The top U.S. infectious disease expert warned on Friday that even though hard-hit spots like New York are showing positive results in the battle against coronavirus, it is too early to relax restrictions on Americans.
“What we’re seeing right now is favorable signs,” Fauci said in an interview on CNN. “We would want to see a clear indication that you were very, very clearly and strongly going in the right direction, because the one thing you don’t want to do is, you don’t want to get out there prematurely and then wind up back in the same situation.
“Now is no time to back off.”
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Month: April 2020
Southeast Asian Ministers Endorse Pans for Pandemic Fund
Southeast Asian foreign ministers have endorsed the setting up of a regional fund to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and discussed a planned video summit of their leaders with counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea.
The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said Friday that the top diplomats of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations linked up by video Thursday in a meeting led by Vietnam.
The ministers endorsed several collective steps to fight the pandemic, including the establishment of a COVID-19 ASEAN response fund, the sharing of information and strategies and ways to ease the impact of the global health crisis on people and the economy, the department said in a statement.It did not provide details. pandemic, three Southeast Asian diplomats told The Associated Press. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity due to a lack of authority to discuss the high-level meeting.
In Thursday’s discussion, Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea amid the contagion, the department said.
The Philippines has expressed solidarity with Vietnam after a Vietnamese fishing boat was reportedly rammed and sank by a Chinese coast guard ship in disputed waters near the Paracel islands in the South China Sea.
Vietnam and the Philippines and two other ASEAN member states, Brunei and Malaysia, have been locked in longstanding territorial disputes with China and Taiwan in the strategic waterways, one of the world’s busiest,
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Malaysia PM Extends Coronavirus Travel Restrictions
Malaysia’s prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, announced Friday the government will extend travel restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, to April 28.
The limits – known as the Movement Control Order – took effect last month to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the country and were initially scheduled to end April 14.
But in a televised address, the prime minister said he was extending the restriction to April 28 on the advice of the Malaysian Health Ministry and other medical experts.
He also announced he has instructed police, the army, the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency, immigration department and all other related agencies to tighten security along the nation’s borders.
Parts of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, have been cordoned off by security personnel due to high numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases.As of Friday, the country reported 4,346 confirmed cases and 70 deaths from the coronavirus. However, it recorded more recoveries than new COVID-19 cases for three days in a row, with 222 patients discharged Friday, bringing the tally of released patients to 1,830 or 42.1 percent of the total.
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France Reports 50 COVID-19 Cases Aboard Aircraft Carrier
Fifty crew members aboard France’s sole aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, have tested positive for the new coronavirus and parts of the ship have been put in lockdown, the armed forces ministry said on Friday.
A ministry statement said that three sailors had been evacuated by air to a military hospital in Toulon, southern France, home port of the carrier.
A team equipped to carry out tests for coronavirus infection boarded the vessel on Wednesday just after the armed forces ministry had reported signs of COVID-19 symptoms among 40 crew members.
“The results of 66 tests showed 50 cases of COVID-19 aboard the Charles de Gaulle. There is no deterioration of the sailors’ medical condition at this stage,” the ministry said, adding that the evacuation of three of those sailors occurred Thursday.
The aircraft carrier, which is equipped with its own intensive care facilities, has 1,760 personnel on board.
The nuclear-powered carrier, which had most recently been taking part in exercises with northern European navies in the Baltic Sea, is continuing its journey to Toulon, where it is due to dock in the coming days.
“While awaiting the early return of the aircraft carrier in Toulon … extra measures aimed at protecting the crew and containing the spread of the virus have been put in place,” the ministry added, adding that all crew members must now wear face masks.
Last week the captain of U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was relieved of his command after the leak of a scathing letter he sent to superiors to call for stronger measures to curb a coronavirus outbreak on his vessel.
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Singapore Battles Virus Hotspots in Migrant Workers’ Dorms
After managing to keep on top of the first wave of coronavirus outbreaks, Singapore is grappling with an alarming rise in infections among migrant workers housed in crowded dormitories.
Such cases now account for about a quarter of Singapore’s 1,910 infections. The government reported 287 new cases Thursday, its biggest daily jump. More than 200 were linked to the foreign workers’ dormitories.
The tiny city-state of less than 6 million people was seen as a model in its early, swift response to the virus. But it apparently overlooked the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers living in conditions where social distancing is impossible. Now more than 50,000 workers are quarantined and others are being moved to safer locations.
The outbreaks merit attention in a region where practically every country has large numbers of migrants working, commuting and living in crowded conditions.
On one recent night, masked foreign workers laden with luggage got off buses, each keeping a small distance from the others, to be registered and screened before moving into a Singapore army camp.
The 1,300 workers moving into segregated facilities in two army camps will be required to observe strict health measures, stagger their meal times and maintain social distancing. They are due to stay in the camp until May 4.
Posing beside single cots spaced several feet apart, several gave thumbs ups in a short video on the defense ministry’s Facebook page.
Others are to be moved into unoccupied housing estates, an exhibition center and other locations to help reduce crowding in their dormitories.
Foreigners account for over a third of Singapore’s workforce, and more than 200,000 are migrant workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other poorer Asian countries living in 43 registered dormitories across Singapore.
Most work in construction, shipping and maintenance jobs, helping to support Singapore’s trade-reliant economy.
Virus clusters have emerged in nine of the privately-run dormitories that house up to 20 men per room, with shared toilets, cooking and other facilities.
By failing to act sooner, Singapore allowed the illness to spread more widely than expected in communities that already are relatively vulnerable, experts said.
“This is a very major and urgent issue that requires active and urgent intervention,” Lawrence Wong, the national development minister, said in televised remarks.
This week, the city tightened precautions with a four-week “circuit breaker,” shutting down non-essential businesses and schools until May 4.
“Hindsight is 20/20. In general, Singapore could have implemented measures earlier that would have blunted the initial surge in imported cases in the second half of March,” said Hsu Li Yang, an associate professor and program leader for Infectious Diseases at the National University of Singapore.
“The important matter at hand is to swiftly disrupt the chains of transmission in the dormitories, as well as in the rest of Singapore,” Hsu said.
The more than 50,000 workers quarantined for two weeks in five dormitories that were declared “isolation areas” are being screened and tested. They are still paid wages and provided food and other essentials. The facilities are sanitized daily and they have been given health kits with face masks and hand sanitizers.
Labor advocates have questioned the strategy, saying confinement en mass in dormitories might put the workers at greater risk.
