Monday 30 March 2020

6 Sha'aban - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8212

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SPORT | 01 PENMAG | 05 BUSINESS | 12

Essential

businesses see

huge rise in ‘stay-

at-home orders’

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

Postponing Games

saves athletes

from mental

turmoil: Coe

MADLSA asks companies to familiarise workers with online remittance serviceSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs (MADLSA) has asked companies to educate their workers about online remittance services as a substitute of exchange houses.

The government ordered to close exchange houses from March 26, following pre-ventive and precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

“The owners of the com-panies are urged to introduce electronic services for money transfer which are available online or mobile app or Ooredoo Money, amid latest decision to close exchange houses operating in the

country,” the Ministry tweeted yesterday.

The Ministry also asked employers to educate domestic helps about the ways of online remittance which are available in a number of languages.

The money transfer service providers such as exchange houses, banks and Ooredoo Money have started sending text messages to customers and account holders.

The text messages explain how they can transfer the money to their homeland. “All the exchange shops are closed. No problem. Register on the Ooredoo Money (http://www.ooredoo.qa/omapp) app now and send up to QR3,500 per transaction using MoneyGram,” said Oreedoo Money in a text message to customers.

“ E n c o u r a g e y o u r employees to go digital for their money transfer needs. Use our money app to send money to your loved ones without having to go out. Download the app now,” a major exchange house oper-ating in Qatar has tweeted.

“Enjoy zero transfer charges with our App which is available now on IoS and Android. We are here for you and your family while you are staying safe at home,” said another famous exchange house on its social media site.

Some employees and workers of the companies oper-ating in Doha and Industrial Area confirmed the smooth function of online remittance services through apps while sharing their experience with

The Peninsula.“I downloaded the app of

my bank a couple of days ago. It took 24 hours to activate, enabling bank to bank transfer. I sent some money successfully to my parents yesterday,” said Hamidullah Khan, an Indian national working as an assistant in a construction company.

Khan said that his friend whose account was with another bank got access immediately just after down-loading the app, without any activating time for making remittance.

The Government of the State of Qatar announced on March 25, the temporary closure of in-person money exchange and transfer service offices in Qatar starting, effective from March 26.

MoI gets 5,598 calls on quarantine violationsSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) said that it received 5,598 calls regarding violations of quar-antine from March 20 to 27.

The Ministry said in tweet yesterday: “Your resolve to stay in quarantine shows your com-mitment to your national and moral obligation towards yourself and others.”

Regarding violations of gathering, MoI said that the number of complaints received on emergency number 999 from March 22 to 27, 2020 regarding gathering is 846.

It also said that traffic and security patrols are monitoring all parts of the country to ensure that no gathering is taking place.

“Traffic and Security patrols

will be carried out throughout the country to implement the decision and ensure that no gatherings take place,” MoI tweeted.

It also has called on cit-izens, residents and visitors to the country to abide by the decision to not to gather in public places to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

During the weekend, a lot of people, especially families, went out for the northern areas to spend time at the desert, as the cold weather attracted people, but police patrols ordered eve-ryone to leave and go home. People prefer to visit such places as they think that it is safer this time from COVID-19.

MoI has clarified all forms of gatherings which are banned under law to prevent the spread of coronavirus. �P2

44 new cases of COVID-19 reported in QatarTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health has announced the registration of 44 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, in addition to the recovery of three cases of those infected, in Qatar, yesterday.

Some of the new cases of infection are related to travelers who have returned to Qatar, while others are due to some con-tacts of cases that had been diag-nosed with COVID-19. The new cases have been put into quar-antine where they are receiving the necessary medical care.

The Ministry of Public Health announced the regis-tration of three patients who have recovered, bringing the total number of recovered cases to 48 in Qatar. Until yesterday, 18,877 people have been screened for COVID-19, while 634 are receiving treatment for the disease. �P2

Dusty weather reduces visibilityA view of the Doha Corniche waterfront as dusty weather affects visibility across the country yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA

Qatar welcomes news that Bahraini citizens can transit homeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The State of Qatar has welcomed the decision of the Kingdom of Bahrain to allow the Bahraini citizens who were transiting through Doha from the Islamic Republic of Iran to return home.

“We wish that the Kingdom of Bahrain had accepted the State of Qatar’s offer to fly the Bahraini citizens home on a private charter flight, instead of prolonging their waiting time,” the Government Com-munication Office (GCO) said yesterday.

“The State of Qatar stands ready to play its humanitarian role during this global crisis. It is unfortunate that the Kingdom of Bahrain has launched allegations, false

accusations and politicised the humanitarian situation of its citizens attempting to transit home.

"Allowing them to return home, as requested by the State of Qatar to the relevant authorities in the Kingdom of Bahrain, is a step in the r i g h t d i r e c t i o n , ” t h e statement said.

It added: “As the health and safety of these Bahraini citizens is paramount at this time, the Ministry of Public Health in the State of Qatar will communicate with its counterpart in the Kingdom of Bahrain, to inform them of the results of the medical tests that have conducted. Qatar wishes the Bahraini citizens good health and safety.”

PM directs to allocate QR3bn guarantees to local banks

QNA — DOHA

Upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to support the economic and financial sector within the framework of the precau-tionary measures to combat the spread of the COVID-19) and H H the Amir’s directives to support and provide financial and economic incentives, amounting to QR75bn for the private sector, Prime Minister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, directed to allocate guarantees to local banks at an amount of QR3bn.

Qatar Central Bank (QCB) said in a statement yesterday that the amount of QR3bn comes within the support package for granting soft loans and without commissions or fees for the affected companies to support salaries and rents through guarantees issued by Qatar Development Bank (QDB) to banks operating in the State.

Qatar Central Bank (QCB) in cooperation with the Qatar Development Bank (QDB), will set standards and mechanisms for implementation.

MoTC teams up with Microsoft to enable remote working spaceTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar government announced yesterday its partnership with Microsoft to implement modern workplace solutions such as Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity by empowering its workforce to work remotely. The move will foster communication and collaboration amongst government entities to ensure uninterrupted delivery of services to businesses and citizens.

The swift enablement of gov-ernment employees to work remotely stems from the Qatar National Vision and readiness of the government as it began its digital transformation journey three years ago through a part-nership between the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) and Microsoft on mod-ernising the government work-place. Through a transformation programme, the “Secure Gov-ernment Modern Workplace”, the effort enabled thousands of gov-ernment employees with tools such as Microsoft 365 Security and Productivity solutions.

“The Qatar National Vision 2030 defines our strategy to pursue economic, social, environ-mental and human development

while ensuring the wellbeing of our workforce, citizens and resi-dents”, said Mashael Ali Al Hammadi, Acting Assistant Undersecretary of Information Technology Affairs at MoTC.

“Digital transformation has been the cornerstone of this journey, which drives our passion to bring the best of technology in place to achieve our goals.”

“Platforms such as Microsoft Teams are an ideal tool for us to bring our people and processes together and help us ensure con-tinuity in communication and workflow amongst our work-force in a secured environment. And this is evident, in light of the recent decision to reduce the

number of employees present at government workplaces to 20 percent. The precautionary measures are taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and ensure the health and safety of citizens and residents in the country.” She added.

Microsoft Teams is a collab-oration productivity tool that empowers work forces to chat, meet, call, and collaborate — all in one place. While governments and organisations across the globe are moving to remote work, Teams delivers an approach to foster a new culture of working together.

“Microsoft’s commitment to our customers is grounded in our mission to empower them in achieving more,” said Lana Khalaf, Country Manager, Microsoft Qatar. “Our collabo-ration with the government of Qatar speaks to this mission as we continue our efforts to enable them with solutions to collab-orate from anywhere. We look forward to supporting them as they take a leap forward in their digital transformation journey by enabling the workforce to stay connected remotely and reinvent the modern workplace.”

The 'Secure Government Modern Workplace' enabled thousands of government employees with tools such as Microsoft 365 Security and Productivity solutions.

OFFICIAL NEWS

DOHA: The Deputy Prime Minister

and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrah-

man Al Thani, received yesterday

a telephone call from Minister of

Foreign Affairs and International

Cooperation of the Italian Repub-

lic, H E Luigi Di Maio. During the

phone call, they reviewed bilateral

cooperation relations and coordi-

nated efforts to curb the spread of

the coronavirus besides issues of

mutual interest. QNA

FM receives phone call from Italian counterpart

02 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020HOME

QU-CENG develops medical products to fight coronavirusTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s College of Engineering (QU-CENG) announced that a research team from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engi-neering (DMIE) represented by students and faculty members developed designs using 3D printers for medical products manufactured in QU-CENG laboratories and workshops to benefit the medical service sector in Qatar.

These new designs include a ventilator machine which is used in hospitals as an integral part to provide the necessary treatment for patients with chest diseases, as well as the face mask for medical per-sonnel and to reduce the chances of infection.

These designs also include door knobs that help opening the doors without touching the

knob to reduce the chances of infection, knowing that the design of the masks filters will be done in collaboration with Qatar University College of Medicine.

Protective masks are developed for doctors and the community using 3D printers to produce masks that protect against the emerging corona-virus. The new masks contain a delicate external electrical wiring network covered with a layer of epoxy for two reasons. The first reason is to close all pores that exist in the prints produced by this widespread type of 3D printers (FDM) that use ABS plastic or “BC” and the second reason for covering and fixing the battery-powered wire mesh to heat the outer part of the mask to a degree higher than 70 degrees Celsius, which

is higher than the degree which the virus endures according to some studies. This will reduce the possibility of the virus remaining alive on the surface of the mask for a relatively long period of time. Filter is not covered by autoclaving and must be replaced after each use while taking all safety and security measures during the change.

Dr. Khaled Kamal Naji, Dean at QU-CENG, said, “These designs announced today support all efforts to confront the Coronavirus, and to reduce its spread in coordination with other sectors. These designs are the result of research groups to find the necessary solutions to the various challenges faced by various sectors in the country and to provide a qualitative and distinctive addition.”

Lolwah Al Khater and Bangladesh envoy

discuss latest COVID-19 developments

The Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Lolwah bint Rashid Mohammed Al Khater, with the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Ashud Ahmed, in Doha, yesterday.

QNA — DOHA

The Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Lolwah bint Rashid Mohammed Al Khater, who is also Spokesperson of the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management met yesterday with the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of Bang-

ladesh, Ashud Ahmed. The meeting reviewed the latest developments of the COVID-19 in Qatar and the world.

During the meeting, H E the Assistant Foreign Minister con-veyed the State of Qatar’s con-dolences to the government and people of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh on the Bangladeshi citizen who passed away yesterday due to

coronavirus. Her Excellency affirmed that Qatar is keen on providing high quality health care to all its residents.

For his part, H E the Ambassador extended thanks to the State of Qatar for the measures it had taken to pre-serve the safety of all, affirming the appreciation of the Bang-ladeshi community in the country.

SJC extends suspension of sessions in Appeal, First Instance Court & Disputes Settlement CommitteesQNA — DOHA

The Supreme Judiciary Council (SJC) announced the extension of its suspension of the sessions of the Court of Appeal, Court of First Instance, Labour Disputes Settlement Committee and the Rental Disputes Settlement Committee for a period of two weeks starting today, in the context of the precautionary and preventive measures taken by the state to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

In a press statement, SJC affirmed that the judges con-tinue to work in the consider-ation of urgent and time related matters and to set new dates for postponed hearings, indi-cating that the Court of Cas-sation will continue to holding its sessions on the dates spec-ified for them in advance.

The Council provides a system of service to the public during the suspension of

hearings by allocating an email address to receive all their inquiries and respond to them according to the jurisdiction of each court, in addition to organizing the work of the alternate judges for each court to consider and decide requests and urgent matters with the formation of teams supporting all courts to serve the litigants. The statement emphasised the continuation of all services pro-vided through the external service centers according to the previously established dates, and requests for the regis-tration of urgent cases and appeals through the electronic portal of the council or attendance at a prior date will continue to be submitted.

The statement appealed that the public to take urgent and prior appointments through the means of commu-nication provided by the Council.

MoI gets 5,598 calls on quarantine violations

FROM PAGE 1

“The prohibited forms of gathering include social func-tions at homes, majlis, mourning, Corniche, court-yards of mosques, social gath-erings, beaches and public parks,” the Ministry earlier said. The Ministry said that patrolling has begun after the announcement of the decision to prevent all kinds of gath-ering in order to save peoples’ lives.

Agricultural companies support MME campaign to disinfect key places THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Doha Municipality in collabo-ration with a number of local agricultural companies has launched a campaign to disinfect key places throughout the municipality.

The campaign was launched following the preventive and precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) said in a statement.

Sheraton Public Park, buildings of MME and Shura Council have been disinfected.

The cleaning and disin-fection operation was also con-ducted at Souq Waqif covering yards, walkways, doors, windows of commercial shops, toilets and other vital areas of the Souq.

A special team of workers equipped with necessary tools of cleaning and spray of disin-fection participated in the

operation. The cleaners also washed outer areas of Souq Waqif and garbage containers.

First Agricultural Company, AG Middle East Agriculture Company, Sidra Agricultural Company, European Agriculture Company and Al Adekhar Agri-cultural Company participated in the disinfection campaign of MME.

Workers disinfecting Souq Waqif area.

Ashghal inspects safety measures in project sites and labour accommodations

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of the preventive and precautionary measures imple-mented by the Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ to limit the spread of the COVID-19), Ashghal has intensified its efforts to inspect the workers’ accommodation and project sites.

These efforts are part of Ashghal’s commitment to effec-tively manage and respond to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) disruption, while continuing to provide essential

road and drainage services to the communities in Qatar.

Ashghal, in collaboration with its contractors, has taken further health and safety measures, especially on project sites to enable the continuity of its core operations whilst ensuring the health and safety of its staff. The health and safety teams are conducting ongoing inspections of labour accommodations and welfare facilities to ensure stringent health and safety measures are applied against coronavirus outbreak.

In an aim to improve on-site worker’s welfare standards, Ashghal has carried out the Worker’s Welfare Compliance Audit in various locations. The audits were conducted to ensure that all contractors and sub-con-tractors are complying with the requirements set out in the con-tractual documents and are abiding by the relevant Qatari laws.

The most important measures that are taken in all

workplaces and accommoda-tions include temperature mon-itoring (effective since the beginning of March 2020), cleaning & sanitising staff transport buses twice daily (morning/evening).

This is in addition to man-datory cleaning and sanitisation of all handrails, doorknobs and handles and any other asso-ciated items that come into contact with the human hand.

Moreover, all recreational

or social gatherings and sports events have been suspended until further notice.

The audit team also made sure that all necessary toiletries, liquid soap dispensers and hand dryers were provided in the workers’ accommodation. In addition to ensuring that all of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) COVID-19 informative posters are clearly displayed on sites, to raise awareness on the essential precautionary measures.

The body temperature of a worker of Ashghal project is being inspected at a site.

44 new cases of

COVID-19

reported in QatarFROM PAGE 1

The Ministry of Public Health is continuing to undertake all necessary checks for all citizens arriving from abroad, as well as all indi-viduals who have been in contact with the affected cases.

MME disinfects

Industrial Area

Street 1 to 32

in two days

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has disinfected 12 million square metre areas from street 1 to 32 at Industrial Area within less than two days.

The disinfection drive was launched by MME in col-laboration with Ministry of Public Health, Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) and Public Works Authority (Ashghal).

Ten teams comprising of 57 vehicles and 89 indi-viduals were involved in the disinfection drive in record time, MME tweeted yesterday sharing a video footage of the operation.

The MME in coordination with the services depart-ments of the municipalities, mechanical department and g e n e r a l c l e a n l i n e s s department mobilised all resources to make the oper-ation success. The drive aimed to ensure the health and safety of the residents of Industrial Area under the preventive and precau-tionary measures which are being taken to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The campaign was launched following the preventive and precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment said.

These efforts are part of Ashghal’s commitment to effectively manage and respond to the ongoing COVID-19 disruption, while continuing to provide essential road and drainage services to the communities in Qatar.

The 3D printed protective masks developed by the research team of Qatar University’s College of Engineering.

03MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 HOME

MoPH tips to stay safe while shopping groceryIRFAN BUKHARI THE PENINSULA

Social distancing is the key to beat COVID-19 pandemic but usually maintaining a safe distance becomes an issue when someone visits a shop or hypermarket to purchase grocery.

Almost all hypermarkets in Qatar, following the directives of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, have made suffi-cient arrangements to ensure social distancing among cus-tomers and also continously disinfecting shared surfaces.

The Ministry of Public Health yesterday issued a number of tips for the cus-tomers on how they can decrease the risk of contracting coronavirus while shopping grocery.

In an infographic shared on its social media accounts, the Ministry has advised people to

limit the grocery store visits to only one person and avoid taking children. “If your household workers are doing the shopping, explain to them the precautionary measures,” the Ministry said further advising people to make a grocery list prior to leaving

their houses.“To reduce the number of

visits, purchase enough gro-ceries to last 1-2 weeks but do not over purchase to leave stock for others. Ensure you always leave a distance of at least 1.5 meters between yourself and others,” the MoPH

has advised people in an ongoing awareness campaign to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

The Ministry also advised people to ensure disinfecting their cars and baskets prior to use, and wear disposable gloves and throw them in a trash bin immediately after use. “Avoid touching your nose, mouth and eyes while shopping and use electronic forms of payment instead of cash and also use a tissue when entering your pin number,” the tweet says.

The Ministry has further advised people to use alcohol-based hand sanitizers immedi-ately after they leave the grocery store and place their grocery bags in the trunk of their cars instead of seats of cars. “When you reach home dispose of the grocery bags immediately and wash the pur-chased items.

Ensure to disinfect and wipe

the surfaces that were in contact with the grocery bags and the products you pur-chased. When you finish storing the products wash your hands with soap and water or use alcohol based-hand sanitizer,” the tweet said.

The Ministry has further asked people to avoid going grocery story if they are expe-riencing any flu like symptoms such as coughing sneezing and fever; suffer from any chronic condition and low immunity and they are elderly persons.

In line with government’s directives to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country, major hypermarkets of the country have also issued a series of social distancing guidelines. The hypermarkets have placed signages at vantage points imparting awareness on shoppers to maintain rea-sonable distance while in the store and at the checkout

queue. Lulu Hypermarket recently

advised all its customers to limit one person per household to do the shopping. They have sug-gested the use of cashless payment wherever possible and recommended its customers to sanitise or wash their hands before coming to the store.

Lulu Hypermarket also started a massive campaign named “Your Health is in Your Hands” at all its stores, aiming to promote awareness of hand hygiene among its customers, employees and general public, as the risk factors for the increased infection and trans-mission of diseases are mainly associated with the hand hygiene.

Al Meera Consumer Goods Company has also banned the entry of children below the age of 12 to its branches as part of its preventive measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

P Limit grocery store visits P Avoid taking children P Purchase for one to two weeksP Do not over purchase P Keep safe distance from others P Disinfect cars and baskets before useP Use disposable gloves P Avoid touching face while shopping P Avoid cash payments P Use tissue when entering pin

MoI reminds people that public gatherings,

including praying on terraces, prohibitedTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) in an awareness poster reit-erated that public gathering

are prohibited due to the current public health scenarios.

