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United States
March 31, 2020 It’s completely demoralizing: Alteon Health, backed by private-equity firms Frazier Healthcare Partners and New Mountain Capital, will cut salaries, time off and retirement benefits for providers, citing lost revenue. Several hospital operators announced similar cuts. Most ER providers in the U.S. work for staffing companies that have contracts with hospitals. Those staffing companies are losing revenue as hospitals postpone elective procedures and non-coronavirus patients avoid emergency rooms. Health insurers are processing claims more slowly as they adapt to a remote workforce. Hospital operators have also announced cuts. Tenet Healthcare, a Dallas-based publicly traded company that runs 65 hospitals, said it would postpone 401(k) matches and tighten spending on contractors and vendors. Emergency room doctors at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have been told some of their accrued pay is being held back.This decision is being made not by physicians but by people who are not on the front lines. (Source: ProRepublica)
March 31, 2020 The captain of a US aircraft carrier carrying more than 4,000 crew has called for urgent help to halt a coronavirus outbreak on his ship. Scores of people on board the Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the infection. At least 100 sailors were infected. The carrier is currently docked in Guam. Captain Crozier recommended quarantining almost the entire crew in the letter dated 30 March. (Source: BBC)
March 31, 2020 Hospitals tell Doctors they’ll be fired If they speak out about lack of gear. “It is good and appropriate for health-care workers to be able to express their own fears and concerns, especially when expressing that might get them better protection,” said Cohen, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s bioethics center. It’s likely hospitals are trying to limit reputational damage because “when health-care workers say they are not being protected, the public gets very upset at the hospital system.” Privacy laws prohibit disclosing specific patient information, but they don’t bar discussing general working conditions. Not all hospitals are blocking staff from talking to the press. New York’s Mount Sinai has been scheduling media interviews for nurses, physicians and trainees to help the public understand the severity of the crisis. The University of California San Francisco Medical Center has gotten hundreds of such calls and encouraged workers to talk to reporters. Mehta is a 38-year radiologist from Charlotte, North Carolina, who runs two Facebook groups for physicians with around 70,000 members. She’s fielded numerous requests from health-care workers hoping to get their stories into the public arena. “I’m hearing widespread stories from physicians across the country and they are all saying: ‘We have these stories that we think are important to get out, but we are being told by our hospital systems that we are not allowed to speak to the press, and if we do so there will be extreme consequences,” she said. Many say they get daily emails urging them not to talk to the media under any circumstances. “The public needs to hear these stories and other physicians need to hear them to be warned against what’s coming,” Mehta said. “It’s so important that everyone understands how bad this is going to get.” (Source: Bloomberg)
March 31, 2020 “It is affecting every age group.” Using virtual reality, a video released by the George Washington University Hospital showed the lungs of a 59-year-old male patient with COVID-19 /video/:(Source: Fox5NewYork): https://tinyurl.com/sonuks5
March 30 2020 As of today, the US had more than 150,000 confirmed cases and more than 2,700 deaths. In New York state, the epicenter of the virus, there now more than 66,000 cases of the virus and 1,218 people have died. The death toll from the coronavirus is predicted to rise to 2,271 on April 15 alone. The model analysis by the University of Washington School of Medicine predicts the crisis will stretch into June. (Source: DailyMail)
March 30 2020 Mayor Bowser is threatening residents of Washington, DC, with 90 days in jail and a $5,000 fine if they leave their homes during the coronavirus outbreak. The city has a 6,500-person homeless population. Trump said today that federal officials are allowing local autonomy. “We’re letting the governors do in their state pretty much what they want, with our supervision, and they consult with us in all cases,” Trump said. (Source: TheNewYorkPost)