“When social distancing in dorm rooms with 12–20 men per room is effectively impossible, should one worker in a room be infected – and he could be asymptomatic — the repeated contact he has with his roommates because of confinement would heighten the risk to his mates. The infection rate in the dorm could increase dramatically,” the group Transient Workers Count Too, a charity group helping migrant workers, said in a statement.
It likened the quarantines to the conditions aboard cruise ships that were incubators for coronavirus infections.
The pace of testing, reportedly at less than 3,000 a day, cannot keep up with infections, and many thousands of workers live outside the 43 registered dormitories, noted the group’s vice president Alex Au.
“They may be able to move 5% or 10%, but our guess is that the densities in the dormitories are so high, you may need something something like a 50% reduction. Where do you place tens of thousands of workers? It’s a very, very big problem,” Au said.
The virus is highlighting the need for better living conditions for workers.
“The problem here is Singapore’s whole economic model, our prosperity, is really built on the assumption or expectation of cheap labor,” Au said. “This is going to show us that cheap is a temporary thing. There will be hidden costs that will erupt when you don’t expect it,” he added.
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Eurogroup Strikes Half-Trillion Euro Deal to Help Members Cope with COVID-19
Finance ministers from the 19 eurozone countries Thursday agreed on a package worth more than half a trillion euros to help companies, workers and health care systems mitigate the economic consequences of the coronavirus outbreak.Mario Centeno, president of the Eurogroup of eurozone ministers, called the package of measures “totally unprecedented.””The package we approved today is of a size close to 4 percent of European GDP,” he said. “Plus, the automatic stabilizers that are quite powerful to protect European economies in case of crisis. This is totally unprecedented. We have never ever reacted so quickly to a crisis as this one.”The measures provide for hard-hit Italy and Spain to quickly gain access to the eurozone’s bailout fund for up to 240 billion euros, as long as the money is used for the needs of their health care systems.Centeno said at a video news conference that countries are expected to identify enough health costs to access the money.People line up to buy supplies from a supermarket as the lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus in Madrid, Spain, continues on April 9, 2020.The credit line is available only for the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak and expires immediately after that.The Eurogroup package also includes up to 200 billion euros in credit guarantees through the European Investment Bank to help companies stay afloat and 100 billion euros to offset lost wages for workers confined at home and others who are on reduced schedule.However, the deal did not include shared borrowing guaranteed by all member countries to pay for the cost of the coronavirus crisis, a key demand from Italy, Spain, France and six other countries, but rejected by Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.The finance ministers of Eurogroup left that issue open and up to national leaders of member countries as part of further negotiations on a possible fund to support the economic recovery in the longer term.
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World Shelters at Home on Good Friday During COVID Pandemic
Millions of people around the world are observing Good Friday, the day Christians believe Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem.The rituals of the holy day are different this year, as most worshippers must view the solemn ceremonies on various media platforms instead of gathering in churches, as the world struggles with COVID-19.Much of the globe is sheltering at home to slow the transmission of the deadly virus.More than 1.6 million people have contracted the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The United States is the global hotspot for the virus with more than 466,000 cases.Spain and Italy follow with 153,222 and 143,626 respectively.The pandemic “poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security — potentially leading to an increase in social unrest and violence that would greatly undermine our ability to fight the disease,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a closed-door meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, according to the text of his remarks.Archbishop Heiner Koch rehearses celebrations of the Good Friday liturgy at St. Joseph church on April 9, 2020, in Berlin, Germany. The service will to transmitted via internet amid the coronavirus disease pandemic.U.S. President Donald Trump, at his virus briefing Thursday, did not seem to think massive testing for the virus is warranted for the U.S. even though some people who carry the virus are asymptomatic. “We’re talking about 325 million people and that’s not going to happen, as you can imagine, and it would never happen with anyone else, either. Other countries do it, but they do it in a limited form.”The Trump administration is increasingly focused on considering when to reopen the U.S. economy, largely shut down due to the virus. More than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment compensation.Finance ministers from the 19 eurozone countries Thursday agreed on a package worth more than half a trillion euros to help companies, workers and health care systems mitigate the economic consequences of the coronavirus outbreak.The measures provide for hard-hit Italy and Spain to quickly gain access to the eurozone’s bailout fund for up to 240 billion euros, as long as the money is used for the needs of their health care systems.International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could lead to the world’s worst economic depression since the 1930s.Georgieva said Thursday that governments had already poured $8 trillion into programs to keep economies afloat but more will be needed. She said developing countries and emerging markets will be the hardest hit. A partial recovery may be seen in 2021, she said.
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Kenyan Physicians Cope With ICU Shortages During Coronavirus Pandemic
Countries struggling to contain the COVID-19 pandemic are scrambling to buy intensive care equipment, especially ventilators, which are needed in the most critical cases. In Africa, the coronavirus is spreading much faster than ICU equipment can be brought in and nurses trained. As a result, physicians in Kenya are drawing on the experience of colleagues overseas to prepare. Long before the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was discovered, Dr. Wangari Waweru-Siika had for years been working on answering the difficult life-and-death questions that the world is now asking in the midst of the pandemic: which patient gets an ICU bed with a ventilator and other life-support equipment, and which doesn’t?Waweru-Siika is a practicing anesthesiologist and professor at Nairobi’s Aga Khan University Hospital. She has been at the forefront of developing ethical frameworks for intensive care in Kenya.“You need to have a clear triage system that is different from your normal triage system when it comes to COVID,” she said. “There are certain patients who — in some institutions around the world — if they get COVID, are not being admitted to intensive care because their chances of survival are minimal.”Kenya has around 180 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Six people here have died, according to the latest figures from the United States’ Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global pandemic.A nurse participates in a drill to test system capabilities for the potential mass influx of coronavirus patients at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, April 9, 2020.Among all COVID-19 cases, 14 percent will require hospitalization and oxygen support, according to the World Health Organization’s guidance on clinical management. Although only 5 percent will require admission to an intensive care unit, many African countries’ ICUs are already stretched.Kenya has 518 ICU beds, according to the Kenya Healthcare Federation and Critical Care Society, although not all are fully functional. In February, a Makerere University study reported that Uganda had 55 ICU beds. South Sudan has 24 ICU beds and four ventilators.Not all ICUs available in Kenya are fully used. Thomas Chokwe is an anesthesiologist at the University of Nairobi and Kenyatta National Hospital. He said that even in some major regional referral hospitals that have recently expanded ICUs, only a portion of the beds can be used safely because of staffing shortages.“You get a pandemic like now and you suddenly realize you require ICU specialists,” he said. “You don’t train those overnight. You must have trained them over a long period of time, and you must have them as part of your resource base.”The Critical Care Society of Kenya has turned to the insight of ICU specialists in countries with overstretched medical centers to develop guidelines for Kenyan physicians.As for Waweru-Siika, who’s on the group’s board, she said she hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of intensive care specialists here in Kenya.
