H5N1

Pakistan doctors treating COVID-19 patients jailed for protesting lack of equipment

Via Globalnews.ca, a report by The Associated Press: Pakistan doctors treating coronavirus patients jailed for protesting lack of equipment. Excerpt:

The Pakistani military promised Tuesday that dozens of doctors who were briefly jailed for taking to the streets in southwestern Baluchistan province to protest the lack of protective equipment to treat the growing number of coronavirus cases will get the equipment they need. 

The 47 doctors protested in Quetta, the provincial capital, on Monday, when they were detained. They were released later the same day, according to provincial spokesman Liaquat Shahwani. 

An army statement on Tuesday said the “emergency supplies of medical equipment, including PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) are being dispatched to Quetta.” 

However, some of the doctors said they were maltreated by the police and that some of their colleagues were beaten. The physicians declined to give their names, fearing reprisals.

Two doctors have died after contracting the new virus in Pakistan, which has recorded 4,004 cases and 54 deaths. Many of the cases have been traced to pilgrims returning from neighbouring Iran. Pakistani authorities have imposed a countrywide lockdown until April 14.

Haiti hospital director kidnapped

Via The Guardian: Coronavirus live news: Cases in Italy overtake China, US infections pass 100,000. This item was posted 7 minutes ago, but recent tweets suggest Dr. Bitar has been freed without payment of a ransom:

Haiti hospital director kidnapped

The director of one of Haiti’s top hospitals was kidnapped on Friday, prompting staff to refuse to take in new patients in protest, as the impoverished country battles an outbreak of the novel coronavirus amid a spike in gang violence.  

Dr. Jerry Bitar, a surgeon, was kidnapped shortly after leaving for work at Hospital Bernard Mevs from his home in an upmarket neighborhood of the capital, hospital administrative assistant Carla Puzo told Reuters. “The relevant authorities are following the case,” a Health Ministry spokesman said.  \

“The Bernard Mevs hospital is a trauma and critical care center and is not treating coronavirus cases currently, but could need to if the disease spreads substantially in the country, where healthcare services and sanitation infrastructure are inadequate.”

Kidnappings for ransom have sharply increased this year amid a political and economic crisis in Haiti, which according to the World Bank is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  

Police confirmed 15 kidnapping cases in January alone. Gangs appear to strike indiscriminately, with victims ranging from Haitian schoolchildren, lawmakers and businessmen to foreign aid workers. 

“Hospital staff decided not to take any new cases for the time being,” Puzo said. “We will continue to look after those already here.”  

A crowd gathered outside the facility in solidarity with Bitar, who runs the hospital together with his twin brother, while staff chanted in unison calls for his release. 

Haitian media outlets also pleaded for bandits to free Bitar.

Violence erupts in China as people try to leave COVID-19-stricken Hubei province

Via The Globe and Mail, Nathan Vanderklippe writes: Violence erupts in China as people try to leave coronavirus-stricken Hubei province. Excerpt:

Violent clashes erupted on a bridge between China’s virus-stricken Hubei province and neighbouring Jiangxi province, days after authorities relaxed an epidemic lockdown.  

Police vehicles were overturned and police scuffled with each other amid large crowds of shouting people, according to a series of videos posted to Chinese social media. The confrontation came after authorities in Jiangxi blocked entry to people from Hubei, local media reported.  

Hubei this week lifted its lockdown of areas of the province outside Wuhan. 

But deep distrust has taken root across China toward people from Hubei, fuelled by fear of COVID-19 that spread widely in the province as well as skepticism of official reassurances that the epidemic has been successfully suppressed. People from Hubei have been refused entry to hotels and their homes, even if they were not in Hubei during the past two months. On social media, people have reported being barred from entering Beijing merely because their hometown is in Hubei.  

Now, the release of lockdown measures means large numbers of people from Hubei are attempting to move elsewhere in China, threatening new hostilities.  

On Friday, videos of the bridge confrontation showed a line of uniformed officers behind riot shields positioned across the bridge, blocking movement from Hubei province across the Yangtze River into Jiujiang, a city in Jiangxi. A large crowd marched toward the blockade chanting “Let’s go, Hubei!” In another video, Ma Yangzhou, the secretary of the party committee in Huangmei County on the Hubei side, urges people to disperse. “It’s dangerous for you to gather like this on the bridge,” he said, citing both the block to transportation and “the risk of virus infection.”  

