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The World Health Organization and International Monetary Fund are joining forces to protect the world against the dual health and economic crises triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.The coronavirus pandemic has infected more than a million people around the world and killed more than 50,000.  Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this is more than a health crisis.  He siad it is also a social and economic crisis.He said the restrictive measures nations are taking to try to stem the spread of this disease are taking a heavy toll on the income of individuals and families, as well as the economies of communities and nations.Tedros said drastic measures must be implemented to protect both lives and livelihoods.  He said countries must aggressively tackle the coronavirus by finding, testing, isolating and treating every contact to save lives.  But he cautioned countries against taking premature action to revive their economies.A health care worker in Redondo Beach, California, works at a new coronavirus drive-thru  testing site on April 3, 2020.“If countries rush to lift restrictions too quickly, the virus could resurge, and the economic impact could be even more severe and prolonged,” he said. “Financing the health response is therefore an essential investment, not just in saving lives, but in the longer term social and economic recovery.”Managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, said her organization is joining with WHO to combat this unprecedented health and economic crisis.She said the world economy is at a standstill and the world is in recession.  She considers the current economic situation to be far worse than the 2008 global financial crisis.  She said everyone must come together to confront and overcome this dual disaster.”WHO is there to protect the health of people,” she said. “The IMF is there to protect the health of the world economy.  They are both under siege and only united we can do our duties.”Georgieva said the economies of emerging markets and developing countries are hardest hit by the pandemic.  She noted that nearly $90 billion of capital investment has flown out of these countries, much more than during the global financial crisis.  She is calling for a moratorium on developing country debt to help them stave off bankruptcies and economic collapse.She said the IMF, World Bank and other international financial institutions have a $1 trillion war chest they will use to protect the economies from this searing crisis.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has removed from office the intelligence community’s watchdog.Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson informed Congress about the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment earlier this year.Trump officially notified the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress on Friday that Atkinson’s firing would go into effect in 30 days.He said in a letter that he “no longer” had “the fullest confidence” in Atkinson. Trump said he would name a replacement for Atkinson “at a later date.”The move was immediately criticized by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.“At a time, when our country is dealing with a national emergency and needs people in the Intelligence Community to speak truth to power, the President’s dead of night decision puts our country and national security at even greater risk,” congressman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, said in a statement. 
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The Trump administration abruptly changed its description of the Strategic National Stockpile, the federal government’s repository of life-saving medicines and supplies, to conform with President Donald Trump’s insistence that it is only a short-term backup for states, not a commitment to ensure supplies get quickly to those who need them most during an emergency.The change, reflected on government websites Friday, came a day after Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser who has taken a larger role in the coronavirus response, offered a new argument about the stockpile.After saying that states should use their own stockpiles first, Kushner said, “And the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”Dance instructor Morgan Jenkins makes a video in front of a mural amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on April 3, 2020.Until Friday, the federal Health and Human Services website had reflected a markedly different approach to the stockpile. The “Strategic National Stockpile is the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out,” the website used to say, according to an archived search.”When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency,” the website had said.But, according to data, the description changed Friday morning: “The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.”Officials at the agency said the change had been in the works for weeks, downplaying any connection to Kushner’s comments. Kushner made his claim during his first appearance at the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing, a moment meant to highlight his growing role in managing the federal response to the pandemic, particularly in delivering vital supplies.Trump has long insisted that the onus for battling the crisis lies with the states and that Washington is meant to play more of a supporting role. He has resisted calls to issue a national stay-at-home order and said that he didn’t want to overly use the Defense Production Act, which allows him to mobilize private companies for the effort, because he believed the states should take the lead in obtaining supplies. 