30 March 2020 Dead bodies are loaded into refrigerated trucks outside New York Brooklyn Hospital after 98 people died in seven hours - bringing city's death toll to 790 and cases to 36,221. Each refrigerated truck is said to be able to hold some 44 bodies. Queens, the largest borough, has been the hardest-hit by number of cases, hitting yesterday 10,373. It's trailed by Brooklyn with 8,451, The Bronx with 6,145, Manhattan with 5,438 and Staten Island with 1,866. Neighborhoods such as Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona, which are generally poor, densely packed and have large non-English speaking populations, have been among the hardest hit. In those areas, between 69% and 86% of the tests done have come back positive. As of yesterday, more than 8,500 people remain hospitalized across the state because of the disease, including more than 2,000 in intensive care. Since the outbreak reached American shores, more than 1,000 New York State residents have died. The first known infection in the state was discovered on March 1 in a health care worker who recently returned from Iran. The city's ambulances are responding to about 6,000 calls a day. Cuomo said yesterday that more than 76,000 health professionals, including many who've recently retired from the field, have volunteered to help in the coronavirus fight. The USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms and a full medical staff, is scheduled to arrive in the city today. It will be used to treat non-coronavirus patients to free up space in city hospitals. There are 142,000 cases across the country and 2,500 have died. The president has extended social distancing guidelines until the end of April and said yesterday that if 200,000 or fewer died from the virus, he would have done a 'good job'. (Source: DailyMail): https://tinyurl.com/vl9pr3a
March 30, 2020 When protective gear has been in short supply Nurses die, Doctors fall sick and panic rises on virus front lines. The coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 30,000 people in New York City, is beginning to take a toll on those who are most needed to combat it: the doctors, nurses and other workers at hospitals and clinics. In emergency rooms and intensive care units, typically dispassionate medical professionals are feeling panicked as increasing numbers of colleagues get sick. “I feel like we’re all just being sent to slaughter,” said Riley, a nurse at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, who has contracted the virus, along with his husband. Arriving to work each day, doctors and nurses are met with confusion and chaos. Few things have caused more anxiety than shifting protocols meant to preserve a dwindling supply of protective gear. When the pandemic first hit New York, medical workers changed gowns and masks each time they visited an infected patient. Then, they were told to keep their protective gear on until the end of their shift. As supplies became even more scarce, one doctor working on an intensive care unit said he was asked to turn in his mask and face shield at the end of his shift to be sterilized for future use. Others are being told to store their masks in a paper bag between shifts. “It puts us in danger, it puts our patients in danger. I can’t believe in the United States that’s what’s happening,” said Cabrera, an emergency room nurse at Jacobi Medical Center. .At a branch of the Montefiore hospital system in the Bronx, nurses wear their winter coats in an unheated tent set up to triage patients with symptoms, while at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, patients are sometimes dying before they can be moved into beds. There is also the fear of bringing the disease home to spouses and children. A gynecologist who works for the Mount Sinai hospital system said she had begun seeing women in labor who were positive for the coronavirus. Because she is not considered a front-line worker, she said, restrictions on protective gear are even more stringent than on Covid-19 units. This week, the Health and Hospitals Corporation recommended transferring doctors and nurses at higher risk of infection - such as those who are older or with underlying medical conditions - from jobs interacting with patients to more administrative positions. Doctors and nurses fear they could be transmitting the virus to their patients, compounding the crisis by transforming hospitals into incubators for the virus. That has happened in Italy, in part because infected doctors struggle through their shifts. All medical workers who show symptoms, even if they are not tested, must quarantine for at least seven days and must be asymptomatic for three days before coming back to work. In Italy, the number of infected heath care workers is now twice the Chinese total, and the National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists has compiled a list of 50 who have died. In China, more than 3,000 doctors were infected, nearly half of them in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, according to Chinese government statistics. Nearly 14 percent of Spain’s confirmed coronavirus cases are medical professionals. (Source: TheNewYorkTimes)