The awareness poster reminded all residents that all

kinds of the gatherings at all places, including Corniche, cafeterias and even gathering on terrace for prayers, are pro-hibited and violators will face hefty fine or imprisonment or both. “Adherence to the health and preventive measures is a protection for yourself and your family and for the security of the society,” the Ministry said in the poster published in various languages.

“All kinds of the gatherings are prohibited in Corniche, beaches, public places and in front of the restaurants and cafeterias,” it said.

“Gathering for Jamaath prayer in front of Masjids or on the roofs of the houses and buildings or at any other places is also prohibited as a protection for your safety,” MoI added. “Imprisonment not exceeding three years and fine not exceeding QR200,000 or any one of the above will be the punishment for the vio-lators of the above instruc-tions,” ministry warned.

Private healthcare

facilities to stop

some elective

health servicesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has asked private healthcare facilities to stop some elective health services from Saturday.

In a memo sent to all private healthcare facilities in Qatar, the Healthcare Facil-ities Licensing and Accredi-tation Department at MoPH has said that the decision to stop some elective health services, in the context of pre-ventive and precautionary measures undertaken by the Ministry of Public Health to limit the spread of COVID-19 and to ensure the safety of patients, and healthcare workers.

According to the memo, dental clinics, dermatology and lesser clinics, plastic surgery clinics, surgical pro-cedure will be stopped at all private health facilities, except treating for emergency cases. Also all diet and slimming centres, physio-therapy clinics, comple-mentary medicine of all kinds provided at private healthcare facilities are asked to be stopped by the healthcare facilities licensing and accred-itation Department at MoPH.

QPO's video lifts people’s spirits amid COVID-19

RAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

Following a well-received video on social media several days ago, Qatar Philhar-monic Orchestra (QPO) has uploaded a new video of the musicians’ rehearsals shot from their own homes, lifting people’s spirits while encouraging them to stay indoors.

The video of the musicians’ stirring performance of an excerpt from Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony, which they will perform on their concert slated on June 13 at Katara Opera House, is cur-rently making rounds on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The video has been viewed and shared thousands of times and garnered hundreds of likes and praises from music aficionados and social media users.

One of the Facebook users described the performance as “beautiful and very moving” and the Qatar Philharmonic as “one of the world’s great orchestras.”

While most of the comments lauded the performance, many wished the orchestra well and look forward to seeing them live in their next show. As the gov-ernment urges people to stay home as part

of preventive measures against the spread of COVID-19, the musicians continue to rehearse in their homes. The video uploaded on the orchestra’s social media channels with the hashtag #HomeOffice is aimed at encouraging people to follow health guidance and support Qatar in its fight against coronavirus.

In an earlier statement, Kurt Meister, Executive Director of Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, said they wanted to show people that despite the current situation, the orchestra is working and “preparing

for the time when we can all come together again.”

Through the video of the musicians rehearsing in their homes, the orchestra “sends a message to people about how, while we may be separated at the moment, we are still together,” said Meister.

With four movements, Dvorak’s New World Symphony is considered one of the most popular of all symphonies. Neil Arm-strong took a tape recording of this com-position along during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. This symphony is a very peaceful

and relaxing piece of music that that the orchestra hopes will make people “enjoy it at a time when there is so much bad news and it is possible to feel a little lost,” said Meister.

The orchestra’s June 13 concert rep-ertoire also includes Pyotr Ilyich Tchaik-ovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy and Sergueï Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63.

The orchestra also plans to release more videos of its musicians’ virtual rehearsals.

The video of Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra musicians rehearsing in their homes lifts people’s spirits in the time of COVID-19.

The video of the musicians’ stirring performance of an excerpt from Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony is currently making rounds on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Message to President of Argentina

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has sent a written message to the President of the Argentine Republic, H E Alberto Fernandez, pertaining to bilateral relations and means to bolster them. H E the Ambassador of the State of Qatar to Argentina, Batal bin Mojab Al Dosari, delivered the message during a meeting with H E the President of Argentina.

16 people arrested for violating COVID-19 home quarantine requirements: MoPHQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) announced that the c o m p e t e n t a u t h o r i t i e s arrested 16 people who violated the requirements of home quarantine yesterday.

The pledge they com-mitted themselves had fore-warned this. The ministry

said the arrest of these persons is part of the measures in force in the country and approved by the health authorities.

This is to ensure public safety, in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Ministry said that the 10 persons proceeded to prose-cution. The persons arrested,

who are all Qataris, are: Abdul Nasser Ahmed Ahmed Al Shaiba, Rashid Hadi Rashid Al Sable Al Marri, Mohammad J a b e r M o h a m m a d A l Zabadani Al Marri, Abdullah Hayel Nazel Rashid Al Anzi, Abdullah Hussein Ali Al Ateeq A l M a r r i , A b d u l l a h Mohammed Salem Al Bahah Al Marri, Abdullah Ali Bakhit

Ali Al Athbi, Abdullah Jaber Ali Rashid Alyan, Saif Hamad Saif Ali Al Abtha, Bandar Saif Ali Saif Al Marri, Hamad Jaber Hamad Mohammad Al Zukiba, Nasser Abdullah Salem Al Hutil Al Marri, Sultan Muhammad Bakhit Al Athba Al Marri, Faisal Muhammad Bakhit Al Athba Al Marri, Ali Rashid Ali Rashid

Afifa, Abdullah Mashey Shabib Hussain Al-Dossary. The authorities reminded cit-izens and residents in home quarantine of the necessity of strict adherence to the conditions set by the Ministry of Health for their own safety and others.

The Ministry, in the statement, stressed whoever

violates the conditions will expose himself to the pen-alties in line with the provi-sions of Article 253 of the Penal Code No. (11) of 2004, and the provisions of Law No. (17) of 1990 regarding pre-vention of infectious dis-eases, and Law No. (17) of 2002 on Protection of Community.

04 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020HOME

WCM-Q students secure residencies at world's top academic health centers

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Final-year medical students of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) have secured residencies at some of the world’s most renowned academic health centers to continue their training after they graduate in May.

The medical students matched at residency training programs at leading healthcare institutions in Qatar and the US, including Hamad Medical Corporation, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, Case Western/University Hospital Cleveland, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center/University of California, Los Angles (UCLA), and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Mar-yland, among others.

The 32 students of WCM-Q’s Class of 2020 who matched will join their residency programs in the fall to begin training in their chosen spe-cialties, which this year are derma-tology, general surgery, internal medicine, interventional radiology, neurology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, pediatrics and psychiatry.

Qatari national Abdulla Al Mulla matched at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System in Richmond Virginia, where he will join the pediatrics residency program. Abdulla said: “Finding out where I had matched was quite an overwhelming experience. I am so

happy to have matched at VCU and really looking forward to starting the next chapter in my life, but at the same time I’m a little sad that a very happy chapter at WCM-Q is drawing to a close. I’ve had a really great time here and I know I’ll miss it a lot.”

The annual Match Day event, which pairs soon-to-graduate medical students with residency training programs, is highly com-petitive. This year more than 40,000 US and international appli-cants submitted program choices for 37,256 available positions. Likewise, gaining acceptance to the highly regarded residency programs at HMC requires extremely high levels of academic achievement and clinical excellence.

WCM-Q alumni who complete their residency training at elite insti-tutions in Qatar and the US fre-quently go on to work in the healthcare sector in Qatar, explained Dr. Thurayya Arayssi, Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and Continuing Profes-sional Development.

“We are extremely fortunate that many of our graduates join the excellent residency programs at HMC and then become local con-sultants making huge contributions to the health of the nation,” she said.

“Similarly, many alumni who go the US for their residencies return to Qatar after completion, which also gives the local healthcare sector

a great boost. I extend my most sincere congratulations to the Class of 2020 for matching at truly excellent institutions in Qatar and the US.”

Menatalla Mekhaimar matched at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, where she will join the internal medicine residency program.

She said: “I am overjoyed to have matched at Mount Sinai and excited that I will be living in New York for the next three years. I chose Internal Medicine because I loved it when I did my clinical rota-tions at Hamad and my sub-internship at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York — I like that you get to spend a lot of time with patients and I really enjoy the diagnostic rea-soning you do as a team. I’m sure the next three years are going to be really exciting, challenging and rewarding.”

She added: “I’ve had a won-derful time at WCM-Q; the teaching has been excellent and I’ve loved my experience here.”

Dr. Javaid Sheikh, Dean of WCM-Q, congratulated the students and he said: “We are immensely proud of the unstinting pursuit of excellence in academic achievement and patient care demonstrated by the Class of 2020. I offer them my warmest congratulations for achieving matches as such pres-tigious institutions and I look forward to seeing them thrive in their new roles.”

Students of WCM-Q’s Class of 2020 receiving their white coats at the beginning of the medical program.

QatarDebate Center takes steps to avoid spread of COVID-19

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of our measures to minimise COVID-19 in Qatar, QatarDebate Center (QD) a member of Qatar Foundation (QF), has activated remote work to put in force Qatar Foundation's initiative to enhance work and comply with standards and recommendations to ensure the success of working remotely.

Dr. Hayat Maarafi said that QatarDebate is continuing its plans of training workshops for adjudicators, coaches and stu-dents online and is eager to

provide the best methods to enhance the visions and goals of Qatar and QF.

Indicating that the center has previous experience with some countries in foreign relations, providing training and imple-menting plans, whether work-shops or competitions across the telecommunications network.

Furthermore, The English Department at QatarDebate has provided online training work-shops to Princess Sumaya Uni-versity for Science and Tech-nology in the Kingdom of Jordan, to introduce the English debate programme — the British Par-liament system — at the request

of the university administration and their desire to open an English debate department.

QatarDebate Center’s ambas-sador from Kuwait, Fahad Al Subaie and from QatarDebate, coach Saad Al Assad and Bara Al Ahmar have adjudicated a debate for Princess Sumaya University team.

Moreover, The center’s ambassador from Kuwait, Fahad Al Subaie, will provide an Arabic debate workshop, which will clarify the idea of cooperating with the platform of dawarat.com that started in 2019 and were designed for teachers in order to use the debate as an educational

tool, and with regard to cooper-ation with the QatarDebate as a platform for knowledge of debates.

These workshops will be dis-played on the center’s channel.

These workshops are an undertaking existing in schools.

However, it needs to be managed and organised whilst presenting it from a distance.

Qatar National English Debate Team represents Qatar in the international English debate competitions. It has con-tinued its training remotely with the center’s coaches with enthu-siasm, motivation and full com-mitment to learn.

Also, there is distinctive training for the secondary school team Qatar, the development team, where they are trained on the skills and application of the debates.

Amina Awartani, English Debate coach at QatarDebate,

said, “We have training for Qatari beginners aged 12-18 years, on the debate strategy, case analysis and argumentation, which started two months ago and is still ongoing remotely.”

She added, “The overall impression is good and the opportunity to meet with stu-dents was characterised by the creation and presentation of incentive programmes.”

Mohamed Khider, Arabic Debate Coach at QatarDeabte, said, “The team has continued its training through distance learning tools, where students attended training workshops and group discussions without any obstacles, and debates were held among them via Zoom platform for remote conferencing services.”

At present, the center’s coaches are working on arranging a set of joint debates with other debaters inside and outside the country.

The distance learning oppor-tunity provided a chance to think of a set of digital tools that could benefit students such as sending, reading substances or viewing resources and asking interactive questions using the Edpuzzle platform among other.

Qatar National English Debate team. RIGHT: Debate adjudicators working remotely.

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

T h e M i n i s t r y o f Commerce and Industry (MoCI), in cooperation with Al Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles, dealer of Mercedes-Benz in Qatar, announced the recall of Mercedes-Benz GLC Class model of 2018, because the air bag warning label on the passenger side sun visor does not include

information in the required languages.

The decision to recall comes as part of the Min-istry’s continuous efforts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs.

The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair w o r k s a n d

will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

The Ministry has urged all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, which processes complaints, inquires and suggestions r e c e i v e d f r o m consumers.

MoCI recalls Mercedes-Benz GLC Class 2018 model

Dr. Hayat Maarafi said QatarDebate is conducting training workshops for adjudicators, coaches and students online, and is eager to provide the best methods to enhance the visions and goals of Qatar and Qatar Foundation.

Lulu turns off lights for Earth HourLulu Hypermarkets observed Earth Hour on Saturday from 8.30pm to 9.30pm by switching off all external lights in all its branches across Qatar.

Msheireb Properties observes Earth HourLights at Msheireb Downtown Doha were turned off on Saturday night to spread awareness on protecting environment, preserving natural resources, and reducing the consumption of energy. Msheireb Downtown Doha, the largest and most sustainable city in the world, is a symbolic development of the friendly-environment and sustainable projects.

QatarDebate Center's coaches are working on arranging a set of joint debates with other debaters inside and outside the country.

05MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 HOME

Ensuring education continuesis our priority amid COVID-19,says QF partner varsity deanTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As the education landscape in Qatar adapts to changing times due to the coronavirus outbreak, the dean of a Qatar Foundation partner university has outlined how remote learning is ensuring learning never stops.

Amir Berbić, Dean of Virginia Com-monwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) said that there is “nothing more important we can do” than ensure education continues amid the COVID-19 situation. And while he admits online tuition is “a learning curve”, he also believes it is creating new educational opportunities and insights.

“In addition to staying healthy and exercizing social distancing, the number one priority right now is to continue learning,” he said.

“We switched to the remote learning online teaching mode several weeks ago, since the State of Qatar directed there should be no on-campus instruction. Prior to the coronavirus out-break, all our departments already had an academic continuity plan which we had utilized due to other circumstances in the past, such as flooding. The tran-sition was immediate as soon as it was decided that this was what we needed to do.”

Speaking about the interaction between students and faculty through various forms of distance learning, Dean Berbić said this includes ‘virtual’ classes,

or professors recording lessons and stu-dents then following them.

“We’re using various methods of engaging our students,” he said. “I think it’s gone well so far and it’s a big learning curve for all of us, both for our pro-fessors and our students.

“Obviously, we would much prefer to have physical contact. but this is the situation right now. We are trying to adapt quickly, and troubleshoot and adjust.”

Dean Berbić says students and faculty need this adaptability when it comes to virtual learning, explaining: “Studying art and design, as we do at VCUarts Qatar, comes with very spe-cific challenges because of the

studio-based component that is at the core of many of our courses.

“The work of our students is very physical and tactile. It’s highly experi-ential, whether that is through lectures, conversations, critiques, studio work, or working in the laboratories. We rely on the physical environment as a learning space. That means this is a big challenge for us, but it’s one that we are adapting to in various ways,”

VCUarts Qatar professors are adjusting course objectives or the goals of specific projects or lessons. “They are asking students to work in different ways for example, instead of relying on something that would have been pro-duced in a fabrication lab, they’re asking students to maybe work with different materials that are at their disposal in their home,” said Dean Berbić.

“Our students have done well to make the best of this situation — they are really engaged. Of course, we would much rather be able to engage them in an immediate way, but the artists and designers are good at adjusting and working within new constraints, and that’s at the core of artistic and design practice — exercising your creativity within very tight limitations or constraints.”

Another challenge art students may face is that their work requires crea-tivity, and this may be difficult to artic-ulate through technology. But Dean Berbić said: “It just requires us to work in different ways and engaging differ-

ently with technology. “It’s more of a shift or a change in

terms of modality rather than losing creativity. In some ways, it might make our students and our faculty more cre-ative, because it further concentrates minds and means you need to come up with innovative solutions. However, it still comes with lots of challenges and uncertainty, and we’re looking to manage that in the best way we can.”

According to Dean Berbić, VCUarts Qatar students and faculty are now dis-covering new ways of teaching that they may not have explored before. “There has been a feeling that it’s not easy to teach studio-based art and design dis-ciplines or courses remotely,” he said.

“As we are now forced to face a new reality, it may give us a new appreci-ation of the possibilities in terms of how art and design can be taught through a virtual model. There are opportunities when it comes to realizing new methods of communication, of teaching, of making art and design work. And there are also benefits in terms of building

communities in new ways that we haven’t done before.

“Whether it’s a physical envi-ronment or this new virtual mode, we must continue to teach and learn, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do for as long as it takes. With our faculty, we’re discussing different ways in which they can improve the virtual mode of instruction, as well as having conversations with students to get their feedback on what is and isn’t working.”

And he believes that this experience will make VCUarts Qatar, and other uni-versities, more aware of the challenges and opportunities that virtual learning presents. “In the context of art and design, we now have much more expe-rience than we’ve ever had of this mode of learning,” he said.

“When all this is over, we will have learned lessons and have a lot of infor-mation and insight on what does and doesn’t work in terms of virtual learning. We can use this even when it’s not necessary, as something that adds to education overall.”

Amir Berbić, Dean of Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar).

NU-Q students study on home campusTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Northwestern University Qatar’s (NU-Q) annual student exchange program with its home campus in the United States was cut short this year for some of the students due to the COVID-19 outbreak. But before that happened, the students attended classes and participated in student life on the Evanston campus. They are now continuing their studies remotely.

“The opportunity to spend one semester at the home campus is a unique experience, and every student selected to participate finds it uniquely rewarding. Exchange students return feeling energized by the experience and it is wonderful to see how much intellectual and personal growth each achieves in a relatively short

period,” said Gregory Ferrell Lowe, professor and director of the Communication Program at NU-Q.

While most of the students have returned to Qatar or their respective home countries, they will continue the program remotely through the end of the academic year.

One student in the program, Marielle Cortel, dis-covered that she faced a unique challenge. With so many courses to select from, she had difficulty deciding which classes to take. She ended up enrolling in film pho-tography, sound production, and web convergence, with plans to also study Korean lit-erature, health communica-tions, and production.

“The program allows you to explore and learn more about yourself,” Cortel said. Her first

extended time away from family, Cortel became more self-sufficient, managing her finances and discovering — contrary to her expectations —that she is capable of socializing in a new environment rather easily.

Like Cortel, Muna Hussain focused on film production, but she is also venturing beyond her major. She is taking a swing dancing class and also dis-covered rollerblading at the Norris University Center, the hub of social activity at Northwestern.

The Communications Exchange program helped Hussain overcome her trepi-dations about traveling to the US.

“I used to be afraid of the US,” but Hussain found in Evanston that “people are very friendly. American culture is

very open and accepting.”Rui Oh agreed.“I was worried that I’d be

isolated or find a lack of com-munity, but that has not been the case here.” Rui Oh said the experience helped her grow closer to NU-Q and NU-E stu-dents, something she called a “double win.”

She was also “stoked” to pursue her interest in gamifi-cation. This spring she learned about photogrammetry (3D modeling) and other Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality techniques.

Rui Oh first visited Evanston in 2019 as an NU-Q student ambassador. It was that trip that convinced her to apply for the Exchange program.

“Don’t overthink it, just come,” she advised NU-Q stu-dents who are thinking about applying for next year.

FROM LEFT: NU-Q students Nur Munawarah, Marielle Cortel, and Belkees Al Jaafari stand by the Northwestern University Library while on the exchange program.

Aster introduces online consultationto prevent spread of COVID-19THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Aster DM Healthcare Qatar has started online consultation and home delivery of medicines among other measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in Qatar.

The measures have been taken in line with the regula-tions issued by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the country in three different modalities, said Dr. Sameer Moopan, CEO, Aster Qatar.

“We have strictly enforced all these regulations and reduced the number or stopped all elective procedures as per the guidelines of MoPH. We have also reduced most out-patient services in both Aster medical centres and the hos-pital,” said Dr. Moopan.

