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Rabu, 08 April 2020

China's Wuhan ends its coronavirus lockdown but elsewhere one begins - Reuters

WUHAN, China (Reuters) - The Chinese city where the new coronavirus emerged ended its more-than two-month lockdown on Wednesday, even as a small northern city ordered restrictions on residents amid concern about a second wave of infections.

A member of a medical team weeps at the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport after travel restrictions to leave Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and China's epicentre of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, were lifted, April 8, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song

China sealed off Wuhan, a central city of 11 million people, on Jan. 23, a drastic step that came to symbolise its aggressive management of the virus.

More than 50,000 people in Wuhan were infected, and more than 2,500 of them died, about 80% of all deaths in China, according to official figures.

The virus has since spread around the world, infecting more than 1.4 million people, killing 82,000 of them and wreaking havoc on the global economy as governments imposed lockdowns to rein in its spread.

While China has managed to curb its coronavirus epidemic the measures to contain it have exacted a heavy economic and social toll, with many residents in recent days expressing relief as well as uncertainty and worry over the lingering danger of infection.

“I’m going to see my parents,” Wang Wenshu told Reuters as she waited to check in at Wuhan’s Tianhe airport, which reopened on Wednesday.

“Of course I miss them. Stop asking me about it or I’m going to cry.”

Some travellers wore full protective suits, long raincoats or face shields.

Wuhan has slowly been returning towards normal, with people officially allowed to enter the city from March 28, although restrictions remain. Residents have been urged not to leave Wuhan or Hubei province, or even their neighbourhood, unless absolutely necessary.

“We are acutely aware that we must not relax as we have not claimed final victory,” Hubei vice governor Cao Guangjin said at a news conference on Wednesday.

“We need to remain calm, and be just as cautious at the end as at the beginning.”

Shopping malls and the city’s biggest shopping belt, the Chu River and Han street, reopened on March 30. Long queues, thanks to requirements that customers stand a metre apart, have formed at supermarkets while some residents have taken advantage of the warmer weather to resume outdoor badminton games and dancing.

Wuhan has reported just three new confirmed infections in the past 21 days and only two in the past two weeks.

NORTHERN BORDER WORRY

But even as Wuhan came back to life, new imported cases in the far northern province of Heilongjiang surged to a daily high of 25, fuelled by an influx of infected travellers crossing the border from Russia.

On Wednesday, Suifenhe city announced restrictions on the movement of citizens similar to the measures Wuhan has endured.

People must stay in their residential compounds and only one person per family can leave once every three days to buy necessities, and must return on the same day, state-run CCTV reported.

“While the whole country is celebrating the unlocking of Wuhan, few noticed that Heilongjiang is under enormous pressure dealing with infections coming over the border,” one person wrote on the Weibo social media platform.

“Suifenhe is a small city without any high-level hospitals, how can it handle the huge influx of patients?”

Some 55,000 people were expected to leave Wuhan by train on Wednesday. By early morning, more than 10,000 had left by plane, an airport official said. Flights to Beijing and international locations have not resumed.

“I’m very happy, I’m going home today,” migrant worker Liu Xiaomin told Reuters as she stood with her suitcases in Wuhan’s Hankou railway station, bound for Xiangyang city.

People from Wuhan arriving in Beijing must undergo two rounds of testing for the virus.

NEW CASES

China is maintaining strict screening protocols, concerned about any resurgence in infections by virus carriers who exhibit no symptoms and infected travellers arriving from abroad.

China’s new coronavirus cases doubled on Tuesday as the number of infected travellers from overseas surged, while new asymptomatic infections more than quadrupled.

New confirmed cases rose to 62 on Tuesday from 32 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said, the most since March 25. New imported infections accounted for 59 of the cases.

The number of new asymptomatic cases rose to 137 from 30 a day earlier, the health authority said on Wednesday, with incoming travellers accounting for 102 of the latest batch.

Authorities do not count asymptomatic cases in their tally of confirmed infections until patients show symptoms such as a fever or a cough. As of Tuesday, 1,095 asymptomatic patients were under medical observation, with 358 of them travellers arriving from abroad.

Slideshow (13 Images)

To stem infections from outside its borders, China has slashed the number of international flights and denied entry to virtually all foreigners. It also started testing all international arrivals for the virus this month.