March 29, 2020 A global pandemic is an exercise in cooperation. We can't let Trump start a trade war right now. Too many lives are at stake.There are rumblings that the Trump administration may slap protectionist measures on medical supplies needed to fight the coronavirus. That is to say, in the midst of a pandemic, Trump might start a trade war. Anything that worsens relations between nations, makes medical supplies more expensive, or complicates supply chains is the last thing we need right now. More than once this week Trump has complained about European Union nations that have put export restrictions on vital coronavirus fighting supplies. His ally, GOP Rep. Collins, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Pompeo urging him to restrict the trade of US supplies. And earlier this week White House trade adviser Navarro said Trump would sign an executive order requiring government agencies to "buy American" when building equipment to fight the coronavirus pandemic in a bid to bring parts of the medical supply chain back to the US. (Source: BusinessInsider)
March 29, 2020 A group of armed vigilantes cut down a tree and dragged it across a man’s driveway in Maine to force him to quarantine in his home amid fears he could be infected with the coronavirus, A man residing on Cripple Creek Road in Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, called authorities around 3:35 p.m. in March 27 to report a group of people with guns had cut down a large tree and dragged it in front of his driveway, blocking access to the main road. A neighbor began yelling at him to get indoors and remain quarantined. Deputies have learned that there is a general belief by some island residents that the Cripple Creek Residents are supposed to be quarantined because they came here from another state and could have COVID-19. (Source: FoxNews)
March 29, 2020 “As the president fiddles, people are dying". As President Trump looks for ways to restore normalcy in parts of the U.S., his foremost infection disease expert says the country could experience more than 100,000 deaths and millions of infections from the coronavirus pandemic. “I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 cases,” he said, correcting himself. Fauci’s prediction would take the death toll well past that of the average seasonal flu. Trump repeatedly cited the flu’s comparatively much higher cost in lives in playing down the severity of this pandemic. Trump had eyed a “reopening” of the U.S. economy by Easter, April 12. Trump’s “denial” in the crisis was “deadly,” Pelosi said. She promised a congressional investigation once the pandemic is over to determine whether Trump heeded advice from scientific experts and to answer the question that resonates through U.S. political scandals: “What did he know and when did he know it?” About 125,000 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. had been recorded as of today morning, with over 2,100 dead. One in three Americans remain under state or local government orders to stay at home to slow the spread of the virus. Governors in hotspots across the country were raising alarm. “By the end of the first week in April, we think the first real issue is going to be ventilators. And we think it’s about the fourth or fifth of April before, down in the New Orleans area, we’re unable to put people on ventilators who need them. And then several days later, we will be out of beds,” Gov. Edwards said. (Source: AP)
March 29, 2020 The U.S. leads the world in reported cases with more than 120,000. Confirmed deaths surpassed 2,000 yesterday, twice the number just two days before. Rhode Island National Guard troops were instructed to go door to door in coastal communities to find New Yorkers and advise them about a mandatory 14-day quarantine for people from the state. And in Florida, Gov. DeSantis has ordered anyone arriving from Louisiana to self-quarantine and said law enforcement officers would set up checkpoints to screen cars from the state. In Detroit, one of the nation’s largest African American cities, there is a distrust among some in the community of the medical system and government due to systemic racism. Chopra, the medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the Detroit Medical Center said worried about a “tsunami” of patients. Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Michigan, providing money for the outbreak. He has done the same for New York, Louisiana and Illinois. The disease threatens to be devastating for close-knit communities where everyone knows everyone. Decatur, population 26,000, has 30 cases with one confirmed death and another suspected. The county health department has already run out of personal protective equipment. The last supply from the federal stockpile arrived more than a week ago and contained just 77 N95 masks and two dozen face shields. (Source: AP)
29 March 2020 People on the front lines aren't getting protected. They're lambs to slaughter. Health care workers throughout New York are alarmed at the dearth of protective equipment to keep staff safe. Lack of testing... tests are reserved for the most critical cases unless you are symptomatic and the symptoms are serious enough. New York Governor Cuomo said yesterday that "right now" there is enough protective equipment. Medical staff in America's coronavirus hotbed New York are struggling with long hours and a dire need for protective equipment -- and as infections surge, they increasingly fear for their own safety. Many medical workers lamented severe shortages of necessary supplies, including plastic protective gowns and hospital-grade masks. There's not enough money, there aren't enough tests, there's not enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for people who are dealing with this -- not just the doctors, but nurses, ancillary staff, janitors -- everyone in the hospital who are getting huge exposure to the virus. New York state has counted more than 50,000 positive cases, with around 6,500 people hospitalized. (Source: AFP)
