Sabtu, 16 Mei 2020

Italy to reopen borders to European Union tourists in early June - CNA

ROME: Italy will reopen to European tourists from early June and scrap a 14-day mandatory quarantine period, the government said on Saturday (May 16), as it quickened the exit from the coronavirus lockdown. 

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also said on Saturday that gyms and cinemas would soon be able to welcome the public again, as the government seeks to restart economic activity while treading cautiously amid the lingering, though waning, coronavirus.

"We're facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again," Conte said during a televised address. "We have to accept it otherwise we will never be able to start up again."

Conte enforced an economically crippling shutdown in early March to counter a pandemic that has so far killed more than 31,500 people in Italy.

The shutdown halted all holidaymaking in a country heavily dependent on the tourism industry.

Although Italy never formally closed its borders and has allowed people to cross back and forth for work or health reasons, it banned movement for tourism and imposed a two-week isolation period for new arrivals.

READ: St Peter's Basilica reopens to tourists on Monday: Vatican

In March, the European Union banned foreign nationals from entering its Schengen zone, an open border zone comprising 22 of 27 member states, with exceptions for medical workers and essential travel.

But on Wednesday, the EU set out plans for a phased restart of summer travel, urging member states to reopen its internal borders, while recommending that external borders remain shut for most travel until at least the middle of June.

In a press release, Italy's government did not explicitly state which foreign nationals would be allowed to enter, but said its new measures respected the "legal order of the European Union".

Beginning on Jun 3, visitors within the Schengen zone will be allowed to enter Italy with no obligation to self-isolate. Italians will also be able to move between regions, though local authorities can limit travel if infections spike.

Movements to and from abroad can be limited by regional decree "in relation to specific states and territories, in accordance with the principles of adequacy and proportionality to the epidemiological risk", the government said.

The latest decree is also a boon to Italy's agricultural sector, which relies on roughly 350,000 seasonal workers from abroad.

Farming lobby group Coldiretti said farms were already preparing to organise some 150,000 workers from places including Romania, Poland and Bulgaria.

The peak of Italy's contagion passed at the end of March but with experts warning a second wave cannot be ruled out, Conte had been reluctant to lift the lockdown quickly.

His approach frustrated many of Italy's regions, with some already allowing businesses to reopen before the restrictions were lifted.

READ: City at centre of Italy's COVID-19 tragedy works to heal 'deep scar'

Restaurants, bars and hairdressers are being allowed to reopen on Monday, two weeks earlier than initially planned.

Shops will also open and Italians will finally be able to see friends, as long as they live within their same region.

Church services will begin again but the faithful will have to follow social distancing rules and holy water fonts will be empty. Mosques will also reopen.

Gyms, pools and sports centres will be able to open up again on May 25, Conte said on Saturday, provided they respect security protocols.

Theatres and cinemas will be allowed to reopen on Jun 15, he said.

Gatherings of large groups are still banned.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the latest clarification that Italy will open its borders only to EU nationals.

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2020-05-16 10:52:45Z
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India surpasses China in coronavirus cases to become new Asia hot spot - The Straits Times

NEW DELHI -  India has now recorded more Covid-19 cases than China as it continues to lift some of its more stringent measures to contain the virus.

The world’s second most populous country has reported 86,508 infections and 2,760 deaths. China has recorded 84,038 cases and 4,637 deaths.

Most of India’s infection cases are registered in its top cities, which are hubs of economic activity, posing both public health and economic challenges.

Nearly a third of the country’s cases were recorded in capital city Delhi, which has a population of 19 million, and Mumbai, the country’s financial capital.

Mumbai, with its 22 million residents and 17512 Covid-19 cases, has seen its health infrastructure coming under pressure amid a growth in coronavirus infections.

Hospitals are overwhelmed, an estimated 487 police personnel have tested positive for Covid-19 and the virus has continued to spread through its slums, which remain a key worry for India’s policy makers.

At Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, 84 new cases were recorded on Friday, taking the total tally in the slum to 1145 with 54 fatalities.

Delhi has 8995 confirmed cases.

Its neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have sealed their borders, allowing movement only for essential services. 

Experts say that getting the economy back on track fast will depend on getting the virus under control in its top cities.

Other cities recording high numbers of infections include Chennai and Ahmedabad with 5946 and 7171 cases respectively on Friday.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that Covid-19 will not disappear immediately, the economy will need to be managed alongside persistent infection risks, possibly for a prolonged period,” said Mr Rishi Sahai, managing director of financial advisory company Cogence Advisors.

He said that the 130 districts classified as red-zone districts at present are some of the most urbanised and industrialised parts of the country and account for 41 per cent of national economic activity and 38 per cent of India’s industrial output.