The clashes took place between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., a worker at a toll booth on the bridge told the Globe and Mail in an interview Friday evening. “It was on the middle of the bridge somewhere that the block was put in place,“ said Ms. Huang, the worker. The Globe is not identifying her by her full name because she is not authorized to speak to the foreign media. On Friday evening, digital mapping apps showed the bridge closed from both sides, citing “construction.” 

In a brief commentary published on its Twitter-like Weibo account, the state-owned People’s Daily called the bridge conflict “regrettable.” 

“The people of Hubei have made great efforts and significant contributions to winning the battle against the epidemic,” the commentary said. “People from all sectors of society have also been calling for the acceptance of Hubei’s migrant workers. However, it’s undeniable that some individuals of some regions have intentionally or unintentionally discriminated against Hubei people, set up obstacles for them to return to work” and discriminated against them. 

According to official government policy, those who live outside Wuhan and are considered healthy have been allowed to resume travels since Wednesday. Authorities reopened railways and long-distance bus service, and pledged to completely remove all highway roadblocks by Friday. The desire to leave Hubei is substantial: Qichun County in the city of Huanggang counts one million residents, but has said 216,000 need to leave for work.

Syria reports first case of COVID-19

The NGO UOSSM has emailed me a news release: 

Toronto, Canada- This weekend the Syrian Government reported their first case of COVID-19 in Damascus (not including Northern Syria). UOSSM projects a significantly higher number of cases that have gone unreported. Over 80% of the medical infrastructure in Syria is operating at a limited capacity and COVID-19 testing kits are extremely inaccessible.

UOSSM predicts a parabolic jump of cases in North Western Syria in the next two weeks. The medical system definitively does not have the capacity to cope with the influx. The UN reports that there are 4,178,480 people in North Western Syria, living in densely populated conditions with little access to healthcare. In Idlib (pop. 3.5+ million) there are 201 ICU beds and only 95 ventilators. 100% of the ventilators are currently in use and not available to treat COVID-19. In North Western Syria there is currently only one PCR Lab. In the past 12 months alone, 85 medical facilities have been attacked and most are currently not functional. The medical infrastructure cannot handle the existing population needs let alone a wide spread pandemic. Medical staff suffer from a shortage of masks, gloves, gowns, disinfectant, thermal scanners and other medical supplies.

Years of war and malnutrition have left many people’s immune systems compromised and the entire population susceptible to drastically higher mortality rates. It is predicted that the transmission rates will be dramatically higher than global averages due to densely populated IDP camps and multiple families living in the same dwelling.

“The corona virus will spread through refugee camps like wildfire. The large geriatric population and those with chronic conditions (asthma, cancer, diabetes, hepatitis, etc.) are expected to have a very low probability of survival. The international community must make a fair allocation of personal protective equipment and testing kits for Northern Syria.” –Said Dr. Hussam Al Fakir, Chairman of UOSSM International

UOSSM’s response:

· UOSSM’s mobile clinics have made it a top priority to visit communities and educate the population on social distancing, hygiene practices and steps if people are symptomatic.

· UOSSM has nurse/staff in front of medical facilities to screen patients and direct them to the right area.

· UOSSM has asked all health workers to attend the WHO online course “Introduction to Emerging Respiratory Viruses, Including Novel Coronavirus”.

· UOSSM’s technical team has trained all health workers in UOSSM PHC centres on the detection of suspected cases, handling of cases, referral of cases, and reporting.

· UOSSM is working in close collaboration with the Idlib Health Directorate to implement a ‘COVID-19 Response Plan’. A few days ago, the Idlib Health Directorate announced the opening of an epidemic surveillance laboratory to carry out PCR tests to identify Covid-19 (testing kits currently unavailable).

COVID-19: Italy bans any movement inside country as toll nears 5,500

Via The Guardian: Coronavirus: Italy bans any movement inside country as toll nears 5,500. Excerpt:

Italy has banned any movement inside the country and closed all non-essential businesses as it desperately seeks to stem the spread of coronavirus following a horror weekend in which more than 1,400 people died. 

The escalating measures, which leave the government short of remaining population control levers, came as the rate at which Covid-19 spread around the world continued to accelerate, growing by more 130,000 cases in the past four days.  

Italy, the country firmly at the centre of the global crisis, exceeded China’s death toll last week despite having fewer confirmed infections and a far smaller population. More than 5,500 Italians are testing positive every day, with the average age of those dying 78.5.  

Supermarkets, banks, pharmacies and post offices are among businesses that will be permitted to keep trading under the new rules. On Sunday, Italians were also banned from moving across municipalities other than for “non-deferrable and proven business or health reasons or other urgent matters”, the health ministry said. 