March 29, 2020 US President Trump took to Twitter today to vaunt the television ratings of his daily briefings on the coronavirus pandemic gripping the United States. "Because the 'Ratings' of my News Conferences etc. are so high... the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY," the president tweeted. "President Trump is a ratings hit," he said quoting, the first sentence in an article in The New York Times. The full sentence read: "President Trump is a ratings hit, and some journalists and public health experts say that could be a dangerous thing." While cable and broadcast TV networks were initially showing his lengthy daily briefings live in their entirety, some have since cut back, citing what Maddow of MSNBC, for example, called "misinformation." (Source: France24)
March 29, 2020 Thirteen years ago, a group of U.S. public health officials came up with a plan to address what they regarded as one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators. The breathing-assistance machines tended to be bulky, expensive and limited in number. The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis. Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway. And then a multibillion-dollar maker of medical devices Covidien, a large medical device manufacturer bought the small California company Newport that had been hired to design the new machines. In 2015, Covidien was sold for $50 billion to another huge medical device company, Medtronic. The project ultimately produced zero ventilators. The federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile had full-service ventilators in its warehouses, but not in the quantities that would be needed to combat a major pandemic. The federal government started over with another company in 2014, the Duch Philips, whose ventilator was approved only last year and whose products have not yet been delivered. It wasn’t until last July that the F.D.A. signed off on the new Philips ventilator, the Trilogy Evo. The government ordered 10,000 units in December, setting a delivery date in mid-2020. The national stockpile had 12,700 ventilators ready to deploy. The government has since sped up maintenance to increase the number available to 16,660 - still fewer than a quarter of what officials years earlier had estimated would be required in a moderate flu pandemic. (Source: dnyz)
March 28, 2020 Difficult time to be a rat. New Orleans' famous Mardi Gras celebration brought thousands of tourists to the city, and medical experts believe it might be a big factor in the city's COVID-19 outbreak. Now with Bourbon Street's famous bars all closed and people social distancing, videos show dozens of rats scurrying through the empty streets. There are possible infections the rat infestation could spread to the local homeless population. (Source: CBSNews)
Mar 28, 2020 Early on in the outbreak, President Trump was accused of downplaying its severity, saying that sustained community spread was not “inevitable” even after a senior health official said it was. As the illness took root, first in the West Coast states of Washington and California, the U.S. was unable to perform meaningful levels of contact tracing because it was so slow off the mark with testing. The government initially refused to relax regulatory hurdles that would have allowed states and local health departments to develop their own test kits based on guidelines provided by the World Health Organization, and all early samples were being sent to the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Then the CDC sent out faulty test kits to the states, adding to delays. It was not until Feb. 29, the date of the first U.S. death and more than a month after the first confirmed U.S. case, that the government lifted its ban. The private sector entered later, adding to capacity. “If we could have done contact tracing, we might have found a lot more cases quickly and shut down the hot spots,” said Dr. Gábor Kelen, director of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University. U.S. officials have defended their response, repeatedly asserting that tests developed by South Korea - which is seen as an example of best practice for its aggressive early testing - sometimes produced false positives. Kelen disagreed with that reasoning. “One thing I teach my residents: Something is better than nothing, sooner is better than later". As of yesterday afternoon, 61 percent of the U.S. population of 330 million was called to lockdown, meaning 39 percent is not. From a scientific point of view, the pathogen could “down mutate” and become less virulent as time goes on, said Kelen, as similar viruses typically do. The heat and humidity of summer could also slow its spread, experts have said. Forecasters at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine believe the peak of the outbreak may come in mid-April with more than 80,000 deaths, based on current trends. Their model suggests 38,000 deaths at the lower end and 162,000 at the higher end. By way of comparison, influenza and pneumonia killed 34,000 people in the 2018-2019 flu season. (Source: JapanTimes)