“Finding methods of keeping these red-zone districts operational and safe would be critical in keeping economic activity sustainable,” he said.

India implemented complete lockdown on March 25, which brought all economic activity to a halt.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been easing restrictions in phases allowing economic activity to resume, shops to reopen, offices to resume operations with 33 per cent of their workforce and people to come out of their homes between 7 am and 7 pm.

Mr Modi has now promised that there would be new rules in the next phase of the lockdown whose more stringent restrictions will be lifted on Sunday.

The country has been divided into red, orange and green zones, with e-commerce for non essential items barred in red zones.

India has continued to see a rise in new infections. But according to the government, the rate of new infections nationwide is slowing down.

India’s doubling rate of the virus has slowed down from 10.9 days in the past week to 13.9 days in the three days till Thursday, said health minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday.

Enforcing social distancing amid lifting some restrictions remains challenging in the cities, which are overcrowded. 

Still, there is a difference of opinion among India’s states on how to move forward.

The Delhi government is keen to open up the capital city and resume all economic activities, while others like the Telangana government has already announced the lockdown in the state will continue until May 29.

“We think that after relaxing the lockdown, there will be an increase in coronavirus cases,” wrote Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in a letter to Mr Modi.

“But we have arranged hospitals, oxygen, ventilators, ambulances and ICUs to tackle the situation.”
 

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2020-05-16 10:24:33Z
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Italy to reopen borders for tourists in early June - CNA

ROME: Italy will reopen to tourists from early June and scrap a 14-day mandatory quarantine period, the government said on Saturday (May 16), as it quickened the exit from the coronavirus lockdown.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte enforced an economically crippling shutdown in early March to counter a pandemic that has so far killed more than 31,500 people in Italy.

The shutdown halted all holidaymaking in a country heavily dependent on the tourism industry.

Although Italy never formally closed its borders and has allowed people to cross back and forth for work or health reasons, it banned movement for tourism and imposed a two-week isolation period for new arrivals.

READ: St Peter's Basilica reopens to tourists on Monday: Vatican

Beginning on Jun 3, all visitors will be allowed in with no obligation to self-isolate. Italians will also be able to move between regions, though local authorities can limit travel if infections spike.

Movements to and from abroad can be limited by regional decree "in relation to specific states and territories, in accordance with the principles of adequacy and proportionality to the epidemiological risk", the government said.

The latest decree is also a boon to Italy's agricultural sector, which relies on roughly 350,000 seasonal workers from abroad.

Farming lobby group Coldiretti said farms were already preparing to organise some 150,000 workers from places including Romania, Poland and Bulgaria.

READ: City at centre of Italy's COVID-19 tragedy works to heal 'deep scar'

The peak of Italy's contagion passed at the end of March but with experts warning a second wave cannot be ruled out, Conte had been reluctant to lift the lockdown quickly.

His approach frustrated many of Italy's regions, with some already allowing businesses to reopen before the restrictions were lifted.

Restaurants, bars and hairdressers are being allowed to reopen on Monday, two weeks earlier than initially planned.

Shops will also open and Italians will finally be able to see friends, as long as they live within their same region.

Church services will begin again but the faithful will have to follow social distancing rules and holy water fonts will be empty. Mosques will also reopen.

Gatherings of large groups are still banned.

BOOKMARK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments

Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram

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2020-05-16 08:44:28Z
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No beds, packed morgues: Mumbai hospitals near collapse amid COVID-19 pandemic - CNA

MUMBAI: Packed morgues, bodies in wards, patients forced to share beds and medical workers run ragged: Mumbai's war against coronavirus has pushed the Indian city's hospitals to breaking point.

Ravi, 26, had to change his mother's diapers himself as she lay dying from the disease in the huge Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, better known as Sion.

"They would just give us medicines and leave," Ravi (not his real name) told AFP. Staff in the 1,300-bed facility were "overworked and tired", he said, with sometimes three patients per bed.

Now he too has contracted the virus and is in another hospital - but only after four facilities refused to admit him. "We don't have the infrastructure for this disease," he said.

READ: India's coronavirus infections surpass China, but contagion slowing

The state-run Sion hospital has become a byword for the stunning failure of Mumbai - home to billionaires, Bollywood and slums - to cope with the pandemic.

A video widely shared on social media and shown on Indian TV showed corpses wrapped in black plastic left on beds in a ward where patients are being treated.

Authorities said they were investigating the footage.

"SO MANY CASES"

With space at a premium, and relatives too afraid or unable to claim their dead because they are themselves in quarantine, disposal of coronavirus corpses is not easy, doctors say.

But dealing with the sick is much harder.

"We don't have enough beds to manage so many cases. The emergency area gets full in a matter of hours," Aditya Burje, a junior doctor working night shifts at Sion hospital, told AFP.