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COVID-19 Fears Prompt Detainees in Australia to Plead to Be Released from Immigration Detention
Detainees in Australian immigration centers are pleading to be released because of COVID-19 fears. They say it is impossible for them to self-isolate and protect themselves from the disease.Detainees at the Villawood immigration center in Sydney fear an outbreak of the new coronavirus inside the facility that houses more than 400 people would be impossible to control. They are pleading to be released, and some said they are so desperate they’ve gone on a hunger strike.“We are not going to break or wreck anything, but this is the only form of way that we can reach out is by striking like this to do not eat in order to get some form of attention,” one detainee said. “No eat, no drink. We are sick of being in the dark and being in the shadows. We are human beings, so we urge you, we are pleading with the Australian government to act now. The time is now before it gets here and it is too late.”In a letter to the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, detainees insist they are living in a potential COVID-19 “death trap.”“We ask the community and the prime minister and the lawyers to help our family and help us before the disease comes inside the detention (center) and sweep everybody,” a second detainee said.So far there has been one confirmed case of the new coronavirus in Australia’s detention network.“This COVID-19 virus is taking you out there and it hits in here like it is already the rumors are, we are all gone, we’re all going to die,” a third said. “We just get buried with nothing. They might as well just come and shoot the lot of us now.”The government insists there are established plans for dealing with a potential coronavirus outbreak within Australia’s detention network. A spokesperson said detainees showing symptoms of COVID-19 would be quarantined and tested.There are about 1,440 people, including those from Iran, New Zealand and Sudan, being held in detention on the Australian mainland. Forty percent are asylum seekers, while around 600 are being held for visa breaches.The average length of time in detention is more than 500 days.
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Pass the Salt: The Minute Details that Helped Germany Build Virus Defenses
One January lunchtime in a car parts company, a worker turned to a colleague and asked to borrow the salt.In that instant, they shared the coronavirus along with the saltshaker, 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 coworkers 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 novel 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 January 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 defenses.Baker Tim Kortuem poses with lamb-shaped easter cakes with protective masks at his bakery Schuerener Backparadies as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues in Dortmund, Germany, April 9, 2020.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 February 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 2,600 people have died of COVID-19. In Italy, with a smaller population, the total exceeds 18,200.”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. The paper, not yet peer-reviewed, was shared on the NDR site.Electronic diariesIt was on January 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.Director Birgitta Falk, right, and conservator Luke Jonathan Koeppe remove the top of the Saint Corona shrine at the Cathedral Treasury in Aachen, Germany, April 9, 2020. There is no relationship between St. Corona and coronavirus.The woman’s parents, from Wuhan, had visited her before she traveled on January 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 hospitalized. 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 No. 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 cooperate 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 No. 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 January 20, the scientists wrote.Where calendar data was incomplete, the scientists said, they were often able to use whole genome sequencing, which analyzes differences in the genetic code of the virus from different patients, to map its spread.By following all these links, they discovered that case No. 4 had been in contact several times with the Shanghai patient. Then case No. 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 No. 5.A passenger walks at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 9, 2020. About 95 percent of the flights were canceled because of the coronavirus.Webasto said on January 28 it was temporarily closing its Stockdorf site. Between January 27 and February 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 danceThis is not to say Germany has defeated COVID-19.Its coronavirus death rate of 1.9 percent, based on data collated by Reuters, is the lowest among the countries most affected and compares with 12.6 percent 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 February 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.People keep distance due to the coronavirus at a market in Aachen, Germany, April 9, 2020.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 reevaluate 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.
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Entire Botswana Parliament Under Quarantine After Health Care Worker Test Positive for COVID-19
Botswana said the entire parliament, including the president and speaker, are under a 14-day mandatory quarantine Friday, a day after a health care worker at parliament tested positive for the novel coronavirus.A government statement said the worker was among the seven new cases of coronavirus in the southern African nation, raising the national tally to 13.President Eric Masisi had gone back to work in early April after a self-quarantine period following his trip to neighboring Namibia last month. He tested negative for COVID-19 on April 1.Masisi has since declared a state of emergency with initiatives to control the spread of the virus, which claimed the life of one person.
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California’s Homeless Struggle to Stay Safe Amid Pandemic
Officials in cities and counties throughout California are struggling with how best to help more than 100,000 homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.But officials face multiple challenges tackling what has been an escalating crisis even before the coronavirus hit. The virus adds a new, deadly twist to the challenge:Bring people into crowded homeless shelters and increase the risk of exposure to the virus.Or leave them on the streets with limited access to sanitation, and the virus may spread quickly through encampments.Shelter in convention centers, museumsCities and counties are trying piecemeal approaches.In Northern California, Oakland moved some sick homeless people into two vacant hotels, and the city is setting up 60 emergency Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers to shelter the most vulnerable homeless residents, and another six more for homeless young people.Homeless people and camps in Berkeley, California, in April 2020.San Jose has converted two convention centers to house the homeless — with cots the recommended distance apart — and has committed to spending $17 million on prefab tiny homes.This week, San Francisco officials said it would lease 7,000 hotel rooms for both homeless people and first responders, tripling the number of hotel rooms it currently has contracted. The city is also Homeless people and camps in Berkeley, California, in April 2020.Joe Pendleton is an Army veteran who lives in Berkeley in his tricked-out van with his dog, Griz. He’s doing better than most: He has a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer and a laptop.Pendleton works with volunteers from the Berkeley Free Clinic and other organizations to prepare the homeless encampments for the pandemic. They’ve done their own informal census of who lives in which camps, doorways and alleyways so that they can keep track of them in case people get sick.Nowhere to charge phones, use a bathroom “We’ve come up with our own system of moving people through camps if we suspect they’re sick, so they’re quarantined from everybody else,” Pendleton said. “We’re homeless, not helpless.”But this is a vulnerable population with limited access to services and information.Homeless people and camps in Berkeley, California, in April 2020.Some are unaware of the pandemic, said Yesica Prado, an out-of-work Lyft driver and freelance journalist who lives in a recreational vehicle in Berkeley. When the shelter-in-place orders began and businesses closed, homeless people lost places where they could routinely use the bathroom, charge their phones and buy food, she said.“So if anything, we have spread information within ourselves,” she said. “You know, make sure that our neighbors know what’s going on.”A permanent solution?While most officials are scrambling to come up with a plan for the next weeks and months, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf is hoping the crisis may be an opportunity to address the problem of homelessness in her city.“We really don’t want to have a situation where when the pandemic is over and we’re kicking people back out onto the street,” she said. “We want to be strategic in this moment and do things now in the face of this emergency that can serve us in the long term.”Whether those plans ever come to fruition remains to be seen. For now, officials are in a race against the clock to set into motion their homeless plan before the expected surge in COVID-19 cases hits.