As of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed cases in mainland China stood at 81,802, including 3,333 fatalities, the National Health Commission said.

Reporting by Brenda Goh in Wuhan and Ryan Woo, Lusha Zhang, Liangping Gao, Se Young Lee and Yawen Chen in Beijing; Writing by Engen Tham and Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Michael Perry, Richard Pullin and Giles Elgood

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-04-08 10:30:42Z
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Afghan-Taliban talks over prisoner swap collapse, threatening to upend U.S. peace deal - The Washington Post

Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post A member of the Afghan police mans a position at the Thrikh outpost in the district of Nawa in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

KABUL — The Taliban halted prisoner swap negotiations with the Afghan government Tuesday after accusing leaders in Kabul of refusing to comply with a key part of the U.S. peace deal — a major setback to what many hoped would be the start of formal talks between the two Afghan sides.

Representatives of the Taliban and the Afghan government were negotiating the release of more than 100 prisoners. The U.S.-Taliban peace deal called for thousands of prisoners to be released within days of its signing, but the Afghan government quickly objected to that timeline, citing logistical constraints.

The release was already weeks behind schedule, and when the two sides finally met in Kabul, negotiators quickly hit a snag. Taliban representatives wanted their senior leaders included in the first round of releases, while the Afghan government balked at releasing anyone who had helped orchestrate large-scale attacks.

The repeated delays to the start of formal talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are threatening to upend the fragile U.S.-Taliban peace deal. Since it was signed in late February, violence in Afghanistan has escalated and a power struggle over the Afghan presidency has deepened.

Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post

Taliban fighters drive on a road in Khogiani district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, in December.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday dismissed the impasse over the prisoner releases as “posturing” and said the United States expected issues to arise as the two sides move toward formal talks.

“There was no doubt that there would be steps forward and steps backward,” Pompeo said in a news conference, adding that some progress had been made since the agreement was signed last month. “But we see them posturing in the media.”

Pompeo traveled to Kabul on March 23 to broker a deal between President Ashraf Ghani and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. Ghani was declared the winner of the September election by a slim margin; Abdullah decried the result as fraudulent and has threatened to set up a parallel government. After Pompeo’s visit failed to resolve the crisis, he threatened to cut $1 billion in U.S. aid to the country.

Statements from Pompeo’s senior diplomats suggest the Trump administration has increased pressure on Afghan leaders in recent days.

“Donors are frustrated and fed up by personal agendas being advanced ahead of the welfare of the Afghan people,” Alice Wells, the State Department’s top official for South and Central Asia, said in a statement posted to Twitter on Monday.

Afghanistan needs billions in foreign aid every year to provide its citizens with basic services, and expert projections estimate the country will remain dependent on aid for years to come. That dependence is expected to be exacerbated if the coronavirus outbreak in Afghanistan worsens. Afghanistan has had more than 400 confirmed coronavirus cases and 14 deaths, but officials warn that the true number could be much higher, as testing has been limited.

Hopes were high when a Taliban delegation arrived in Kabul last week. The visit came after Ghani announced the creation of a negotiating team and Abdullah issued a statement expressing his support for its members. The Afghan government and the Taliban had also agreed on a compromise: The prisoner releases would occur in smaller batches rather than all at once.

The peace deal signed by the United States and the Taliban called for up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners to be released in exchange for 1,000 members of the Afghan security forces and government employees in Taliban custody.

But after days of talks, the Taliban issued a statement Tuesday announcing that the group would no longer participate in “fruitless meetings” and accused the Afghan government of “just wasting time.” Hours later, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen announced in a tweet that the Taliban delegation would return to Doha, Qatar, where the group has a political office.

The Afghan government said the Taliban’s move “indicates a lack of seriousness about peace,” according to a statement from Javid Faisal, spokesman for the Afghan national security adviser’s office.

Faisal said discussions “had entered an important phase” before Taliban officials backed out. Regardless, he added that the Afghan government remains open to continuing talks.

But as peace talks with the Taliban are repeatedly delayed, violence in Afghanistan has spiked. On Sunday, the Taliban accused the United States of violating the terms of the peace deal by carrying out attacks on Taliban fighters and drone strikes on Afghan civilians.

The Taliban statement warned that continued violations would “create an atmosphere of mistrust that will not only damage the agreements, but also force mujahideen to a similar response and will increase the level of fighting.”