Mar 28, 2020 New York death toll: 517 - one death every 17 minutes. The highest number of sick are in Queens, with 9,228. Brooklyn is next, with 7,789, followed by the Bronx, with 5,352, and Manhattan, with 5,036. Staten Island has 1,718 cases. (Source: TheNewYorkPost)
Mar 28, 2020 As the number of coronavirus cases explodes across the U.S., nearly 690 officers and civilian employees at police departments and sheriff’s offices around the country have tested positive for COVID-19. In New York: 512. On a single day this week, yesterday, 4,111 uniformed officers called in sick, more than 10% of the force and more than three times the daily average. More than a fifth of Detroit’s police force is quarantined; two officers have died from coronavirus and at least 39 have tested positive, including the chief of police. For the 2,200-person department, that has meant officers working doubles and swapping between units to fill patrols. Police academies are accelerating coursework to provide reinforcements. Masks, gloves and huge volumes of hand sanitizer have been distributed. Precinct offices, squad cars and equipment get deep cleaned in keeping with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. This week, groups representing American police and fire chiefs, sheriffs, mayors and county leaders asked President Trump in a letter to use the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to ensure they have enough protective gear. Police must prepare for the possibility of civil unrest among people who become anxious or unhappy about government orders or hospitals that get overrun with patients. In big cities and remote areas alike, officers are being told to issue tickets or summons rather than making arrests for minor crimes. (Source: AP)
28 March 2020 The military are not immune from the disease. Part of the U.S. Army's Northern Command U.S. military command teams in charge of protecting homeland security monitoring foreign missile and warplane threats are being isolated in the infamous Cold War-era Cheyenne mountain bunker located in Colorado Springs Air Force Station, Colorado where they will remain sealed off' until the coronavirus pandemic passes. It was completed on February 8, 1966, and serves as NORAD's secondary headquarters after the Peterson Air Force Base in El Paso County. Cheyenne Mountain is 9,500 feet tall and was once a place where natives traveled for spiritual guidance. Should the staff working at the bunker become ill, there is in fact a third team of high-ranking military officials working another 'secret' location. (Source: DailyMail): https://tinyurl.com/sw2drtr
March 27, 2020 A heat map highlighting cellphone location data within the U.S. is providing a frightening insight into the movements of humans amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The data, collected by location technology company X-Mode, was recently plugged into the geospatial data visualization platform known as Tectonix. In just one example of the project’s findings, cellphones on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, during spring break were selected and tracked. When the festivities ended, the cellphones were seen sprawling out across the Eastern half of the country, potentially bringing cases of the highly contagious virus with them. (Source: DailyDot): https://tinyurl.com/yx36pjlj
March 26, 2020 With 330 million residents in the United States, at least 81,321 people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1,000 deaths - more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen. (Source: msn)
3/26/20 The U.S. Senate late Wednesday unanimously approved a $2 trillion emergency package intended to stave off total economic collapse in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, bringing an end to more than five days of negotiations between senators and the Trump administration. One of the most urgent components of the package provides $150 billion for hospitals and other health entities that are pleading for help to contain the pandemic, relying on hand-sewn masks and donated ventilators. It also includes hundreds of billions in direct $1,200 payments to many Americans as well as bigger unemployment checks to people whose jobs are shed in the crisis. For businesses, there are $850 billion worth of loan programs, much of which comes with careful oversight provisions demanded by Democrats. (Source: Politico)