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Italian Prime Minister: It’s Too Early to Relax Coronavirus Measures
Many people in Italy are calling for the government to begin easing restrictions now that the coronavirus spread is showing what some see as signs of slowing down. The daily death toll has been dropping steadily, as have admissions to intensive care units. But with about 500 people still dying each day, the country’s prime minister is resisting calls to relax strict safe-distance measures.The debate is growing on whether it is time to downgrade the emergency and start easing restrictions after a strict five-week lockdown.Falling daily death rates and fewer admissions to intensive care units are reason for hope. On top of that, there is pressure to reopen industries and businesses in the face of what could be a massive economic meltdown.Medical staff tends to a patient in the ICU unit of San Filippo Neri Hospital’s Covid department, in Rome, Italy, April 9, 2020.In the face of it all, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is urging caution and says any decision to downgrade the emergency must be taken gradually and together with scientists.He also warned of dire consequences yet to come for the whole of Europe if the EU does not come together and agree on a rescue package.Conte said the future of the European Union is at stake in a challenge he has compared to that of World War II.In a video interview with the German newspaper Bild Conte, the Italian prime minister said Europe must unite and deliver a solid response to head off a devastation of the European economy.He said the sooner financial instruments are created that will allow countries to deal with this crisis, the sooner everyone will emerge from this situation and enjoy economic and social and advantages.Divisions between southern European nations, led by Italy, and northern ones, mainly Germany and the Netherlands, have so far stalled plans for a massive package to help the hardest-hit economies recover from the effects of the pandemic.
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Euro Countries Agree on Half Trillion Euros in Support
Governments from the 19 countries that use the euro overcame sharp differences to agree Thursday on measures that could provide more than a half-trillion euros ($550 billion) for companies, workers and health systems to cushion the economic impact of the virus outbreak.Mario Centeno, who heads the finance ministers’ group from euro countries, called the package of measures agreed upon “totally unprecedented … . Tonight Europe has shown it can deliver when the will is there.”The deal struck Thursday among the finance ministers did not, however, include more far-reaching cooperation in the form of shared borrowing guaranteed by all member countries.FILE – Italian Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri attends a meeting in Rome, March 3, 2020.The officials left that issue open, pushing the question to their national leaders to sort out down the road as part of a further discussion about a fund to support the economic recovery in the longer term. Still, Italian Finance Minister Robert Gualtieri tweeted that shared borrowing through “eurobonds” had been “put on the table.”FILE – Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra attends a news conference in Paris, France, March 1, 2019.Borrowing together to pay for the costs of the crisis was a key demand from Italy, Spain, France and six other countries. Italy and other indebted members are expected to see their debt load increase because of the recession caused by the virus outbreak. But shared debt was rejected by Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Netherlands Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra tweeted that “we are and will remain opposed to eurobonds.”The question now is whether the package will be seen as big enough to impress markets and enable eurozone governments to handle new accumulations of government debt from the recession. The concern is that increased borrowing could in the longer term trigger a new eurozone financial crisis like the one that threatened the currency union in 2010-2015. For now, bond-market borrowing costs of indebted countries such as Italy are being held in check by the European Central Bank, which has launched an 870 trillion-euro bond purchase program. But that program is so far limited in size or duration.The ministers agreed that hard-pressed governments such as Spain and Italy could quickly tap the eurozone’s bailout fund for up to 240 billion euros ($260 billion), with the condition that the money is spent on their health care systems and the credit line expires after the outbreak is over. A dispute over conditions had held up a decision at a conference Tuesday.The agreement also provides for up to 200 billion euros in credit guarantees through the European Investment Bank to keep companies afloat and 100 billion euros to make up lost wages for workers put on shorter hours.Centeno said that countries would work on a recovery fund for the longer term and as part of that would discuss “innovative financial instruments, consistent with EU treaties.” He said that some countries support shared borrowing and that others oppose it.The deal overcame bitter disagreement between Italy and the Netherlands over the conditions for loans from the bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism. Italy had rejected the idea of using the fund because of the ESM’s requirement that the money come with conditions to reform. That recalled the tough conditions imposed on Greece, Ireland and other indebted eurozone countries that were bailed out during the eurozone debt crisis.The compromise struck in the final statement says that countries could borrow up to 2% of annual economic output at favorable rates to finance “direct or indirect” costs of the current health crisis. Centeno said during a post-decision video news conference that he expected countries to be able to identify enough health costs to access the money.The package comes on top of extensive spending measures at the national level by member governments. The European Union has also taken the unprecedented steps of setting aside its limits on debts and subsidies by national governments to their home companies.
