Former Pope Benedict dies aged 95 - CNA

VATICAN CITY: Former Pope Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95, the Vatican announced on Saturday (Dec 31), almost a decade after he became the first pontiff to resign in six centuries.

His death brings to an end an unprecedented situation in which two "men in white" - Benedict and his successor Pope Francis - had co-existed within the walls of the tiny city-state.

"With sorrow, I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9.34am in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican," Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

His body will be displayed from Monday morning in St Peter's Basilica, to allow the faithful to pay their respects.

Crowds visiting St Peter's on Saturday expressed sorrow at the news of his death, but also admiration.

"We are distraught," said Davide Di Tommaso, 30, from the southern Italian region of Molise, adding: "He was truly a great pope."

Tributes also began pouring in from around the world, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailing "a formative figure of the Catholic Church, an argumentative personality and a clever theologian".

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed him as a "giant of faith and reason ... a great figure in history".

The German pope emeritus, whose birth name was Joseph Ratzinger, had been living a quiet life in a former convent inside the Vatican grounds since his shock decision to step down in February 2013.

His health had been declining for a long time, but the Vatican revealed on Wednesday that his situation had worsened, while Pope Francis called for Catholics worldwide to pray for him.

In 2005, the body of John Paul II, the last pope to die, lay in state before a funeral mass in St Peter's Square attended by one million people, including heads of state.

Pope Benedict had almost entirely withdrawn from public view, his health reported to be shaky and the few photographs that emerged of him exposing his frailty.

Back in 2013, he had cited his declining physical and mental health in his decision to become the first pope since 1415 to give up the job as head of the worldwide Catholic church.

"There were moments of joy and light, but also moments that were not easy ... There were moments ... when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping," Benedict told his last general audience, a gathering of more than 150,000 people.

RESIGNATION AS HEAD OF CATHOLIC CHURCH

Pope Benedict had almost entirely withdrawn from public view, his health reported to be shaky and the few photographs that emerged of him exposing his frailty.

Back in 2013, he had cited his declining physical and mental health in his decision to become the first pope since 1415 to give up the job as head of the worldwide Catholic Church.

He was a brilliant theologian but his papacy was beset by Vatican in-fighting and a scandal over clerical sexual abuse of children that rocked the Catholic Church the world over, in which he was criticised for a lack of leadership.

The abuse scandal overshadowed his final months after a damning report for the German church in January 2022 accused him of personally failing to stop four predatory priests in the 1980s while archbishop of Munich.

He denied wrongdoing and the Vatican strongly defended his record in being the first pope to apologise for the scandals, who expressed his own "deep remorse" and met with victims.

Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005, the first German pope of the modern era.

He later said his election felt "like the guillotine".

Unlike his successor Pope Francis, a Jesuit who delights in being among his flock, Benedict was a conservative intellectual dubbed "God's Rottweiler" in a previous post as chief doctrinal enforcer.

His papacy was dogged by controversy, from comments that angered the Muslim world to a money-laundering scandal at the Vatican bank and a personal humiliation when, in 2012, his butler leaked secret papers to the media.

Despite saying he would live "hidden from the world" after his resignation, he repeatedly intervened on key issues facing the Church through books, interviews and articles.

In January 2020, he expressed his opposition to allowing priests to marry. A year earlier, he blamed clerical abuse scandals on the 1960s sexual revolution and a collapse in faith in the West.

In an interview in March 2021, he said "there is only one pope", but acknowledged "fanatical" supporters who refused to accept his resignation.

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2022-12-31 09:52:00Z
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S'pore ready to step up border measures if needed, MOH monitoring situation as China reopens - The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Health (MOH) stands ready to step up measures if necessary, and is closely monitoring the global Covid-19 situation even as China reopens its borders from Jan 8, 2023.

Despite some public concern about the large number of infections in China and announcements by other countries such as India, Italy and Japan of new testing requirements for all travellers from China, Singapore’s local situation has remained stable even after the XBB sub-variant wave, said MOH.

At this stage of the pandemic, the most important factor is Singapore’s population immunity.

MOH said: “We cannot completely stop infections, and indeed the virus has continued to circulate in our communities, but we can ensure that infections result in few cases of hospitalisations and severe illnesses.”

Singapore’s seven-day moving average of local Covid-19 cases is 729, the number of Covid-related hospitalisations remains below 100, and the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care remains in the single digits, MOH said.

Paediatric and bivalent vaccines are available to strengthen the nation’s already high immunity, it added.

With new Covid-19 treatment facilities and expanded transitional care facilities also available, Singapore is in a stronger position to live with the virus, becoming more resilient with each wave, MOH stressed.

However, the ministry remains vigilant, closely watching the global situation, especially with an increase in caseloads in many countries due to the uptick in international travel and onset of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

China, which is facing a large infection wave, is currently of particular concern.

First, there is the possible emergence of new and more dangerous variants, MOH said.

Singapore has been working with our international partners, including Gisaid, which maintains a pathogen genomics database, to monitor the variants circulating globally.

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2022-12-30 12:54:16Z
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India makes negative COVID-19 test mandatory for travellers from 5 countries from Jan 1 - CNA

NEW DELHI: India will make a negative COVID-19 test mandatory for flyers from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand from Jan 1, the health minister said on Thursday (Dec 29).

Travellers from these countries and territories would have to upload their test reports on an India government website before their departure, minister Mansukh Mandaviya wrote on Twitter.

"This is being done in view of the evolving COVID-19 situation across the world," the health ministry said in a statement, adding that the test should be taken within 72 hours of travel to India.

The new requirement for a COVID-19 test would be in addition to the random tests on 2 per cent of all international passengers arriving in India.