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The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted global food supplies and is causing labor shortages in agriculture worldwide.Are there food shortages?Panic buying by shoppers cleared supermarket shelves of staples such as pasta and flour as populations worldwide prepared for lockdowns.Meat and dairy producers as well as fruit and vegetable farmers struggled to shift supplies from restaurants to grocery stores, creating the perception of shortages for consumers.Retailers and authorities say there are no underlying shortages and supplies of most products have been or will be replenished. Bakery and pasta firms in Europe and North America have increased production.Food firms say panic purchasing is subsiding as households have stocked up and are adjusting to lockdown routines.The logistics to get food from the field to the plate, however, are being increasingly affected and point to longer-term problems.In the short term, lack of air freight and trucker shortages are disrupting deliveries of fresh food.In the long term, lack of labor is affecting planting and harvesting and could cause shortages and rising prices for staple crops in a throwback to the food crises that shook developing nations a decade ago.Agricultural workers clean carrot crops of weeds amid an outbreak of the coronavirus disease at a farm near Arvin, Calif., April 3, 2020.What’s disrupting the food supply?With many planes grounded and shipping containers hard to find after the initial coronavirus crisis in China, shipments of vegetables from Africa to Europe or fruit from South America to the United States are being disrupted.A labor shortage could also cause crops to rot in the fields.As spring starts in Europe, farms are rushing to find enough workers to pick strawberries and asparagus, after border closures prevented the usual flow of foreign laborers. France has called on its own citizens to help offset an estimated shortfall of 200,000 workers.More wide-scale crop losses are looming in India, where a lockdown has sent masses of workers home, leaving farms and markets short of hands as staple crops like wheat near harvest.Is food going to cost more?Wheat futures surged in March to two-month highs, partly because of the spike in demand for bakery and pasta goods, while corn (maize) sank to a 3½-year low as its extensive use in biofuel exposed it to an oil price collapse.Benchmark Thai white rice prices have already hit their highest level in eight years.Swings in commodity markets are not necessarily passed on in prices of grocery goods, as food firms typically buy raw materials in advance. A sustained rise in prices will, however, eventually be passed on to consumers.Some poorer countries subsidize food to keep prices stable.The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that a rush to buy by countries that rely on imports of staple foods could fuel global food inflation, despite ample reserves of staple crops.Fresh produce such as fruit or fish or unprocessed grains such as rice reflect more immediately changes in supply and demand.FILE – A farmer feeds iceberg lettuce to his buffalo during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus disease, at Bhuinj village in Satara district in the western state of Maharashtra, India, April 1, 2020.Will there be enough food if the crisis lasts?Analysts say global supplies of the most widely consumed food crops are adequate. Wheat production is projected to be at record levels in the year ahead.However, the concentration of exportable supply of some food commodities in a small number of countries and export restrictions by big suppliers concerned about having enough supply at home can make world supply more fragile than headline figures suggest.Another source of tension in global food supply could be China. There are signs the country is scooping up foreign agricultural supplies as it emerges from its coronavirus shutdown and rebuilds its massive pork industry after a devastating pig disease epidemic.
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily DebunkClaim: American students will have to repeat the school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Verdict: FalseRead the full story: FactCheck.org​ Social Media Disinfo​FTC websiteCirculating on social media: Claims that silver prevents COVID-19.Verdict: FalseRead the full story: “This Idaho Chiropractor Was Running Ads On Facebook Falsely Claiming Silver Prevents The Coronavirus” — BuzzFeed​ Factual Reads on CoronavirusAn antibody test for the novel coronavirus will soon be available
In the short term, this will be important because it will permit the authorities to identify who may return to their jobs without risk of infecting others.