Police squads in Rome were checking documents and fining those outside without a valid excuse. People who were out shopping were forced to wait in line at the entrance to make sure the store was filled with only a handful of shoppers at a time. Joggers were asked to limit their runs to laps around the block. 

People out for a walk were fined if they broke the rules and wandered into a park or stopped to take pictures of historic scenes of a city without any people. 

The Italian prime minister told the country it was facing its gravest moment since the second world war and that all businesses and factories that were not “strictly necessary, crucial [or] indispensable” would close until 3 April. 

“We will slow down the country’s productive engine, but we will not stop it,” Giuseppe Conte said late on Saturday. His comments came shortly after it was announced that 793 Italians had died from coronavirus, the most in a single day anywhere in the world. 

Another 651 Italians died on Sunday, bringing the overall toll to more than 5,400. Nearly 60,000 people across the country are confirmed to have the virus.  

In other developments on Sunday:  

• The first cases were confirmed in Gaza and Syria, intensifying existing fears about how their health systems would cope with an outbreak of the virus. 

• The death toll in Spain climbed past 1,720 people, exceeding the official figures of more than 1,600 killed in Iran, and the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, warned “the worst is still to come”. 

• More than one billion Indians were asked to observe a one-day curfew, as Australia introduced curbs on commercial activity. 

• Boris Johnson gave his most explicit warning yet that the UK might face an Italian-style lockdown amid mounting criticism of a mixed message from the prime minister’s office. 

• At least 23 people died and dozens more were injured as Colombia’s prisons were rocked by riots and protests by inmates demanding better protection from the virus. 

• The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was quarantined after it emerged that one of her doctors had tested positive, while Rand Paul became the first US senator to test positive. 

• Spanish opera star Plácido Domingo announced on Facebook that he had contracted the virus.

Caixin: WHO says threat of coronavirus pandemic ‘very real’

Via CX Daily: WHO says threat of coronavirus pandemic ‘very real’. Excerpt:

Virus spread and reactions /

• As of Tuesday evening, at least 109 countries and regions outside China reported a total of at least 34,318 infections, including 936 deaths, according to government data and media reports compiled by Caixin.  

• Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, Tuesday morning, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. This marks his first visit to the city since the outbreak began.  

• The Hong Kong government said that all travelers, residents or nonresidents in Hong Kong who have been to Italy in the last 14 days will be placed in a mandatory 14-day quarantine in centers set up by the government. The measure will take effect Friday. 

• The hospital where coronavirus whistleblower Li Wenliang worked and died has been hit harder than any other by Covid-19 due in part to throttling of information by officials, a Caixin investigation has found.  

• The World Health Organization (WHO) said the coronavirus outbreak is on the cusp of becoming a pandemic. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, made the remark Monday at a daily briefing after the virus spread across more than 100 countries worldwide, Bloomberg reported.  

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement that “now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real.”  

• As of Monday in Iran, at least 27 people (link in Chinese) died from alcohol poisoning after a rumor circulated that drinking alcohol could help prevent the coronavirus infection, state news agency IRNA reported. Drinking alcoholic beverages is banned in Iran, causing some people to turn to consuming rubbing alcohol. A total of 218 people were hospitalized for methanol poisoning in the western province of Khuzestan, Ahwaz University of Medical Sciences spokesperson Ali Ehsanpour told local media.  

Iran is one of the countries worst hit by the virus. It has reported 8,042 coronavirus cases, giving it the third-highest total behind China and Italy. A total of 291 people have died from the virus in the Middle Eastern country. 

• In the Middle East, the coronavirus spread across at least 15 countries and regions as of Tuesday. Countries including Iran, Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Qatar have announced (link in Chinese) suspensions of local schools. Saudi Arabia partly closed the Islamic holy site Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca for sterilization. It  also suspended international travel to and from nine virus-stricken countries, including South Korea and Italy. 

• The Boao Forum for Asia, which China hopes to position as Asia’s answer to the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been postponed to help with epidemic control, the organizer said Monday on its website. 

The annual conference, which was to be held in South China’s Hainan province March 24-27, became the latest in a series of major global conferences and exhibitions to be affected by the coronavirus outbreak.  

• In Italy, riots broke out in 27 prisons across the country after all family visits were suspended (link in Chinese) as the government implemented measures to contain the epidemic. Six inmates were confirmed dead as of Monday in the wake of clashes at the Saint Anna penitentiary in the northern province of Modena.  

Italy extended travel restrictions nationwide on Tuesday, two days after it locked down the northern part of the country, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said at a press conference, according to its government website (link in Italian). 

