
As diplomatic tensions escalated, the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a rebuke to China for leaking details of a private conversation between Australian officials and China over the threats.
But the state-controlled People’s Daily accused the Prime Minister of trying to use the calls for a probe to deflect criticism over his handling of the bushfires and the coronavirus crisis.
“The deeply troubled Morrison Government is anxious to find an outlet for the domestic public’s anger,” the People’s Daily report states. “They are using an old trick to try and blame China.”
Predicting the Prime Minister’s call for an independent inquiry would fail, the People’s Daily said France and the United Kingdom would reject it.
“This is a slap on the face which has come quickly,” it warned.
The diplomatic war of words follows incendiary comments by the Chinese Ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye on Tuesday. In a recent interview with the Australian Financial Review, Cheng refused to concede that Covid-19 even originated in Wuhan’s wet markets. He also warned a review could spark a Chinese consumer boycott of students and tourists visiting Australia.
“The Chinese public is frustrated, dismayed and disappointed with what Australia is doing now,” he said.
In response, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson phoned the Chinese ambassador to Australia to complain. However, China promptly leaked an embarrassing account of the purported comments.
Accusing Australia of trying to “cry up wine and sell vinegar”, the Chinese ambassador claimed Adamson played down the immediate need for an investigation.
“Ambassador Cheng elaborated clearly China’s relevant position, stressing that no matter what excuses the Australian side has made, the fact cannot be buried that the proposal is a political manoeuvre.”
The rising tensions follow Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s confirmation that Western intelligence agencies want to probe whether Covid-19 accidentally escaped from a Wuhan lab.
An exclusive investigation by the Daily Telegraph revealed that Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US, are looking closely at the work of virologist Shi Zhengli and a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou.
Shi is known as “The Batwoman” of Wuhan according to colleagues, for her groundbreaking research into coronaviruses in bats.
But Shi insists Covid-19 did not escape from her lab, although she feared, in the beginning, it might have been responsible. She recently told Scientific American that she “breathed a sigh of relief when tests showed none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves”.