March 26, 2020 US President Trump has said that the World Health Organization has "very much" sided with China on coronavirus crisis, asserting that many people are unhappy with the global health agency and feel that "it's been very unfair". At a press conference Trump was asked if he agreed that the WHO showed favouritism and the US should re-explore its relationship with the health agency once the dust settles. In a tweet Congressman Steube alleged that the WHO has been a mouthpiece for China during the coronavirus pandemic. Both the WHO and China must face consequences once this pandemic is under control, he demanded. Senator Hawley echoed Steube's view and demanded the same. "There need to be consequences here. WHO has sided with China Communist Party against the world in this pandemic," he said in another tweet. WHO director Ghebreyesus has faced criticism for praising China's leadership for its "determination to end the new coronavirus outbreak". He has also been accused of conspiring with Beijing in its "propaganda" to hush-up coronavirus cases. Ghebreyesus had gone to China in January to meet President Xi, and a WHO team comprising of international health experts working in the country. WHO appreciates the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak & the transparency authorities have demonstrated," he had said in a tweet after his meeting with Xi. "Just back from China where I held frank talks with President Xi, who has taken charge of a monumental national response to the coronavirus outbreak. Based on cooperation & solidarity, China has committed to protecting its citizens & all people globally from the outbreak," he said in another tweet. Globally, the death toll from the coronavirus has risen to 21,293 with more than 471,518 cases reported in over 170 countries and territories, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. (Source: OneIndia)
March 26, 2020 China's ruling Communist Party poses a substantial threat to Americans' health and their way of life as the Wuhan virus outbreak clearly has demonstrated, US Secretary of State Pompeo said today after video conference with his counterparts from G7 countries, blasting Beijing for the intentional "disinformation campaign" and trying to deflect from its handling of the coronavirus crisis. He said China's delay in sharing information about the virus had created risks to people worldwide. "The CCP also threatens to undermine the free and open order that has underpinned our mutual prosperity and safety in the G7 countries," he said. The US urged every country to work together to protect the UN and other organisations from China's malign influence and authoritarianism. "We G7 countries must promote our shared values of freedom, sovereignty, good governance, transparency, and accountability, and push the UN to uphold these principles as well," he said. There was a discussion among the G7 countries about the intentional disinformation campaign that China has been and continues to be engaged in, he said. There are talks in Congress to hold China responsible for the coronavirus outbreak because it hid information. Some of the lawmakers are also calling on China to pay damages to the US and the world. Congresswoman Stefanik introduced a Resolution in the House of Representatives and Senator Hawley in the Senate calling for an international investigation into the Chinese Communist Party's cover-up of the early spread of the coronavirus outbreak. "Since day one, the Chinese Communist Party intentionally lied to the world about the origin of this pandemic. The CCP was aware of the reality of the virus as early as December but ordered laboratories to destroy samples and forced doctors to keep silent," said Hawley. The Resolution calls on China to pay back all nations impacted due to its intentional, early coverup of the deadly virus. Resolution calls for China to provide compensation for the harm, loss, and destruction their arrogance brought upon the rest of the world. "It is time for an international investigation into the role their cover-up played in the spread of this devastating pandemic. The CCP must be held to account for what the world is now suffering," he said. Senator Barrasso said that China had been exposed. "We cannot allow ourselves ever again to be in any way dependent on China for medicines, for materials, or for minerals," he said. (Source: IndiaToday)
NATO
March 27, 2020 NATO has stepped in to distribute critical aid to the affected regions. The Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) is its nodal agency for civil emergency response in the Euro-Atlantic area. In the past few days it has been approached by Italy, Spain, Ukraine and Montenegro for assistance. The Strategic Airlift International Solution (SALIS) programme charters civilian Antonov transport planes. Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are currently part of the initiative and can take advantage of the service when required. The programme is administered by the NATO Support Procurement Agency (NSPA). In December 2018, NSPA signed a strategic airlift contract with the Germany-based company Antonov Logistics Salis to obtain assured access of up to five AN-124 aircraft to the end of 2021. On Tuesday night, an Antonov 124 landed in Pardubice airport in Czechia from the city of Shenzhen in China, carrying more than 100 tons of equipment. In Slovakia on Wednesday another AN-124 landed with 48 tons of medical material from Tianjin, China. 45 tons of equipment, including 100,000 protective suits arrived in Bucharest on Thursday from the Republic of Korea. The supplies were delivered by a SAC C-17 Globemaster. (Source: ChinaGlobalTelevisionNetwork)