As of Monday, the coronavirus infected 9,172 (link in Italian) people and killed 463 in Italy.  

• In the U.S., more than 3,500 people aboard the Grand Princess, which docked at the Port of Oakland Monday in California, began disembarking (link in Chinese) after being stuck on the cruise ship for five days.  

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he will seek a payroll tax cut and other measures (link in Chinese) to ease the economic impact from the outbreak.    

Medical updates  / 

• China’s controversial quarantine measures limited the size of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak and should be kept in place until late April, according to a study by a prominent Chinese epidemiologist.   

Market and social impacts  /  

• Just as China’s factories get back on their feet after being laid low by the coronavirus, a drop in demand from their biggest trading partners around the world is coming back to give them another hit. 

• China’s money-losing online used car sellers have been slashing salaries and jobs in recent weeks, operating in cash-conservation mode as business slows to a trickle during the Covid-19 outbreak. 

• China’s package delivery sector is facing sharp increases in operating costs as transportation and temporary labor expenses jump amid the epidemic, an industry official said. 

• Trip.com Group Ltd.’s top two executives will stop drawing salaries as part of a series of cost-cutting moves at China’s biggest online travel service provider.  

• Tesla shares plunge amid crash in oil prices, China virus risks  

COVID-19 live updates: Number of deaths outside China passes 1,000 as Italy records highest one-day toll

Via The Guardian: Coronavirus live updates: number of deaths outside China passes 1,000 as Italy records highest one-day toll. Excerpt:

• The death toll from the coronavirus outside China passed 1,000 on Tuesday, as Italy recorded 168 deaths, its highest one day toll. 

• In the United States, the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases was up to 761 as of Tuesday morning, but there are still concerns over a lack of testing kits in the country. 

• New York governor Andrew Cuomo deployed the national guard to New Rochelle, the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in the New York metro area. 

• The total number of Covid-19 cases in the UK jumped to 373, as of 9am on Tuesday, up from 319 at the same time on Monday. 

• A sixth patient in the UK died after testing positive for coronavirus. The man was in his early 80s and had underlying health conditions, the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust confirmed. 

• British Airways and Ryanair have cancelled all international flights to and from Italy, following the Italian government’s decision to place the entire country on lockdown came into effect on Tuesday. 

• The start of the UK peak of the coronavirus epidemic is expected within the next fortnight, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr Jenny Harries, said. She added that the UK would see “many thousands of people” contract the virus. 

• A number of universities including Harvard, NYU and Trinity College Dublin have moved lectures online in a bid to tackle the spread of the virus. 

• Victims of race hate crimes in the UK have been urged to come forward after a Chinese student’s jaw was dislocated in a street attack. 

• The UN refugee agency made an urgent appeal for donations to help it to tackle any outbreak of coronavirus among displaced people. 

• Greece announced it would shut down all schools and universities for two weeks in a bid to control the spread of the virus.

COVID-19 live updates: UK death toll rises to six as Italy-wide lockdown comes into force

Via The Guardian: Coronavirus live updates: UK death toll rises to six as Italy-wide lockdown comes into force.

Government figures on the geographical spread of the virus reveal new and increased cases in 23 council areas of England, according to analysis by the Guardian’s data team. 

The geographical figures, now released daily with a 24-hour delay to allow for verification, show eight areas where the virus has been detected for the first time. 

They are: Dudley, Enfield, North Somerset, Suffolk, Sunderland, Sutton, Waltham Forrest, Wolverhampton and Havering where two new cases were confirmed. 

Most of the areas report increases of one case, but in Camden and Oldham new cases doubled from two to four, and in Southwark and Nottinghamshire they increased from three to five. 

The other areas reporting increases in cases were: Barnet, Bolton, Brighton, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Surrey, Torbay, and Warwickshire. 

Summary 

• The total number of Covid-19 cases in the UK jumped to 373, as of 9am on Tuesday, up from 319 at the same time on Monday. 

• A sixth patient in the UK died after testing positive for coronavirus. The man was in his early 80s and had underlying health conditions, the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust confirmed. 

• British Airways and Ryanair have cancelled all international flights to and from Italy, following the Italian government’s decision to place the entire country on lockdown came into effect on Tuesday. 

• The start of the UK peak of the coronavirus epidemic is expected within the next fortnight, England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said. She added that the UK would see “many thousands of people” contract the virus. 

• A number of universities including Harvard, NYU and Trinity College Dublin have moved lectures online in a bid to tackle the spread of the virus. 

