Coronavirus World: Live Tracker updates

Millions of children are at risk of dying, the United Nations said Wednesday, not from Covid-19, but from preventable causes. Unable to receive care in hospitals that are struggling to fight the virus, more than a million children ages 5 and under will die every six months, UNICEF said in a report.

And the World Health Organization, the health body that has been working to coordinate global efforts to combat the disease, warned Thursday of an impending crisis of mental illness, the result of “isolation, fear, uncertainty, the economic crisis”. caused by the pandemic.

Devora Kestel, director of the W.H.O.mental health department, who presented the report, said the world could expect to see an increase in the severity of mental illness, especially in children and health workers.

“The mental health and well-being of entire societies have been seriously affected by this crisis and are a priority that must be urgently addressed,” he said.

A government official in France said Thursday it would be unacceptable for French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi to grant the United States early access to any Covid-19 vaccine it develops, after comments from the company’s chief executive suggested that the United States would be first in line because he helped fund the research.

Sanofi received $ 30 million from an office of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The US, Hudson said, adding that Europe needed to increase its investment in vaccines.

“I have been campaigning in Europe to say that the United States will receive the vaccines first,” he said. “It will be so, because they have invested to try to protect their population, to restart their economy.”

Sanofi later said in a statement that he was “committed in these unprecedented circumstances to making our vaccine accessible to all.” He noted that it has manufacturing plants around the world, and that while production of a potential vaccine in the United States would go primarily to the US market, “the rest of the manufacturing capacity will span Europe and the rest of the world.”

The issue is a delicate one for President Emmanuel Macron, who has repeatedly said that France and the rest of Europe need to develop their “economic sovereignty” to depend less on the United States and China for strategic medical and technological goods.

Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said Thursday that any Covid-19 vaccine would be a “global public good”.

And at least one lead expert said it was not necessary to evaluate all residents in Wuhan, given the low number of cases in the city.

The test drive, which will likely require the mobilization of thousands of medical and other workers, shows the ruling Communist Party’s determination to prevent a second wave of infections as it tries to restart China’s economy. The plan was announced this week after Wuhan reported six cases of coronavirus, snapping a streak of more than a month with no new confirmed infections.

The city’s goal of evaluating each resident is unrivaled in scale and in the speed at which Wuhan apparently plans to carry it out.

Abe declared a state of emergency in seven prefectures on April 7 and extended it to the entire nation approximately a week later. It later extended the emergency period, originally slated to end May 7, until the end of this month.

Japan has reported a total of 16,079 infections and 687 deaths from the coronavirus. On Thursday, the health ministry reported 57 new cases for the nation and 19 deaths.

After a meeting with a group that included public health officials and an economic adviser, Abe decided to lift the statement in the prefectures with low numbers of coronavirus cases. He said he would review the state of emergency for the remaining prefectures next week to determine if he could get up before the end of the month.

Abe urged residents not to let their guard down after the emergency declaration is lifted. He asked that people continue to wash their hands, respect social distancing guidelines and wear masks when going out. He also asked residents to avoid crowds in closed and poorly ventilated places and to refrain from visiting places such as discos, karaoke rooms and live music venues.

“We will have to create a new model in daily life from now on, and today is the beginning of that,” he said. He added that if infections start to increase significantly again, “unfortunately we may have to resort to a second state of emergency declaration.”

The figure adds to the 2.5 million children ages 5 and under who already die every six months in 118 low- and middle-income countries.

Put another way, the approximately 13,800 young children who die each day will join more than 6,000 others whose lives could have been saved.

“In the worst case, the global number of children dying before their fifth birthday could increase for the first time in decades,” Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director, said in a statement.

The indirect effects of Covid-19 have also increased the threat to pregnant women in these countries. UNICEF said an additional 56,700 maternal deaths could occur within six months, in addition to the 144,000 deaths already taking place in the same countries in that time period.

According to calculations, the 10 countries that could have the highest number of additional child deaths are Bangladesh, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda.

President Trump said Thursday that he planned to mobilize the military to distribute a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available and that older Americans would be given priority.

“It is a massive job to administer this vaccine,” he told Fox Business Network. “Our army is now mobilizing, so by the end of the year we will be able to give it to many people very, very quickly.”

Trump also predicted that 2021 would be “one of the best economic years we’ve ever had” after the pandemic’s financial recession, even as new data continues to show just how deep the economic damage is.