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American Coronavirus Lawsuits Seek Compensation from China
In less than a month, more than 5,000 Americans have joined a class-action lawsuit in Florida seeking reparations from the Chinese government for COVID-19 damages. The plaintiffs claim to have suffered huge losses due to Beijing’s negligence in containing the virus. Similar class-action lawsuits also were filed in Nevada and Texas.“Our lawsuit addresses those who have been physically injured from exposure to the virus … it also addresses the commercial activity China has engaged in around the “wet markets” trade,” Berman Law Group, which filed the Florida suit, told VOA. The law firm cited the ‘commercial activity’ and ‘personal injury’ exceptions under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [FSIA] as legal grounds for suing China.Chimene Keitner, professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, disagrees.“If you read any of the cases that have been decided under the statute [FSIA], it is extremely clear that personal injury, the conduct of a Chinese official needs to happen in the territory of the U.S. for that to apply. And there’s no allegation of commercial activity here,” Chimene noted.She added, “you can’t sue foreign states for their policy decisions.”International tribunalsThe Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where a number of people fell ill with a virus, sits closed in Wuhan, China, Jan. 21, 2020.A potential U.S. lawsuit against China for coronavirus damages could be worth $1.2 trillion, according to British conservative think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. In its new report, the Henry Jackson Society said China is potentially liable for the damages incurred due to its early mishandling of the disease. Specifically, intentionally withholding information from the World Health Organization was cited as a violation of the International Health Regulations. The think tank urged countries to sue China, laying out 10 different legal avenues to pursue, including the WHO, the International Court of Justice, Permanent Court of Arbitration, courts in Hong Kong, and the U.S.“Not simply using one but using a combination of the legal avenues may prove to be the most effective way forward,” said Andrew Foxall, director of research at the Henry Jackson Society and co-author of the report, in an interview with VOA. Countries, including the U.S., are unlikely to come forward, though, and make an official legal challenge against China over the coronavirus, according to David Fidler, visiting professor at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, and former legal consultant to the WHO.“Epidemics could break out anywhere … So, there’s this shared interest not to throw what I call the normative boomerang,” said Fidler “Interestingly, countries have very strong common interest not to apply international law in a mechanical way in connection with infectious disease outbreaks.”Transboundary harmThe customary law of ‘International Responsibility’ for damages caused to another nation was first recognized in the Trail Smelter arbitration in the 1920s.A smelter in British Columbia, Canada, emitted toxic fumes and caused damage to the forests and crops in surrounding areas, and also across the Canada-U.S. border in Washington State. A tribunal was set up by Canada and the U.S. to resolve the dispute, and the Canadian government agreed to provide compensation.Legal scholars draw parallels to Chinese responsibility in the spread of the coronavirus.“If Canada had good environmental laws in place, the smelter wouldn’t be polluting and wouldn’t have done harm in the U.S. It looks related here. If China just maintained an adequate food safety regulatory regime, the harm wouldn’t have been spread,” said Russel Miller, professor of law at Washington and Lee University.William Starshak, a finance attorney in Chicago, points out that it will be in China’s interest to assume responsibility, as Canada did.“That actually will help China show itself to be a responsible citizen, but also to bring all of these claims, which are going to be diverse and have all sorts of geopolitical issues, come with a massive bill into one forum. Address them. It’s really the only way for China to move beyond this,” Starshak said.
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Unemployed Americans Face Hardship, Uncertainty During Pandemic
The United States has taken a different approach than some European countries in providing relief to workers in industries that have been shutdown to contain the spread of COVID-19. While countries like Germany and France are reimbursing businesses to keep workers on the payroll, VOA’s Brian Padden reports, the U.S. has mostly opted to increase government assistance for millions of workers once they are laid off from their jobs or lose employment entirely.
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No Halt to Culture Wars During Coronavirus Outbreak
A partisan fight over voting in Wisconsin was the first issue linked to the coronavirus to make it to the Supreme Court. Efforts to limit abortion during the pandemic could eventually land in the justices’ hands. Disputes over guns and religious freedom also are popping up around the country.The virus outbreak has put much of American life on hold, but the nation’s culture wars seem immune from the pandemic.And in a country deeply divided over politics, some liberals are accusing conservatives of using this crisis to advance long-held goals, especially in the areas of access to abortion and the ballot box. Conservatives have complained about restrictions on church services and gun shops. “We see the right as being very opportunistic to advance their agenda,” said Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal People for the American Way.‘Knee-jerk response’Tim Schmidt, founder and president of the gun-rights U.S. Concealed Carry Association, called restrictions on gun sales “a knee-jerk response to something we don’t quite understand. I hope and pray it doesn’t happen but that’s what I fear,” he said in a recent online forum. The clash over Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin is just one fight sparked by the coronavirus. Ultimately, conservative majorities on both the high court and Wisconsin Supreme Court broke with more liberal colleagues to reject Democratic efforts to delay the vote and extend absentee balloting. The rulings signal an approaching season of bitter election-related litigation, said University of California at Irvine law professor Richard Hasen.”It is a very bad sign for November that the Court could not come together and find some form of compromise here in the midst of a global pandemic unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes,” Hasen wrote about the U.S. Supreme Court justices on his Election Law blog. “And it does not look like the courts are going to be able to do any better than the politicians in finding common ground on election principles,” he addedDemocratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the 11th Democratic candidates debate of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, held in CNN’s Washington studios.‘All-mail ballots’Already, Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has said the country should be looking “to all-mail ballots across the board” because of the pandemic. But President Donald Trump has weighed in strongly against voting by mail, even though he himself casts absentee ballots and Republicans have often favored mail-in ballots especially for older people. More fights over elections may be ahead, but the pandemic has already led to clashes in multiple states over abortion access. In Republican-led Alabama, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, governors sought to prohibit almost all abortions by classifying them as elective procedures that should be put off during the virus outbreak. Those efforts have, so far, been mostly blocked. In Iowa, the American Civil Liberties Union and the state reached an agreement that allows women to obtain “essential” surgical abortions. Federal court rulings have allowed abortions to continue in Alabama, Ohio and Oklahoma. But not so in Texas, where the federal appeals court in New Orleans held 2-1 Tuesday that the state’s restrictions on abortions could remain in place during the pandemic. ‘Emergency measures’U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, wrote for the court that “when faced with a society-threatening epidemic, a state may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights so long as the measures have at least some ‘real or substantial relation’ to the public health crisis.”The ruling drew a blistering dissent from Judge James Dennis, a Bill Clinton appointee, who said that results in cases involving abortion at the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals don’t stem from “the law or facts, but because of the subject matter.” Abortion rights groups on Wednesday went back to a lower court in an effort to resume abortions, and the case could still eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said Texas “has been trying to end abortion for decades and they are exploiting this pandemic to achieve that goal.” Andrea Schry, right, fills out the buyer part of legal forms to buy a handgun as shop worker Missy Morosky fills out the vendors parts after Dukes Sport Shop reopened, March 25, 2020, in New Castle, Pa.Gun stores targetedAbortion clinics aren’t the only places that states have sought to close during the pandemic. Gun stores, too, have been targeted. Most states have deemed gun sellers essential businesses allowed to remain open during the emergency. But three states — Massachusetts, New Mexico and Washington — forced those businesses to close. Gun rights groups have gone to court to pressure New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, and local officials in North Carolina to reverse course on gun restrictions. Other lawsuits are pending in California. Joe Bartozzi, president and CEO of the National Sports Shooting Foundation, said closing the stores is the wrong answer. “You don’t want to, in a time of crisis, be suspending civil liberties,” Bartozzi said. Gun-control advocates said the National Rifle Association and allied groups were using the pandemic to advance their cause. “This is part of their playbook for many years which is to foment fear during a time of crisis,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun-control group Moms Demand Action. A sign highlighting Holy Week activities is displayed outside the Our Mother of Perpetual Help- St. James Parish, April 8, 2020, in Ferndale, Mich.Religious gatheringsSome churches also have become embroiled in fights about whether they can stay open in states that have restricted gatherings. Some states’ stay-at-home orders have specifically exempted some level of religious activity, but that hasn’t necessarily prevented clashes.In Kansas, leaders of the Republican-controlled legislature overturned Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s executive order limiting the size of religious gatherings during the virus outbreak. “It appears to be out of line and extreme and clearly in violation, a blatant violation, of our fundamental rights,” said state Senate President Susan Wagle of Wichita, an abortion opponent, who questioned why clinics were still being allowed to perform abortions while restrictions were being placed on churches. Three Houston-area pastors sued over potential fines for holding religious services amid the virus outbreak.”We believe the government’s power stops at the church doors,” said Jared Woodfill, a lawyer who represents the pastors and said he’s working on three other pandemic-related church lawsuits in Texas, even though Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order deems religious services essential. He said it’s ironic that Wisconsin held elections. “You had elections but you can’t have church?” he asked. Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, took to Twitter to offer a different take on the same set of facts. “COVID-19: just dangerous enough to block abortion but not dangerous enough to hold elections by mail,” Strangio wrote.