Several measures have been taken across all Aster facilities and to reduce crowd in the waiting areas of clinics and the hospital.

“We have increased the number of the slots for appointment. We have started online consultation for two third of the patients. For the online consultations, at present, we are using Zoom platform, which is very common among public,” said Dr. Moopan.

He also said that the chairs at the waiting area have been arranged to ensure social distancing.

“We request our patients to

use our online appointment system which reduces waiting time. At some of our facilities, we advise patients to wait in their own cars after regis-tration and we call them as per the waiting list. Most impor-tantly, after the initial consul-tation, we are informing patients to use online consul-tation for follow-up,” said Dr. Moopan.

All patients with chronic diseases at Aster have been advised to use online consul-tation facility.

“Doctor will do the consul-tation online and medicines will be prescribed. We have a facility of home delivery of medicines free of cost. This is an approved process by the drug control department of MoPH. So we can deliver the prescribed medicines at their doorsteps,” said Dr. Moopan.

“Only urgent cases need to be seen in the clinic with reports. All other cases, we will make appointments for

radiology and lab investigations according to the condition of the patient. Or even, they can give the sample and leave the clinic at the time of visit. Once the reports are ready, we will initiate the online consultation and treatment,” he added.

Also, all the staff across Aster facilities have been divided in to three groups for 10 days each.

“We are using only one third of the staff and we will change them every 10 days so that even if anyone is exposed to COVID-19, the rest of the staff will be safe. We have divided them to three groups and arranged accommodation for them in three different groups of houses. The people who are coming for duty will be in same accommodation and rest of them in other accommo-dations. In this way we also assure that we can provide our staff for any duties if the gov-ernment asks for,” said Dr. Moopan

The measures have been taken in line with the regulations issued by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the country in three different modalities, said Dr. Sameer Moopan, CEO, Aster Qatar.

GWC celebrates Earth Hour 2020THE PENINSULA — DOHA

GWC (Q.P.S.C), the leading logistics provider in the State of Qatar, has participated in Earth Hour 2020 by turning off the lights in different areas in its Logistics Village Qatar, GWC Bu Sulba Warehousing Park, Street 15, Street 41, Ras Laffan, and its main HQ on D-Ring Road on Saturday. The company also invited its employees to participate in the initiative.

The company’s partici-pation in this initiative comes amid its response to the COVID-19 outbreak, for which it has put in place every safety

measure to ensure the nation’s health. By participating in this event, the company exemplified its commitment to its environ-mental duty while maintaining the wellbeing of its employees, clients and stakeholders.

“At GWC, we realise that one hour of turning off lights is not a sustainable environ-mental plan for any company or individual; yet, it’s a symbol of a larger commitment – that for the rest of the year, we will not spare any effort to save our planet,” stated GWC Group CEO, Ranjeev Menon.

GWC has a long standing of environmental initiatives such as reduce waste through

paperless operations, as well as reduce, reuse, recycle by which the company will treat as many of used materials as possible such as paper, plastics, wood pallets, and oil.

Started by WWF and partners as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour is now one of the world’s largest grassroots movements for the environment.

Held every year on the last Saturday of March, Earth Hour engages millions of people in more than 180 countries and territories, switching off their lights to show support for our planet.

A combination of photo showing after and before turning lights off to mark Earth Hour, on Saturday.

“We switched to the remote learning online teaching mode several weeks ago. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, all our departments already had an academic continuity plan which we had utilised due to other circumstances in the past. The transition was immediate as soon as it was decided that this was what we needed to do.”

06 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 GULF / MIDDLE EAST

Iran extends furloughs for 100,000 prisonersREUTERS & AP — DUBAI

Iran’s coronavirus death toll has risen to 2,640, a health ministry official said yesterday, as the Middle East’s worst-hit country grapples with the fast-spreading outbreak.

“In the past 24 hours we had 123 deaths and 2,901 people have been infected, bringing the total number of infected people to 38,309,” Alireza Vahabzadeh, an adviser to the health min-ister, said in a tweet. “12,391 people infected from the virus have recovered.”

Health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur told state TV that 3,467 of those infected were in “critical condition”.

“I am happy to announce that also 12,391 people who had been infected across the country have recovered,” Jahanpur said. “The average age of those who have died of the disease is 69.”

President Hassan Rouhani urged Iranians to adapt to their new way of life, which was likely to continue for some time.

“We must prepare to live with the virus until a treatment is discovered... The new measures that have been imposed are for everyone’s benefit... Our main priority is the safety and the health of our people,” Rouhani said during a televised meeting.

The government has banned inter-city travel after warning of a potential surge in corona-virus cases because many Ira-nians defied calls to cancel travel plans for the Persian New Year holidays that began on March 20.

The authorities told Ira-nians to stay at home, while schools, universities, cultural, religious and sports centres have been temporarily closed.

To stem the spread of the virus in crowded jails, Iran’s judiciary yesterday extended furloughs for 100,000 pris-oners. On March 17, Iran said it had freed about 85,000 people from jail temporarily, including political prisoners.

“The second wave of (the) temporary release of prisoners had already started and their (100,000 prisoners) furloughs have been extended until April 19,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili was reported as saying by state television.

Iran said it had 189,500 people in prison, according to a report submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran to the Human Rights Council in January.

Iranian authorities say that US sanctions are hampering their efforts to curb the out-break and have urged other

countries and the United Nations to call for the measures to be lifted. Washington has rejected a lifting of sanctions.

Iran has urged the interna-tional community to lift sanc-tions and is seeking a $5bn loan from the International Mon-etary Fund.

Tensions have risen between Iran and the United States since 2018, when US President Donald Trump pulled out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

“US has gone from sabotage & assassinations to waging an economic war & #Economic-Terrorism on Iranians-to #Med-icalTerror amidst #covid19iran. This even exceeds what would be permissible on the battle-field,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted. “STOP aiding WAR

CRIMES. STOP obeying IMMORAL & ILLEGAL U.S. sanctions.”

The United States imposed fresh sanctions on Iran on Thursday. Tehran has rejected a US offer to help Iran to cope with the pandemic.

Syria meanwhile reported the first fatality from the virus in the war-torn country, which has five confirmed infections. State news agency Sana said a woman died upon reaching an emergency room and tested positive for the virus, without saying where it happened.

Syria has closed schools, restaurants and nightclubs, and imposed a nighttime curfew last week aimed at preventing the virus’ spread. Its health care system has been battered by nearly a decade of civil war, leaving the country particularly vulnerable.

A national flag flutters at a nearly deserted corniche, during a countrywide lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19 in the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, yesterday.

Saudi expands lockdown as virus cases, death toll riseREUTERS & AFP — DUBAI

Saudi Arabia halted entry and exit into Jeddah governorate yesterday, expanding lockdown rules as it reported four new deaths from a coronavirus outbreak that continues to spread in the region despite drastic measures to contain it.

The Saudi health ministry said four more foreign resi-dents, in Jeddah and Madinah, had died from the virus, taking the total to eight. The kingdom confirmed 96 new infections to raise its tally to 1,299, the highest among Gulf Arab states.

Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain reported more cases, taking the total in the six Gulf Arab coun-tries to over 3,200, with 15 deaths.

Saudi authorities imposed entry and exit bans on Jeddah, after doing so for the cities of Riyadh, Makkah and Madinah last week. The kingdom late on Saturday extended indefinitely its suspension of international passenger flights and a bar on workplace attendance.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have imposed partial curfews and the UAE has imposed an overnight curfew until April 5 under a nationwide campaign to sterilise streets and public venues.

UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi announced coronavirus-related fines, including 50,000 dirhams ($13,000) for non-compliance with home quarantine orders and 3,000 dirhams for violating the curfew. Kuwait and the

UAE have also halted passenger flights at main airports. Oman suspended international pas-senger flights on Sunday.

The UAE emirate of Ras Al Khaimah said late on Saturday that hundreds of German tourists had been repatriated. Kuwait said it evacuated 97 of its nationals yesterday from Iran, one of the epicentres of the disease.

Bahrain, which has about 1,000 citizens stuck in Iran, has been struggling to charter air-craft willing to operate repatri-ation flights.

Qatar Airways, one of the few airlines maintaining scheduled commercial pas-senger services, will continue to fly, Group Chief Executive H E Akbar Al Baker told Reuters.

Egypt has shuttered several hospitals and quarantined vil-lages in an attempt to halt the rising infection rate of new coronavirus in the most pop-ulous Arab state. A Cairo hos-pital was closed for sterilisation late Saturday after two COVID-19 cases were confirmed.

An official at Al-Salam hos-pital told AFP on Sunday: “We are currently disinfecting the

hospital for the safety of eve-ryone concerned. One patient had come in tested positive and a member of our staff was infected after”.

He said no date was yet set for re-opening the facility.

Other hospitals have also been closed in the last week after recording cases of the virus, including the Alexandria University Hospital and Al Shorouk hospital in Cairo.

Health ministry spokes-person Khaled Megahed also announced that villages in up to 10 governorates have been quarantined.

“We have several infections from the same source... in what we call local transmission. Before it spreads to become a community transmission, we undertake this precautionary measure of quarantining the entire village... for 14 days,” he said on a widely watched talk-show with popular host Lamees Al Hadidi on Saturday.

Egyptian doctors on social media have urged people to stay home to stem the rate of transmissions through social interactions. The health min-istry has reported 576 COVID-19 cases, including 36 deaths. Egypt imposed a night-time curfew last week for two weeks in a bid to contain the growing contagion, which has caused over 30,000 deaths globally.

Penalties for violators include a fine of up to 4,000 Egyptian pounds (around $250) and even jail time. Flights have been grounded until 15 April.

Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain reported more cases, taking the total in the six Gulf Arab countries to over 3,200, with 15 deaths.

Lebanon reports 2 new deathsQNA — BEIRUT

The Lebanese health author-ities announced yesterday 26 new confirmed infections of Coronavirus (COVID-19) and two new deaths, bringing the total of whom infected with the virus to 438 cases and the death toll to 10 in the country.

The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said in a statement that the number of laboratory-confirmed infec-tions, including the cases in Rafik Hariri University Hospital and accredited university hos-pitals’ laboratories in addition to other laboratories, have increased with 26 cases from Saturday. The ministry also said

that two deaths were recorded for patients who had chronic diseases and both were in their eighth decade.

Furthermore, the Lebanese Council of Ministers announced on Thursday an extend of the total mobilization in the country, which started on March 15 and should end on March 29, to be until April 12, to curb an outbreak of the pandemic.

Moreover, the Lebanese government announced on Friday in the framework of tightening the efforts for com-bating the pandemic to hold the work of shops, food processing and storage institutions, in addition to a curfew from 7:00

pm to 5:00 am, besides closing Beirut International Airport, ports, land crossings for expa-triates, administrations, public institutions and private sectors work.

The Omani Ministry of Health has registered 15 new coronavirus cases in the country yesterday, bringing the tally up to 167 cases.

Five cases are linked to contact with infected patients and eight are related to travel, while two cases are under epi-demiological investigation, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

A total of 23 patients with COVID-19 have recovered so far, the ministry added.

Iran: 54 inmates at large after mass jail breakAFP — TEHRAN

Iranian security forces are searching for 54 escaped inmates following a prison break over which four guards were arrested, Iran’s state news agency reported.

“Some prison guards were summoned and four of them were arrested and others released on bail,” Mojtaba Shirouzbozorgi, a judicial official in Kurdistan province, told Irna. According to the agency, 74 inmates escaped from Saqqez city’s prison on Friday, 20 of whom have so far either turned themselves in or been captured.

On March 19, 23 prisoners escaped from another jail in the western city of Khor-ramabad, the capital of Lorestan province, hours before the start of Iran’s New Year celebrations, Irna said.

The near-empty Istiklal Street after authorities urged people to stay home as part of COVID-19 precautions in Istanbul, Turkey, yesterday.

Total number of coronavirus cases inTurkey climbs to 9,217: Health MinistryANATOLIA — ANKARA

As many as 23 more people died of coro-navirus in Turkey in the past 24 hours, according to the country’s Health Ministry yesterday, bringing the death toll to 131.

T h e t o t a l number of con-firmed coronavirus cases surged to 9,217, as 1,815 more people tested pos-itive for the virus in the past 24 hours, according to the ministry.

A total of 105 patients have recovered and been discharged from hospitals since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the announced data, which said 568 patients were being treated at intensive care units.

Also, 9,982 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours and the number of total tests carried out so far stood at 65,446.

After first appearing in Wuhan, China, last December, the novel coronavirus has spread to at least 177 countries and territories, according to data compiled by U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

The data shows more than 685,600 cases have been reported worldwide since last December, with the death toll over 32,100 and more than 145,700 recoveries.

Foreign minister urged Turkish expats yesterday to stay at home to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Pay attention to the warnings of our embassies, consulate generals and officials in your countries,” Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Twitter sharing a video, including the

messages of Turkish representatives abroad.

“The virus could not be spread to others as the patients stay at home,” Turkey’s Ambassador to the UK Umit Yalcin said in the video. Turkey’s Ambassador to the US Serdar Kilic, the country’s Brussels Ambassador Hasan Ulusoy and several consul generals warned people to stay safe in their homes.

At least 50 Turkish expats in eight countries have died due to COVID-19.

07MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Zimbabwe begins 21-day coronavirus lockdown todayAFP — HARARE

Zimbabweans braced yesterday for a three-week lock-down to curb the spread of the corona-virus which has killed one person so far and infected six others, and for many the lockdown means tough times ahead.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a 21-day “total” lockdown from today that will curtail movement within the country, shut most shops and banks, and suspend flights in and out of Zimbabwe.

With independent sources saying the official number of infections is understated, the spread of COVID-19 could prove devastating for a country whose economy is crippled by hyperinflation and whose social health care systems are crumbling.

Poor rains have exacer-bated the crisis, with half of the 15-million-strong population facing severe food shortages.

“We are not against the lockdown,” said Isaac Sayeed, who runs a stationery stall in the capital, Harare.

“But 21 days is rather too long. We already have shortages of basic foodstuffs,” he said.

The looming lockdown has triggered panic-buying and a spike in prices, adding more upward pressure to an inflation rate that currently stands at 540 percent.

Price of cooking gas shot up almost 50 percent overnight. Long queues have formed in supermarkets as people rush to buy whatever they can afford.

“We are supposed to stock up enough things to last us 21 days, but most of us live on what we earn daily, so we only manage a few groceries. I can see us facing tough times ahead,” said Sayeed.

The cash-strapped gov-ernment will not be able to cushion businesses against the lockdown.

“If they failed to buy ven-tilators for the treatment centres, where will they get the money to shore up small busi-nesses which are in the majority?” Sayeed asked.

Sayeed said his business would take a knock, but he did not dare ignore the lockdown, which will be imposed with both police and military patrols.

The lockdown will be “a huge challenge for most people who rely on their daily earnings to survive,” said Prince Gwanza who sells books and mobile phones.

“I can foresee people starving while confined in their homes. There are few people who can afford a square meal on an average day, to expect them to stock up for three weeks in to expect the impos-sible,” he said. Economist Prosper Chitambara of the

People queue to pay for goods at a supermarket ahead of a nationwide 21-day lockdown called by the government to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Harare, Zimbabwe, yesterday.

Labour and Economic Research Institute of Zimbabwe think-tank also warned that the impact of the lockdown would be “severe in terms of liveli-hoods. We are a highly infor-malised economy.”

According to independent statistics, as many as 90 percent of the employable population do not have formal jobs and many choose to emigrate.

“Most people have no access to social protection and companies are not getting the huge bailouts that those in other

countries are getting.” Trade unionist Japhet Moyo

said that “most people are living from hand to mouth and some companies may not recover after this”.

“While we are aware of the disastrous effects of the lockdown on the economy, we are faced with a choice whether its better to save lives and rebuild tomorrow.”

President Mnangagwa, who took over from long-time ruler Robert Mugabe in 2017 with the backing of the military, has

struggled to revive the mor-ibund economy and curb hyperinflation.

The public healthcare system already faces shortages of basic drugs and lacks essential equipment and running water. But doctors and nurses staged a walkout last week in protest over a lack of protective clothing to care for coronavirus patients.

On Saturday, health min-ister Obadiah Moyo made assur-ances that such protective gear has been secured.

Nigeria orders lockdown in Lagos, Abuja over virusAFP — ABUJA

N i g e r i a ’ s P r e s i d e n t Muhammadu Buhari ordered the “cessation of all move-ments” for two weeks in the largest city Lagos and capital Abuja to stop the spread of coronavirus.

“All citizens in these areas are to stay in their homes” starting from 2200 GMT on Monday, Buhari announced in a televised address to the nation.

“Travel to or from other

states should be postponed. All businesses and offices within these locations should be fully closed during this period.”

Buhari said the restrictions —which also cover Ogun state neighbouring Lagos — do not apply to hospitals, food shops or petrol stations.

“Although these establish-ments are exempted, access will be restricted and monitored,” he added. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with some 190 million people, has so far reg-istered just 97 confirmed

infections and one death from COVID-19, but testing has been limited. Officials have warned that the country risks seeing an “exponential” rise in cases unless contacts of suspected carriers are tracked down faster. Authorities in Lagos, a sprawling megacity of 20 million people, had already closed schools, shut non-food shops and restricted gatherings to limit movement.

Enforcing a total lockdown will be a mammoth challenge for the authorities in a country

where tens of millions live in dire poverty and rely on their daily earnings to survive.

“We are fully aware that such measures will cause much hardship and inconvenience to many citizens. But this is a matter of life and death,” Buhari said. He said the authorities would “deploy relief materials” to assist people in towns around Lagos and Abuja whose liveli-hoods were hit. Two-months worth of welfare payments “for the most vulnerable in our society” would be transferred

immediately, the leader said. The Lagos state governor on

Friday announced a programme to supply two weeks of basic foodstuffs to an initial 200,000 households in the city.

The central government in Africa’s largest oil producer is already facing severe economic strain after the global pandemic sparked a collapse in crude prices. State revenues — which are reliant on oil— have plunged and officials have said they will have to cut the budget for this year.

EU pledges €250m to Tunisia’s coronavirus fight

AFP — TUNIS

The EU announced that it would grant 250 million euros to Tunisia to help fight the deadly new coronavirus and the adverse socioeconomic effects of a lockdown.

The bloc’s enlargement commissioner Oliver Varhelyi pledged the aid in a telephone call with Tunisia’s foreign minister Noureddine Erray, according to a joint statement by the EU delegation in Tunis and the ministry.

Tunisia has so far declared five deaths from the COVID-19 respiratory disease, among 227 people confirmed to have been infected by the virus.

A nighttime curfew came into effect on March 18, and daytime restrictions were imposed last Sunday, limiting movements to those of “extreme necessity”.

People board public transport as they travel to villages at the end of a night-long curfew ordered by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease, in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday.

In Somalia, coronavirus goes from fairy tale to nightmareAP — MOGADISHU

At first, the coronavirus was just a fairy tale, a rumor along the dusty lanes of the displaced persons’ camp that Habiba Ali calls home. It seemed fantastical: an illness sweeping the world far beyond Somalia’s borders, killing thousands of people and sending some of the richest countries into panic.

Then Somalia’s first virus case was announced on March 16, and one of the world’s most fragile nations stag-gered even more. Nearly three decades of conflict, extremist attacks, drought, disease and a devastating outbreak of locusts have taken a vast toll.

