Two members of the military police patrol the streets in Budapest on Monday, as part of a lockdown imposed by the government due to the coronavirus.
BERLIN — The Hungarian parliament on Monday handed the country’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, the power to govern unchallenged for as long as he sees fit, a move rights groups said effectively suspends democracy in the European Union member state in the name of fighting the novel coronavirus.
The “coronavirus bill,” which allows Orban to rule by decree and bypass the national assembly, passed by 137 to 53 votes despite opposition efforts to attach an expiration date on the state of emergency. The law also punishes those who “distort” or publish “false” information on the outbreak with five years in jail.
The government has said that the emergency powers are necessary to fight the outbreak, but political analysts say they have questions about whether Orban will relinquish them when the health crisis subsides. Hungary has 447 coronavirus cases and 15 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
“He is using this crisis to further increase his power,” said András Bíró-Nagy, the director of the Budapest-based Policy Solutions think tank. “The Hungarian prime minister enjoys the situation where he can act as a captain in a crisis. I don’t see him giving up these powers again easily.”
He pointed to the fact that Orban, leader of the right-wing anti-immigration Fidesz party, still holds emergency powers introduced in 2016 to deal with the migrant crisis.
Orban does not stand alone in being accused of a coronavirus power grab amid concerns that leaders with authoritarian tendencies could exploit the current crisis.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of carrying out what critics have dubbed a “coronavirus coup” to remain leader and delay his impending court proceedings.Security agencies have also been ordered to track users’ data without their consent.
Zoltan Mathe
AP
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban replies to faction leader of the oppositional Jobbik party Peter Jakab during a question-and-answer session of the Parliament as it approved legislation that extends a state of emergency and gives the government extraordinary powers to enact measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, failed to convince lawmakers to give him the authority to take over private businesses earlier this month. But even the emergency powers he has been granted have raised concerns given his past record of flouting the rule of law.
While expansive emergency measures in countries such as Britain, France and Italy may have an end date before they must gain parliamentary approval for extensions, the lifting of checks and balances on democracies needs to be closely monitored, rights activists say.
“In states of emergency, there may be a need to temporarily derogate from certain rights and procedures but any such measures need to be temporary, proportionate and absolutely necessary from a public health perspective,” said Lydia Gall, an Eastern Europe researcher with Human Rights Watch.
“Vaguely formulated provisions, as can be seen in the state-of-emergency legislation adopted, do not fulfill those criteria and certainly not when they are set for an indefinite period of time,” she added.
The vote by Hungary’s parliament effectively leaves the Orban administration free to pass any type of decree it sees fit, she said. “We will have to wait and see how the government will use this unlimited power.”
There are fears that it will be used to further curb independent voices and a free press, she said. Hungary has made several arrests in recent weeks of people accused of spreading “fake news” over the number of coronavirus cases in the country, even though many believe the real number of infections is higher.
While the Orban-controlled government says the constitutional court can still act as a check, observers point out that it has been stacked with Orban loyalists.
“In practice, everybody in Hungary knows the constitutional court is never going to go against Orban,” Bíró-Nagy said.
The European Union has already launched punitive measures against Orban’s government.
The bloc said that Orban’s attacks on the media, the judiciary and the rights of minorities pose a “systematic threat” to its core values.
But so far, it has not managed to shift Hungary’s course, and analysts say the 27-member bloc will now be distracted with the broader issues of dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
Reactions were muted on Monday.
Didier Reynders, the European Union commissioner for justice, said that the organization evaluates emergency measures taken by member states in relation to fundamental rights.
“This is particularly the case for the law passed today in Hungary concerning the state of emergency and new criminal penalties for the dissemination of false information,” he tweeted.
Others, including former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, called for decisive action.
“I have been dreaming of a ‘United States of Europe’ for years,” he wrote on Twitter. “Precisely for this reason, I have the right, and the duty, to say that after what Orban has done today, the European Union MUST act and make him change his mind. Or, simply, expel Hungary from the Union.”
László György Lukács, a right-wing parliamentarian with the Jobbik party, told the pro-government news site Hungary Today that he believed in tough measures to fight the virus but “Orbán must not use the epidemic to build a kingdom.”
Michael Birnbaum in Brussels and Steve Hendrix in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic climbed past 3,000 on Monday, the deadliest day yet in the country’s mounting crisis, while New York cheered the arrival of a gleaming 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship as a sign of hope in the city’s desperate fight.
In a grim new milestones marking the spread of the virus, total deaths across the United States hit 3,017, including at least 540 on Monday, and the reported cases climbed to more than 163,000, according to a Reuters tally.