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NASA Marks 50 Years Since Apollo 13 Mission
Apollo 13’s astronauts never gave a thought to their mission number as they blasted off for the moon 50 years ago. Even when their oxygen tank ruptured two days later — on April 13.Jim Lovell and Fred Haise insist they’re not superstitious. They even use 13 in their email addresses.As mission commander Lovell sees it, he’s incredibly lucky. Not only did he survive NASA’s most harrowing moonshot, he’s around to mark its golden anniversary.”I’m still alive. As long as I can keep breathing, I’m good,” Lovell, 92, said in an interview with The Associated Press from his Lake Forest, Illinois, home.A half-century later, Apollo 13 is still considered Mission Control’s finest hour. Lovell calls it “a miraculous recovery.” Haise, like so many others, regards it as NASA’s most successful failure. “It was a great mission,” Haise, 86, said. It showed “what can be done if people use their minds and a little ingenuity.” As the lunar module pilot, Haise would have become the sixth man to walk on the moon, following Lovell onto the dusty gray surface. The oxygen tank explosion robbed them of the moon landing, which would have been NASA’s third, nine months after Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took humanity’s first footsteps on the moon.Now the coronavirus pandemic has robbed them of their anniversary celebrations. Festivities are on hold, including at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the mission began on April 11, 1970, a Saturday just like this year.That won’t stop Haise, who still lives in Houston, from marking what he calls “boom day” next Monday, as he does every April 13.Lovell, Haise and Jack Swigert, a last-minute fill-in who died in 1982, were almost to the moon when they heard a bang and felt a shudder. One of two oxygen tanks had burst in the spacecraft’s service module.FILE – In this April 10, 1970, photo made available by NASA, Apollo 13 astronauts, from left, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert and Jim Lovell pose for a photo on the day before launch.The tense words that followed are the stuff of space — and movie — fame.”OK, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” radioed Swigert, the command module pilot.”This is Houston. Say again, please.””Houston, we’ve had a problem,” Lovell cut in.Lovell reported a sudden voltage drop in one of the two main electrical circuits. Within seconds, Houston’s Mission Control saw pressure readings for the damaged oxygen tank plunge to zero. The blast also knocked out two electrical power-generating fuel cells and damaged the third. As Lovell peered out the window and saw oxygen escaping into the black void, he knew his moon landing was also slipping away. He shoved all emotions aside.”Not landing on the moon or dying in space are two different things,” Lovell explained, “and so we forgot about landing on the moon. This was one of survival. How do we get home?”The astronauts were 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) from Earth. Getting back alive would require calm, skill and, yes, luck.”The explosion could not have happened at a better time,” Lovell said.Much earlier, he said, and the astronauts wouldn’t have had enough electrical power to make it around the moon and slingshot back to Earth for a splashdown. A blast in lunar orbit or, worse still, while Lovell and Haise were on the surface, “that would be the end of it.” “I think we had some divine help in this flight,” Lovell said.The aborted mission went from being so humdrum that none of the major TV networks broadcast the astronauts’ show-and-tell minutes before the explosion, to a life-and-death drama gripping the entire world. As flight director Gene Kranz and his team in Houston raced to come up with a rescue plan, the astronauts kept their cool. It was Lovell’s fourth spaceflight – his second to the moon – and the first and only one for Haise and Swigert.Dark thoughts “always raced through our minds, but silently. We didn’t talk about that,” Lovell said. Added Haise: “We never hit the point where there was nothing left to do. So, no, we never got to a point where we said, ‘Well, we’re going to die.'”The White House, less confident, demanded odds. Kranz refused, leaving it to others to put the crew’s chances at 50-50. In his mind, there was no doubt, no room for failure — only success.”Basically that was the name of the game: I’m going to get them home. My team’s going to get them home. We will get them home,” Kranz recalled.For the record, Kranz never uttered “failure is not an option.” The line is pure Hollywood, created for the 1995 movie “Apollo 13” starring Ed Harris as Kranz and Tom Hanks as Lovell.FILE – In this April 17, 1970, photo made available by NASA, the command module carrying the Apollo 13 crew parachutes to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.The flight controllers went into crisis mode. They immediately ordered the command module Odyssey shut down to conserve what little power remained, and the astronauts to move into the lunar module Aquarius, now a lifeboat. One of the low points, Lovell said, was realizing they’d be cramped together in the lander.”It was designed for two people for two days. We were three people for four days.”The carbon dioxide overload, from breathing, threatened to kill them. Engineers scrambled to figure out how to convert the square air-purifying canisters in the dead capsule into round ones that would fit in their temporary home. Their outside-the-box, seat-of-the-pants solution, using spacecraft scraps, worked. But it was so damp and cold that the astronauts couldn’t sleep. Condensation covered the walls and windows, and the temperature was close to freezing.Dehydrated and feverish, Haise had the roughest time during the six-day ordeal. Despite the sky-high stress, Haise recalls no cross words among the three test pilots. Even Swigert fit in, despite joining the crew a scant three days before liftoff. He replaced command module pilot Ken Mattingly, who with his crewmates had been exposed to German measles, but unlike them didn’t have immunity. Rumors swirled that the astronauts had poison pills tucked away in case of a hopeless situation. Lovell dispelled that notion on page one of his 1994 autobiography, “Lost Moon,” the basis for the “Apollo 13” film.Splashdown day finally arrived April 17, 1970 — with no guarantees.The astronauts managed to power up their command module, avoiding short circuits but creating a rainfall inside as the spacecraft decelerated in the atmosphere.The communication blackout lasted 1 1/2 minutes longer than normal. Controllers grew alarmed. Finally, three billowing parachutes appeared above the Pacific. It was only then, Lovell said, that “we knew that we had it made.” The astronauts had no idea how much their cosmic cliffhanger impacted the world until they reached Honolulu. President Richard Nixon was there to greet them.”We never dreamed a billion people were following us on television and radio, and reading about us in banner headlines of every newspaper published,” Lovell noted in a NASA history.The tank explosion later was linked to damage caused by electrical overheating in ground tests. Apollo 13 “showed teamwork, camaraderie and what NASA was really made of,” said Columbia University’s Mike Massimino, a former shuttle astronaut.In the decades since, Lovell and his wife, Marilyn, of nearly 68 years have discussed the what-ifs and might-have-beens.”The outcome of everything is, naturally, that he’s alive,” she said, “and that we’ve had all these years.”