Already vulnerable, millions of Somalis now contemplate a new way to die. “We have been overcome with an extraordinary fear about the disease,” Ali said as she worried about her six children. “And we are even avoiding shaking hands with people. Our fear is real, and we are helpless.”

Even as mask-wearing health workers entered her Sayidka camp in

the capital, Mogadishu, to demonstrate lathering up with soap and water, some authorities shuddered. Small children mimicked the virus prevention measures, happily covering their mouths with their hands.

Somalia ranked 194th of 195 coun-tries in the Johns Hopkins Global Health Security Index for 2019 and scored zero in several areas, including emergency preparedness, emergency response, infection control practices and health care access.

The country lacks essential equipment for the kind of intensive care that COVID-19 patients, some-times gasping for breath, desperately need, Health Minister Fawsia Abikar told The Associated Press. Less than 20 beds in intensive care units are available.

Somalia also has lacked the capa-bility to test for the new virus, meaning samples are sent abroad and results delayed for more than a week. Quar-antine tents have been erected around an old port in Mogadishu. As of Sunday, all international and domestic flights,

except for emergency medical and food cargo, have been suspended.

“This is a disease which has over-whelmed more sophisticated health care systems of countries than ours,” President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed warned in a public awareness campaign.

A third virus case was confirmed in recent days. The person infected is a contractor for the United Nations at the heavily fortified compound at the international airport where many dip-lomats and aid groups are based.

Somalia’s fate depends in part on another, more dangerous authority, the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab extremist group that controls or holds sway in parts of the central and southern regions.

Al Shabaab often strikes in the heart of the capital, with fighters det-onating suicide bombs at checkpoints or infiltrating offices posing as employees. Chances for infection also exist along major roads in Somalia where the group operates a system of forced taxation.

While Al Shabaab leaders recently met to discuss the coronavirus as a pre-caution, the group has been hostile to humanitarian workers during past emergencies. Few people expect any-thing different now.

“Lessons from previous epidemics, including the cholera outbreak in 2017, tell us that it’s unlikely they will allow humanitarian partners access to areas that are in need,” the Somalia director for Action Against Hunger, Ahmed Khalif, told the AP. But “they let people seek health care (elsewhere) when they were overwhelmed by the numbers, so we expect a similar reaction.”

From his office in Mogadishu where desks have been pushed apart for social distancing, Khalif worries along several lines.

Because of a lack of governance over the years, Somalis have thrived on social networks that are now threatened, he said.

The warm personal embraces must end, even though some people mis-takenly think Somalia’s hot weather will defeat the virus.

And some 6 million Somalis live in squalid conditions, many of them uprooted by past disasters. Most are acutely hungry.

Hundreds of thousands cling to existence on the fringes of Mogadishu, their homes of corrugated metal, even hanging cloth, jammed side-by-side. Access to water is severely limited.

“It’s going to be beyond anyone’s imagination,” Khalif said. “A wide-spread outbreak of the disease would be catastrophic to the people who are already vulnerable.”

The virus doesn’t discriminate among rich or poor, he said. Elsewhere in Mogadishu, better-off citizens have rushed to stock up on face masks, san-itizer and gloves.

“Demand is extremely high,” Abdulkhadir Muse, a pharmacist, said as shelves emptied. ”The problem is that some people are buying and hoarding marks to sell them at a higher price.”

Crowds of shoppers mingled in the city of 2.5 million people, some still shaking hands in greeting.

Somali military claims killing 142 militants

ANATOLIA — MOGADISHU

Somali National Army (SNA) said yesterday that it killed over 142 Somali-based Al Shabaab militant group members in the ongoing military operation in south-western province of Lower Shabelle.

The operation that started on March 18 against al-Shabaab mainly took place in the strategic agricultural-rich town of Janaale and its sur-round areas, according to the state media.

Angola reports first two coronavirus deathsAFP — LUANDA

Angola has recorded its first two deaths from coronavirus, out of the seven confirmed cases in the southwestern African country, health minister said.

“We now have seven con-firmed cases and unfortunately two people lost their lives between last night and this morning,” Health Minister Silvia Lutucuta told a news conference.

The fatalities were both Angolan citizens -- a 59-year-old, who was regularly resident in Portugal,but returned home on March 12 and a 37-year-old who had returned home from Lisbon the following day.

Netanyahu, Gantz see ‘significant progress’ towards unity govt

AFP — JERUSALEM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his erstwhile rival Benny Gantz yesterday announced “significant progress” in talks towards forming an emergency unity government amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Gantz, whose now fractured centrist Blue and White alliance had positioned itself as the alternative to Netanyahu in three incon-clusive elections over the past year, was elected parliament speaker on Thursday.

The two men held talks through Saturday night “aimed at establishing a national emergency government to deal with the corona crisis and the additional challenges facing the State of Israel”, said a joint statement from Blue and White and Netan-yahu’s Likud party. “Significant progress was made during the meeting,” it added. “During the course of the day, an additional meeting will be held in order to come to a finalised agreement.”

Both leaders have previously voiced support for a unity gov-ernment to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Gantz was tasked with forming a government following March 2 elections — a task he had already been unable to complete after two national polls last year —and there was no guarantee he would succeed this time, given rifts within the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

The former chief of Israel’s army, Gantz has subsequently tempered his long-time opposition to working with Netanyahu, due to the dangers presented by the coronavirus.

But that move has provoked an implosion of the anti-Netanyahu block Gantz had led. A parliamentary committee on Sunday afternoon formalised Blue and White’s fracture, with Gantz’s faction keeping that name. The dissidents were rebranded as Yesh Atid-Telem, incorporating the Yair Lapid and Moshe Yaalon parties.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a 21-day ‘total’ lockdown from today that will curtail movement within the country, shut most shops and banks, and suspend flights in and out of Zimbabwe.

As Anne Applebaum wrote for the Atlantic, “At times when people fear death, they go along with measures that they believe, rightly or wrongly, will save them - even if that means a loss of freedom.

08 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANSHEIKH DR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

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ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

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DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

QATAR is committed to its humanitarian principles. The nation does not deviate an inch from these prin-ciples, no matter how tempting the situation is. Qatar proved this on various occasions, including when the citizens from the siege nations had received the best treatment from the State hospitals and the numerous times Qatari aids, financial, material, voluntary and other projects, supported the needy people around the world.

By doing all these, the nation showed the world the heights of humanity and also tried to send the message that nothing is more valuable than supporting mankind.

During this COVID-19 times also Qatar has not spared any opportunity to support people, not just the residents but people all over the world. By offering to fly as many as 31 Bahraini citizens, who arrived in Doha on Qatar Airways flight from Iran, on a private charter flight to Bahrain at no expense to the government of Bahrain or the individuals, Qatar has shown its human-itarian attitude once again. Bahrain does not allow com-mercial flights from Qatar.

Due to this, Qatar enquired with officials in Bahrain as to how Qatar could assist in the travellers’ efforts to return home. Reading that ‘Bahrain is one among the four siege nations’ will definitely add greatness to the deed.

“As the health and safety of all individuals in Qatar and around the world is paramount at this time, the Ministry of Public Health has administered coronavirus tests for the 31 Bahraini citizens and provided them with accommodation in a quarantine hotel at no cost to them or the government of Bahrain,” said the statement from Government Communication Office.

Such benevolent gestures and actions of hope during such difficult situations can come out only from great minds as the great nation has never shown any kind of discrimination to any one at any point of time.

By doing all possible means to curb the spread of coronavirus and giving the best available treatment to all COVID-19 patients, Qatar has been doing excep-tionally well to fight the threat.

Recently, the Ministry of Public Health has also acti-vated a set of remote access channels to healthcare services at Primary Health Care Corporation and Hamad Medical Corporation. The new virtual healthcare services have been developed to ensure the safety of everyone. By launching a distance learning system for all students, including students with disabilities, Qatar ensured con-tinued and flawless education process during this time.

Qatar will soon win its fight against COVID-19 without much worries and its people can ever be proud of this glorious story soon.

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Quote of the day

We are fighting a battle that will take

time. The first two weeks of April will

be harder than the two we have just

lived through.

Edouard Philippe, French Prime Minister

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaking in front of stacks of medical protective supplies during a news conference at the Jacob K Javits Convention Center which will be partially converted into a temporary hospital in New York City.

“You are living a moment in history,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his Friday news conference. “This is going to be one of those moments they’re going to write and they’re going to talk about for genera-tions. This is a moment that forges character, forges people, changes people - make them stronger, make them weaker - but this is a moment that will change character.”

A pandemic disease reveals our social stratification - who can work from home and who cannot, who has financial reserves and who does not. As in any crisis, the most vulnerable will have worse outcomes because they begin with worse health and have fewer resources to keep them safe or protect them if they get hit.

But if one thinks of the coro-navirus outcome as a war that engages the entire citizenry, exacts casualties and upends daily life, then the coronavirus may act to bring us together and to serve as a great leveler. We are all cooped up, all uncertain and all dependent on a functioning health-care system and food-supply supply chain. More Amer-icans, through no fault of their own, may experience unem-ployment than at any time in our history.

As in other times of societal stress and extreme challenge (e.g., the Great Depression), this crisis may strengthen and expand the role of the federal government. It may bridge the rural/urban divide and dampen the sense in red America that what happens in blue America

does not concern them - and vice versa. The notion that one-half of the country (the so-called elites) is out to get the other might fade. A common appreciation for life-saving science may ensue.

Much depends, however, on political leadership at both the federal and state levels. Do we adopt the attitude that vul-nerable people are precious and deserving of sacrifice to keep them from infection, or do we take the Trumpian position that the “cure is worse than the disease” (i.e., profits above health)? There are three factors that are likely to determine in what way the country changes.

First, we will only halt the erosion of trust in government if the government acts competently. The public has been pummeled with the results of bad policy (e.g., financial deregulation, the “endless wars”); a brief recession and a bare minimum number of coronavirus casualties may con-vince millions of Americans that they really can rely on political leaders, and that democracy does not necessarily mean dysfunction. It is essential that Congress con-tinue to pass urgent rescue and recovery measures; that governors such as Cuomo come up with innovative ideas to save lives (e.g., convert New York’s Javits Center into a temporary hospital); and, critically, that success is lauded and incompetency punished. If we elevate success stories, the message will be that government in competent hands can serve us well.

Second, we cannot give way to the totalitarian temptation. As Anne Applebaum wrote for the Atlantic, “At times when people fear death, they go along with measures that they believe, rightly or wrongly, will save them - even if that means a loss of freedom. Such measures have been popular in the past.” Relying on unilateral executive action and not duly passed legis-lation, impinging on free and fair elections (or refusing to take

measures that protect them), seeking extraordinary police power (as the Justice Department apparently did in seeking the power to detain citizens indefi-nitely), or excessive surveillance and violations of privacy will lead us in a dangerous direction. It was reassuring to see that when Trump’s Justice Department did try to seek excessive powers, figures on the right (e.g., Texas Sen. Ted Cruz) and on the left (e.g., New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) both strongly rejected the idea.

Finally, corruption, self-dealing and favoritism will erode trust in government and intensify the social, racial and political divisions. When a senator is alleged to have engaged in insider trading, it is incumbent on his own party to take swift and definitive action. If the $500 billion fund for businesses becomes a slush fund for Trump and his cronies, the wing of the Democratic Party led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will have a field day and push for more extreme measures such as nationalization of key industries. (For this reason, the push for tough oversight by Senate Dem-ocrats was essential.) When police powers increase to, for example, enforce curfews or quarantine restrictions, it is essential that the laws are enforced equitably regardless of ZIP code.

In sum, the decency of our leaders will determine whether the pandemic is yet another blow to civil society and functional democracy. But as important as the tone of our leaders is how well they execute mitigation and recovery efforts; how strongly we push back against anti-dem-ocratic impulses; and how vigor-ously we clamp down on profit-eering and unequal justice. If done right, this moment will change us for the better.

Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for The Wash-ington Post.

JAPAN NEWS - YOMIURI The number of people newly infected with the new corona-virus has been decreasing dramatically in China. The Chinese Communist Party-controlled government shows off what it claims are the successful results of its anti-virus measures, but they should not serve as a model for other countries to follow.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told a recent video-conference of top leaders of G20 major economies: “We have made tremendous sacri-fices. Now the situation in China is moving steadily in a positive direction.” Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other Chinese officials trumpet that this demonstrates the superi-

ority of the Chinese system.The epicenter of infection

has shifted from China to Europe and the United States. China has been accelerating its medical support to Italy and other countries. Beijing likely aims for these activities to lead to expanding the sphere of its international influence.

On the domestic front, the Chinese government has decided to lift the lockdown of Wuhan, Hubei Province, where the infection first expanded, early next month and has been making prepa-rations to resume economic activities. China will reportedly ban the entry of foreigners in an attempt to prevent a backflow of coro-navirus infections.

There is no doubt that lockdowns, suspension of transport services and restriction of movements have been effective in containing infections. China was even able to keep movement records of individuals by mon-itoring their activities through leading-edge technologies and ensured restrictions were implemented thoroughly by mobilizing all military and Communist Party organiza-tions. These methods could be peculiar to China alone.

Legal procedures such as a declaration of an emergency situation are required in Europe and the United States. In contrast in China, under the dictatorial one-party political system ruled by the Com-munist Party, hard-line steps

can be taken without going through a democratic process. But it cannot be said that the Chinese formula is superior.

What should not be for-gotten is that China’s rigid bureaucratic apparatus and its tendency to cover up infor-mation caused delay in initial responses to the coronavirus outbreak, thus resulting in the expansion of virus infections globally. A doctor in Wuhan, who sounded a warning ahead of others in the initial stage of the outbreak late last December, was punished by the local government for “spreading a false rumor.”

The Xi administration admitted that the punishment was problematic and acknowledged the restoration of his honor.

How this moment could change us for the better

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China’s coronavirus response steps should not be model for other nations

Established in 1996

JENNIFER RUBIN THE WASHINGTON POST

09MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 OPINION

The US is now the world’s biggest crude producer, pumping 13 million barrels a day - more even than Saudi Arabia can supply if it opens its taps fully. And so far this year it has exported more oil than it has imported.

Politics, people and markets are similar in how they respond to crisis, from natural disaster, to financial slump, to the onset of war. The instinctive response is fear and uncertainty; followed by mitigation; followed ulti-mately by the search for renewal in the wreckage of calamity.

While countries around the world roll out emergency measures to respond to COVID-19, and with an esti-mated 50 million people in lockdown, few are actually prepared for what a post-pandemic world will look like - the demands it will make of the societies left to populate it, and the extent to which it will blunt the confidence and hyper-individualism that has characterised the 21st century thus far.

At the end of World War II, the need for a global framework based on shared values and interdependence rallied political and policy elites to the cause of a liberal international order. In the 70-odd years that followed, that framework was gradually

eroded by the combined forces of globalisation, poverty and the unrespon-siveness of mainstream political parties to local discontent.

Until a few months ago, it seemed almost certain that the resurgence of the political right from Brazil to Hungary, and India to the United States would unambiguously come to define the remainder of the 21st century. Autocracies would consolidate. Exclusion and xenophobia would dom-inate election promises; and events such as the European migrant crisis would further the logic for nativism and tougher rules on immigration and protectionism.

But will the pandemic, the deadliest since the Spanish influenza, change all that? Or will the neo-authoritarian character of the last two decades, culminating dramat-ically in Britain’s exit from the EU, be immune to the indis-criminate, deadly spread of COVID-19, and the conse-quences of its universal reach?

While even the liberal global north takes drastic steps to isolate, quarantine and restrict the movement of citizens, in the long-term, the pandemic will likely demon-strate that a world without safety nets, cooperation and deep cross-border engagement is no longer tenable. Leaders and elec-torates will have to answer

tough questions about why they were caught unprepared, and the sustainability of a planet dictated by climate deniers and political chau-vinists whose ascent to power has been enabled by a tra-dition of misrepresentation, manipulation, and misinformation.

As a result of COVID-19, governments not just in Europe, but from Latin

America to South Asia, have been forced overnight into solidarity and cooperation: coordinating international travel rules, sharing infor-mation about public health management strategies, fact-checking domestic news, and exchanging scientific expertise. Like the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Western Europe, governments will soon need to cooperate over fiscal stimulus and trade. That will be a big task for an inter-national system that, under America’s “go-it-alone” uni-polar shadow, has been largely inward-looking, driven by a lack of disruptive innovation, and eschewed any real alignment of national plans or priorities.

Already, European leaders have responded angrily to the self-regarding unilateralism of President Donald Trump’s travel ban on its European allies. Amid a scalding oil-price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, oil producers are now being forced to discuss how best to stabilise the price of the commodity against a backdrop of the pandemic.

American legislators have called on the US to revisit its “maximum pressure policy” of sanctions on Iran that have hit the country’s ability to import medical supplies. Tehran, for the first time in six decades, has approached the IMF to help it fight the coro-navirus outbreak. In the Far East, members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party have voted to donate their monthly salaries to help arch-nemesis China fight the outbreak. In response, Chinese social media quickly filled with gratitude for Jap-anese well wishes.

As the pandemic peaks, populists in power will inevi-tably face a credibility crisis. Many, such as Donald Trump in the United States and Narendra Modi in India, were sufficiently adept at dealing with emergencies geared at otherising a convenient enemy, immigrants in the case of the former, Muslims in the case of the latter. But in the pandemic, there is no visible, ethnically identifiable “other” to strong-arm. Popu-lists will face criticism for their inability to effectively respond and contain the spread of the disease. It is for this reason, perhaps, that Indian Prime Minister Modi hurriedly turned to tech-nology by holding a videocon-ference between heads of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

(SAARC) member states this week. But the fact remains that India under Modi’s authoritarian spell spent the last five years working against regional integration, instead ratcheting up neighbourhood tensions, including a lockdown and Internet shutdown for eight million people in the disputed ter-ritory of Kashmir.

Finally, in China, where the outbreak began, and where the rules against social media bloggers and activists are strict, even the Com-munist Party has been forced to realise the costs of restricting the flow of infor-mation in tackling the out-break, and the countervailing power of social media and the digital public sphere in daily governance.

Will COVID-19 trigger global political change? There are two reasons why it might. The first is that unlike “shocks” such as war, earth-quakes and famines, pan-demics do not discriminate by geography or human identity. By nature, pandemics are inclusionary, rendering borders futile, and requiring global responses that are inclusionary in turn. Secondly, unlike other security crises that preceded it - the Cold War, 9/11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria - gov-ernments will be unable to use the spread of Covid-19 to silence opponents, since it will be harder to label criticism in these cases as disloyal or unpatriotic. This will make regimes vulnerable to lead-ership change, and offer an opportunity to marginalised political parties to innovate.

For democracies and autocracies alike, COVID-19 will ultimately be a moral reckoning in the conduct of foreign and domestic policy, as nations’ ability to grapple with the challenges of ine-quality, climate change and social mobility will stand exposed for all to see. Paki-stan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has already called on the global north to write off the debt of vulnerable coun-tries. Whether or not that happens, government func-tionaries will certainly be held accountable for lack of regu-lation, commitment to social equity, and sufficiently deep cross-border engagement that preceded the disaster. And if and when the storm subsides, new norms will likely be needed to dictate how states behave with each other.

Fahd Humayun is a PhD candidate at Yale.