People in New York and New Jersey lined both sides of the Hudson River to cheer the U.S Navy ship Comfort, a converted oil tanker painted white with giant red crosses, as it sailed past the Statue of Liberty accompanied by support ships and helicopters.
The Comfort will treat non-coronavirus patients, including those who require surgery and critical care, in an effort to free up other resources to fight the virus, the Navy said.
“It’s a wartime atmosphere and we all have to pull together,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was among the dignitaries to greet the ship’s arrival at the Midtown Manhattan pier.
Hospitals in the New York City area have been overrun with patients suffering from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus. Officials have appealed for volunteer healthcare workers.
“We can’t take care of you if we can’t take care of ourselves,” said Krystal Horchuck, a nurse with Virtua Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. “I think a lot of us have accepted the fact that we are probably going to get this. It’s just that we want to survive. We’re all being exposed to it at some point.”
The United States has the most confirmed cases in the world, a number that is likely to soar when tests for the virus become more widespread.(Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T)
President Donald Trump told a White House briefing that more than 1 million Americans had been tested for coronavirus - less than 3% of the population. While the United States has ramped up testing after a series of setbacks, it still lags countries like Italy and South Korea on a per capita basis.
In California, another hard-hit state, Governor Gavin Newsom said the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations had nearly doubled over the past four days and the number of ICU patients had tripled. Officials there also appealed for medical volunteers.
CENTRAL PARK HOSPITALS
To ease the pressure in New York, construction of a 68-bed field hospital began on Sunday in Manhattan’s Central Park. The white tents being set up evoked a wartime feel in an island of green typically used by New Yorkers to exercise, picnic and enjoy the first signs of spring.
The makeshift facility, provided by the Mount Sinai Health System and non-profit organization Samaritan’s Purse, is expected to begin accepting patients on Tuesday, de Blasio said.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, one of the most prominent public figures of the coronavirus crisis, told a news conference the state might have to step in to close playgrounds in the country’s most populous city in order to enforce social distancing and slow the spread of the virus.
Cuomo and de Blasio are among a growing chorus of officials who have voiced frustration at Trump’s handling of the crisis and a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
“I am not engaging the president in politics,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said of Trump, a Republican. “My only goal is to engage the president in partnership.”
Medical students and physician assistants from Touro University Nevada wait to screen people in a temporary parking lot shelter at Cashman Center, with spaces marked for social distancing to help slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. March 30, 2020. REUTERS/Steve Marcus
Ford Motor Co said on Monday it will produce 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days at a Michigan plant in cooperation with General Electric’s healthcare unit, and can then manufacture 30,000 a month.
Officials in states hard hit by the pandemic have pleaded with the Trump administration and manufacturers to speed up production of ventilators to cope with a surge in patients struggling to breathe. On Friday, Trump said he would invoke powers under the Defense Production Act to direct manufacturers to produce ventilators.
CHILLING NUMBERS
U.S. health officials are urging Americans to follow stay-at-home orders until the end of April to contain the spread of the virus, which originated in China and has infected about three-quarters of a million people around the world.
“If we do things together well - almost perfectly - we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, told NBC’s “Today” show.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a White House briefing that he expected a coronavirus outbreak in the fall, as well, but he said the nation would be better prepared to respond.
Authorities in New Orleans were setting up a field hospital at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center - the same site where thousands of Hurricane Katrina refugees gathered in 2005 - to handle an expected overflow of patients.
Dr. Thomas Krajewski, an emergency room doctor at St. Barnard Parish hospital in New Orleans, said he had watched patients be admitted to the hospital and seem ready to get better only to get worse.
“Many of them have passed away already in a way that ... it’s not normal,” he said. “It’s not something that any of us had prepared to do. And we’re kind of writing the book as we go.”
Slideshow (30 Images)
The governors of Maryland, Virginia and Arizona issued “stay-at-home” orders as cases rose in those states, as did Washington, D.C.
At the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, 12 prisoners were hospitalized and several required ventilators, while 77 more showing symptoms were isolated at the facility, officials said.
Renowned country and folk singer John Prine was among the latest celebrities - including several members of Congress - to come down with the virus. Prine was in stable condition on Monday after being hospitalized with symptoms of the illness, his wife said on Twitter. Prine, a 73-year-old cancer survivor, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
(This story refiles to add dropped word “care” in the 7th paragraph)
Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York, Daniel Trotta in Milan, Barbara Goldberg and Stephanie Kelly in New York and Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing by Paul Simao and John Whitesides; Editing by Howard Goller, Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York welcomed the arrival of a gleaming 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship on Monday as a beacon of hope for the city’s desperate fight against the coronavirus pandemic, while the national death toll climbed past 3,000 on the country’s most deadly day.