– The Economist, April 2
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Much publicized COVID-19 supplies donated by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and his Alibaba Group never made it to Eritrea, despite Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s saying the supplies had been delivered to the entire continent.The reasons why the goods did not reach Eritrea are unclear, but rights activists accuse the government of ignoring the needs of its people.Two officials at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which helped organize delivery of the coronavirus masks and test kits to various African countries, confirmed to VOA that no supplies reached Eritrea.A senior Africa CDC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said the plane carrying the supplies was supposed to fly from Sudan’s capital to Asmara on March 23, but Eritrean officials never authorized the plane to land.   Forced to bypass Eritrea, the pilots instead flew to Djibouti and Kenya before returning to their starting point, Addis Ababa, he said.James Ayodele, a spokesperson for the Africa CDC, said “the issue is still being discussed at a diplomatic level.”Threat to healthWhatever the reason for Eritrea’s failure to accept the medical supplies, Meron Estefanos, executive director of the Eritrean Initiative on Refugee Rights, said the government is severely jeopardizing the health of its own citizens.“I don’t believe that it was incompetence. I believe it’s just that they don’t care. If it was just because of bureaucracy, they would have just fixed the airline and they would have had it the next day. This is a country that can do lots of things. Importing something from Ethiopia to Asmara is a one-hour flight. They could even allow them to land right now, you get the point, just for medical purposes,” Meron said.Health experts and human rights activists are gravely concerned that Eritrea is severely underequipped in the event of a severe coronavirus outbreak. The government has confirmed 18 COVID-19 cases to date.  Meron said that rather than accepting goods from abroad, the government is asking its diaspora across the globe to give money to the government.”Eritrea is not ready for anything. First of all, just eight months ago they shut down 29 Catholic clinics. These were the best clinics in the country, giving free service to the public. But because of the Catholics’ call for peace [and the] release of political prisoners, they shut down the clinics. But who is getting hurt?  It’s the people,” Meron said.Talks continuingAsked to comment on the matter, Billene Seyoum, a spokesperson for Ahmed, said only that talks were ongoing to resolve the issue. The Alibaba Foundation declined to comment.Daniela Kravetz, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, said she did not want to specifically address the matter of Jack Ma’s supplies as she did not have firsthand information.She did underline the dire need for medical supplies in Eritrea and the need to open the door to humanitarian aid.“I am concerned about the fact that, if this continues to escalate, the reality is that many Eritreans will not be able to seek or obtain medical help. There is a lack of functioning intensive care units with adequate ventilators, shortage of water, shortage of medical staff, shortage of labs to carry out tests. I don’t really think the country has the medical capacity to deal with a pandemic like this one,” Kravets said.She also called on Eritrea to release political prisoners and low-risk offenders because of the risk of COVID-19 spreading inside the country’s overcrowded prison system. 
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While the coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdowns across Europe have been devastating for many businesses, Albania’s anchovy industry is reporting a boom in demand for its product.The Nettuno Anchovy factory, located in the port city of Durres on Albania’s Adriatic Sea coast, had been forced to reduce its staff due to lockdown regulations that have been in place for weeks in the country.But that smaller staff is working all the harder — while wearing masks and other protective gear — to meet a demand that has risen by 30 percent since the pandemic began.Plant owner Orlando Salvatore tells the French news agency he believes the anchovies are popular because they are easily shipped in enclosed containers, considered nutritious, and are popular with Europeans on pizzas, which he says more people are making at home because of their confinement.Salvatore says most of the increased sales are going to Spain and Italy, but the company ships to France and elsewhere in Europe as well.  
 
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Officials in Prague on Friday removed the statue of a controversial Russian World War II army commander, under protests from Russia and the pro-Russia Czech Republic President Milos Zeman.Marshal Ivan Konev led forces of the Soviet Union’s Red Army into what was then Czechoslovakia and Prague itself in 1945, liberating it from Nazi occupation. The statue honoring Konev was erected in 1980, when Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc.The statue became a subject of controversy after the fall of the communist Czech government in 1989, because of Konev’s post-World War II activities, most notably playing a leading role in crushing an uprising in Hungary in 1956. Czech historians say he also played a role in the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslavkia.After the statue was targeted by vandals, city officials in Prague’s 6th district proposed removing it and formally approved the move Thursday.Russia’s foreign ministry and its embassy in Prague issued statements condemning the removal, and Zeman also expressed opposition to the move.City officials said they will erect a new memorial to World War II liberators at the site and the statue will be transferred to a museum. 