A U.S. military spokesman, Col. Sonny Leggett, denied the Taliban allegation, saying that U.S. forces in Afghanistan are upholding the terms of the agreement and that “any assertion otherwise is baseless.”

Leggett said that the U.S. military will continue to come to the aid of Afghan forces and that the Taliban must reduce violence.

The U.S. military is continuing to draw down its forces from Afghanistan, as mandated by the peace deal with the Taliban. The United States began reducing the roughly 12,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in March and is on track to bring down the number to 8,600 by early July, within the 135-day time period stipulated by the peace deal.

George reported from London. Carol Morello in Washington and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Afghans are fearful, angry with their warring leaders after U.S. pulls $1 billion in aid

Afghanistan is stuck with a divided government and Taliban insurgency. Now, coronavirus is spreading

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2020-04-08 10:32:06Z
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Euro zone fails to reach a deal on new coronavirus stimulus after 16 hours of talks - CNBC

Mario Centeno, Portugal's finance minister and head of the group of euro-area finance ministers, listens during a press conference following a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Monday, Jan. 22, 2018.

Euro zone finance ministers failed to reach an agreement Wednesday on how to provide additional stimulus to weather the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The COVID-19 virus, which emerged in China in late 2019, has brought the major European economies to a halt. Businesses activity has been put on hold across the region and that's pressured governments to take bold action to support companies and citizens.

However, after 16 hours of talks, the finance ministers remain divided over how best to provide loans and whether to go as far as issuing joint EU debt.

"We came close to a deal but we are not there yet," Mario Centeno, who chairs the meetings among the 19 ministers, said on Twitter.

The group had been working on a new credit line to be provided by the European Stability Mechanism — an emergency fund that was set up in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis. A few of the countries — in particular, the Netherlands —were pushing for some conditionality attached to the loans. However, other nations, such as Italy and Spain, did not want any fiscal targets in exchange for new funding.

Ministers were also divided over developing a new debt instrument. Italy, France, Spain, Ireland and Luxembourg were pushing for a written commitment to work towards joint debt issuance. However, opposition — again, mainly from the Netherlands — has blocked this idea so far.

Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch finance minister, said Wednesday morning that his country "was and remains against the idea of euro bonds (an instrument that would combine European securities)."

"We think this will create more problems than solutions for the EU. We would have to guarantee debts of other countries which isn't reasonable," the minister said on Twitter.

Euro zone finance ministers are used to pulling all-night meetings to reach an agreement, but their actions to address the ongoing pandemic are being closely monitored.

"The lengthy delays and intense jostling will tarnish whatever measures are eventually agreed," Florian Hense, economist at Berenberg bank, said Wednesday in an email.

He warned that "in the long run, the way in which the EU and the euro zone are perceived to react to the unprecedented emergency of the Covid-19 pandemic can shape attitudes to European integration for decades to come."

Anti-EU parties have been quick to react to the ongoing stalemate.

Matteo Salvini, head of the anti-EU Lega party in Italy, said yesterday he doesn't trust loans coming from the EU and he doesn't want Italy to ask Berlin or Brussels for more money.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), which entered the German Parliament for the first time in 2017, has spoken out against corona bonds — another plan to address potential EU debt issuance to fund some of the costs of the pandemic. A spokesman for the AfD said neither the coronavirus nor the euro "justify that German taxpayers are bled for the debt of the whole EU."

European ministers will meet again Thursday as they seek to overcome these two differences.

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2020-04-08 09:45:56Z
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Live updates: U.S. reports highest daily coronavirus death toll; Wuhan makes a fresh start - The Washington Post

The Chinese city of Wuhan emerged from its 76-day lockdown Wednesday, with 11 million residents able to move around the city and the country — provided their government-issued “health code” shines green.

Wuhan staged a grand light show under the theme “Heroic City, Heroic People” to celebrate the reopening of the central Chinese metropolis where the virus emerged late last year. But the trauma and isolation of the past two months have taken a huge toll: More than 2,500 Wuhan residents died of the coronavirus and tens of thousands were hospitalized, according to official figures. Now, people must piece their lives and livelihoods back together.