People gathered on the New York and New Jersey sides of the Hudson River to cheer the U.S Navy ship Comfort, a converted oil tanker painted white with giant red crosses, as it sailed past the Statue of Liberty accompanied by support ships and helicopters.
The Comfort will treat non-coronavirus patients, including those who require surgery and critical care, the Navy said.
“It’s a wartime atmosphere and we all have to pull together,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was among the dignitaries to greet the ship’s arrival at the Midtown Manhattan pier. Hospitals in the city have been overrun with patients suffering from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.
The United States had its highest daily death toll on Monday with more than 500 new deaths, bringing the total to 3,001 killed and more than 160,000 reported cases, according to a Reuters tally.
The United States has the most confirmed cases in the world, a number that is likely to soar when tests for the virus become more widespread.(Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T)
U.S. President Donald Trump told a White House briefing more than 1 million Americans had been tested for coronavirus - less than 3% of the population. While the United States has ramped up testing after a series of setbacks, it still lags countries like Italy and South Korea on a per capita basis.
In California, another hard-hit state, Governor Gavin Newsom said the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations had nearly doubled over the past four days and the number of ICU patients had tripled.
CENTRAL PARK FIELD HOSPITALS
To ease the pressure in New York, construction of a 68-bed field hospital began on Sunday in Central Park, and the white tents being set up evoked a wartime feel in an island of green typically used by New Yorkers to exercise, picnic and enjoy the first signs of spring.
The makeshift facility, provided by the Mount Sinai Health System and non-profit organization Samaritan’s Purse, is expected to begin accepting patients on Tuesday, de Blasio said.
New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo, one of the most prominent public figures of the coronavirus crisis, told a news conference the state might have to step in to close playgrounds in the country’s most populous city.
Cuomo and de Blasio are among a growing chorus of officials who have voiced frustration at Trump’s handling of the crisis and a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
“I am not engaging the president in politics,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said of Trump, a Republican. “My only goal is to engage the president in partnership.”
Ford Motor Co said on Monday it will produce 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days at Michigan plant in cooperation with General Electric’s healthcare unit, and can then manufacture 30,000 a month.
Officials in states hard hit by the pandemic have pleaded with the Trump administration and manufacturers to speed up production of ventilators to cope with a surge in patients struggling to breathe. On Friday, Trump said he would invoke powers under the Defense Production Act to direct manufacturers to produce ventilators.
The USNS Comfort passes Manhattan as it enters New York Harbor during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, U.S., March 30, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar
CHILLING NUMBERS
U.S. health officials are urging Americans to follow stay-at-home orders and other measures to contain the spread of the virus, which originated in China and has infected about three-quarters of a million people around the world.
“If we do things together well - almost perfectly - we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, told NBC’s “Today” show.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. health official, cited those figures on Sunday as a possible outcome, but Birx’s assessment appeared to suggest the figures could be a floor rather than a ceiling.
The virus has spread from its original epicenters in Washington state, New York and California.
Authorities in New Orleans were setting up a field hospital at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center - the same site where thousands of Hurricane Katrina refugees gathered in 2005 - to handle the expected overflow of patients.
The governors of Maryland, Virginia and Arizona issued “stay-at-home” orders as cases rose in those states, as did Washington, D.C.
At the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, 12 prisoners were hospitalized and several required ventilators, while 77 more showing symptoms were isolated at the facility, officials said.
Renowned country and folk singer John Prine was among the latest celebrities - including several members of Congress - to come down with the virus. Prine was in stable condition on Monday after being hospitalized with symptoms of the illness, his wife said on Twitter. Prine, a 73-year-old cancer survivor, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Slideshow (19 Images)
Trump initially played down the risk to Americans, drawing criticism from health officials and political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden, front-runner in the Democratic race to challenge Trump in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
“We allowed the seeds to be planted. And now there is nothing to do but wait for the bloom. A lot of these deaths are already percolating,” said Dana Miller, 61, of Belmont, Massachusetts, a retired U.S. government health policy official.
Trump on Sunday abandoned a hotly criticized plan to get the economy up and running by mid-April, extending his original 15-day nationwide stay-at-home order for another 30 days, a step that many Americans accepted with resignation.
“I’m sad to be locked inside, but I think it’s for the best,” said Mia Siracusa, 24, a data manager ordered to work out of her apartment in Brooklyn, whose live-in boyfriend is from Italy and whose mother is a New York City hospital nurse.
Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York, Daniel Trotta in Milan, Barbara Goldberg and Stephanie Kelly in New York and Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing by Paul Simao and John Whitesides; Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York welcomed the arrival of a gleaming 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship on Monday as a beacon of hope for the city’s desperate fight against the coronavirus pandemic, while the national death toll climbed past 3,000 on the country’s most deadly day.
People gathered on the New York and New Jersey sides of the Hudson River to cheer the U.S Navy ship Comfort, a converted oil tanker painted white with giant red crosses, as it sailed past the Statue of Liberty accompanied by support ships and helicopters.
The Comfort will treat non-coronavirus patients, including those who require surgery and critical care, the Navy said.
“It’s a wartime atmosphere and we all have to pull together,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was among the dignitaries to greet the ship’s arrival at the Midtown Manhattan pier. Hospitals in the city have been overrun with patients suffering from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.
The United States had its highest daily death toll on Monday with more than 500 new deaths, bringing the total to 3,001 killed and more than 160,000 reported cases, according to a Reuters tally.
The United States has the most confirmed cases in the world, a number that is likely to soar when tests for the virus become more widespread.(Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T)
U.S. President Donald Trump told a White House briefing more than 1 million Americans had been tested for coronavirus - less than 3% of the population. While the United States has ramped up testing after a series of setbacks, it still lags countries like Italy and South Korea on a per capita basis.
In California, another hard-hit state, Governor Gavin Newsom said the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations had nearly doubled over the past four days and the number of ICU patients had tripled.
CENTRAL PARK FIELD HOSPITALS
To ease the pressure in New York, construction of a 68-bed field hospital began on Sunday in Central Park, and the white tents being set up evoked a wartime feel in an island of green typically used by New Yorkers to exercise, picnic and enjoy the first signs of spring.
The makeshift facility, provided by the Mount Sinai Health System and non-profit organization Samaritan’s Purse, is expected to begin accepting patients on Tuesday, de Blasio said.
New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo, one of the most prominent public figures of the coronavirus crisis, told a news conference the state might have to step in to close playgrounds in the country’s most populous city.
Cuomo and de Blasio are among a growing chorus of officials who have voiced frustration at Trump’s handling of the crisis and a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
“I am not engaging the president in politics,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said of Trump, a Republican. “My only goal is to engage the president in partnership.”
Ford Motor Co said on Monday it will produce 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days at Michigan plant in cooperation with General Electric’s healthcare unit, and can then manufacture 30,000 a month.
Officials in states hard hit by the pandemic have pleaded with the Trump administration and manufacturers to speed up production of ventilators to cope with a surge in patients struggling to breathe. On Friday, Trump said he would invoke powers under the Defense Production Act to direct manufacturers to produce ventilators.
The USNS Comfort passes Manhattan as it enters New York Harbor during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, U.S., March 30, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar
CHILLING NUMBERS
U.S. health officials are urging Americans to follow stay-at-home orders and other measures to contain the spread of the virus, which originated in China and has infected about three-quarters of a million people around the world.
“If we do things together well - almost perfectly - we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, told NBC’s “Today” show.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. health official, cited those figures on Sunday as a possible outcome, but Birx’s assessment appeared to suggest the figures could be a floor rather than a ceiling.
The virus has spread from its original epicenters in Washington state, New York and California.
Authorities in New Orleans were setting up a field hospital at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center - the same site where thousands of Hurricane Katrina refugees gathered in 2005 - to handle the expected overflow of patients.
The governors of Maryland, Virginia and Arizona issued “stay-at-home” orders as cases rose in those states, as did Washington, D.C.
At the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, 12 prisoners were hospitalized and several required ventilators, while 77 more showing symptoms were isolated at the facility, officials said.
Renowned country and folk singer John Prine was among the latest celebrities - including several members of Congress - to come down with the virus. Prine was in stable condition on Monday after being hospitalized with symptoms of the illness, his wife said on Twitter. Prine, a 73-year-old cancer survivor, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Slideshow (19 Images)
Trump initially played down the risk to Americans, drawing criticism from health officials and political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden, front-runner in the Democratic race to challenge Trump in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
“We allowed the seeds to be planted. And now there is nothing to do but wait for the bloom. A lot of these deaths are already percolating,” said Dana Miller, 61, of Belmont, Massachusetts, a retired U.S. government health policy official.
Trump on Sunday abandoned a hotly criticized plan to get the economy up and running by mid-April, extending his original 15-day nationwide stay-at-home order for another 30 days, a step that many Americans accepted with resignation.
“I’m sad to be locked inside, but I think it’s for the best,” said Mia Siracusa, 24, a data manager ordered to work out of her apartment in Brooklyn, whose live-in boyfriend is from Italy and whose mother is a New York City hospital nurse.
Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York, Daniel Trotta in Milan, Barbara Goldberg and Stephanie Kelly in New York and Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing by Paul Simao and John Whitesides; Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman
MOSCOW — Russia’s propagandist in chief was seconds away from starting his show on state television, a two-and-a-half-hour fiesta of flattery celebrating President Vladimir V. Putin’s coolheaded response to the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s calm in contrast to the lockdowns and panic gripping Europe and the United States.
Then came an alarming update on Russia’s situation from the mayor of Moscow. Because of the virus’s accelerating spread, the mayor decreed on Sunday evening, all residents of the capital would be forbidden to leave their homes starting Monday and will need special passes to move around the city.
By late Monday, at least 14 Russian regions and the country’s second biggest city, St Petersburg, had announced that they, too, were ordering residents to stay at home, indicating that the world’s largest nation, a vast territory covering 13 time zones, could soon be in lockdown.
For weeks the Kremlin and its cheerleaders in the state news media have insisted that, unlike Italy, Spain and, more recently, the United States, Russia could tackle the virus without major disruption.
But in recent days they have come around to where much of the world has been for some time: forced to accept desperate measures to try to contain the outbreak.
In a country where all important events usually revolve around Mr. Putin, however, the president has been curiously absent or tardy.
He held a teleconference on Monday with the Kremlin’s representatives in the regions, endorsing Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s lockdown decree as “justified and necessary” while presenting himself as the defender of ordinary Russians by ordering a crackdown on speculation and price-gouging.
“Our country is one big family,” Mr. Putin said. “But as they say, ‘Every family has its black sheep.’”
Mr. Putin, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political commentator and former member of the Kremlin’s human rights council, “wants to bring only good news, not bad news.”
By the official count, Russia has 1,836 confirmed cases — far fewer than the 143,000 in the United States and the nearly 100,000 in Italy, but a fivefold increase over a week ago. Only 10 Russians have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Of the 302 new cases nationwide reported on Monday — the biggest one-day rise yet — 212 were in Moscow, Russia’s largest city.
Russia has conducted more than 260,000 tests, but this includes cases of multiple tests on the same person, lowering the head count considerably.
Holed up for much of the past week at his country estate outside Moscow, Mr. Putin left it to Mr. Sobyanin to order the city’s 13 million residents to stay at home. On Monday Mr. Sobyanin vowed “tougher and tougher measures” to keep people indoors.
As snow returned to the capital, the police cordoned off parks in downtown Moscow but did not stop pedestrians. Traffic on the city’s central ring road, while lighter than usual, was still heavy.
There was no sign of panic, despite efforts to stoke it on social media, where anonymous fake reports and videos appeared of troops and armored vehicles advancing on the capital to take control.
For the moment, the restrictions in Moscow seem to have reassured rather than alarmed the public. They also turned pet dogs into especially valuable possessions, since the only outdoor leisure activity permitted under Mr. Sobyanin’s order is walking a pet within a 100-yard radius of home.
Walking her corgi on a back street in the center of the city, Anna Ivanova, a 55-year-old economist, said she supported the lockdown and believed that Russia has the pandemic under control, since she does not know many people infected with the virus.
Russian stubbornness, she added, meant that the authorities needed to introduce controls step by step if the public is to obey them. “If we were to enact tough measures immediately, we’d have the same kind of panic as in Italy,” she said.
As typically happens in times of crisis, many Russians recalled that they had seen much worse before.
The coronavirus, said Lyudmila Yevgenyevna, 64, is nowhere near as perilous as World War II or the siege of Leningrad. “Everything passes,” she said. “Wars end, as do epidemics and quarantines.” she said.
But others wondered whether the virus really exists. “I don’t believe in coronavirus,” said Larisa Ilyinichna, 60. “Our authorities need this for something.”
Russia closed its 2,600-mile border with China in late January and said this weekend that it was closing all land borders with the dozen other countries with which it shares a frontier.
The first crack in the Kremlin’s facade appeared last Wednesday, when Mr. Sobyanin warned Mr. Putin publicly that the real number of sick people was “much bigger” than official numbers indicated. That, he said, was because many of those returning from hard-hit European countries had not yet been tested.
More troubling, a still small but growing portion of recent infections are the result of community transmission rather than people returning from abroad. A sudden surge in infections would probably overwhelm Russia’s extensive but often ramshackle state medical system.
The health service includes a few showcase facilities, including a new, state-of the-art infectious diseases hospital in Moscow that Mr. Putin visited last Tuesday.
But much of it, particularly in more remote areas of the country, is plagued by shortages of money, medicine and modern equipment.