 
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The lockdown has been in place just over a week here in Britain, and beyond the economic and health concerns, the new restrictions are having myriad effects on a society that finds itself largely locked indoors.The first place where people vent their thoughts and frustrations is on the local school parents’ WhatsApp group. The messages flood in in before we’ve fed the children breakfast. All schools are closed, so the WhatsApp group has become a vital tool for tips on completing homework, with parents having to relearn everything they’d forgotten since primary school as they perform as stand-in teachers. For us, it’s the Norman invasion of England in 1066, mixed with long division. Inevitably there are technical problems with the online learning system, prompting another flood of complaints.Other parents post ‘breaking news’ style updates as supermarkets open online delivery slots — a scarce and valuable commodity as panic buying grips the country.Homework done, it’s time for the children to catch up with their classmates using apps like ‘Zoom’ or ‘House Party.’ My thoughts turn to what it would be like to be on lockdown with no internet. Would the sense of isolation be even more intense?It seems to me the lockdown has pitted two core British values against each other: the right to privacy, to one’s own life, to roam freely; versus the general instinct to play by the rules, obey the law and maintain the social contract between government and individual.That clash has manifested itself most clearly in the police response to the lockdown. Traditionally, policing is done here on the principle of community consent. By far the majority of police officers don’t carry guns. Suddenly, as in many countries across the world, Britain has become a surveillance state. In some places there are police checkpoints. We’re only allowed out to exercise once a day or to buy essential goods. Anyone caught breaking the new law faces a fine of $75.When one police force released disapproving drone footage of walkers out in a national park there was an outcry on social media, with one former judge warning that it had ‘shamed the tradition of British policing.’ Another commentator claimed it was creating a vision of ‘dystopia.’ And when a British lawmaker recently tweeted a photo of himself briefly visiting his elderly father to wish him happy birthday, the local police force admonished him publicly on Twitter, even though they had stayed outdoors and at a safe distance. I too have elderly parents and would like to visit them to check that they are okay, but it’s not clear to me if that is an ‘essential journey’ under the new rules.It’s not only the police who are monitoring people’s movements. There have been instances of neighbors reporting each other to authorities for leaving the house to exercise more than once a day, or for having people visit. Several police forces have set up hotlines or online portals to facilitate this.There is much confusion about what is permitted under the new legislation. When I go out for my once-daily run or bike ride, am I allowed to take a five-minute rest halfway through, or must I hurry home? On our local Facebook page, some older residents have posted disapproving photographs of children playing in the park, describing it as bad parenting. In the comments sections beneath, other residents have noted that many older people didn’t follow the initial guidance on social distancing as they packed out the local garden centers and nurseries just days before the lockdown came into effect. It seems the new rules have caused some tension between the generations.Most people do try to comply with the rules in their day-to-day interactions. I recently took my children to the local park to play in the cricket practice nets. It’s proving a popular option for the daily exercise outing, as the summer cricket season approaches and kids are desperate to play sports. Under normal circumstances, several families can use the adjacent nets at the same time, but the social distancing rules mean each family now politely waits their turn. One family insisted that this was nonsense and said we should all play alongside each other. That prompted a heated dispute, with accusations of queue-jumping, of breaking the spirit of the new laws, of putting health at risk. As the old British saying goes, ‘it’s just not cricket’ – meaning it’s not in the spirit of fair play, of British manners and gentlemanly conduct.Such values may belong to a different era. But it’s clear that the unwritten rules of British society are being sorely tested and will likely become even more frayed by the time these restrictions come to an end, many weeks from now.
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Living during the COVID 19 lockdown can feel stifling to put it mildly. But so far, most people are abiding by the rules for everyone’s sake. But as VOA’s Henry Ridgwell discovered, it is stifling, especially for people used to living in a free and open society like the UK.
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While admitting he wants to prioritize domestic needs, U.S. President Donald Trump denied placing a moratorium on overseas shipments of personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns to help other countries. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story.