South America
30 Mar 2020 Indigenous groups across South America are blockading their villages and retreating into their traditional forest and mountain homes. “Coronavirus could wipe us out,” warned Kaiabi, an indigenous leader in Brazil’s Xingu national park, a sprawling sanctuary on the southern fringes of the Amazon that is home to about 6,000 people from 16 different tribes. Specialized indigenous health system was “totally unequipped”. Xingu leaders have been sealing off roads into their reserve, which is almost the size of Belgium. Further north, on Brazil’s Amazon border with Colombia and Venezuela, the country’s most indigenous municipality, Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, has reportedly been placed in total lockdown, with all flights and boat traffic suspended. Diseases such as smallpox and measles brought by European invaders may have wiped out up to 90% of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas – perhaps 55 million of an estimated 60 million people – between the late 15th and 17th centuries. In Colombia, which has confirmed 608 Covid-19 cases and six deaths, indigenous communities are also self-isolating, setting up roadblocks outside their reservations and outlawing visits to their ancestral lands. The country is home to about 1.5 million indigenous citizens from 87 different tribes. Authorities also needed to act swiftly to expel outsiders such as thousands of wildcat goldminers from reserves like the Yanomami territory, straddling Brazil’s border with Venezuela. (Source: TheGuardian)
Globalization
March 31, 2020 The US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surged past 3,500. Globally, over 800,000 people have been infected and more than 39,000 people have died. Today China reported just one new death from COVID-19 and 48 new cases, claiming that all new infections came from abroad. The Johns Hopkins figures supplied by government health authorities around the world are regarded with skepticism by public health experts because of varying counting practices, a lack of testing in places, the many mild cases that have been missed - and perhaps government efforts to downplay the numbers. (Source: TheNewYorkPost)
March 31, 2020 Soldiers patrol the streets with their fingers on machine gun triggers. The army guards an exhibition center-turned-makeshift-hospital crowded with rows of metal beds for those infected with the coronavirus. And Serbia’s president warns residents that Belgrade’s graveyards won’t be big enough to bury the dead if people ignore his government’s lockdown orders. Since President Vucic announced an open-ended state of emergency on March 15, parliament has been sidelined, borders shut, a 12-hour police-enforced curfew imposed and people over 65 banned from leaving their homes. While nearly 800 coronavirus cases and 16 deaths have been recorded in Serbia, according to Johns Hopkins University, testing has been extremely limited and experts believe the figures greatly under-represent the real number of victims. Most people suffer mild or moderate symptoms. In European Union-member Hungary, parliament yesterday passed a law giving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government the right to rule by decree for as long as a state of emergency declared March 11 is in effect. The law also sets prison terms of up to five years for those convicted of spreading false information about the pandemic and up to eight years for those interfering with efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, like a curfew or quarantine. Rights groups and officials say the law creates the possibility of an indefinite state of emergency and gives Orbán and his government carte blanche to restrict human rights and crack down on freedom of the press. Hungarian Justice Minister Varga said criticism of Hungary’s bill were “political attacks based on the wrong interpretation or intentional distortion” of its contents. In Israel, Netanyahu’s caretaker government was authorizing unprecedented electronic surveillance of Israeli citizens and a slowdown of court activity that forced the postponement of Netanyahu’s own pending corruption trial. In Russia, authorities have turned up the pressure on media outlets and social media users to control the narrative amid the country’s growing coronavirus outbreak. Moscow went on lockdown yesterday. In Poland, people are worried about a new government smartphone application introduced for people in home quarantine. (Source: AP)
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