The Moscow mayor’s stay-at-home order is technically a “recommendation,” as the city government has no legal right to confine people to their homes.
But it suggested that at least some senior officials are taking the coronavirus threat seriously, rather than viewing it merely as something that the state media can use to gloat over the travails of foreigners and promote Mr. Putin’s image as the savior of a besieged country.
Much of a flagship news show on Sunday — presided over by the firebrand host Dmitri Kiselyov — focused on Mr. Putin’s visit to the infectious diseases hospital and on how, showing steely courage that was said to have surprised even his close aides, the president went inside alone, without his bodyguards.
In a reprise of the action-man stunts that have been staged throughout his 20 years in power, Mr. Putin put on a canary-yellow protective suit and gas mask.
To remind Russians of their president’s hands-on style, Mr. Kiselyov showed pictures of Mr. Putin’s previous exploits: flying in a fighter jet, descending into the sea in a submarine and visiting front-line soldiers in Syria.
Mr. Putin, he gushed, “shows up in person everywhere.”
The question now, however, is whether Mr. Putin will also “show up” and take ownership of a coronavirus crisis that risks spiraling out of control, as it has done in other countries. Doing that would endanger the image, carefully constructed over two decades and the basis of his widespread popularity.
So far, Mr. Putin has left it to Mayor Sobyanin and the newly appointed prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, to announce decisions that will only annoy many Russians.
Mr. Mishustin on Monday called on local authorities around the country to follow Moscow’s lead and order people to stay home.
Mr. Putin, always wary of associating himself with bad news, last week delivered a surprise television address to the nation, warning that Russia “cannot isolate itself from the threat,” but then announced a weeklong paid vacation for the whole country.
This left the streets of Moscow and other cities filled with people enjoying their time off. The Kremlin later had to clarify that the country was not being given a bonus vacation but was simply being asked to stay at home.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Moscow Center, said that Mr. Putin’s public detachment from the health crisis fit into what, since he annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has been his view that the presidency is not so much a job as a sacred mission.
“This is all connected to his sense of having a personal mission,” she said. “Why should he spend his sacred political capital on a virus?”
Anton Troianovski, Ivan Nechepurenko and Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting.
PARIS (Reuters) - From the stage of an evangelical superchurch, the leader of the gospel choir kicked off an evening of prayer and preaching: “We’re going to celebrate the Lord! Are you feeling the joy tonight?”
“Yes!” shouted the hundreds gathered at the Christian Open Door church on Feb. 18. Some of them had traveled thousands of miles to take part in the week-long gathering in Mulhouse, a city of 100,000 on France’s borders with Germany and Switzerland.
For many members of this globe-spanning flock, the annual celebration is the high point of the church calendar.
This time, someone in the congregation was carrying the coronavirus.
The prayer meeting kicked off the biggest cluster of COVID-19 in France - one of northern Europe’s hardest-hit countries - to date, local government said. Around 2,500 confirmed cases have been linked to it. Worshippers at the church have unwittingly taken the disease caused by the virus home to the West African state of Burkina Faso, to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, to Guyana in Latin America, to Switzerland, to a French nuclear power plant, and into the workshops of one of Europe’s biggest automakers.
Weeks later, Germany partially closed its border with France, suspending a free-movement pact that has been in place for the past 25 years. The church cluster was a key factor, two people familiar with the German decision told Reuters. Church officials told Reuters that 17 members of the congregation have since died of complications linked to the disease.
Other religious gatherings have been linked to the spread of the virus: A large church in South Korea has triggered more than 5,000 cases there. This story, told to Reuters by members of the Christian Open Door congregation and officials involved in coping with the outbreak, is testament to the speed and ferocity of the coronavirus infection. As public health administrators were still gearing up for coronavirus, the disease was operating to its own, remorseless timetable - one that has quickly outpaced anything they could put in place.
As the faithful gathered on a clear Tuesday evening in the church, an old shopping center converted into a 2,500 seat auditorium, the disease seemed remote. France had 12 confirmed cases, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data. There were none in the Mulhouse area.
France, like other governments in northern Europe, had imposed no restrictions on big meetings. There was no alcohol gel for the congregations to clean their hands, no elbow bumps instead of handshakes.
“At the time, we viewed COVID as something that was far off,” said Jonathan Peterschmitt, son of the lead pastor and grandson of the church’s founder. His father, Samuel, was unavailable for an interview because he had been sickened by the virus, his son and a church spokeswoman said.
The day after the first case linked to the church was identified on Feb. 29, public health officials followed the usual protocol and traced the people whom the carriers had been in contact with, to stem the spread. Using a list supplied by the church - which public health officials said cooperated fully - they first contacted those who had staffed the children’s crèche during the gathering.