• Victims of race hate crimes in the UK have been urged to come forward after a Chinese student’s jaw was dislocated in a street attack.

Several inmates die in prison protests over Italy's COVID-19 lockdown

Via TheLocal.it: Several inmates die in prison protests over Italy's coronavirus lockdown. This raises a problem we're all going to have to deal with: how to protect "immobilized" populations like prisoners and care-home residents. Excerpt:

Prisoners took to the roof of a Milan jail on Monday as part of a string of violent protests against coronavirus containment measures, in which six convicts have died.  

As part of an unprecedented effort to halt the outbreak, prisons across Italy have been ordered to stop all visits and limit day releases. 

In another incident, around 50 inmates broke out of jail in the southern city of Foggia, and about 20 were still on the run after their fellow convicts were caught, Italian media reported.   

Some prisoners have been asking to be granted amnesty over the health crisis.  

Rights campaigners warned of mass revolts over the new measures, and families gathered outside prisons to protest the restrictions -- and to get news of their loved ones.  

Around a dozen prisoners at the San Vittore prison in Milan managed to climb onto the roof of one of the wings and shouted slogans as the police and prison guards below looked on.

It was the second day of unrest, with at least 23 jails -- from Venice and Milan in the north, to Rome, Naples and Bari in the south -- protesting over measures aimed at preventing the virus entering the prison system. 

Six inmates died during or following clashes at Sant'Anna jail in the city of Modena in northern Italy, according to prisoner rights group Antigone.   

Three died in Modena, while the other three died after being transferred from there to jails in Parma, Alessandria and Verona, Italian news agency ANSA said. It said there were reports that the prisoners had broken into a medical centre in the Modena jail and had overdosed. 

Authorities in Modena would not immediately confirm the reports. 

Domenico Pianese, head of the police union Coisp, said the mass revolts looked planned and warned that the mafia could be behind such "an evident strategy to try to take advantage of the difficulties caused by the coronavirus". 

Prison visits suspended 

At San Vittore, the prisoners perched precariously on the roof tiles wore bandannas or scarves over their faces. Fellow inmates could be seen massed around the barred windows at the jail in the Italian capital.  

Relatives rallied outside many of the concerned jails in protest over the measures, including a ban on family visits.

"We're urging inmates and relatives to stop violent protests, as they could spark others," Antigone's Andrea Oleandri said. "The situation could rapidly deteriorate."  

Prisoners, who get most of their information from televisions, tended to protest in solidarity if they saw convicts in other jails rioting, he added. 

Family members desperate for news of their loved ones on Monday had to be held off by prison guards at the entrance to the Modena jail, as ambulances and prison vans came and went, an AFP photographer said.

Ukraine: Violent clashes as locals hurl stones at coronavirus evacuees' bus

Via The Guardian: Ukraine: violent clashes as locals hurl stones at coronavirus evacuees' bus.

Ukraine’s effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak was plunged into chaos on Thursday as local residents hurled stones at buses carrying the evacuees and engaged in violent clashes with police. 

The vehicles were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, peeked through shattered bus windows as they drove slowly under heavy police escort.  

Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine’s central Poltava region had barricaded the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing that they could become infected.  

Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tyres and clashed with hundreds of riot police who moved to restore access. One protester tried to ram police lines with his car. 

The Ukrainian authorities say all passengers on board had been screened twice for the virus before being allowed to fly, but that was not enough to pacify the protesters. 

“Isn’t there any other place in Ukraine that can host 50 people, that is located in more or less remote villages or in far-off areas where there is no threat to population?” queried resident Yuriy Dzyubenko. 

One protester was heard suggesting they should be kept at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Another suggested taking them to parliament, while another said Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, should house them himself if he really believed there was no danger. 

“This is what I am telling him, telling the president: ‘Take 10 people, then I will take two,’” a man called Yuriy, who did not give his last name, said.

Nine police and one civilian were hospitalised, regional police said in a statement. 

More than 10 protesters were detained, and Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, visited the site of the skirmishes to try to calm the crowd down. He urged the protesters “not to fall for provocations and be understanding of the necessity for these temporary measures”.  

“The situation is rather heated,” Poltava’s regional police spokesman Yuri Sulayev said.  

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also weighed in, saying the protests showed “not the best side of our character”. In a statement on his Facebook page, Zelenskiy said the authorities had done everything possible to make sure the virus would not spread to Ukraine.  

“But there is another danger that I would like to mention. The danger of forgetting that we are all human and we are all Ukrainian,” he said.