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Italian Envoys in Washington Muster Help for Homeland
Amid their anxiety and mourning for friends and family in their virus-stricken homeland, the diplomats at Italy’s embassy in Washington are working earnestly to secure help from afar.“We are all concerned by the situation in Italy. Our thoughts are constantly with relatives and friends, some of whom live in the hardest-hit areas of the country,” said Ambassador Armando Varricchio, who answered questions by email in accordance with the new social distancing norms.Italy was the first European country to see a large spike in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and remains among the most severely affected, with more than 143,000 cases confirmed and more than 18,000 deaths as of Thursday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.Armando Varricchio, Italy’s ambassador to the United States, is photographed while taking part in a virtual discussion organized by the Meridian Center, April 2, 2020. (Italian Embassy photo)Varricchio, whose staff is working long hours to address the needs and concerns of Italian citizens in the United States, told VOA his country was deeply grateful for $100 million worth of aid recently announced by President Donald Trump. He described the assistance as “a testament to a deeply rooted friendship that unites us.”Trump announced the aid, which he said would consist of “surgical and medical and hospital things,” at a White House event on March 30, adding that the people of Italy “are having a very hard time.”The U.S. business community has also stepped up with donations totaling more than 25 million euros, the ambassador said, “and we have also seen great support coming from nonprofit organizations.”Beyond that, Varricchio and his colleagues have teamed up with an organization comprising North America-based Italian scholars and scientists to raise money on GoFundMe for a research institute in Rome that focuses on infectious diseases, as well as hospitals in Milan and Naples.Despite the urgency of the situation, Varricchio is already looking ahead to what can be done to help his country emerge from the crisis.“What will be most needed in the long run,” Varricchio said, “is rebuilding our society, our economy and achieving robust growth.” He identified transatlantic trade, along with ties in economic activities and in finance, as “crucial.”
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Justice Delayed: Virus Crisis Upends Courts System Across US
The coronavirus pandemic has crippled the U.S. court system, creating legal dilemmas as the accused miss their days in court. The public health crisis could build a legal backlog that overwhelms courts across the country, leaving some defendants behind bars longer, and forcing prosecutors to decide which cases to pursue and which to let slide. “Everybody is scrambling. Nobody really knows how to handle this,” said Claudia Lagos, a criminal defense attorney in Boston.Judges from California to Maine have postponed trials and nearly all in-person hearings to keep crowds from packing courthouses. Trials that were underway — like the high-profile case against multimillionaire real estate heir Robert Durst — have been halted. Some chief judges have suspended grand juries, rendering new indictments impossible. Other have allowed them to sit, though six feet apart. Prosecutors may have to abandon some low-level cases to keep people from flooding into the legal system.Many judges are holding hearings by phone or video chat to keep all cases from grinding to a halt. Other courts are stymied by outdated technology. The clerk for the the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Molly Dwyer, likened the logistical challenges to “building the bike as we ride it.” Judges have asked for emergency powers to delay trials longer than the law generally allows and extend key deadlines, like when a defendant must initially appear in court. That could keep people locked up longer, exposing them to unsafe jail conditions, and violate their constitutional right to a speedy trial, defense lawyers say.”We shouldn’t be creating mechanisms in the current crisis to keep people in jail longer. The jails are just tinderboxes waiting for the virus to take off,” said Jeff Chorney, deputy public defender in Alameda County, California. Courts there now have seven days instead of 48 hours to hold arraignments, during which a defendant is often appointed a lawyer and can enter a plea. The pandemic has shuttered nearly every aspect of everyday life as the death toll mounts and more states impose strict stay-at-home orders. There are nearly 400,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths in the U.S., according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.Still, coast-to-coast disruptions of the courts system are unprecedented. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina forced courts in New Orleans to temporarily close. The suspension of legal deadlines after the natural disaster left thousands languishing behind bars for months without formal charges, attorneys say. Lawyers there fear a repeat.”On a regular day, without a crisis like Katrina and COVID, you can imagine people getting lost in a system like this,” said Alanah Odoms Hebert, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “There will be a lot folks who fall through the cracks.” No civil litigation is getting done. U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger in Chicago chafed at a recent request for an emergency order barring the alleged misuse of elf and unicorn drawings. “The world,” he said, “is facing a real emergency. (The) plaintiff is not.”The COVID-19 disruptions are causing widespread confusion with prosecutors and defense attorneys as they struggle to file documents, get matters heard in courthouses operating on skeleton crews and share information with jailed clients while maintaining social distancing. Lawyers for Elizabeth Holmes, head of the blood-testing startup Theranos scheduled to be tried this summer for allegedly defrauding investors, asked a California federal judge to also exempt them from the orders. They said the restrictions made witness preparation and serving subpoenas difficult. The judge refused.Attorneys are wary of visiting their clients in jails for fear of contracting the virus or spreading it behind bars. They rely on phone calls, which in some places are recorded, limiting what they can say. “You have to sort of chose between your safety and your client’s safety … or their constitutional rights. It’s a really impossible situation,” said William Isenberg, a Boston defense attorney. The haphazard operations could lead defendants to later challenge convictions, even if their lawyers did the best they could during the virus-related tumult. Courthouse chaos may worsen when the shutdowns end, as judges try to return to old cases while fielding a burst in new cases. A flood of lawsuits linked to COVID-19 will add to the logjam. “The courts are looking down the barrel of a real serious bottleneck,” said Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. “I don’t think anybody has figured out what they’re going to do.”Crime victims are also forced to wait. In Minnesota, the virus has postponed the federal trial of an Illinois militia leader accused of being the ringleader in the 2017 pipe bombing of a Minnesota mosque. Michael Hari’s trial was already postponed once. Now it’s scheduled for late July.Mohamed Omar, executive director of the mosque, said community members want to see quick justice, but that he understands the need for a delay. “The safety of our community and those that are vulnerable are more important to us now more than any other thing,” he said. “This is bigger than all of us.”For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in a few weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
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Malawi Electoral Commission Plans July Vote Despite Coronavirus
Malawi’s Electoral Commission (MEC) says it is pushing ahead with voter registration for July’s presidential election re-run, despite a government-ordered suspension because of the coronavirus.Malawi has so far eight confirmed cases of the virus and one death. Health officials worry people grouped for registration and voting could easily spread the virus but the MEC says only it has the authority to halt the election process. The MEC says there is no plan to stop voter registration over coronavirus concerns. Spokesman Sangwani Mwafulirwa on Wednesday said there were adequate measures in place to prevent infections in registration centers. “For example, those that are coming for registration they are observing the social distance. Fortunately, this time around, our biometrical voter registration system is efficient. So, we are not having queues in voter registration centers,” he said.Mwafulira said all MEC staff wear protective equipment such as face masks and that hand sanitizers, soap, and water are provided for the public. The MEC last week launched voter registration for a July re-run of last year’s presidential election.Health officials criticized going ahead with the election process at a time when they are trying to check the spread of coronavirus.Heath Minister Jappie Mhango says up to 50,000 Malawians could die from the disease if not enough action is taken to stop the virus.Mhango, who also chairs a cabinet-level committee on the coronavirus, on Tuesday announced voter registration would be suspended.“What we are saying is, you can only have an election where people are enjoying good health. We are a government and as a government we have a duty to protect our citizens. Assume tomorrow we are attacked by foreign forces – will you go to register? We are already in a war situation; we are fighting the virus. This is war. You cannot subject your citizens to hazardous situation just because you want an election, for what?” asked Mhango.However, the MEC argues only it or the courts can halt the election.