At this point, the health inspectors realized they were too late. Some crèche staff were already sick, according to Michel Vernay, an epidemiologist with France’s national public health agency in eastern France.
“We were overwhelmed,” said Vernay. “We realized that we had a time bomb in front of us.”
“SPIRITUALLY RECHARGE”
Among the congregation was local man Elie Widmer, a 37-year-old manager of a house-building company. His parents were members of the church, which was founded in 1966 by Jean Peterschmitt, a French shopkeeper who embraced evangelism after his wife was unexpectedly cured of an illness.
Widmer said he had drifted away from the church as a teenager, but returned. The Mulhouse gathering was something he looked forward to the whole year, he said: “You feel a special energy during that week. For a week, you stop everything to spiritually recharge.” As a drummer in the church orchestra, he attended the whole week.
Coming from further afield was Antoinette, a 70-year-old grandmother who lives on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. For her, the gathering was part of a 25-year tradition.
Antoinette made the trip with five other women who worship at the Bethel evangelical church in the capital Ajaccio. She spoke on the condition that she not be fully identified, saying believers had been stigmatized by people outside the church for spreading the virus.
Antoinette has chronic lung problems, for which she has regular treatment. As the women flew out of Corsica on Feb. 16, they looked forward to combining evangelical workshops with excursions to the shops.
“We knew nothing,” she said from her home in Ajaccio. “We weren’t thinking about the epidemic.”
Neither was Mamadou Karambiri, who flew into Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport on Feb. 14 aboard an Air France flight from Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso.
He is pastor of his own church in Africa and co-founder of an organization called the International Evangelism Center – Africa Interior Mission. A charismatic speaker with a shock of white hair, Karambiri was to be the meeting’s star preacher.
His church, a warehouse-like building that takes up a city block in Ouagadougou, can accommodate 12,000 people, according to a worshipper there. A giant white cross towers above the red dirt street outside. Across the road is the studio that televises the sermons the pastor delivers to worshippers assembled on rows of blue plastic chairs.
Karambiri traveled to the Mulhouse gathering with his wife and a bodyguard, said his spokesman, Aristide A. Ouedrago. The pastor, through his secretary, declined to be interviewed for this story.
Ouedrago said that he believed that when Karambiri traveled, the virus was not in France, although in fact there were 12 cases.
“PETRI DISH”
In Mulhouse, the Christian Open Door church stands across the road from a kebab cafe. A four-storey-high white metal cross rises over the car park.
Also gathering in the church building were two children whose mother had taken sick before the event started, health officials said. The mother stayed at home, but their grandfather brought the children along - the elder child was five, the younger just one year old.
The children and their mother would later test positive for coronavirus, making the mother a potential source of the cluster, said Vernay, the French public health official. It was not clear to public health officials where the mother, whom Vernay declined to identify, picked up the infection.
The week’s schedule included gospel choir performances, collective prayer, singing, sermons from preachers, workshops, and testimony from people who said God had cured their illnesses.
The best-attended sessions had up to 2,500 people and there were never fewer than 1,000, said Jonathan Peterschmitt, the founder’s son, from his home. Many people came day after day, and spent hours there. “So we were in the same petri dish for a week,” he said.
By the end of the gathering on Feb. 21, no one had reported any flu-like symptoms, according to Nathalie Schnoebelen, a church spokeswoman. At the time, France’s tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases was steady at 12.
SPREAD
In late February, Widmer, the drummer, started feeling unwell. His wife, his three children, and his mother-in-law also took ill.
A cross is pictured on the Eglise de la Porte Ouverte Chretienne during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mulhouse, France March 12, 2020. Picture taken March 12, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
On March 3, the WHO recorded 91 new COVID-19 cases in France, bringing the country’s total to 191. The church, prompted by the discovery of the infected woman and her two children, posted on its Facebook page that people who had come to the gathering should contact a doctor.
Widmer dialed 15, the number in France for emergency medical care. There were not enough testing kits for him to be tested. But doctors diagnosed coronavirus and ordered him and his family to quarantine themselves.
For three days he had a strong fever and headache, and lost his sense of taste and smell. He said he was not especially worried: His family had milder symptoms. He has since recovered, but remains in self-isolation.
The virus spread through the church founder’s family. Around a dozen members are now recovering.
A few miles away across the border, German officials were watching with growing alarm.