Preparing for a post-pandemic world

At the point we’re now at, postponing the oil-price war won’t make a lot of difference for an industry that’s already breaking down under the weight of demand destruction. It’s too late to use diplomacy and artful negotia-tions to share the burden of output cuts that are now inev-itable.

The pumping free-for-all unleashed by Saudi Arabia and Russia is important for the long-term shape of the oil industry, but, as my col-league Javier Blas pointed out here, it’s a sideshow to the havoc being wrought by the lockdowns crippling econ-omies worldwide in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Forecasts of a catastrophic drop in oil demand abound, with estimates of a whopping 20% year-on-year reduction in global consumption in April becoming more common. That’s 20 million barrels a

day, equivalent to the entire consumption of the United States.

It would be impossible for any small group of producers to mitigate that kind of impact by reducing output, unless Saudi Arabia and Russia were both to slash their production to almost zero. And that’s not going to happen.

On Wednesday, US Sec-retary of State Mike Pompeo called on Saudi Ara-bia’s Crown Prince to take the lead as his country prepared to host a meeting of the Group of 20 nations. Pompeo urged the kingdom “to rise to the occasion and reassure global energy and financial markets.”

That’s a reasonable request. Somebody has to show leadership and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be President Donald Trump.The trouble is that I suspect what Pompeo meant is for Saudi Arabia to cut its production unilaterally, rather than trying to bring together a short-term “coa-lition of the willing,” including the US, to work together to confront a global problem. After all, that’s always what’s hap-pened in the past.

Take for example the

response to the Asian financial crisis. In February 1999, then President Bill Clin-ton’s energy secretary, Bill Richardson, expressed US concerns over oil prices that had fallen below $10 a barrel. Two months later the Organi-zation of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to its third successive output cut and by the end of the year Brent crude had recovered to $25 a barrel.

It’s no surprise that Saudi Arabia was willing to take the lead back then, and to bear the bulk of the output cuts. It, too, wanted higher oil prices. Those were the days when oil was regarded as a depleting asset whose value would only rise in the future, as demand out-stripped available supply. Cutting production would leave oil in the ground that would appreciate in value. But that was a long time ago. That view no longer holds sway - battered both by the tsunami of crude extracted from shale rocks and the growing awareness of the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that has seen concerns about peak oil production replaced with worries (for producers) of peak oil demand. Oil left in

the ground now is at risk of never being produced at all.

Of course back in 1999, it would have been unrea-sonable to expect America to join in the output reduction effort. The US was pumping a little over 6 million barrels a day - less than half its current production - and the gas-guz-zling nation imported about 10 million barrels a day more crude and refined products than it exported.

But 2020 is not 1999. The US is now the world’s biggest crude producer, pumping 13 million barrels a day - more even than Saudi Arabia can supply if it opens its taps fully. And so far this year it has exported more oil than it has imported.

Yet a lack of leadership - from Riyadh and Wash-ington - means that it’s now too late to make a coordi-nated response to the collapse in demand. As it stands at the moment, OPEC is not due to meet until early June, and whether the car-tel’s external allies including Russia join them in an enlarged OPEC+ shindig remains to be seen. No matter, any action agreed then wouldn’t have an impact until July, at the earliest. Even an agreement reached

tomorrow would have little impact until May, with April crude sales now largely completed.

By then storage tanks around the globe will be close to capacity; ships full of unwanted oil will be floating in safe anchorages; and pro-ducers will be forced to shut wells because they have simply run out places to put any crude they pump out of the ground.

Without output cuts, pro-duction shut-ins are inevi-table. Consultants IHS Markit see a surplus of 1.8 billion barrels of crude building up during the first half of 2020, and yet there’s only 1.6 billion barrels of storage capacity available.

The window to distribute those cuts in an orderly manner between producers has closed. OPEC had its last chance in March and Amer-ica’s leaders subse-quently squandered their chance at leadership. As it now stands, production cuts will be distributed by the market on the basis of who has access to storage tanks and who is losing money by pumping. Welcome to the free market.

Julian Lee is an oil strat-egist for Bloomberg.

Welcome to a truly free oil market

FAHD HUMAYUN AL JAZEERA

JULIAN LEE BLOOMBERG

As a result of COVID-19, governments not just in Europe, but from Latin America to South Asia, have been forced overnight into solidarity and cooperation: coordinating international travel rules, sharing information about public health management strategies, fact-checking domestic news, and exchanging scientific expertise.

Leaders and electorates will have to answer tough questions about why they were caught unprepared, and the sustainability of a planet dictated by climate deniers and political chauvinists whose ascent to power has been enabled by a tradition of misrepresentation, manipulation, and misinformation.

A worker disinfects a bus stop against coronavirus disease in Krakow, Poland, yesterday.

10 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020ASIA

Calls grow for tightermovement curbs inIndonesia as toll risesREUTERS — JAKARTA

Doctors, politicians and human rights commissioners are calling on Indonesia’s government to enact tighter movement restric-tions as the death toll from coronavirus rose yesterday in the world’s fourth most populous country, which has resisted lockdowns.

A government minister in the country of 260 million said on Friday that a regulation was being prepared so regions can limit movement to stop the spread of the disease, which has killed 114 people in Indonesia as of yesterday, with 1,285 con-firmed cases.

But he did not say when the legislation would be ready or how far it would go.

A hashtag that translates as #LockdownOrDie was trending on social media at the weekend,

while human rights groups and medical professionals all joined calls for rapid action.

A spokesman for President Joko Widodo did not respond

immediately to a request for comment on the demands for movement restrictions.

“There are a lot of people who have called on the central government to put in place a lockdown policy, especially in epicentres,” said Halik Malik, a spokesman of the Indonesian Doctors Association.

He said the association would support whatever approach is taken by Widodo, who has encouraged social dis-tancing but questioned whether Indonesians have the culture or discipline for lockdowns.

That has marked Indonesia out from Southeast Asian coun-tries that have enacted restric-tions, such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

China, where the corona-virus originated, placed some 500 million people under restrictions at one point. India

has ordered a total lockdown of its more than 1.3 billion people.

Indonesia’s National Com-mission on Human Rights, a government body, called for a regional quarantine on areas that have been categorised as “red zones.”

The University of Indone-sia’s Faculty of Medicine called in a letter for more “local lock-downs”. Arsul Sani, vice

chairman of the upper house of parliament, said it was ready to support “regional quarantine” measures.

One major concern is whether the virus will spread during the “mudik” — when millions of Indonesians tradi-tionally leave cities for their hometowns at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in May.

The Indonesian capital

Jakarta ordered a state of emer-gency on March 20, closing schools and entertainment spots. The city of Tegal, which like Jakarta is on the densely populated island of Java, said it would impose some restrictions from today.

The eastern province of Papua closed airports, sea ports and land borders on Thursday, but was ordered to reopen them by the central government.

Medical officers prepare before administering a test for coronavirus disease to a patient at a drive-through testing site in Depok, near Jakarta, Indonesia, yesterday.

Modi seeks ‘forgiveness’ from India’s poor over lockdownREUTERS /IANS — MUMBAI

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the nation’s poor for forgiveness yesterday, as the economic and human toll from his 21-day nationwide lockdown deepens and criticism mounts about a lack of adequate planning ahead of the decision.

Modi announced a three week-lockdown on Tuesday to curb the spread of coronavirus. But the decision has stung mil-lions of India’s poor, leaving many hungry and forcing jobless migrant labourers to flee cities and walk hundreds of kilometres to their native villages.

“I would firstly like to seek forgiveness from all my coun-trymen,” Modi said in a nationwide radio address.

The poor “would definitely be thinking what kind of prime minister is this, who has put us into so much trouble,” he said, urging people to understand there was no other option.

“Steps taken so far… will give India victory over corona,” he added.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in India rose to 979 yesterday, with 25 deaths.

In an opinion piece

published yesterday, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo — two of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 — said even more aid for the poor is needed.

“Without that, the demand crisis will snowball into an eco-nomic avalanche, and people will have no choice but to defy orders,” they wrote in the Indian Express.

There still appears to be

broad support for strong measures to avoid a coronavirus catastrophe in India, a country of some 1.3 billion people where the public health system is poor.

But opposition leaders, ana-lysts and some citizens are increasingly criticising its imple-mentation. In particular, they say the government appears to have been caught off guard by the mass movement of migrants fol-lowing the announcement,

which threatens to spread the disease into the hinterlands.

“The Gov’t had no contin-gency plans in place for this exodus,” tweeted opposition politician Rahul Gandhi as images of migrant labourers walking long distances to return home dominated local media.

#ModiMadeDisaster was a top trending topic in India yes-erday on social media site Twitter.

Police said four migrants were killed on Saturday when a truck ran into them in the western state of Maharashtra. Also on Saturday, a migrant col-lapsed and died in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, according to a police official.

“We will die of walking and starving before getting killed by corona,” said migrant worker Madhav Raj, 28, as he walked by the road in Uttar Pradesh.

Yesterday, several hundred migrants in the town of Paippad, in southern Kerala state, gathered in a square demanding transport back to their hometowns.

The central government has called on states to provide marooned labourers with food a n d s h e l t e r , a n d

Modi’s supporters slammed state governments on Twitter for failing to properly implement the lockdown. In India’s cities, too, anger was rising.

“We have no food or drink. I am sat down thinking how to feed my family,” said home-maker Amirbee Shaikh Yusuf, 50, in Mumbai’s sprawling Dharavi slum.

Meanwhile, the Central gov-ernment yesterday directed the states to strictly follow the nationwide lockdown norms and stop the movement of people across the cities, advising them to arrange shelter, food and other facilities for migrant labourers at their workplace.

The direction came amid migration of labourers from cities to their villages in different states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Noting that there has been movement of migrant workers in some parts of the country, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba through video conferencing with officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs, state Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police yesterday morning decided to “seal” the district and state borders.

Migrant workers return to their homes after they failed to get the bus to their villages during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of coronavirus, in New Delhi, yesterday.

Malaysia arrests

hundreds for

violating

restrictions

REUTERS — KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysia this week arrested hundreds of people for violating restrictions aimed at stemming the spread of coro-navirus, a senior minister said yesterday, amid a spike in the number of deaths linked to the outbreak.

The death toll rose from 27 to 34 within a 24-hour period, the biggest daily rise so far, while the number of reported cases was up to 2,470, the highest in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia has closed schools and non-essential businesses and imposed restrictions on travel and movement until April 14 to try to contain the spread.

Defence minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob told reporters 649 people were detained on Saturday, while 73 people have plead guilty to offences such as gathering in groups, obstructing public officials, and breaking through police blockades.

This was in addition to 614 people arrested since the movement curbs were imposed on March 18.

“Some people gave the excuse that they were just going out to buy food,” Ismail said.

Plane catches fire at Manila airport, killing all 8 aboardAP — MANILA

A plane carrying eight people, including an American and a Canadian, burst into flames yesterday while attempting to take off from Manila’s airport on a flight bound for Japan, killing all those on board, officials said.

The plane, which was car-rying six Filipino crew members and the American and Canadian passengers, was bound for Tokyo on a medical mission when it caught fire near the end of the main runway, Manila airport general manager Ed Monreal said.

Firetrucks and rescue per-sonnel rushed and doused the aircraft with foam to try to extin-guish the flames, he said.

“Unfortunately, there were no survivors,” Monreal told a late-night news conference.

He declined to identify the

victims until their families were informed and said other details about the flight and the pas-sengers were unclear.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said the Agusta WW24 aircraft apparently encountered an unspecified “technical problem” as it rolled to take off.

Video footage shows the air-craft engulfed in bright-orange flames in the darkness as fire-fighters scramble to put out the fire by spraying chemical foam while sirens blare.

Nearly three hours after the accident, the bodies of the victims were still inside the wreckage. Airport authorities were waiting for police investi-gators to examine the crash scene before retrieving the remains, Monreal said.

The airport’s main runway was closed due to the accident.

The airport had only minimal staff due to air travel restric-tions that are part of a monthlong lockdown imposed by the government in the main northern Philippine region of Luzon, where Manila, the capital, lies, to fight the corona-

virus outbreak, officials said.A Korean Airlines flight

bound for Manila was diverted to Clark International Airport, north of Manila, due to the incident, Monreal said, adding that the main runway would be reopened as soon as the

wreckage was removed.Donaldo Mendoza, the

deputy chief of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, said the aircraft was deemed “air-worthy” based on records and its pilots were properly certified to fly.

Debris of the crashed plane are seen at Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines, yesterday.

Nepal rescues 964 tourists amid virus lockdownANATOLIA — KATHMANDU

Nepal has rescued nearly 1,000 foreign tourists stranded in remote mountain regions across the country after authorities imposed a lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus pandemic, an official said yesterday.

An estimated 10,000 tourists from Europe, Australia,

South Korea, the US, and Canada have been stuck in trekking routes and other tourist locations in the country, said Kabindra Bhatta of the Nepal Tourism Board.

He said around 600 people from European countries have been evacuated over the past three days.

Nepal last week halted all international flights and went

under lockdown to fight the pandemic.

Among the 964 rescued so far, over 200 were airlifted from Lukla, near Everest, 177 from Jomsom, near Nepal’s border with China, and 60 from the base camp of Mount Annapurna, according to the officer.

“Most of them were airlifted while dozens also travelled

overland to Kathmandu,” Bhatta said. The US, Canada and Aus-tralia were trying to negotiate chartered flights to evacuate their citizens from Nepal, he added.

Tens of thousands of for-eigners visit Nepal every spring season, which runs April through May, for trekking and mountaineering. The country’s Tourism Ministry shut the

expeditions on Everest and other Himalayan peaks over the pandemic two weeks ago.

Nepal has been under a complete lockdown for the past five days, restricting move-ments to only essential services.

The country, so far, has five confirmed cases of coronavirus. All of the five patients have reportedly contracted the virus while abroad.

Myanmar suspends

entry visas

ANATOLIA — YANGON

Myanmar will temporarily suspend entry visas beginning yesterday in efforts to prevent the spread of coronavirus pandemic.

The foreign ministry said late Saturday it will not issue the visas except to diplomats, UN officials and crews of ships and aircraft operating to and from Myanmar.

The measure will be in effect until the end of April.

The first cases of the virus known as COVID-19 were reported March 23, making Myanmar one of the last nations to declare the presence of the virus, Myanmar began banning foreign nationals entering through land border gates since the first cases were reported yesterday.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers from neigh-boring countries, however, continue to arrive.

After first appearing in Wuhan, China, in December, the virus has spread to at least 177 countries and territories, according to data compiled by US-based Johns Hopkins University.

Data shows more than 662,000 cases have been reported worldwide with the death toll above 30,600 and nearly 140,000 recoveries.

A government minister in the country of 260 million said on Friday that a regulation was being prepared so regions can limit movement to stop the spread of the disease, which has killed 114 people in Indonesia as of yesterday, with 1,285 confirmed cases.

11MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 ASIA

China guards against incoming wave of virusREUTERS — WUHAN

A growing number of imported coronavirus cases in China, where the epidemic originated in December, risked fanning a second wave of infections when domestic transmissions had “basically been stopped”, a senior health official said yesterday.

China, where the disease first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, had an accumulated total of 693 cases entering from overseas, which meant “the pos-sibility of a new round of infec-tions remains relatively big”, Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC), said.

Nearly a quarter of those came from arrivals in Beijing.

“Beijing, the capital, still bears the brunt of the risks,” said Xu Hejian, spokesman for the Beijing government, told reporters.

“There’s no reason to lay back and relax yet. It’s not a time when we can say everything is going well.” Most of those imported cases have involved Chinese returning home from abroad.

A total of 3,300 people have now died in mainland China, with a reported 81,439 infections.

China was widely accused of a delayed response when

suspected cases first emerged in December, with a young doctor reprimanded for “spreading rumours” when he tried to raise the alarm.

But the world’s most pop-ulous country has since won praise from the World Health Organisation for its efforts to lock down affected areas and isolate patients. In the last seven days, China has reported 313 imported cases of coronavirus but only six confirmed cases of domestic transmission, NHC’s data showed.

There were 45 new corona-virus cases reported in the mainland on Saturday, down from 54 on the previous day, with all but one involving travellers from overseas.

Airlines have been ordered to sharply cut international flights from yesterday. And restrictions on foreigners entering the country went into effect on Sat-urday. Five more people died on Saturday, all of them in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. It has reported only one new case in the last 10 days.

Saturday marked the fourth consecutive day that Hubei recorded no new confirmed cases. The sole case of domesti-cally transmitted coronavirus was recorded in Henan province, bordering Hubei.

With traffic restrictions in the province lifted, Wuhan is also gradually reopening borders and restarting some local transpor-tation services.

“It’s much better now,” a man, who gave his surname as Hu, told Reuters as he ventured out to buy groceries in Wuhan.

All airports in Hubei resumed some domestic flights yesterday, with the exception of Wuhan, which will open to domestic

flights on April 8. Flights from Hubei to Beijing remain sus-pended. A train arrived in Wuhan on Saturday for the first time since the city was placed in lockdown two months ago.

Restrictions have also been eased on people looking to return to the capital, although the

procedure still appears much more vigorous as it’s done on an application approval basis.

More than 7,000 have returned to Beijing from Hubei by charted trains or private cars, Mao Jun, a Beijing government official, said yesterday.

On a cold and rainy day,

Wuhan streets and metro trains were still largely empty. The Hubei government said on its official WeChat account that a number of malls in Wuhan, as well as the Chu River and Han Street shopping belt, would be allowed to resume operations today.

People wearing face masks walk, in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicentre of China’s coronavirus disease outbreak, yesterday.

Pakistan PM for global cooperation in fight against COVID-19INTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has emphasised interna-tional cooperation in the fight against COVID-19 as he wished speedy recovery to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, both of whom have contracted the novel corona-virus infection.

“I wish HRH Prince Charles

@ClarenceHouse and PM @BorisJohnson speedy recovery, good health and long life. This deadly virus #Covid-19 has hit people beyond borders.

We need an internationally coordinated response to counter it,” PM Khan tweeted w i t h t h e h a s h t a g #TogetherWeCan.

PM Johnson had tested pos-itive for COVID-19 on Friday, shortly after participating in the extraordinary G20 Summit held

through video-conferencing to discuss ways for confronting the raging pandemic. Prince Charles had on Wednesday dis-closed that he was infected with coronavirus.

Both British leaders were having mild symptoms and are currently in self-isolation. PM Johnson continues to work from home, while Prince Charles was self-isolating at a royal estate in Scotland.

Britain has been badly hit by

the surging infection. The death toll from the viral infection in the UK rose to 1,019 on Saturday, an increase of 260 over Friday marking the single day largest jump in the number of dead.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi earlier in the day spoke to British Secretary of State for Foreign and Com-monwealth Affairs Dominic Raab to discuss the global out-break of coronavirus and pros-pects of enhanced bilateral

cooperation for tackling the pandemic.

He also reiterated the need to lift sanctions against Iran, enabling it to utilise its resources to save precious human lives.

The foreign minister high-lighted that debt relief for developing countries, like Pakistan, would enable them to devote greater resources to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its economic fallout.

Virus outbreakfears spark riotin Thai prison

AFP — BANGKOK

Dozens of prisoners broke furniture and torched buildings during a riot in a Thai jail yesterday sparked by fears of a coronavirus outbreak in the facility.

During the violence some convicts escaped from the Buriram prison where more than 2,000 are held, the justice ministry said. Seven have been arrested.