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Pat Marmo walked among 20 or so deceased in the basement of his Brooklyn funeral home, his protective mask pulled down so his pleas could be heard.”Every person there, they’re not a body,” he said. “They’re a father, they’re a mother, they’re a grandmother. They’re not bodies. They’re people.”Like many funeral homes in New York and around the globe, Marmo’s business is in crisis as he tries to meet surging demand amid the coronavirus pandemic that has killed around 1,400 people in New York City alone, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.His two cellphones and the office line are ringing constantly. He’s apologizing to families at the start of every conversation for being unusually terse, and begging them to insist hospitals hold their dead loved ones as long as possible.His company is equipped to handle 40 to 60 cases at a time, no problem. On Thursday morning, it was taking care of 185.”This is a state of emergency,” he said. “We need help.”Employees deliver a body at Daniel J. Schaefer Funeral Home, on April 2, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York.Funeral directors are being squeezed on one side by inundated hospitals trying to offload bodies, and on the other by the fact that cemeteries and crematoriums are booked for a week at least, sometimes two.Marmo let The Associated Press into his Daniel J. Schaefer funeral home in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn on Thursday to show how dire the situation has become.He has about 20 embalmed bodies stored on gurneys and stacked on shelves in the basement and another dozen in his secondary chapel room, both chilled by air conditioners.He estimated that more than 60 percent had died of the new coronavirus. For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness and lead to death.”It’s surreal,” he said.Hospitals in New York have been using refrigerated trucks to store the dead, and Marmo is trying to find his own. One company quoted him a price of $6,000 per month, and others are refusing outright because they don’t want their equipment used for bodies.Even if he gets a truck, he has nowhere obvious to put it. He’s wondering if the police station across the street might let him use its driveway.He’s also hoping the Environmental Protection Agency will lift regulations that limit the hours crematoriums can operate. That would ease some of the backlog.”I need somebody to help me,” he said. “Maybe if they send me refrigeration, or guide me in a way that I could set up a refrigerated trailer that I could keep, and I could supervise.”Patrick Kearns, a fourth-generation funeral director in Queens, said the industry has never experienced anything like this. His family was prepared on 9/11 for their business to be overrun, but with so many bodies lost amid the rubble, the rush never came.He’s seeing it now. The Kearns’ business in Rego Park is just minutes from Elmhurst Hospital, a hot spot in the city, which itself has emerged as the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. Through the first 15 days of March, the family’s four funeral homes held 15 services. In the second half of the month, they had 40.Pat Marmo, owner of Daniel J. Schaefer Funeral Home, walks through a viewing room set up to respect social distancing April 2, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York.Like Marmo, Kearns has converted a small chapel into a makeshift refrigerator with an air conditioner. Other funeral directors told The Associated Press this week they were prepared to take similar measures.The surge in deaths is coming at a time when there are tight restrictions on gatherings, making saying goodbye a lonely process.A family at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn this week leaned over a yellow chain serving as a cordon and tossed roses at the casket of a loved one. Another in Queens offered final goodbyes through the windows of their cars. At one cemetery in the Bronx, where visitors were barred entirely, a funeral director stood over the grave and took photos to send to mourners.”The whole process, including the experience for the family during the funeral, is one of sort of isolation rather than the support,” said Bonnie Dixon, president of Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens.Jackie McQuade, a funeral director at Schuyler Hill funeral home in the Bronx, has struggled to tell families no. But she has no choice, given rules limiting services to immediate family only, if that.One cemetery she worked with has locked its gates to family and friends. Only she and a priest were allowed at the site of a burial. She photographed the casket being lowered, hoping it could bring some closure to the family.
“We would be going crazy if it were one of our loved ones,” she said. “We’re bearers of bad news on top of a sad situation.”Marmo said he’s hardly sleeping from the stress, worried he’ll forget a small but critical task, like removing someone’s ring before they’re sent for cremation.
He’s set to host a funeral Friday for a 36-year-old New York City subway driver who died last week helping riders evacuate a burning train. There will be a limited service in his main chapel, where he has 10 chairs, lined in two rows with 6 feet (2 meters) between each. The best he can do while respecting “social distancing” guidelines.”The guy deserves a funeral down the Canyon of Heroes,” Marmo said, referring to a stretch of Broadway in lower Manhattan where ticker tape parades are traditionally held. “Is he going to get that? He’s not going to get that. And it’s horrible.”