“Even though the epidemic might be ending, for some groups of people the trauma might be just starting,” Du Mingjun, who set up a 24-hour mental health hotline, told a Reuters reporter in Wuhan.

Authorities had been cautious about allowing Wuhan to come out of its quarantine, gradually allowing various parts of the city to return to a semblance of normal over the past week or so. The final barrier came up at midnight on Wednesday, when people were allowed to leave Wuhan for the first time since Jan. 23. Cars and trucks were lined up for hours at the city’s 76 tollgates. A Phoenix TV reporter posted a video of vehicles streaming out.

“I’m very excited,” Li Qing, a Wuhan native waiting at a toll gate so she could return to her work in Jiangsu province, told the Sixth Tone website. “The city can’t stay sealed off forever — we need to go to work.”

More than 55,000 people were estimated to be leaving Wuhan by train on Wednesday, with 40 percent going to the southern manufacturing hub of Guangdong. The first flight to leave Wuhan’s Tianhe International Airport since the city lifted the lockdown was a China Eastern plane bound for Sanya, on the resort island of Hainan.

Most of those leaving appeared to be migrant workers trying to return to jobs elsewhere in China. The lockdown began on the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday, often the only time of year that people can visit their hometowns and families.

But the Communist Party secretary for Hubei province, Ying Yong, said that Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, wasn’t out of the woods. “Zero new infection doesn’t mean zero risk in the epidemic,” Ying said Tuesday. “The lifting of traffic lockdown doesn’t mean a lifting of epidemic control measures; the reopening of city gate doesn’t mean that we should open the doors to our homes.”

The Hubei government has urged residents not to go outside unless necessary, and if they do go out, to wear masks.

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2020-04-08 09:24:41Z
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Live updates: U.S. reports highest daily coronavirus death toll; Wuhan makes a fresh start - The Washington Post

“Even though the epidemic might be ending, for some groups of people the trauma might be just starting,” Du Mingjun, who set up a 24-hour mental health hotline, told a Reuters reporter in Wuhan.

The Hubei government has urged residents not to go outside unless necessary, and if they do go out, to wear masks.

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Live updates: U.S. reports highest daily coronavirus death toll; Wuhan makes a fresh start - The Washington Post

“Even though the epidemic might be ending, for some groups of people the trauma might be just starting,” Du Mingjun, who set up a 24-hour mental health hotline, told a Reuters reporter in Wuhan.

The Hubei government has urged residents not to go outside unless necessary, and if they do go out, to wear masks.

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UK leader Boris Johnson spends a second night in intensive care with coronavirus - CNBC

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks and takes questions during a press conference in Downing Street regarding the coronavirus outbreak, on March 9, 2020. in London, England.

Alberto Pezzali - WPA Pool | Getty Images

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has spent a second night in an intensive care unit in hospital, but his condition is stable, according to officials.

"The Prime Minister's condition is stable and he remains in intensive care for close monitoring. He is in good spirits," Downing Street said in a statement Tuesday evening.

Johnson was admitted to the unit in St. Thomas' Hospital, London, on Monday evening after his coronavirus symptoms worsened.

It was announced on March 27 that Johnson had tested positive for the coronavirus, but he wasn't admitted to hospital until Sunday for "tests" due to persistent symptoms of the virus, including a cough and fever.

Speaking at the government's daily press conference Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputizing for Johnson, said the prime minister had been "receiving standard oxygen treatment and breathing without any assistance."

"He's not required any mechanical ventilation or noninvasive respiratory support. He remains in good spirits and in keeping with clinical practice his progress continues to be monitored closely in critical care," Raab said.

The U.K. reported its largest daily rise in deaths so far on Tuesday, with 786 fatalities reported, taking the overall death toll to 6,159 people. The sharp rise in deaths (up from 439 reported Monday) has been partly attributed to a lag in data collection from the weekend, Sky News reported. To date, 55,242 people in the U.K. have tested positive for the virus.

Officials said there are tentative signs that the spread of the virus is slowing. The government's Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said Tuesday that it was "possible that we're beginning to see... the curve flattening." He said it would be another "week or so" before there could be any certainty of that, however.

Johnson was the first world leader to contract the coronavirus and his admission to intensive care has shocked many. On Tuesday, he was sent best wishes from leaders in Europe, and President Trump, who called him a "very good friend."

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2020-04-08 07:29:18Z
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