He was expected to warn that if the United States does not accelerate its response to the pandemic, Americans will suffer “unprecedented illness and death” and “2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history,” according to prepared comments.

Burundi ousted four senior officials from the World Health Organization days before a crucial general election, amid criticism that the country has not done enough to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

The county Foreign Office declared four W.H.O. officials, including Dr. Walter Kazadi Mulombo, the main representative of the UN agency in the country, “persona non grata”. Authorities did not give a reason to expel the experts, but said they had to leave Burundi before Friday.

Burundi, who will go to the polls on Wednesday to choose a president, legislators and local officials, has reported only 27 cases and one death from Covid-19. Those numbers were suspiciously low by health experts, especially as cases increase in neighboring Tanzania, which has also been accused of failing to report the true number of the virus.

“Despite limited official reports,” he said, “all the evidence points to the exponential growth of the epidemic in Dar and elsewhere in Tanzania.”

The Manila chief police officer faces charges for a birthday party amid a blockade.

Authorities in the Philippines on Thursday ordered charges to be brought against the Manila chief police officer after photos of him celebrating his birthday party appeared on social media despite restrictions on such gatherings.

The charges against the officer, Maj. Gen. Debold Sinas, came a day after the nation’s police ordered an internal investigation into the episode amid public pressure. General Sinas is the head of the Police Office of the National Capital Region, the group in charge of monitoring the Manila area.

Photos of General Sinas and several officers at a party were widely circulated and even shared by his office. An image showed him standing at a table surrounded by fellow police officers in what appeared to be a drinking session.

Harry Roque, a spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, said a criminal case will be filed Friday against General Sinas and other senior police officials who attended the meeting.

Mr. Sinas defended himself and said he was surprised when his men launched the meeting for him. On Thursday, he apologized and said some of the images were old social media posts that had been edited.

“It doesn’t define the totality of what actually happened,” he said. “However, I apologize for what happened on my birthday that caused public anxiety.”

But for decades after the deaths decreased, the pandemic seemed to disappear from the public imagination. With rare exceptions, it did not appear in novels, paintings, plays, or movies. Important monuments were not built. Even scholars overlooked the subject. And scholars say massive amnesia helps explain the lack of preparation for Covid-19.

Geoffrey Rice, 73, a professor in New Zealand, has written several books on the devastating effects of the 1918 flu on his country, leaving 9,100 dead in a population of just over a million. Three years ago, he and an epidemiologist began waving for a national flu monument.

In the United States, Brian Zecchinelli began to wonder about the absence of a monument. One of the dead was his grandfather Germinio, an Italian immigrant who had worked as a craftsman in a Vermont granite factory, one of many in a city that calls itself “the world capital of granite.”

Mr. Zecchinelli knew little about his grandfather’s life, which lasted only 35 years, so he spent months investigating his death. He was fascinated not only by the flu, but by its almost total disappearance from the collective memory of society.

“When I searched for memorials for the flu, I found nothing,” he said. “There was a plaque in Colorado and maybe something small in Australia, and that was it. I thought, ‘This is crazy. This flu changed the United States forever. It changed the world forever. I have to do something “.

On November 6, 2019, a zinc plaque was discovered in an herb garden next to a war memorial and steeple in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

Hospital radio stations in Britain are one of the least known features of their healthcare system. However, there are more than 200 such stations, small operations, manned by volunteers, according to the Hospital Broadcasting Association.

“It’s a pretty old-fashioned concept, going in and talking to people,” he said, “but you get such an instant response from patients that they might not have seen a friendly face in days.”

When Britain closed in March, most hospitals banned visits. Many DJs adapted by broadcasting from home or asking nurses to collect requests on their behalf, he said.

“A few weeks ago, someone in the Covid palliative care room asked for Frank Sinatra, ‘My Way,'” he said. “If someone asks about that, you know exactly why they want it.”

“Well-equipped, air-conditioned workshop,” reads the sale notice. “Ready for immediate production after acquisition.”

Workshop owner Zhou Wei submitted the notice last month, hoping someone, anyone, can help him out of his clothing business in South China.

Some people have called. But their offers have been depressingly low.

“If the price is still that low after this week, I will have to sell to them anyway,” Zhou said.

Zhou, who is in her early 30s, is from Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus outbreak in China. He has spent years at the Guangzhou manufacturing center producing women’s clothing.