 
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The coronavirus death count in France surged to nearly 5,400 people on Thursday after the health ministry began including nursing home fatalities in its data.The pandemic had claimed the lives of 4,503 patients in hospitals by Thursday, up 12% on the previous day’s 4,032, said Jerome Salomon, head of the health authority. A provisional tally showed the coronavirus had killed a further 884 people in nursing homes and other care facilities, he added.This makes for a total of 5,387 lives lost to coronavirus in France — an increase of 1,355 over Wednesday’s cumulative total — although data has not yet been collected from all of the country’s 7,400 nursing homes.”We are in France confronting an exceptional epidemic with an unprecedented impact on public health,” Salomon told a news conference.The country’s broad lockdown is likely to be extended beyond April 15, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Thursday, extending a confinement order to try and deal with the crisis that began on March 17.Police officers check their phones as they walk on Trocadero plaza during a nationwide confinement to counter the new coronavirus, in Paris, April 2, 2020.The government was racing to try to ensure it can produce or procure itself certain medications needed to treat coronavirus patients as stocks were running low, Philippe told TF1 TV, echoing concerns across Europe as the pandemic places a huge strain on hospitals in Italy, Spain and elsewhere.More than two-thirds of all the known nursing home deaths have been registered in France’s Grand Est region, which abuts the border with Germany.It was the first region in France to be overwhelmed by a wave of infections that has rapidly moved west to engulf greater Paris, where hospitals are desperately trying to add intensive care beds to cope with the influx of critically ill patients.The care sector has called for blanket testing for all staff, with the virus often entering nursing homes through employees. More than 1 million people live in France’s care homes.”We have to limit the impact on old people as we know that they are the most fragile,” said Romain Gizolme, head of an association for the care of the elderly.On the front lineIn early March, health authorities asked nursing home staff to toughen entry protocols, wear gloves and masks, and isolate suspected cases.However, one worker in the Lyon region said that as of last week in her nursing home, residents were still dining together and staff were not wearing masks. Since then two workers had tested positive and four residents had fallen sick, she said.It is still not clear when the epidemic will reach its peak in France and hospitals in Paris are still scrambling to add more intensive care beds. France has already boosted their number to 9,000, from about 5,000 before the start of the crisis.FILE – Men wearing face masks chat at the entrance of the Fondation Rothschild nursing home, in Paris, March 27, 2020.Salomon said the number of coronavirus patients requiring life support rose by 6% on the previous day to 6,399.With France now in its third week of lockdown, the number of patients going into intensive care should in the next few days show how effective the government’s unprecedented measure is proving in slowing the rate of spread.In the Paris region, intensive care units are more or less saturated. Health authorities in the capital are trying to add 200 beds. Philippe said authorities would open a new ward at a hospital just outside Paris ahead of schedule so that it can take in an extra 86 patients there by mid-April.In Neuilly, a wealthy Paris suburb, one intensive care nurse told Reuters TV that wild swings in the conditions of some patients were among the most difficult aspects to deal with.”You can go from a state wherein he’s doing well one minute and the next he’s not,” said the nurse at the Ambroise Pare clinic, who gave his name as Martin.About 100 patients are being transferred from the capital to other less-affected regions to ease congestion in the wards, while medics are being relocated in the opposite direction.Respirators are also being put into people’s homes to save space at hospitals with patients monitored remotely.”We really now are on the front line of the battle,” said an official at the Paris region’s health authority. 
 
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Hong Kong has ordered pubs and bars to close for two weeks from 6 p.m.  Friday as the financial hub steps up social distancing restrictions and joins cities around the world in the battle to halt the spread of coronavirus.Anyone who violates the new law faces six months in jail and a fine of HK$50,000 ($6,450).The extraordinary move in a city that never sleeps comes a week after the government stopped all tourist arrivals and transit passengers at its airport and said it was considering suspending the sale of alcohol in some venues.“Any premises (commonly known as bar or pub) that is exclusively or mainly used for the sale or supply of intoxicating liquors … must be closed,” the government said in a statement late Thursday.It added that 62 confirmed coronavirus cases in the city had been linked to bars, leading to 14 further infections, including a 40-day-old baby. Hong Kong has 802 cases of coronavirus and four deaths from the disease.Alcohol will still be available in supermarkets and convenience stores across the Asian financial center.Global coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million Thursday with more than 52,000 deaths as the pandemic further exploded in the United States and the death toll climbed in Spain and Italy, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