Local media showed footage of black smoke billowing from the prison’s multiple blocks in the country’s northeast, and a Corrections Department official said drones were deployed to investigate what weapons the prisoners were using.

“There was a group of pris-oners trying to escape and were creating chaos... which included burning down some facilities inside,” said Narat Sawetana, director general of the Correc-tions Department.

He added later that six pris-oners had been injured in the melee by broken glass. More than 1,500 prisoners had to be evacuated before the rioting could be stopped.

Justice Minister Somsak Thepsutin confirmed that a group of inmates sentenced to life had started “agitating” other prisoners with rumours of a virus outbreak.

“The fact is that none of the prisoners in Buriram were infected — they only started this rumour to find some sup-porters,” the minister said, adding that the cafeteria and visiting areas were among the facilities torched.

Mental health workers were later deployed to assuage pris-oners “after some rumours were spread” about a COVID-19 out-break, Major General Akkaradej Pimonsri said.

Australia asks peopleto further self-isolate;virus spread slowsREUTERS/AFP — MELBOURNE Australians were asked yesterday to further isolate themselves from the public to keep the coronavirus from spreading even as authorities said the rate of daily infections has halved in recent days.

Government officials said that public gatherings must be restricted to two people and Australians should stay inside unless shopping for essentials, exercising, going to work or medical care. Those over 70 s h o u l d s e l f - i s o l a t e themselves.

“Anyone who doesn’t need to be out of their home should be in the home,” Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said. “This is radical.” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it is now up to the states and territories to determine how the two-people gathering limit will be enforced and whether breaching it would carry fines, which has been the case with previous gathering rules in most states.

There were 3,978 confirmed cases in Australia as of late

yesterday, Murphy said, slightly higher than official health min-istry data showing 3,966 cases and an increase of 331 over a 24-hour period. Sixteen deaths were attributable to the virus.

Neighbouring New Zealand saw its first death related to the coronavirus yesterday, with cases rising to 514 confirmed infections.

The daily rate of the spread of the coronavirus has halved in recent days to about 13 percent-15 percent, health offi-cials said, adding that social dis-tancing measures have helped to slow the spread.

“We feel reasonably con-fident that we are detecting a significant majority of the cases in Australia,” Murphy said.

Two-thirds of the cases have been traced to contacts with people returning from overseas, but community transmissions have been rising, especially in the most populous New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria states, where more than half of Aus-tralia’s 25.5 million people live.

“We have to stop the thing that’s worrying us most, which

is community transmission, that is transmission without known links to a known case,” Murphy said.

Public playgrounds, outside gyms and skateparks would be closed from today, and group boot camps will no longer be permitted.

Meanwhile, hundreds of cruise ship passengers were due to board flights for Germany yesterday, after spending days stranded at sea off the West Australian coast in a stand-off

with authorities.The Artania docked in the

port city of Fremantle on Friday after an earlier ban was reversed amid a spike in COVID-19 cases onboard that saw three passengers taken onshore to intensive care wards.

A spokeswoman for Ger-many’s Condor Airlines said about 800 people were to board four planes in the Western Aus-tralian capital, Perth, yesterday evening bound for Frankfurt.

“We are flying them back

home. These flights will be operated via Phuket in Thailand,” she said.

An Australian Border Force official said the passengers — mostly German citizens, but also some French and Swiss nationals — were due to dis-embark the Artania yesterday afternoon and would be trans-ported directly to the airport.

They were expected to undergo health checks before being allowed to catch the charter flights.

Passengers from the coronavirus infected cruise ship MV Artania berthed at the port of Fremantle are transferred in a bus with a police escort (right) to Perth International Airport to be transported to Germany, in Perth, Australia, yesterday.

North Korea fires two ‘ballistic missiles’ into sea: SeoulAP — SEOUL

North Korea yesterday fired two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea, South Korea and Japan said, continuing a streak of weapons launches that suggests leader Kim Jong Un is trying to strengthen domestic support amid worries about a possible coronavirus outbreak in the country.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the pro-jectiles flying from the North Korean eastern coastal city of Wonsan into the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan yesterday morning. The projectiles flew about 230km at a maximum altitude of 30km, the statement said.

The military described the launches as “very inappro-priate” at a time when the world

is battling the coronavirus out-break. It urged North Korea to stop such military action.

Japan’s Defence Ministry said that presumed ballistic missiles were believed to have splashed into the sea outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

“Recent repeated firings of ballistic missiles by North Korea is a serious problem to the entire international community including Japan,” a ministry statement said.

In recent weeks, North Korea has fired a slew of mis-siles and artillery shells into the sea in an apparent effort to upgrade its military capability amid deadlocked nuclear talks with the United States. Those weapons were all short range and capable of striking South Korea, but didn’t pose a direct

threat to the US homeland.Some experts say the latest

North Korean launches were likely designed to shore up unity and show that leader Kim Jong Un is in control in the face of US-led sanctions and the global pandemic.

Kim “wants to show he rules in a normal way amid the coro-navirus (pandemic) and his latest weapons tests were aimed at rallying unity internally, not launching a threat externally,” said Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

“North Korea doesn’t have time now to spare for staging (external threats).” North Korea has been engaged in an intense campaign to prevent the spread of the virus that has infected more than 660,000 worldwide.

It has called its campaign a

matter of “national existence” but has steadfastly denied there has been a single virus outbreak on its soil. Many foreign experts question that claim, warning an epidemic in North Korea could be dire because of its chronic lack of medical supplies and p o o r h e a l t h c a r e infrastructure.

A week ago, North Korea said President Donald Trump sent a personal letter to Kim, seeking to maintain good rela-tions and offering cooperation in fighting the outbreak. A North Korean state media dispatch didn’t say whether Trump men-tioned any of the latest weapons tests by the North.

Kim Jong Un has vowed to boost internal strength to with-stand what he calls “gangsters-like” US-led sanctions that are stifling his country’s economy.

His nuclear diplomacy with Trump faltered after the American president turned down his calls for broad

sanctions relief in exchange for a limited denuclearisation step during their second summit in Vietnam in early 2009.

A man watches a news broadcast showing file footage of a North Korean missile test, in Seoul yesterday.

China, where the disease first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, had an accumulated total of 693 cases entering from overseas, which meant ‘the possibility of a new round of infections remains relatively big', Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission, said.

12 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020EUROPE

Virus deaths fall again in Italy; lockdown extension loomsREUTERS — ROME

The number of deaths from coro-navirus in Italy fell for the second consecutive day yesterday but the country still looked almost certain to see an extension of stringent containment measures.

The Civil Protection department said 756 people had died in the last day, bringing the total to 10,779 — more than a third of all deaths from the virus worldwide.

There were 133 fewer deaths than the 889 deaths reported on Saturday, when the numbers fell from a record high of 919 on Friday.

While the total number of confirmed cases rose to 97,689 yesterday from a previous 92,472, it was the lowest daily rise in new cases since Wednesday.

But despite hopes by Italian officials that the downward trend would continue, it appeared increasingly likely that restric-tions on all but essential activities that were due to expire on Friday would be soon officially extended.

“The measures that were due

to expire on April 3 inevitably will be extended,” Regional Affairs Minister Francesco Boccia told Sky TG24 television.

He said the timing would be decided by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the gov-ernment based on data from the medical and scientific community.

“I think that it would be inap-propriate and irresponsible to talk of re-opening (schools and production sites),” Boccia said.

Italian media have reported that the extension could last for a further two weeks until about April 18.

Italy’s sports minister said yesterday he would propose banning all sports events, including soccer matches, for the

whole of April. Health Minister Roberto Speranza asked Italians not to let the guard down.

“We would erase all the efforts made so far to rein in con-tagion. The sacrifices of the last weeks are serious,” he told Cor-riere della Sera newspaper in an interview published yesterday.

The daily deaths in the northern region of Lombardy, the area that has borne the brunt of the emergency, were down sharply from Saturday’s tally.

“There isn’t an exponential rise in the data anymore, showing that what has been done is giving results,” said Danilo Cereda, an official from the Lombardy regional government.

But Giulio Gallera, the top health official in the northern

region of Lombardy, said Italians had to acknowledge that they would have to live “in a different

way in the coming months”.More than 662,700 people

have been infected by the novel

coronavirus across the world and 30,751 have died, according to a tally.

Medical personnel holding placards with the name of their homeland, in Cremona, Italy, yesterday.

Spain toughens curbs as virus toll surgesREUTERS — MADRID

Spain prepared to enter its third week under near-total lockdown yesterday, as the government approved a strengthening of measures to curb the spread of the corona-virus and the death toll rose by 838 cases overnight to 6,528.

Second only to Italy in fatal-ities, Spain also saw infections rise to 78,797 from 72,248 the day before.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in a televised address to the nation on Saturday night, announced that all non-essential workers must stay at home for two weeks, the latest government measure in the fight against coronavirus.

He said workers would receive their usual salaries but would have to make up lost hours at a later date. The measure would last from March 30 to April 9.

Yesterday, Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said the measure was “flexible” and workers would be paid but would be expected to make up their lost

days before December 31.“We need to reduce mobility

to the level of Sundays,” she said, adding that taking into account the Easter holidays, measures would cover eight working days.

She added to Prime Minister Sanchez’s calls for the EU to react, saying “we need a Europe in which workers’ rights are reinforced”.

Unions welcomed the measures and business groups CEOE and CEPYME said that while they would comply with the new rule, “it will generate an unprecedented huge impact on the Spanish economy, espe-cially in sectors such as industry”.

The slowdown “may lead to a deeper crisis in the economy that could become social”, they warned in a statement.

Yesterday, health emer-gency chief Fernando Simon repeated a warning that intensive care wards were becoming saturated, but said cases were stabilising and “the rise in new cases has been falling for a few days”.

In Madrid, birdsong drowned out traffic on deserted streets yesterday morning as police reinforced patrols, stopping buses and cars to check passengers had reason to be out of their homes.

The number of beds at a

makeshift hospital to treat coro-navirus patients in the IFEMA conference centre will soon reach 1,400, Madrid’s regional government said.

It also announced an official period of mourning for those who have died. Flags will fly at

half-mast and a daily minute’s silence will be held.

Schools, restaurants and shops selling non-essential items have been shut since March 14 and most of the pop-ulation is house-bound as Spain tries to curb the virus.

Members of the Spanish Military Emergencies Unit wearing protective suits stand outside a bus used to transport coronavirus patients, in Madrid, yesterday.

Northern Ireland

brings in tough

measures to fight

coronavirus

REUTERS — BELFAST

Northern Ireland will introduce “sweeping new powers” to combat the spread of coronavirus from 2300 GMT on Saturday, with many restrictions on businesses tougher than the rest of the United Kingdom.

The British region will pro-hibit anyone from leaving home without reasonable excuse, compel certain premises to shut and use its power of direction to close or restrict businesses that do not ensure employees’ safety, its devolved government said.

The number of corona-virus deaths in Northern Ireland rose by two to a total of 15 on Saturday, while 324 people had tested positive, the Public Health Agency said.

Ireland, which shares an open border with Northern Ireland, has so far reported 2,415 cases and 34 deaths. It ordered citizens on Friday to stay home until April 12, with most only able to leave to shop for groceries and for brief exercise.

The measures in Northern Ireland are tougher on employers, with the instruction that anyone who can work from home must work from home, and com-panies cannot compel an employee to come to work if it is feasible to work from home.

First Minister Arlene Foster said the devolved government was asking the people of Northern Ireland to make fun-damental changes to how they lived their lives.

“These are extraordinary powers for any Government to have to introduce, but we are living in extraordinary times,” she said.

“We know the enormity of what we are asking of the public, but it is proportionate to the threat we all face from this deadly virus. No-one is immune.”

The Belfast executive said it would introduce penalties ranging from a fixed penalty notice to fines of up to 5,000 pounds to enforce the new powers.

UK lockdown could last six months: OfficialAFP — LONDON

Life in locked-down Britain may not return to normal for six months or longer as it battles the coronavirus outbreak, a top health official warned yesterday, as the death toll reached more than 1,200.

Deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries said it would take two or three weeks to assess the impact of the current rules for people to stay at home wherever possible to limit the spread of COVID-19.

“If we are successful, we will have squashed the top of that (infection) curve, which is bril-liant,” she told the government’s daily news conference.

“But we must not then sud-denly revert to our normal way of living — that would be quite dangerous. If we stop then, all of our efforts would be wasted and we could potentially see a second peak.”

She said measures to contain the virus would be reviewed

every three weeks, “probably over the next six months” or even longer — but stressed that did not necessarily mean a full lockdown for that long.

“Gradually we will be able to hopefully adjust some of the social distancing measures and gradually get us all back to normal,” Harries said.

Britain has been on lockdown

for a week, with non-essential shops and services closed and people told to stay at home except for daily exercise, to get groceries or help vulnerable people. The measure was intro-duced amid fears the virus was spreading more rapidly than expected.

New figures yesterday revealed that 1,228 people with

coronavirus have now died in Britain — an increase of 209 on the previous 24 hours.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is among more than 19,500 people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

He is currently holed up in his flat above his Downing Street office, but officials say he has mild symptoms and remains “fully in charge”.

Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, one of the epidemiologists advising the government, told the Sunday Times he believed the lockdown could last until “the end of May, maybe even early June”.

In a leaflet being sent to more than 30 million British house-holds in the coming days, Johnson warned that “things will get worse before they get better”.

“The more we all follow the rules, the fewer lives will be lost and the sooner life can return to normal,” the prime minister wrote. But he added: “We will not hesitate to go further if that is

what the scientific and medical advice tells us we must do.” Harries also warned that the death toll would continue to rise until the lockdown started to have an effect.

“We actually anticipate that our numbers will get worse over the next week, possibly two,” she said, but should then fall.

A top ear, nose and throat surgeon was yesterday named as one of the victims of coronavirus.

Amged El-Hawrani, 55, died in hospital in Leicester in central England. His family said he was a “loving and much-loved husband, son, father, brother and friend”.

Separately, senior gov-ernment minister Michael Gove accused China, where corona-virus first emerged, of failing to alert the world as to its severity.

“Some of the (early) reporting from China was not clear about the scale, the nature, the infec-tiousness of this,” he told BBC television.

A man wearing a protective face mask outside a Waitrose supermarket in Frimley, south west of London, yesterday.

German minister commits suicide after ‘virus crisis worries’AFP — FRANKFURT AM MAIN

Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany’s Hesse state, has committed suicide apparently after becoming “deeply worried” over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier said yesteday.

Schaefer, 54, was found dead near a railway track on Saturday.

The Wiesbaden prosecu-tion’s office said they believe he died by suicide.

“We are in shock, we are in disbelief and above all we are immensely sad,” Bouffier said in a recorded statement.

A visibly shaken Bouffier recalled that Schaefer, who was Hesse’s finance chief for 10 years, had been working “day and night” to help companies and workers deal with the economic impact of the pandemic.

France steps up evacuations from packed hospitalsAFP — NANCY

France evacuated 36 more coro-navirus patients from the hard-hit east to western areas yesterday, hoping to free up intensive care units as hospitals brace for even more serious cases in the coming days.

Two high-speed trains carried patients from Mulhouse and Nancy toward hospitals along France’s western coast, where the outbreak has been limited so far.

Dozens of hospital workers, flanked by police and soldiers standing guard, spent hours installing four patients in each wagon in an operation that began before dawn.

“We have to free up beds, it’s absolutely crucial that we air out these intensive care units. We’re still seeing an increase in patient numbers,” said Francois Brun, head of emergency services at the regional hospital in nearby Metz.

The evacuations came as

France announced that the German government would send a military plane to bring patients from Alsace to hospitals in Stuttgart and Ulm.

France has already evac-uated dozens over the past week from the east, hoping to stay ahead of a crisis that Prime Min-ister Edouard Philippe warned would only worsen over the next two weeks.

Overall nearly 4,300 coro-navirus patients are in intensive care, many with severe

respiratory problems requiring ventilators that officials worry could soon be in short supply.

Philippe said the gov-ernment was racing to have 14,000 intensive care beds available soon, compared with around 5,000 before the out-break began in January.

France has mobilised its mil-itary to help hospitals, with the army using a helicopter to transport two patients to Metz and Essen in western Germany on Saturday.

The Civil Protection department said 756 people had died in the last day, bringing the total to 10,779 — more than a third of all deaths from the virus worldwide.There were 133 fewer deaths than the 889 deaths reported on Saturday, when the numbers fell from a record high of 919 on Friday.

13MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 EUROPE

COVID-19 cases surpass10,000 in the Netherlands AGENCIES — AMSTERDAM/THE HAGUE

The number of confirmed coro-navirus cases in the Nether-lands passed 10,000 yesterday, health authorities said, adding that the rise in deaths and hospitalisations continued to show signs of slowing.

In its daily update, the Netherlands’ National Institute for Health (RIVM) said con-firmed cases rose by 1,104 to 10,866, an 11% increase.

There were 132 new deaths, bringing the number of fatal-ities to 771.

“Just as in the preceding days, the number of hospi-talised patients and the number of deaths are increasing less quickly than would have been expected without measures,” the RIVM said.

But because health author-ities are testing mostly only the very sick and healthcare workers for the virus, the real number of infections is likely to be far higher, the RIVM said.

The Dutch government

ordered social distancing measures, closed schools and most businesses and banned public gatherings in mid-March.

Meanwhile, Dutch officials have recalled tens of thousands of masks imported from China and distributed to hospitals bat-tling the coronavirus outbreak because they do not meet quality standards, the health ministry said on Saturday.

They received a delivery of masks from a Chinese manu-facturer on March 21, the min-istry said in a statement.

They received a first indi-cation they did not meet their standards when they were inspected.

Part of the shipment had already been distributed to health professionals, the

statement said. “The rest of the shipment was immediately put on hold and has not been distributed.

“A second test also revealed that the masks did not meet the quality norms. Now it has been decided not to use any of this shipment,” said the statement.

Future shipments would undergo extra testing, the statement added.

The recall concerned nearly half of the shipment of 1.3 million masks, known as FFP2 — 600,000 had already been sent to hospitals, the public television channel NOS reported.

The problem with the masks was that they did not close over the face properly, or had defective filters, the station added.

Dutch officials have recalled tens of thousands of masks imported from China and distributed to hospitals because they do not meet quality standards, the health ministry said.

Norway to perform random coronavirus testsAP — OSLO, NORWAY

Norwegian health authorities said they are set to start performing random corona-virus tests, following the exper-iment Iceland has done.

Citing officials at the Nor-wegian Institute of Public

Health, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK said yesterday such random testing among all citizens will provide answers to two key questions: how many of those who appear to be infected actually have the coronavirus and how wide the spread of the virus is.

NRK said Iceland, with its 12,000 random tests among its population of 340,000, has the largest number of tests per capita in the world.

Norway, a nation of 5.4 million, has so far reported 4,054 coronavirus cases with 25 deaths.

Aircraft carrier not docking due to pandemic French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle cruises at the coast of Frederikshavn in Denmark, yesterday. The carrier was supposed to have visited Aarhus harbour but is not docking due to the coronavirus.

Czech PM to Trump: Use masks to stem virus spreadAFP — PRAGUE

Billionaire Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis yesterday told US President Donald Trump to make wearing face masks in public mandatory to try to stem spiralling coronavirus infec-tions.

