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Washington: Chinese hackers are trying to steal the COVID-19 vaccine investigation, US authorities said on Wednesday, increasing tensions between superpowers as markets fell amid US Federal Reserve warnings that closures prolonged damage could cause “lasting damage”.
Meanwhile, Europe pushed ahead with plans to gradually reopen summer tourism, despite fears of a second wave of pandemic infections that have forced more than half of humanity behind closed doors in recent years. months.
With some countries struggling after a further increase in cases and the global death toll above 294,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the virus “will never go away.”
There is no proven therapy for COVID-19. An effective vaccine could allow countries and economies to reopen completely and potentially earn millions of dollars for their creators.
Amid such risks, hackers linked to Beijing are trying to steal research and intellectual property related to treatments and vaccines, two US security agencies warned.
“China’s efforts to target these sectors pose a significant threat to our nation’s response to COVID-19,” said the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
No agency offered evidence or examples to support the accusation.
Washington, which has confirmed nearly 1.4 million cases of the virus in the United States and more than 84,000 deaths, has increasingly blamed Beijing for the outbreak that first emerged in China late last year.
Beijing has repeatedly denied the United States’ accusations.
Lasting damage
The value of a vaccine was underlined when Jerome Powell, head of the US Federal Reserve, warned on Wednesday that persistent closures could cause “lasting” economic damage.
Powell’s warning blew up the globe on Wall Street, analysts said, and stocks slipped on the comments, even as he also said the US economy should recover “substantially” once the outbreak stops.
Trump, trying to boost the world’s largest economy while seeking re-election this year, is pressing past warnings from health officials, particularly chief infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, who warned that reopening too soon runs the risk of triggering an uncontrollable outbreak.
On Wednesday, the president dismissed Fauci’s caution call as “not acceptable,” and in an excerpt from an interview with Fox Business that aired in its entirety on Thursday, Trump said: “I totally disagree with him in schools. ”
Some hints of the cost of moving too quickly could be seen in European markets, given a new twist of data showing new outbreaks in South Korea and Germany.
Russia, now the country with the second-highest number of virus cases, registered more than 10,000 new infections after authorities this week issued orders to stay home.
Fears of a second wave were also mounting in China, with the northeast city of Jilin partially closed in and Wuhan, where the virus was first detected last year, planning to test its entire population after clusters of new cases.
France reopens some beaches
Still, with no vaccine in sight and dire economic data pointing to the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, many countries were trying to navigate the reopening.
Desperate to save millions of tourist jobs, the European Union laid plans for a gradual restart of travel this summer, with eventual border controls to be lifted and measures to minimize infections, such as wearing masks in shared transport.
In France, some beaches reopened on Wednesday, but only for swimming and fishing, while sunbathing was still prohibited.
People in England were allowed to leave their homes more freely, as data showed the British economy contracted by two percent in January-March, its fastest decline since 2008, and with a much worse contraction to come.
Hospitals alienate people
Elsewhere, cases were emerging.
Chile imposed a total blockade on its capital, Santiago, after a 60 percent jump in infections in the past 24 hours.
Argentine officials watched Buenos Aires cautiously after one of its poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods showed an increase in infections. The water had been cut at Villa 31 for eight days.
Brazil is emerging as a new global access point despite President Jair Bolsonaro dismissing the pandemic as a “little flu.”
Health experts have warned of potentially devastating consequences as the virus spreads throughout the developing world, where health care systems are underfunded and isolation is often not possible.
In northern Nigeria, fears that the virus is spreading have seen hospitals close their doors to the sick.
Official Binta Mohammed said she had to see her husband die of “diabetic complications.”
“The four private hospitals we took him to refused to admit him for fear that he had the virus,” he said.
‘Tough old woman’
But there were stories of hope, including two centenarians who survived the virus.
In Spain, Maria Branyas, 113, battled the disease during weeks of isolation in a retirement home where other residents died of the disease.
And in Russia, Pelageya Poyarkova, 100, grabbed a bouquet of red roses when she was discharged from the Moscow hospital after her own recovery.
“It turned out to be a tough old woman,” said the hospital’s acting director, Vsevolod Belousov.
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