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Late one March morning, cell phones across Illinois activated simultaneously through the state’s emergency warning system, buzzing with the urgent text message:“State needs licensed health care workers to sign up at IllinoisHelps.net to fight COVID-19.”The warning came as the number of known coronavirus cases in Illinois soared, many in Chicago and the urban areas surrounding it, while the city’s sprawling McCormick Place convention center along Lake Michigan was transformed into a temporary medical facility to handle the influx of patients.But outside Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, among vast corn and soybean fields, smaller towns dot rural areas where concerns are growing about the relentless spread of the coronavirus, and physicians are sounding the alarm about what they need to fight it.“I think right now, critically, it’s people … it’s the protective equipment, the masks, and it’s prayers,” said Dr. Stephen Hippler. “We have an undersupply of testing kits, so we don’t always know who has coronavirus and who doesn’t, and we are facing a shortage of personal protective equipment, which really adds to the anxiety of this.”Hippler is a chief clinical officer for OSF HealthCare, owned and operated by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. OSF HealthCare serves patients in small cities and rural markets in Illinois and Michigan through 14 hospitals with a total of 2,192 acute care beds. It also operates 30 urgent care locations.FILE – This sign near Dufur, Oregon, shows distances to the nearest towns, March 20, 2020. Rural residents fear the spread of coronavirus to areas with scarce medical resources.Unimaginable situation“I don’t know how you prepare for something like this, how you envision something like this,” Hippler told VOA. “Our health care system and our hospitals all do planning for disasters, but typically it’s around tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes — where an area is affected, but then others can rush in from elsewhere to help. But our planning scenarios have never [imagined a situation] where the entire world is down all at once.”Increasing the number of available working health care professionals and keeping them safe during the outbreak are among the challenges Hippler said rural health care providers face.“I think the challenges really come in around the resources required to stand up to a pandemic like this in IT [information technology], supplies, creating negative pressure rooms, just keeping up with the clinical resources and clinical guidelines,” said Hippler. “I think it’s that infrastructure that health care is built on that rural hospitals will face a challenge with.”“They’re really the sole source of hospital care for that community,” said Pat Schou, executive director of the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network, or ICAHN, which connects and supports 57 rural medical facilities, many of them independent, throughout the state.Schou, who is also president of the board of the National Rural Health Association, said U.S. Census research shows only about 15 percent of those in the United States live in rural communities, where the population is, on average, older, poorer and has a greater percentage of those with underlying health conditions at higher risk for serious illness and hospitalization if they contract the coronavirus.“Most of these hospitals serve a rural community of around 25,000 people,” Schou said, adding that many rural patients could live a significant distance away from a health care facility.Outpatient services are keyAbout 80 percent of the business that occurs at those facilities are outpatient services, such as therapy, lab services and minor surgeries.Schou said this is the core of the business that generates revenue for many rural hospitals and is dramatically drying up as patients stay home under lockdown.“If you only have 30 to 45 days’ cash on hand, it’s going to be very, very tough,” said Schou, who believes about 25 percent of the hospitals her organization supports could suffer steep financial losses depending on the length of the COVID-19 crisis. “If this is a short-term situation, they may be fine. If it goes longer than three or four months, they are going to have severe financial strain.”The spread of the novel coronavirus globally comes after 19 rural hospital closures in the United States in 2019. The Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina said that since 2005, the country has lost 170 rural health care facilities, eight of those since January.Schou said the loss of income and increasing financial strain could lead to difficult decisions for rural hospital administrators. “Do they keep all the staff? Do they lay off? What if they do have a surge that comes their way?” she asked, adding, “If we have a threefold surge, we’re going to have a serious problem.”While $100 billion in financial assistance for health care providers is on the way as part of the recently enacted $2.2 trillion federal relief package, Schou said it could take weeks to filter down to rural hospitals that may need funds, support and equipment far sooner.Competing for PPETo make matters worse, rural hospitals are competing with larger medical systems serving urban areas for critical supplies and equipment that is in short supply.“If you are a larger facility and you are treating these COVID patients, already you are a higher priority,” Schou told VOA.OSF HealthCare’s Hippler said the widespread and urgent need for personal protective equipment, or PPE, continues and is complicated by the fact that much of it is supplied in China by manufacturers that suffered disruptions when the coronavirus emerged.“It just happened that the epicenter [in China] was in the area where we get a lot of our PPE products,” he said, but PPE isn’t the only item on the growing list of needs and wants as the crisis drags on.“We all wish we had access to more testing, more reagents, a quicker way to do that,” he said.  “This is unlike flu season where it typically sweeps across the country. We’re not yet seeing a lot of that spread as intensely outside of these population centers, but we don’t know yet, it’s still early, and we’re still getting prepared.”