Opposition parties, whose court case saw last year’s election results overturned in February, have been pushing for the election to go ahead, despite the risk. United Transformation Movement Party President Saulos Chilima made his argument Wednesday during a televised press conference.He said the group that was talking about the suspension of the electoral process was lying. That is because the laws of Malawi do not allow them to suspend the registration process, he argued. That is the responsibility of the electoral commission. What I know, said Chilima, is that the exercise is still on and I urge people to go and register.But health rights groups say allowing voters to gather for registration and polling contradicts key coronavirus prevention measures. Executive Director for Malawi Health Equity Network George Jobe says the public is getting mixed messages from authorities. “There have been messages on social distancing to be observed and also [against] gatherings. And at the same time, we saw there was registration. Isn’t that breaking the rules given out? So, the two activities are contradicting and confusing to the general public,” Jobe said.Malawi’s Constitutional Court nullified last year’s presidential election citing massive irregularities in the re-election of President Peter Mutharika. The court ordered fresh polls by July 3.If allowed to continue, voter registration would continue until June 7.
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Senegal’s Street Children Among Those Most at Risk for COVID-19
Senegal has more than 200 reported cases of coronavirus, prompting President Macky Sall to declare a state of emergency last week. Among those most vulnerable to the virus are the street children of the capital, who live in crowded boarding homes and are forced to beg for a living. Jules Souleymane Ndiaye distributes milk to street children, known as talibes, in Mbour, south of Dakar. The children are told to line up single file, with a distance of one meter between each person.Son of a talibe himself, Ndiaye is co-founder of Pour Une Enfance Senegal (For a Childhood in Senegal). The Franco-Senegalese association was created in 2012 to help street children, who are estimated to number at least 100,000.Boarding homesNdiaye said the talibes are among the most vulnerable to catching and spreading the coronavirus. Most live in daaras, which are boarding homes run by Islamic scholars that are notorious for their unsanitary, crowded conditions.Ndiaye said association members tell the children they must not shake hands with people, and that they must clean up when they come in from outside. He said some of the kids have even made a homemade sink in which to wash their hands.FILE – Street children wait to get meals from members of the Village Pilote association amid an outbreak of the coronavirus disease, in Dakar, Senegal, April 1, 2020.In 2016, Senegalese authorities introduced a law that officially prohibits children from begging, in an effort to get the talibes off the streets. But the law has never been enforced.The National Food Security Council of Senegal said it plans to provide for underprivileged families to help get them through the coronavirus pandemic.Niokhobaye Diouf, director of a child protection committee with Senegal’s Ministry of Family, said Senegalese authorities have a coronavirus emergency plan for street children. Dakar has made 13 educational social centers available, said Diouf, as well as other community centers. They are talking about a capacity of 1,500 beds, he said.Keeping the talibes off the street to avoid coronavirus is key, said Amara Thiam, a nurse with For a Childhood in Senegal.Infection could spreadThiam said infection in one talibe would be a disaster because the child’s daara, maybe all daaras, would be subject to infection. When the children go out on the street, he said, they interact a lot with each other.Before the pandemic, he ran the center’s clinic, which gave basic medical care to about 30 street children per day.For a Childhood in Senegal also ran a center that offered classrooms, playrooms, showers, a bakery and a vegetable garden, making it a haven for talibes. But now the center, like much of Dakar, is closed to prevent spreading the virus.Co-founder Ndiaye said a stay-at-home lockdown might be the only thing that spares the kids from catching the virus and passing it to others.
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UK PM Johnson Moves out of Intensive Care
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has moved out of intensive care as he continues to recover from COVID-19, a spokesman said on Thursday.”The Prime Minister has been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward, where he will receive close monitoring during the early phase of his recovery,” the spokesman said.”He is in extremely good spirits.”Johnson, 55, was admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough, and was rushed to intensive care on Monday where he has since spent three nights receiving treatment.
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As Restrictions Ease in Wuhan, Health Official Vigilant Against Resurgence
As restrictions on travel and other movement by citizens are eased in the Chinese city of Wuhan — once, the epicenter of the world-wide coronavirus outbreak — health officials say they must remain vigilant against a resurgence of the virus. Officials Wednesday lifted most of the travel restrictions in the city, allowing regular traffic out of the city resume, along with train and air travel. Travelers were required to show they were approved as healthy using a phone app and having their temperature taken. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Wuhan Zhongnan Hospital deputy Chief Zhang Jungian says doctors are tracking patients they have seen — with or without symptoms — and ensuring they are going through the necessary quarantine. They are also stressing personal precautionary measures, such as face masks. The international community has raised questions regarding the veracity of information provided by the Chinese government regarding the outbreak there. But the lockdown and precautions taken in Wuhan and other areas to fight the spread of the virus have proven effective enough to be adopted by other nations.
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