The state-run Lokmanya Tilak hospital has become a byword for the stunning failure of Mumbai to cope
The state-run Lokmanya Tilak hospital has become a byword for the stunning failure of Mumbai to cope with the pandemic. (Photo: AFP/Indranil Mukherjee)

The hospital's proximity to India's biggest slum Dharavi makes it a key battleground in the fight against the pandemic.

"In March there were just one or two suspected cases a day. It all seemed to be under control. Then the situation drastically changed," the 25-year-old said.

By the end of April, Burje and his colleagues were overwhelmed.

"We were seeing 50-100 patients a day, 80 per cent of whom would turn out to be positive and many would need to be on oxygen," he said.

Like many doctors at state-run hospitals, Burje, who gets a US$700 monthly stipend, has not been paid since India went into lockdown in late March.

READ: Commentary: India’s fragmented healthcare system is its Achilles’ heel in the fight against COVID-19

He has not had a night off in two months.

With nearly a third of his medical school cohort at the hospital diagnosed with coronavirus, he admitted he was scared to go to work.

"If something happens, who will take care of me?"

"SYSTEM EXPLODING"

Sion hospital is not alone in India's financial capital. And everyone - from medical students to doctors with decades of experience - is struggling.

Intensive care specialist Deepak Baid, who runs a private hospital in north Mumbai, volunteered to help at a state-run medical facility, Rajawadi Hospital.

READ: India looks to ease lockdown even as coronavirus infections jump

But though it is only equipped to handle patients with moderate symptoms, doctors there routinely end up treating critically ill people, Baid said.

Even clinicians specialising in fields like dermatology or orthopaedics are being hit with caseloads of patients they are not qualified to treat.

"We can't send (patients) to other better-equipped hospitals because they have no beds and so we do what we can," he told AFP.

"The system is under a lot of pressure, it's exploding," he said.

Flimsy protective equipment has made sanitation workers fearful of tackling tasks such as changing sheets used by coronavirus patients, Nilima Vaidya-Bhamare, another doctor, told AFP.

"UTTERLY NEGLECTED"

Mumbai has 4,500 beds for coronavirus patients, according to Daksha Shah, a senior health official with the city authority.

"We are expanding capacity all the time," she told AFP, pointing to efforts to build a 1,000-bed field hospital in a commercial hub.

A 1,000-bed field hospital is under construction to help deal with the increase in Covid-19 patients
A 1,000-bed field hospital is under construction to help deal with the increase in Covid-19 patients. (Photo: AFP/Indranil Mukherjee)

Authorities are also setting up intensive care units inside schools.

But with Mumbai so far registering around 18,000 cases, a fraction of its 18-million-strong population, fears are growing that India's worst-hit city is unprepared for a potential surge.

India spends less than two per cent of its GDP on healthcare.

As of 2017, India had 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people, around the same level as Iraq, according to the World Bank. China has 1.8 per 1,000, and the United States 2.6.

Many of the problems highlighted by the pandemic have been festering for a long time, Vaidya-Bhamare said, from a lack of basic supplies such as soap to overburdened staff.

"I graduated in 1994 and government hospitals were utterly neglected then," she said. "Why does it take a pandemic to wake people up?"

BOOKMARK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments

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2020-05-16 08:18:57Z
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Crowds at Wuhan clinics fear COVID-19 testing could rekindle disease - CNA

WUHAN: As Wuhan, the Chinese city where the COVID-19 pandemic began, revs up a massive testing campaign, some residents crowding the test centres expressed concern on Saturday (May 16) that the very act of getting tested could expose them to the coronavirus.

Safety has become a hot topic on social media groups among the 11 million residents of Wuhan, people told Reuters as they converged on open-air test sites at clinics and other facilities. Many said, though, that they support the voluntary campaign.

Wuhan health authorities sprang back into action after confirming last weekend the central Chinese city's first cluster of new infections since it was released from virtual lockdown on Apr 8.

The new cases - all of them people who had previously shown no symptoms of the disease - spurred Wuhan authorities to launch a citywide search for asymptomatic carriers of the virus, aiming to gauge the level of COVID-19 risk.

READ: China has fifth COVID-19 vaccine in human trial: Official

"Some people have expressed worry in the (social media) groups about the tests, which require people to cluster, and whether there's any infection risk," said one Wuhan resident who asked not to be named.

"But others rebutted those worries, saying such comments are not supportive of the government."

The unprecedented scale of testing indicates the official level of concern, some experts say. Others say it is an extremely costly exercise and question its effectiveness.