“Mr. President @realDon-aldTrump, try tackling virus the Czech way,” tweeted Babis, who like Trump is a mogul busi-nessman turned populist politician.

“Wearing a simple cloth mask decreases the spread of the virus by 80%! Czech Republic has made it

OBLIGATORY for its citizens to wear a mask in the public,” he said, adding “Pls retweet. God bless America!”

Babis failed to quote a sci-entific source backing the claim that masks cut the rate of COVID-19 infection by 80 percent.

There is little agreement in scientific circles as to whether healthy people wearing masks is effective protection against the novel coronavirus and dif-ferent countries have varying levels of advice on the subject.

Numerous health institu-tions have urged the public not to buy masks due to mass

shortages. The World Health Organization recommends that healthy people only need to wear a mask if they are taking care of someone suspected of being infected.

In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has similar advice, saying you should only wear a mask if you are sick or caring for someone who is.

But an unrelated 2009 CDC study said that masks “could be considered under certain cir-cumstances” in communities where the H1N1-type Influenza A virus, more commonly known as “swine flu”, is present.

Earlier this month, Babis’s government came under fire over a dire shortage of face masks, which prompted tens of thousands of Czech women to switch on their sewing machines and make their own protective gear. Prague has since also begun to import medical supplies from China.Prague has also closed borders, schools, most shops and all pubs to stem infections.

An EU country of 10.7 million, the Czech Republic has confirmed 2,663 cases of COVID-19, including 11 recovered patients and 13 deaths as of yesterday.

Members of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service are seen near the train carrying Ukrainian citizens evacuated from Russia, at the central railway station in Kiev, yesterday.

Russia virus cases exceed 1,500 with 9 deaths REUTERS — MOSCOW

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said yesterday that the corona-virus outbreak had entered a new phase as the total number of cases in the Russian capital exceeded 1,000 with many Muscovites going out despite a plea to stay home.

Authorities in Moscow, Rus-sia’s worst-affected area, shut shops and entertainment venues from Saturday and

urged Muscovites to stay at home during the non-working week announced by President Vladimir Putin.

But at least 52,000 people took walks in the city parks on Saturday, and many elderly people made long trips on the city’s vast public transportation network, Sobyanin said on his website.

“The situation with the spread of coronavirus has entered a new phase. More than

1,000 cases of the disease have already been recorded in Moscow. Nobody is insured."

“An example of miserable Italian and Spanish cities, even New York, where tens and hun-dreds of people die every day, is in front of everyone’s eyes.” The official tally of confirmed cases in Russia rose by 270 in 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,534. Nine people have died of the coronavirus, seven of which in Moscow.

Sweden keeps restaurants open; allows gathering of up to 50 peopleAP — STOCKHOLM

The streets of Stockholm are quiet but not deserted. People still sit at outdoor cafes in the centre of Sweden’s capital. Vendors still sell flowers. Some still greet each other with hugs and handshakes.

After a long, dark Scandi-navian winter, the coronavirus pandemic is not keeping Swedes at home even while cit-izens in many parts of the world are sheltering in place and won’t find shops or restaurants open on the few occasions they are permitted to venture out.

Swedish authorities have advised the public to practice social distancing and to work

from home, if possible, and urged those over age 70 to self-isolate as a precaution. Yet compared to the lockdowns imposed elsewhere in the world, the government’s response to the virus allows a liberal amount of personal freedom.

Restaurant customers can still be served at tables instead of having to take food to go. High schools and universities are closed, but preschools and primary schools are still running classes in person.

“Sweden is an outlier on the European scene, at least,” said Johan Giesecke, the country’s former chief epidemiologist and now adviser to the Swedish

Health Agency, a government body. “And I think that’s good.”

Other European nations “have taken political,

unconsidered actions” instead of ones dictated by science, Giesecke asserted.

It remains unclear how long Sweden’s exceptional state will last.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, warning of “many tough weeks and months ahead,” announced that gatherings would be limited to 50 people instead of 500. The government noted that weddings, funerals and Easter celebrations would be affected. Still, to reduce the spread of the virus in Germany and the UK, groups larger than two are currently prohibited unless they are composed of people who already live together. Officials in Italy and

France introduced increasingly restrictive limits on public activ-ities and eventually authorised fines because they said too many people ignored social dis-tancing recommendations.

For now, the Swedish gov-ernment maintains that citizens can be trusted to exercise responsibility for the greater good and will stay home if they experience any COVID-19 symptoms. Many Swedes are indeed keeping the recom-mended distance from others.

But some scientists have crit-icized the Swedish Public Health Agency’s approach as irrespon-sible during a worldwide pan-demic that has already killed over 21,000 people in Europe.

Ukraine leader’s party faces crunch vote for IMF loansREUTERS — KIEV

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is the first Ukrainian leader in history to command a single party majority in parliament but its strength will be tested next week as he urges lawmakers to pass reform bills needed to unlock a $8bn aid package.

Ukraine faces a sharp eco-nomic hit from the coronavirus epidemic and parliament must pass banking legislation and lift a ban on the sale of farmland to qualify for a new loan deal from the International Mon-etary Fund.

A lawmaker in Zelenskiy’s party, Nikita Poturaev, said he expected a “serious fight ahead” to pass the measures.

The banking law, which would prevent former owners of banks declared insolvent from regaining their assets, is seen as against the interests of Ihor Kolomoisky, a wealthy tycoon and an early backer of Zelenskiy’s 2019 presidential campaign.

Kolomoisky used to co-own the country’s largest lender, PrivatBank, until it was nation-alised in 2016. He has fought a long legal battle against the government to win it back or

receive compensation.Zelenskiy said passing the

bills was necessary to stave off default but the upcoming vote has spotlighted divisions in his Servant of the People party, which the former actor launched from scratch last year.

On the one hand, there is an informal grouping which champions the IMF deal and last week drove a social media campaign with the hashtag #NoDefault.

The grouping aims to rid Ukraine “of corruption and oli-garchic influence”, according to a document drafted by Poturaev, one of its members. It has also pressured Zelenskiy not to hold direct talks with Russian-backed separatists.

On the other hand, there are lawmakers associated with Kolomoisky, who has previ-ously suggested the country default on its debts.

The new “IMF loan will be stolen, like all the previous ones”, said Alexander Dubinsky, a lawmaker and journalist. “As far as I under-stand, most deputies of “Servant of the People” are ready to support the ‘anti-Kolo-moisky’ bill,” said political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko.

Swiss govt says

257 dead from

pandemicREUTERS — VIENNA

The Swiss death toll from coronavirus has reached 257, the country’s public health agency said yesterday, up from 235 people the previous day.

The number of confirmed cases also increased to 14,336 from 13,213 on Saturday, it said.

The Alpine country of 8.6 million people is deploying army medical units at hospitals to help in regions like Ticino, which borders hard-hit Italy.

Serbia’s elderly venture out for dawn food runREUTERS/AFP — BELGRADE

Octogenarian Ceda Filipovic awoke at 5am (0300 GMT), donned his mask and set of for one of the Belgrade super-markets opening at dawn for the city’s elderly.

When Serbia introduced a state of emergency two weeks ago in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus out-break, the authorities banned all those over 65 years from venturing outdoors but said some supermarkets will be opened every Sunday at 4am for the elderly only to allow them to buy staple produce.

The government has intro-duced a general curfew from 5pm until 5am to reduce contact between people.

Filipovic said he has come to terms with the isolation.

For him and his 79-year-old wife, who live on the first floor of an apartment building in the centre of the city, the highlight of their day is when their seven-year-old grand-daughter, Sofia, comes by their window with her mother or father to chat with them.

“We’re waiting for better times and are hoping this will end,” said Filipovic.

“We’ll have to be patient, to wait and see and survive.” In the nearby supermarket, Filipovic bought flour and cooking oil.

Serbia, a country of 7 million people, has so far reported 659 coronavirus cases and 11 deaths.

On Friday local media reported that three people had been given hefty prison sen-tences of up to three years for breaking self-isolation rules.

A 38-year-old man was jailed for a maximum of three years in the southeastern town of Dimitrovgrad, while two other people were sentenced to two and two and a half years respectively in the eastern town of Pozarevac for breaking the virus restrictions, local media said.

People walk at Strandvagen in Stockholm on Saturday.

14 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020AMERICAS

Virus: Cruise shipoff Panama coasttransfers passengersAFP — PANAMA CITY

Passengers on a virus-stricken cruise liner stranded off Central America were transferred to another ship on Saturday, after the US-bound vessel was given permission to pass through the Panama Canal.

The Zaandam had been stuck in the Pacific Ocean since March 14 after dozens of the 1,800 people on board reported flu-like symptoms and several South American ports refused to let it dock.

The ship’s Dutch owner Holland America said on Friday four passengers had died and two more had tested positive for COVID-19.

Panama on Saturday reversed its decision to block the Zaandam from its canal, and said it would be allowed to pass “to provide humanitarian help.”

Another ship, the Rot-terdam, has since arrived off the coast of Panama from San Diego carrying food, medical staff, testing kits, and medicine

for the beleaguered vessel.Passengers showing no

signs of the virus were ferried from the Zaandam to the Rot-terdam on Saturday, a French tourist told AFP by telephone.

“It’s like emptying a bathtub with a teaspoon,” she said.

“The boats can hold about 100 people, and they are putting about half in at a time. That’s why it’s going slowly.”

The Zaandam cruise liner left Buenos Aires on March 7 and was supposed to arrive two

weeks later at San Antonio, near Santiago in Chile.

Since a brief stop in Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia on March 14, it has been turned away from several ports after reporting that 42 people aboard were suffering from flu-like symptoms.

Then on Friday, Panama’s government blocked the vessel from its waterway, cutting off its route to Florida.

“It is very difficult to maintain mental health” aboard

the vessel, passenger Dante Leguizamon, from Argentina, said on Saturday in a video recorded in the small cabin he has been confined to for six days. “I am... on a boat that I cannot get off, with coronavirus patients, with four dead, going to Miami, full of uncertainty, without money... and without knowing if there is a plane back to my homeland.”

Panama’s Maritime Affairs Minister Noriel Arauz said that 401 passengers who had tested

negative for COVID-19 would be allowed to leave the Zaandam.

People who were ill and those who had been in contact with them will not be trans-ferred. The Zaandam will now head to Fort Lauderdale in Florida, where the remaining passengers will be able to dis-embark, according to Holland America and Panamanian offi-cials. The Rotterdam is expected to return to San Diego, Arauz said.

Passengers board a lifeboat from Holland America Line cruise ship MS Zaandam to be transported to her sister ship Rotterdam on Panama Bay, Panama, on Saturday.

Bolivia, Uruguay confirm first coronavirus deathsREUTERS — MONTEVIDEO/LA PAZ

Uruguay and Bolivia have confirmed their first deaths related to coronavirus, as many Latin America countries go into lockdown in a bid to mitigate the impact of the global pandemic that has infected nearly 700,000 people worldwide and killed over 30,000.

Bolivia’s health minister Aníbal Cruz said yesterday that a 78-year-old woman in the lowland city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the region most affected, had died of severe respiratory distress after contracting the virus from a family member.

“We recommend that the population take care of our older adults who are the most vulnerable and sensitive to this disease,” Cruz told reporters.

Bolivia, which has 81 con-firmed cases, has taken aggressive measures to slow the spread of the disease including a nationwide quarantine and closing the country’s borders.

Nearby Uruguay also reported its first coronavirus

death, while total cases climbed above 300 in the grains and

cattle producer, which has a population of around 3.5 million people.

The country’s health min-istry said in a report that a 71-year-old former electoral court minister, Rodolfo González Rissotto, had died after contracting the virus.

An 82-year-old Uruguayan woman who died earlier in March was found to have had the virus, but her death was attributed to the terminal cancer she was suffering.

Chilean authorities reported a total of 2,139 confirmed cases yesterday after the number had passed one thousand on Wednesday. The copper-rich country has recorded seven deaths.

Neighbouring Argentina, which has imposed a nationwide quarantine, has 745 confirmed cases with 19 deaths, though the number of cases rose by the smallest margin in five days on Saturday, data from the health ministry showed.

A worker disinfects a public bus stop as a preventive measure against the spread of the coronavirus in Bogota, on Saturday. Coronavirus cases in Latin America surpassed 10,000 on Friday, according to an AFP count based on official government and World Health Organization figures.

Bolsonaro visits market to press need to keep Brazil going during pandemicREUTERS — BRASILIA

President Jair Bolsonaro visited a market area just outside the Brazilian capital yesterday to press home his case for keeping Latin America’s largest economy ticking instead of locking down activities to combat the spread of the coro-navirus.

But Bolsonaro office’s social media campaign “Brazil can’t stop” was banned on Saturday by a federal judge and ran into a barrage of criticism from state governors, politicians, public health experts and even his own health minister.

In Taguat inga , a

low-income suburb of Brasilia, Bolsonaro stopped in a nor-mally bustling market square to speak to a man selling bar-becued meat on skewers.

“We have to work. There are deaths, but that is up to God, we cannot stop,” the man said, according to a video posted on the President’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“If we do not die of the illness, we will die of hunger.”

Bolsonaro said he has main-tained that Brazilians need to continue working to earn their incomes while taking precau-tions not to become infected with the coronavirus.

He also has lashed out at

state and municipal officials who in steps aimed at saving lives implemented tough lock-downs, closed non-essential businesses and banned public meetings.

Despite confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, tri-pling in seven days to 3,904 by Saturday, with 114 deaths so far, Bolsonaro has continued to deny the gravity of the disease, calling it “a small cold” that would kill only old people.

On Friday he cast doubt on the state of Sao Paulo’s official death toll from the outbreak, the highest in the country, accusing the governor of

manipulating the numbers for political ends.

“I’m sorry, some people will die, they will die, that’s life,” Bolsonaro said in a television interview.

The “Brazil can’t stop” social media campaign, suggesting to most Brazilians that there was no need for isolating themselves at home, was banned by Judge Laura Bastos in Rio de Janeiro at the request of federal prosecutors.

The judge ruled that Bra-zilians could not be encouraged to leave the isolation of their homes and return to the streets without there being a national plan to fight the pandemic.

Health Minister Luiz Hen-rique Mandetta, often at odds with Bolsonaro since the Pres-ident greeted supporters ral-lying outside his office on March 15, reinforced his opposition to all public gatherings on Saturday.

Mandetta asked the Pres-ident during a cabinet meeting to stop minimising the gravity of the epidemic, two gov-ernment officials with knowledge of the meeting attended by other ministers told Reuters.

They called the meeting tense.

Mandetta also told Bol-sonaro that he could not defend

the President’s proposal to isolate only the old and the ill as a way of reducing the eco-nomic impact of the pandemic, the sources said.

At a news conference fol-lowing the meeting, Mandetta said his measures will be guided by scientific experts and he called on people to stay at home because the health services cannot cope with a surge in cases of infected people.

He also said chloroquine, which is used to treat malaria and defended by Bolsonaro as a possible solution to the health crisis, is not a cure for the disease and can be toxic if used without medical advice.

Police play anthem during partial curfew Members of the National Civil Police band play the national anthem from a truck during a partial curfew ordered by the government in Guatemala City, on Friday.

Guaido urges

unity government

backed by loans

to fight pandemic

AP — MIAMI

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó called on Saturday night for the creation of a “national emergency government” of diverse political leanings to fight the spread of the coronavirus with the assistance of $1.2bn in international loans.

Speaking in a video released on Twitter, Guaidó said the unity government would not be headed by Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist leader who was indicted this week in the US on narcoterrorism charges.

“Those who surround Maduro need to understand the gravity of the accusations,” Guaidó said. “It’s absolutely impossible under his usur-pation to have any type of solution for the country or our families.”

But in a show of reconcil-iation, Guaidó, who is recog-nised as Venezuela’s lawful leader by the US and almost other 60 countries, said oppo-nents of Maduro need to be “realistic” and be prepared to share power.

As an incentive to members of the military and Venezuelans who still support Maduro, he said international financial institutions are pre-pared to support such a power-sharing arrangement with $1.2bn in loans so Vene-zuela can fight the pandemic.

He said the loans would be used to directly assist Vene-zuelan families who are expected to be harmed not only by the spread of the disease but also the economic shock from a collapse in oil prices, virtually the country’s only source of hard currency.

“The consultations we’ve already made allow us to affirm that this is absolutely possible if we form an emer-gency government,” Guaidó said.

The International Mon-etary Fund recently rejected a similar $5bn request from Maduro, saying there was a lack of clarity among its 189 members on whether Maduro or Guaidó is the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

Central American

migrants in limbo

as relocation

plans falter

REUTERS — SAN JOSE

Thousands of African, Haitian and Asian migrants bound for the United States have amassed in immigration shelters in Panama and Costa Rica as plans to relocate them to less crowded areas to lower the risk of spreading the coro-navirus have faltered.

Earlier this week, Costa Rica’s government said it had begun transferring about 2,600 migrants headed for the United States from its southern border with Panama to its frontier with Nicaragua, citing concerns that large crowds could further spread the virus.

However, the head of Costa Rica’s immigration office, Raquel Vargas, said on Saturday that the transfer was suspended until further notice.

“We must find a solution,” Vargas said after Nicaragua decided to send its military to its southern border.

Vargas said the transfer of the first group of migrants in coordination with Panama was “very successful,” but that under the current circum-stances more people could not be moved.

Costa Rica has reported 295 confirmed coronavirus cases and two deaths so far, and has taken stringent measures to curb the spread of the virus. Panama is the Central American nation with the most cases, with 901 con-firmed infections and 17 deaths. By Saturday, most of the migrants were in the Pan-amanian provinces of Darien and Chiriqui, Vargas said. Another 377 remained on Costa Rican soil, mostly in the southern city of Golfito and some in a government shelter in La Cruz.

Most Central American nations have closed their borders to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Since a brief stop in Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia on March 14, the ship has been turned away from several ports after reporting that 42 people aboard were suffering from flu-like symptoms.

Guatemala, Honduras extend curfew to avoid virus spreadREUTERS — GUATEMALA CITY/ TEGUCIGALPA/ MEXICO CITY

Guatemala extended a curfew originally meant to expire yesterday until April 12 to combat the spread of the coro-navirus, the government announced.

Guatemala has so far reg-istered 34 confirmed cases of the virus and one death.

The government of Hon-duras also said yesterday that it was extending a curfew through April 12 as the fast-spreading disease has killed three in the Central American nation, where there are 110 confirmed cases.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell called on Sat-urday on all residents in Mexico to stay at home for a month,

saying it was the only way to reduce the transmission rate of the coronavirus.

Mexican health authorities said there was a total of 848 confirmed cases in Mexico as of Saturday, 131 more than the previous day, and 16 deaths.

Mexico's President on Friday urged people to stay indoors to prevent an "over-whelming" spread of corona-virus, taking his strongest stance yet against the pandemic.

"We have to stay in our homes, we have to keep a healthy distance," Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a video. "If we don't stay inside our homes the number of infection cases could shoot up, and it would saturate our hos-pitals," he said. "It would be overwhelming."

Celebration in quarantine

15MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020 AMERICAS

US could see millions of coronaviruscases and up to 200,000 deaths: Expert

REUTERS — WASHINGTON

US deaths from coronavirus could reach 200,000 with millions of cases, the govern-ment’s top infectious diseases expert warned yesterday as New York, New Orleans and other major cities pleaded for more medical supplies.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimated in an interview with CNN that the pandemic could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the United States.