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The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 50,000 on Thursday.The number of deaths continued to soar in Italy, Spain and the United States, where hundreds of new fatalities were recorded. Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. said the worldwide death toll has reached more than 51,300, while the number of confirmed coronavirus cases is nearing 1 million. Medical staff in full protective gear carry a patient on a stretcher down a street in Naples, as the spread of coronavirus continues, Italy, April 2, 2020.Italy added another 760 dead to its coronavirus toll, pushing its death toll to 13,915, the most in any country. The U.S. death toll topped 5,300, but the White House in recent days said the eventual count could range from 100,000 to 240,000.Around the globe, the impact of the coronavirus wreaked havoc on national and local governments trying to rush medical equipment to hospitals, along with workers who have been laid off by the millions as businesses end normal operations. Another 6.65 million jobless workers in the U.S. filed new claims for unemployment compensation last week, pushing the three-week total to more than 10 million.In China, where the virus first erupted, 600,000 people in Henan province were placed on lockdown, a signal that Chinese officials feared a new outbreak.This still image taken from a live stream provided by Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti showing Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti displaying putting on a protective face mask during his daily news conference in Los Angeles, April 1, 2020.In Los Angeles, the second biggest U.S. city, the mayor urged people to wear masks in public. U.S. health officials are considering whether to urge all Americans to follow suit, but so far have not made a national recommendation. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Wednesday that anyone can be a coronavirus carrier even if they aren’t showing any symptoms.    The CDC affirmed a study from Singapore that says 10% of new cases were spread by people who showed no signs of being sick. The agency says the study reinforces the need for social distancing, staying at least two meters away from other people.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, himself in isolation after testing positive for the coronavirus, said in a video message that Britain would be “massively increasing testing” as the key to ultimately defeating the virus.Belgium has a large number of cases relative to its size, reporting Thursday it confirmed more than 15,000 cases thus far with a surge past 1,000 deaths.  With a population of 11.4 million people, Belgium sits in or near the top 10 worldwide for both figures.A police officer warns people to stay home as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus, in the historic center of Mexico City, April 1, 2020.In Mexico, the country’s foreign ministry urged Mexicans residing in other countries – particularly the United States – not to travel home to visit family right now due to the risk of importing cases. Israel’s health ministry announced Thursday that its leader, Yaakov Litzman, has tested positive for coronavirus and is in isolation.Greek officials said 119 people aboard a passenger ship have been confirmed as positive for the coronavirus.The ferry, with 380 people on board from several countries, has been anchored outside Greece’s main port of Piraeus for several days. It was chartered to house workers who were to work on a shipbuilding project in Spain.In Paris, a portion of Europe’s largest food depot is being converted into a mortuary, because the number of bodies is accumulating too fast for funeral homes to cope.In Cyprus, a domestic abuse association said the forced seclusion brought on by the coronavirus resulted in a nearly 50% spike in family violence reports in March. The Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family said it had nearly 2,100 calls to its helpline in March, but more than half of them went unanswered because the staff was overwhelmed. 
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Twitter said Thursday it has removed thousands of accounts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia and Serbia that allegedly took direction from governments or pushed pro-government content.”We removed 2,541 accounts in an Egypt-based network, known as the El Fagr network,” the San Francisco-based tech firm posted in a series of tweets.”The media group created inauthentic accounts to amplify messaging critical of Iran, Qatar and Turkey. Information we gained externally indicates it was taking direction from the Egyptian government.”El Fagr’s online managing editor Mina Salah vehemently pushed back.”Yes we are loyal to the state but we don’t receive instructions from anyone. We’re merely defending our country and its position is clear vis-a-vis Iran, Qatar and Turkey,” he told AFP.He said Twitter was effectively censoring the newspaper’s content and that journalists were banned from even creating new personal accounts.The platform also deleted 5,350 accounts from regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia for “amplifying content praising Saudi leadership, and critical of Qatar and Turkish activity in Yemen”.Rights groups have accused the conservative kingdom of spying on dissidents and critical online users on Twitter.The Saudi-linked accounts were run out of the kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, where Twitter’s Middle East headquarters is based, as well as Egypt.After an internal investigation, Twitter also removed clusters of accounts in Honduras allegedly propagating pro-government content, in Serbia promoting the “ruling party and its leader” and Indonesian accounts pushing information targeting the West Papuan independence movement.Earlier this week, it removed two of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s tweets questioning quarantine measures aimed at containing the novel coronavirus on the grounds that they violated the social network’s rules.
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