At a testing kiosk in Jianghan district in central Wuhan, a volunteer was patrolling and spraying disinfectant at a long line of people.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China
A child reacts while undergoing nucleic acid testing in Wuhan, the Chinese city hit hardest by the COVID-19 outbreak, on May 16, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Aly Song)

Many people observed social distancing, such as queuing 1 m apart, and there were signs to remind them. But just as many did not. In some cases, volunteer workers were not insisting that they comply.

At another open-air testing kiosk, where throat swabs were taken, yellow and black stickers on the ground kept people from converging.

But at the back of the long queue, about 40 people gathered with no guidance from officials or volunteers.

Residents said the authorities have not told them when they would get the results of their tests.

China has confirmed 82,941 cases of COVID-19 as of Friday and 4,633 deaths. The government does not include people found to be asymptomatic carriers of the virus in its tally and does not publish a cumulative number of asymptomatic cases.

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2020-05-16 07:56:12Z
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Jumat, 15 Mei 2020

India surpasses China in coronavirus cases to become new Asia hot spot - The Straits Times

NEW DELHI (BLOOMBERG) - India's burgeoning coronavirus cases have overtaken China's tally, making it the latest nation with the dubious distinction of having more infections than the country where the virus was first detected.

India saw 3,787 new infections on Friday (May 15), bringing its total to 85,784, surpassing China's 84,038 cases. The world's second-most populous nation now has the 11th-biggest outbreak, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University.

The surge underscores the limited impact of the countrywide lockdown imposed on March 25 to curb the highly infectious pathogen. Nearly two months into the world's most expansive stay-at-home orders, India has not seen its virus curve flattening like Italy or Spain where new cases had begun trending downwards sooner. China too managed to contain its outbreak by locking down Hubei, the province where the pathogen first emerged.

India's rate of daily new infections is still rising despite confining virtually all its 1.3 billion citizens to their homes as many live in highly congested neighbourhoods which makes social distancing impossible.

Even among India's middle-class families, four or more often share a one-bedroom apartment in cities. In Mumbai's slums, as many as seven people live in one room while the whole neighbourhood may be sharing a toilet complex.

As the economic costs of the lockdown mount, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has begun easing containment measures in some parts of the country which risks spurring fresh cases as more people interact and move about.

With the outbreak yet to peak, the central and state governments have been creating hundreds of thousands of isolation beds for infected people and tens of thousands of critical care beds for the severely ill.

This has helped India's fragile health care system stay ahead of the virus: it's death count at 2,753 is lower than China's 4,637 casualties. But much lower testing rates have led many experts to suspect India may be under-counting its virus cases.

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2020-05-16 04:07:05Z
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China calls on US to pay its debts to the United Nations - CNA

UNITED NATIONS, United States: China on Friday (May 15) issued a statement calling on all UN member states to "actively fulfill their financial obligations to the United Nations," stressing that Washington owes the organization more than US$2 billion.

"As of May 14, the total unpaid assessments under the UN regular budget and peacekeeping budget amount to 1.63 billion and 2.14 billion US dollars respectively," the Chinese statement said, citing a report from the UN Secretary-General's office and a meeting held on Thursday.

Including arrears that stretch back several years, "the United States is the largest debtor, owing 1.165 billion and 1.332 billion US dollars respectively", China added.

The US is the biggest contributor to the UN budget, paying 22 per cent of its annual running costs, a bill which adds up to around US$3 billion; and 25 per cent of its peacekeeping operations, which amount to some US$6 billion a year.

Officially, Washington is meant to pay 27.89 per cent of the peacekeeping budget, but a decision made by Congress and implemented by President Donald Trump in 2017 cut that payment to 25 per cent, meaning Washington runs up an annual shortfall of US$200 million.

The United States also has a fiscal year that runs from October to October, which can make it look like an even bigger debtor at certain times of the year.

The US mission to the UN dismissed the call, saying China is "eager to distract attention from its cover-up and mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, and this is yet another example".

It continued: "The United States recently made a payment of US$726 million toward its peacekeeping assessment, and per practice will pay the bulk of its assessment at the end of the calendar year."

It said the total peacekeeping arrears was US$888 million, adding: "Roughly two-thirds of this amount is the result of payment at the rate of 25 per cent from 2017 through the present."

The payment of contributions by member countries for peacekeeping operations has a direct impact on the reimbursements the UN pays to countries that contribute troops to the 15 or so missions around the world.

In a report on May 11, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that "there may be significant delays towards the middle of the year, unless the cash position across missions improves significantly".

On Thursday, around 50 of the 193 member states, including China, paid their contributions in full, which Beijing - the second largest contributor, far behind the United States - noted in its statement.

China pays around 12 per cent of the UN's running costs and around 15 per cent of the peacekeeping budget.

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2020-05-15 23:53:27Z
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