The High Commission of India in Singapore on Wednesday had said that travellers from Singapore do not need to undergo mandatory COVID-19 tests when they visit the country.

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2022-12-29 10:09:00Z
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COVID-19 rules for travellers from China rolled out around the world - CNA

BEIJING: Several places around the world have imposed curbs on travellers from China amid a COVID-19 surge after Beijing relaxed strict "zero-COVID" measures. They cite a lack of information from China on variants and are concerned about a wave of infections.

China has rejected criticism of its statistics and said it expects future mutations to be potentially more virulent but less severe.

Below is a list of rules for travellers from China:

United States

The US will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China beginning on Jan 5. All air passengers 2 and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macao. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said Americans should also reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong and Macau.

India

The country has mandated a COVID-19 negative test report for travellers arriving from China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, the health minister said. Passengers from those countries will be put under quarantine if they showed symptoms of COVID-19 or tested positive.

Japan

Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travellers from mainland China. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days. New border measures for China will go into effect at midnight on Dec 30.

The government will also limit requests from airlines to increase flights to China. Hong Kong's government has asked Japan to withdraw a restriction that requires passenger flights from the financial hub to land at four designated Japanese airports, saying the decision will affect about 60,000 passengers.

Italy

The country has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travellers coming from China. Milan's main airport, Malpensa, had already started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai.

"The measure is essential to ensure surveillance and detection of possible variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population", minister Orazio Schillaci said, when announcing mandatory testing for passengers.

Taiwan

Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Centre said all passengers arriving on direct flights from China, as well as by boat at two offshore islands, will have to take PCR tests upon arrival.

Taiwan will test arrivals from China for COVID-19 starting Jan 1.

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2022-12-29 08:00:00Z
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China's vast countryside in rush to bolster COVID-19 defences - CNA

Hospitals and funeral homes in major cities have been under intense pressure, but the main concern over the health system's ability to cope with surging infections is focused on the countryside.

At a Shanghai pharmacy, Wang Kaiyun, 53, a cleaner in the city who comes from the neighbouring Anhui province, said she was buying medicines for her family back home.

"My husband, my son, my grandson, my mother, they are all infected," she said. "They can't get any medicine, nothing for fever or cough."

Each year, hundreds of millions of people, mostly working in factories near the southern and eastern coasts, return to the countryside for Chinese New Year, due to start on Jan 22.

The holiday travel rush is expected to last for 40 days, from Jan 7 to Feb 15, authorities said.

The state-run China Daily reported on Thursday that rural regions across China were beefing up their medical treatment capacities.

It said a hospital in a rural part of Inner Mongolia where more than 100,000 people live was seeking bidders for a 1.9 million yuan (US$272,308) contract to upgrade its wards into intensive care units.

Liancheng County Central Hospital in the eastern Fujian province was seeking tenders for ambulances and medical devices, ranging from breathing machines to electrocardiogram monitors.

In December, tenders put out by hospitals for key medical equipment were two-to-three times higher than in previous months, according to a Reuters review, suggesting hospitals across the country were scrambling to plug shortages.

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2022-12-29 07:42:00Z
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Asia's tourist hotspots prepare for boom as China relaxes COVID-19 rules - CNA

BANGKOK/SINGAPORE/SYDNEY: Asian countries are bracing for an influx of Chinese tourists as COVID-19 restrictions are dismantled, and while some are wary, operators in others are preparing packages such as hotpot buffets to cash in on the expected spike in travel.

Chinese tourists will no longer need to quarantine on return home starting Jan 8, the government announced this week, a move that spurred a surge in bookings from what was the world's largest outbound travel market in 2019.

The once US$255 billion a year in global spending by Chinese tourists ground to a virtual halt during the pandemic, leaving a gaping hole in the Asian market, where countries from Thailand to Japan had depended on China as the largest source of foreign visitors.

International flights to and from China are at just 8 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, VariFlight data shows, but carriers are looking to ramp up capacity as authorities ease COVID-driven limits on the number of flights.

"There is little doubt mainland Chinese are the spark plug for Thailand's tourism recovery," said Bill Barnett, managing director of hospitality consultancy C9 Hotelworks. "It's not a question of if it will happen, it's now just a matter of how many and how fast."

Malaysia Airlines and Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet Aviation said they hope to restore China flights to pre-pandemic levels by June 2023, while others such as Singapore Airlines and Australia's Qantas Airways declined to provide detailed targets as the situation evolves.

Chinese airlines are likely to make significant increases to capacity from the end of March, coinciding with the start of the summer scheduling season, Morningstar analyst Cheng Weng told clients in a note.

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2022-12-29 06:42:00Z
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Soaring China COVID-19 cases increase risk of new variants: Experts - CNA

VARIANT "SOUP"

Xu Wenbo, head of the virus control institute at China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week that hospitals across the country would collect samples from patients and upload the sequencing information to a new national database, allowing authorities to monitor possible new strains in real-time.

More than 130 Omicron sublineages have been newly detected in China over the last three months, he told journalists.

Among those were XXB and BQ.1 and their sublineages, which have been spreading in the US and parts of Europe in recent months as a swarm of subvariants has competed for dominance worldwide.

However BA.5.2 and BF.7 remain the main Omicron strains detected in China, Xu said, adding that the varying sublineages would likely circulate together.

Flahault said "a soup" of more than 500 new Omicron subvariants had been identified in recent months, although it had often been difficult to tell where each had first emerged.

"Any variants, when more transmissible than the previous dominant ones - such as BQ.1, B2.75.2, XBB, CH.1, or BF.7 - definitely represent threats, since they can cause new waves," he said.

"However, none of these known variants seems to exhibit any particular new risks of more severe symptoms to our knowledge, although that might happen with new variants in the coming future."

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2022-12-29 03:58:41Z
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