Since 2010, the flu has killed between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans a year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1918-19 flu pandemic killed 675,000 in the United States, according to the CDC.

The US coronavirus death toll topped 2,300 yesterday, after deaths on Saturday more than doubled from the level two days prior. The United States has now recorded more than 130,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, the most of any country in the world.

Jason Brown, who was laid off from his job in digital media

due to the pandemic, said Fauci’s estimate was scary.

“I feel like it’s just growing, growing, growing,” said Brown, who is 27 and lives in Los Angeles, one of the epicenters of the outbreak. “There’s no vaccine. It seems like a lot of people don’t take it seriously in the US so it makes me believe that this would become more drastic and drastic.”

Erika Andrade, a teacher who lives in Trumbull, Con-necticut, said she was already expecting widespread deaths from the virus before Fauci’s estimate on Sunday.

“I wasn’t surprised that he said the numbers were coming. They were lower than what I actually expected,” said Andrade, 49. “I’m worried for my mother. I’m worried for the people I love.”

New York state reported nearly 60,000 cases and a total of 965 deaths yesterday, up 237 in the past 24 hours with one person dying in the state every six minutes. The number of patients hospitalized is slowing, doubling every six days instead of every four, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

One bright spot yesterday was Florida reporting about 200 more cases but no new

deaths, with its toll staying at 56. President Donald Trump has talked about reopening the country by Easter Sunday, April 12, despite many states such as New York ordering residents to stay home past that date. On Saturday, he seemed to play down those expectations, saying only “We’ll see what happens.”

Tests to track the disease’s progress also remain in short supply, despite repeated White House promises that they would be widely available.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose state has become one the fastest growing areas for the virus,

especially in the county that includes Detroit, called the r a p i d s p r e a d “gut-wrenching.”

“We have nurses wearing the same mask from the beginning of their shift until the end, masks that are supposed to for one patient at one point in your shift. We need some assistance and we’re going to need thousands of ventilators,” Whitmer told CNN.

New York City will need hundreds more ventilators in a few days and more masks, gowns and other supplies by April 5, Mayor Bill de Blasio told CNN. New Orleans will run out

of ventilators around April 4 and officials in Louisiana still do not know whether they will receive any ventilators from the national stockpile, the governor said. Louisiana has tried to order 12,000 ventilators from commercial vendors and has received 192, Governor John Bel Edwards said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“We haven’t yet been approved for ventilators out of the national stockpile. I con-tinue to press that case and I hope we will be cut in for a slice of what they have left,” Edwards said. “It is the one thing that really keeps me up at night.”

An empty view of the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday, as US President Donald Trump pulled back on putting the hard-hit New York region under quarantine.

New York residents urged to avoid travelAP — NEW YORK

Health authorities urged millions of residents of the New York City region to avoid non-essential travel due to surging coronavirus infections there as deaths in the United States and Europe rose and countries including Russia and Vietnam tightened travel and business restrictions.

The travel advisory came after the number of confirmed American deaths passed 2,000, more than double the level two days earlier. It applies to the 8.6 million people of New York City, the hardest-hit US. municipality, and others in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The advisory cited “extensive community transmission” in the area and

urged residents to avoid travel for 14 days.Worldwide infections surpassed

660,000 mark, with more than 30,000 deaths as new cases, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The United States leads the world with more than 120,000 reported cases. Five other countries have higher death tolls: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France. Italy has more than 10,000 deaths, the most of any country.

The disease has spread to major US cities including Detroit, New Orleans and Chicago and into rural America, where hotspots erupted in Midwestern towns and Rocky Mountain ski havens.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said defeating the virus will take “weeks and weeks and weeks.”

The United Nations, which has its headquarters in New York City, donated 250,000 face masks to the city. Cuomo postponed the state’s presidential primary from April 28 to June 23. The travel advisory by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said employees of trucking, food supply, financial services and some other industries were exempt. It said governors of the three states had “full discretion” over how to carry out the advisory.

Earlier, Cuomo and governors of the other states rejected a suggestion by Pres-ident Donald Trump that he might impose a quarantine on the region. Cuomo said that would be illegal, economically cat-astrophic and unproductive since other areas are already seeing a surge.

The COVID-19 death toll in the US topped 2,300 yesterday, after deaths on Saturday more than doubled from the level two days prior. The United States has now recorded more than 130,000 cases of the virus, the most of any country in the world.

REUTERS — WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump yesterday bragged about the millions of people tuning in to view his daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, saying on Twitter that his average ratings matched a season finale of “The Bachelor.”

“Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY,” Trump tweeted. “’Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.’ said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!”

Trump’s daily coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, the New York Times reported on March 25, citing data from Nielsen Holdings Plc.

Trump had abandoned the custom of having regular press briefings at the White House, but brought them back this month to update the public on his coro-navirus task force.

The New York Times said viewership of the briefings had risen because people were con-cerned about the virus and stuck at home. Trump’s briefing on March 23 drew nearly 12.2 million viewers on the major cable news channels, the news-paper said.

Millions more than usual are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, it said, but reliable numbers are available only for cable news.

MSNBC cut away from the March 23 briefing after about an hour, later saying in a statement that “the information no longer appeared to be valuable to the important ongoing discussion around public health.”

During the briefings Trump hade made inaccurate claims about his administration’s response to the virus and undercut warnings by public officials. On March 26, Trump said the pandemic “was some-thing that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country,” even though public health officials warned for years that the country was unprepared to respond to a pandemic.

Trump brags abouthigh TV viewershipof coronaviruspress briefings

Trump issues

travel advisory

for NY, New Jersey

and Connecticut

REUTERS — WASHINGTON

Experts on the White House coronavirus task force persuaded President Donald Trump that a travel advisory was preferable to the strict quarantine he was considering for the hard-hit New York area to limit the spread of the pathogen, officials said yesterday.

Trump had said on Sat-urday afternoon he might impose a ban on travel in and out of New York state and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, the epicenter of the health crisis in the United States, drawing protests from gov-ernors including Andrew Cuomo of New York.

Hours later Trump dropped the idea, advocating a strong travel advisory instead, as was then announced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We had very intensive dis-cussions last night at the White House with the president. As you know, the original pro-posal was to consider seriously an enforceable quarantine,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infec-tions Diseases.

“After discussions with the president, we made it clear, and he agreed, that it would be much better to do what’s called a strong advisory,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Fauci said enforcing a quarantine could create more difficulties for people and the same goal could be accomplished with an advisory.

Task force members unan-imously decided on Saturday to go forward with the travel advisory and advised Trump - a New Yorker himself - who accepted their recommen-dation, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

“I think the president wanted to consider all the options. He was obviously con-cerned what was going on with New York,” Mnuchin said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump also spoke with the state governors and “he was comfortable that people would take this advisory very seri-ously, and would not travel,” Mnuchin added.

Daniel Niederegger (second left), celebrating his seventh birthday in quarantine with his family and video chatting online with his grandparents in Hawkesbury, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in Ontario, Canada, yesterday.

Army not needed right now to help combat COVID-19 spread: Canadian PMREUTERS — OTTAWA

Canada is not planning for the moment to use troops to help combat a spreading coronavirus outbreak, although the option remains on the table, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

All 10 provinces have declared states of emergency and ordered people to stay home. The number of cases rose to 5,866 from 5,655 on Saturday while the death toll is 63, up from 61, medical officials said.

The province of Quebec - where 8.5 million people are spread across a landmass the size of western Europe - on Saturday said it was restricting access to eight remote regions with often patchy access to healthcare.

Quebec is also stationing police on the border with the United States to ensure returning travelers know they must go into isolation.

Trudeau was non-committal when asked about deploying troops to help Quebec or other provinces.

“This situation is evolving constantly and we are prepared for all kinds of different situations. Of course Canadians know very well that members of the armed forces are always ready to help when they are needed,” he said.

“For the time being no one has made specific requests about this and there are no plans now to carry out opera-tions in Canada with the armed forces,” he told a daily briefing, later adding that “we are not closing the door to any scenario”.

Almost half the people with coronavirus are in Quebec, where Premier Francois Legault said on Sunday that the incidence of new cases appeared to be stabilizing. “Don’t give up,” he exhorted people who might be fed up with staying indoors.

Trudeau also said Ottawa would spend more than C$200 million ($145m) on additional help for vulnerable people such as the homeless, women and children fleeing violence and counseling services for the young.

Trudeau was speaking outside his residence, where he has been staying since his wife Sophie tested positive for coronavirus.

Sophie, who announced on Saturday she had received the all clear, has moved to the prime minister’s official summer residence across the river in Quebec with the cou-ple’s three children, Trudeau said.

Trump in close race with Biden, ABC poll showsBLOOMBERG — WASHINGTON

Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in a tight race for the White House, as Americans focus on the response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday.

Trump has closed a 7-point deficit from February and is in a statistical tie with the former vice president, 47% to 49%, among registered voters. Among all adults, Trump trails Biden 44% to 50%. But Trump’s voters are far more enthusiastic about turning out.

Biden, the front-runner for

the Democratic presidential nomination, is more trusted by voters on health care and Trump more trusted on the economy, according to the poll. When registered voters are asked whom they trust most to confront the coronavirus, there was no statistical difference between the two.

The poll of 1,003 adults, including 845 registered voters, was conducted March 22-25. The margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.

Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden said he feels "frustration” with the U.S. coronavirus response and that

it’s his role to say what he believes President Donald Trump needs to do.

"If I see something that’s not happening, I think it’s my obli-gation to step up and say ‘this is what we should be doing,’” Biden said Sunday on NBC’s "Meet the Press.”

Biden said that if he were in office he would be using the Defense Production Act far more broadly than Trump has. He said he would not only compel General Motors Co. to build ventilators, as Trump has, but increase the production of personal protective equipment for health-care workers.

Bulb fields

16 MONDAY 30 MARCH 2020MORNING BREAK

Polish composer, conductor Krzysztof Penderecki dies at 86AP — WARSAW

Krzysztof Penderecki (pictured), an award-winning conductor and one of the world’s most popular contemporary classical music composers whose works have featured in Hollywood films like “The Shining” and “Shutter Island,” died yesterday at age 86.

In a statement, the Ludwig van Beethoven Association said Penderecki had a “long and serious illness.” He died at his home in Luslawice, Polish media reported.

The statement called Pen-derecki as “Great Pole, an out-standing creator and a humanist” who was one of the world’s best appreciated Polish composers. The association was

founded by Penderecki’s wife, Elzbieta Penderecka, and the communique was signed by its head, Andrzej Giza.

Penderecki was best known for his monumental composi-tions for orchestra and choir, like “St. Luke Passion,” or “Seven Gates of Jerusalem,”

though his range was much wider. Rock fans know him from his work with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

A violinist and a committed educator, he built a music centre across the road from his home in southern Poland, where young virtuosos have the chance to learn from and play with world-famous masters.

Culture Minister Piotr Glinski said in a tweet that “Poland’s culture has suffered a huge and irreparable loss,” and that Penderecki was the nation’s “most outstanding con-temporary composer whose music could be heard around the globe, from Japan to the United States.”

“A warm and good person,” Glinski said in his tweet.

Penderecki’s international career began when, aged 25, he won all three top prizes in a young composers’ competition in Warsaw in 1959 - writing one score with his right hand, one with his left and asking a friend to copy out the third score so that the handwriting would not reveal they were all by the same person.

He would go on to win many awards, including mul-tiple Grammys, but the first prize he won was especially precious: It took him to a music course in Germany, at a time when Poland was behind the Iron Curtain and Poles could not freely travel abroad.

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, Penderecki experi-mented with avant-garde forms

and sound, technique and unconventional instruments, using magnetic tape and even typewriters. He was largely inspired by electronic instru-ments at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio that opened in Warsaw in 1957 and was where he composed.

His 1960 “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” won him a Unesco prize. Written for 52 string instruments, it can be described as a massive plaintive scream.

In the 1970s, believing the avant-garde had been explored to the full, Penderecki embarked on a new path, writing music that, to many, sounds romantic and has the traditional forms of symphonies, concertos, choral works and operas. “

Age is not the only risk for severe virus diseaseAP — WASHINGTON

Older people remain most at risk of dying as the new coro-navirus continues its rampage around the globe, but they’re far from the only ones vulnerable. One of many mysteries: Men seem to be faring worse than women.

And as cases skyrocket in the US and Europe, it’s becoming more clear that how healthy you were before the pandemic began plays a key role in how you fare regardless of how old you are.

The majority of people who get COVID-19 have mild or moderate symptoms. But “majority” doesn’t mean “all,” and that raises an important question: Who should worry most that they’ll be among the seriously ill? While it will be months before scientists have enough data to say for sure who is most at risk and why, prelim-inary numbers from early cases around the world are starting to offer hints.

NOT JUST THE OLD WHO GET SICK

Senior citizens undoubtedly are the hardest hit by COVID-19. In China, 80% of deaths were among people in their 60s or older, and that general trend is playing out elsewhere.

The graying of the popu-lation means some countries face particular risk. Italy has the world’s second oldest popu-lation after Japan. While death rates fluctuate wildly early in an outbreak, Italy has reported

more than 80 percent of deaths so far were among those 70 or older.

But, “the idea that this is purely a disease that causes death in older people we need to be very, very careful with,” Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, warned.

As much as 10 percent to 15 percent of people under 50 have moderate to severe infection, he said.

Even if they survive, the middle-aged can spend weeks in the hospital. In France, more than half of the first 300 people admitted to intensive care units were under 60.

“Young people are not invincible,” WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove added, saying more information is needed about the disease in all age groups.

Italy reported that a quarter of its cases so far were among people ages 19 to 50. In Spain, a third are under age 44. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first snapshot of cases found 29 percent were ages 20 to 44.

Then there’s the puzzle of children, who have made up a small fraction of the world’s case counts to date. But while most appear only mildly ill, in the journal Pediatrics researchers traced 2,100 infected children in China and noted one death, a 14-year-old, and that nearly 6 percent were seriously ill.

Another question is what role kids have in spreading the virus: “There is an urgent need

for further investigation of the role children have in the chain of transmission,” researchers at Canada’s Dalhousie University wrote in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

THE RISKIEST HEALTH CONDITIONS

Put aside age: Underlying health plays a big role. In China, 40 percent of people who required critical care had other chronic health problems. And there, deaths were highest among people who had heart disease, diabetes or chronic lung diseases before they got COVID-19.

Preexisting health problems also can increase risk of infection, such as people who have weak immune systems including from cancer treatment.

Other countries now are seeing how pre-pandemic health plays a role, and more such threats are likely to be dis-covered. Italy reported that of the first nine people younger than 40 who died of COVID-19, seven were confirmed to have “grave pathologies” such as heart disease.

The more health problems, the worse they fare. Italy also reports about half of people who died with COVID-19 had three or more underlying con-ditions, while just 2 percent of deaths were in people with no preexisting ailments.

Heart disease is a very broad term, but so far it looks like those most at risk have sig-nificant cardiovascular diseases

such as congestive heart failure or severely stiffened and clogged arteries, said Dr. Trish Perl, infectious disease chief at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Any sort of infection tends to make diabetes harder to control, but it’s not clear why diabetics appear to be at par-ticular risk with COVID-19.

Risks in the less healthy may have something to do with how they hold up if their immune systems overreact to the virus. Patients who die often seemed to have been improving after a week or so only to suddenly deteriorate — experiencing organ—damaging inflam-mation. As for preexisting lung problems, “this is really hap-pening in people who have less lung capacity,” Perl said, because of diseases such as

COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — or cystic fibrosis.

Asthma also is on the worry list. No one really knows about the risk from very mild asthma, although even routine respiratory infections often leave patients using their inhalers more often and they’ll need monitoring with COVID-19, she said. What about a prior bout of pneu-monia? Unless it was severe enough to put you on a venti-lator, that alone shouldn’t have caused any significant lin-gering damage, she said.

THE GENDER MYSTERYPerhaps the gender

imbalance shouldn’t be a sur-prise: During previous out-breaks of SARS and MERS —cousins to COVID-19

— scientists noticed men seemed more susceptible than women.

This time around, slightly more than half the COVID-19 deaths in China were among men. Other parts of Asia saw similar numbers. Then Europe, too, spotted what Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House corona-virus coordinator, labeled a concerning trend.

In Italy, where men so far make up 58 percent of infec-tions, male deaths are outpacing female deaths and the increased risk starts at age 50, according to a report from Italy’s COVID-19 surveillance group.

The US CDC hasn’t yet released details. But one report about the first nearly 200 British patients admitted to critical care found about two-thirds were male.

A sign is seen at the entrance to a drive-in test facility for NHS workers for COVID-19 set up in the car park of Chessington World of Adventures in Chessington, Greater London, yesterday.

Tourists visiting a flowering bulb fields in Lisse, Netherlands, yesterday. Signs (not seen) at the fields reminded visitors to keep 1.5 metres distance as part of preventive measures against the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

New framework to identify best trees to curb air pollutionIANS — LONDON

Researchers have developed a new framework for selecting the best trees for fighting air pollution that originates from our roads.

In a study, published in the journal Climate and Atmos-pheric Science, researchers from the University of Surrey conducted a wide-ranging lit-erature review of research on the effects of green infra-structure (trees and hedges) on air pollution.

“We are all waking up to the fact that air pollution and its impact on human health and the health of our planet is the defining issue of our time,” said study researcher Prashant Kumar, Professor at the Uni-versity of Surrey in the UK.

“Air pollution is responsible for one in every nine deaths each year and this could be intensified by projected popu-lation growth,” Kumar added.

The review found that there is ample evidence of green infrastructure’s ability to divert and dilute pollutant plumes or reduce outdoor concentrations of pollutants by direct capture, where some pollutants are deposited on plant surfaces.

As part of their critical review, the researchers iden-tified a gap in information to help people — including urban planners, landscape architects and garden designers — make informed decisions on which species of vegetation to use and, crucially, what factors to consider when designing a green barrier.

To address this knowledge gap, they identified 12 influential traits for 61 tree species that make them potentially effective barriers against pollution. Ben-eficial plant properties include small leaf size, high foliage density, long in-leaf period, and micro-characteristics such as leaf hairiness.

US music festival, barbecue contest rescheduledAP — MEMPHIS

Tourism officials in Memphis, Tennessee, said the Beale Street Music Festival and the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest have been rescheduled for the fall after they were postponed by the new coronavirus outbreak.

Memphis officials said in a statement that the barbecue cooking competition has been reset for September 30 to October 3. The music festival will now be held from October 16 through October 18.

Both events are the cor-nerstones of the city’s monthlong tourist event in May. They attract music fans and barbecue cooking teams from around the world.

The Lumineers, Three 6 Mafia, The Avett Brothers, Lil Wayne and The Smashing Pumpkins were among the musical acts scheduled to perform at the music festival before the cancellation. It was not immediately clear if the performers who were set to appear on the original dates in May will be part of the lineup in September.

The Great American River Run also had been postponed. It has been reset for October 31.

This Mississippi River city relies heavily on tourism revenue from Memphis in May. Organisers said earlier this month that they had been instructed by city officials that the events could not be held as originally scheduled.

Meanwhile, Elvis Presley’s Graceland said it is extending its closure through April 19. The Memphis tourist attraction is centred on the life and career of the late rock n’ roll icon. It annually attracts about 500,000 visitors.

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