It mainly sells in China, and from February to April it would normally be its busiest time of year. But this year the orders dried up almost entirely after the virus began to spread rapidly in China in late January.

Soon, he couldn’t afford to keep paying his dozen workers, and he fired them last month. And so far, its owner is not moving in the rent.

He considered selling his machines, but the amount of money he would get for them is also low, and he says the local government has not helped at all.

“Without subsidies, nothing,” he said. “The government cannot be trusted.”

Now, Mr. Zhou is back with his family in his hometown, Pengchang, and is contemplating his next moves. Back in Guangzhou, he said, he faced discrimination because he was from Hubei, where the outbreak began.

Pengchang, however, is an industrial group for non-woven fabrics, which are often used in medical applications. To Mr. Zhou, one in particular looks promising: masks.

It has been a call to arms, or rather a call to forks and knives.

Across Western Europe, farmer and producer organizations are urging people to eat more of their iconic products to reduce surpluses accumulated during the pandemic.

People’s eating habits have changed during blockages, leaving a large surplus of some foods. In Belgium, hundreds of thousands of tons of potatoes have been piled up in warehouses, with restaurants closed and festivals canceled.

In France, people have stored dairy products like milk and butter, but have avoided smelly cheeses like Reblochon, Comté and Bleu, which have cost some producers as much as 60 percent of their typical income. The main organization representing the dairy sector in France has even devised a slogan to tackle the surplus: #Fromagissons or “Let’s act for cheese”.

French wines and Belgian beers are also suffering, and people from both nations have been invited to buy beer coupons that they can use when the bars reopen.

South Africa now allows buyers to buy items like “closed shoes” and “used shorts with boots and leggings” during a partial closure to curb the spread of the coronavirus, a very specific list that has sparked public ridicule and political criticism. . .

“These new clothing regulations are downright crazy and seem to be more in force during the 1980s under the Soviet Union than in a democracy like South Africa,” said Dean Macpherson, opposition political leader in trade and industry.

“Fashion will be fine,” said Thula Sindi, a couture designer and ready-to-wear clothing retailer. “The most important thing right now is human life.”

Among the dead were at least 20 residents of a poor mountain town who had consumed a popular illegal alcohol.

The federal government has also declared that breweries are not essential businesses, forcing them to close and causing a widespread shortage of beer.

According to the authorities, these restrictions may have led more people than usual to buy alcohol on the black market.

Mexico already had a robust illegal trade in alcoholic beverages that have been adulterated or produced under unregulated conditions, and in the past, Mexicans have been sick and even killed by contaminated alcohol.

But the increase in alcohol-related deaths in the past two weeks is unusually high.

The authors discovered that during the five years prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 19 children with Kawasaki disease were cared for at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, which has an advanced pediatrics department, in the province of the country of Bergamo.

But this year, just from February 18 to April 20, the hospital, which is at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, treated 10 children with similar hyperinflammatory symptoms.

That suggests a group fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, the authors said, especially since overall hospital admissions during this time were much lower than usual.

Many of the younger generations looked at the commercial images of rich and happy young people and did not recognize themselves. Many think that China’s biggest boom years are over and that China’s older generation, which has accumulated all the money and power, is trying to co-opt them with flattery.

Tears flowed freely this month at a nursing home in Wassenaar, a coastal community in the Netherlands. And, a rarity in the midst of a pandemic, have been tears of joy.

The cabin, divided by a glass wall, has two entrances. For one, a nursing home resident enters with the help of a staff member. On the other hand, up to two family members can enter the cabin after disinfecting their hands. An intercom allows the family to communicate.

“The first visit to the cabin was very special,” said Holleman. “Two daughters came to see their mother for the first time after three weeks. The three sobbed.

Holleman said he was surprised at how the idea had taken off and spread across the Netherlands to other nursing homes. For now, the facility allows four half-hour visits per day. All slot machines have been reserved until the end of this month.

“Of course, we all prefer to hug and walk outside holding hands,” Holleman said. “This is the second best.”

The reports and research were contributed by Pam Belluck, Aurelien Breeden, Niraj Chokshi, Lynsey Chutel, Abdi Latif Dahir, Rick Gladstone, Russell Goldman, Jason Gutiérrez, Yonette Joseph, Alex Marshall, Claire Moses, Elian Peltier, Motoko Rich, Kirk Semple, Megan Specia, Vivian Wang, Sui-Lee Wee, and Wang Yiwei.