They had received a report from the Robert Koch Institute, a German state public health institution, that added eastern France to its list of four coronavirus risk areas around the world - along with China’s Hubei province, Iran, Italy and North Gyeongsang province, adjoining the city of Daegu, the site of the South Korean church outbreak. By March 11, France’s COVID-19 tally at the WHO had leapt to 1,774, of whom 33 had died.
Roughly 45,000 French workers commute to Germany daily, according to official data - around a fifth of them from the Mulhouse area. Most work in Germany’s wealthy industrial region of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where automakers Porsche and Mercedes-Benz have their headquarters. Europa-Park, a theme park just over the Rhine in Germany, is a big employer, also of French workers.
After attending the gathering, a worker from the French nuclear power plant at Fessenheim near Mulhouse tested positive. The plant’s operator, Electricite de France SA (EdF), ordered 20 others to self-isolate at home but operations were not disrupted, a representative of the power company said. Another person who had been at the gathering worked in the Peugeot Citroen factory on the edge of Mulhouse; that individual too was infected, according to a person familiar with the case.
German officials in Baden-Wuerttemberg decided to act, imposing restrictions on movements across the border.
The French government asked Berlin for an explanation. On March 16, German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron. They talked about the cluster in eastern France and the risk from commuters, said a German government official briefed on the call. Then they agreed to close the border to traffic other than cargo vehicles and people making essential trips. A French official confirmed the contents of the discussion.
Police appeared at previously unmanned border posts, asking car drivers for a document from their employer proving travel is essential. Cargo trucks are backed up.
But the disease was already out. A resident of Switzerland who went to the meeting brought the virus back to their evangelical community near Lausanne, the Swiss federation of evangelical churches said on its website. Public health authorities in French Guyana said they found five people who had traveled to the gathering also tested positive.
GOD’S PRESENCE
Back home in Corsica after her trip to the church gathering, Antoinette felt under the weather.
She put it down to the exertion of the trip, and carried on meeting up with other church-goers in Ajaccio. On March 2, nine days after she returned, she received a call from Mulhouse describing the outbreak there.
She was hospitalized overnight, tested, and on March 4, became one of the first cases of COVID-19 on the French island of Corsica. She has since been in self-isolation, and her church has suspended services. As of March 27, 263 people were infected with coronavirus on Corsica, 21 of whom died.
“People have pointed their finger at me,” said Antoinette on March 16. “They need a scapegoat.” She said some people outside her circle were suspicious of evangelical Christians and blamed her for bringing the virus to Corsica. Jonathan Peterschmitt, the son of the Mulhouse pastor, said others in the congregation had been subject to verbal attacks by strangers for spreading the infection, and were now fearful of revealing their identities.
By March 20, France had more than 10,000 cases of COVID-19. Around a quarter were in Grand-Est, the region that includes Mulhouse. “The very great majority” of these could be traced to the church, said Vernay, the local public health official.
Slideshow (25 Images)
Because there are more critical cases than intensive care beds in the region, some patients have been flown by helicopter to Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg. The French military have set up a field hospital inside green metal-framed tents.
At home in Ouagadougou, Pastor Karambiri and his wife, after falling ill on March 1, went to a local clinic, tested positive, and quarantined themselves until March 20.
At the end of his self-imposed period of isolation, he broadcast a message to his followers in a video posted on his organization’s Facebook page. Sitting on a sofa, his bible on his lap and his wife alongside him, he told them about the infection.
The coronavirus, he said, is “a satanic plan conceived a long time ago to destroy the world. But God is watching over us and he will lead the people out.”
Tangi Salaun reported from Paris; Additional reporting by Gilles Gillaume, John Irish, Richard Lough, Michel Rose and Bate Felix in Paris, Paul Ortoli in Corsica, Denis Balibouse in Mulhouse, Henry Wilkins in Ouagadougou and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; writing by Christian Lowe; Edited by Sara Ledwith
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem on January 23, 2020.
Abir Sultan | AFP | Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tested negative for the coronavirus on Monday after a parliamentary aide was confirmed to be carrying the virus, though the 70-year-old leader would remain in isolation, a spokesman said.
Spokesman Ofir Gendelman said on Twitter that Netanyahu, his family and staff all tested negative, but "he will remain quarantined until further instructions are issued by the Ministry of Health".
Israel's Health Ministry regulations generally require 14-day self-isolation for anyone deemed to have been in proximity to a carrier, with the duration reduced for the number of days that have passed since the suspected exposure.
Israeli media said the infected aide had been present at a parliament session last week attended by Netanyahu as well as opposition lawmakers with whom he is trying to build an emergency coalition government to help address the coronavirus crisis.
Israel has reported 4,695 cases and 16 fatalities.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu has been following medical advice and holding most meetings by video-conference.
