Thursday 23 April 2020

30 Sha'aban - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8236

BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 06 SPORT | 12

Federer

suggests

ATP, WTA

merger

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

QIIB net profit

edges higher to

QR267.1m in

first quarter

QFFD provides $577m aidfor sustainable developmentto various countries in 2019THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Qatar Fund for Devel-opment (QFFD) has continued its efforts to support devel-opment and relief causes in sister and friendly developing countries and to extend a helping hand and provide assistance to them, in imple-mentation of Qatar’s lead-ership, institutions and community to provide relief to nations and needy people around the world.

The fund provided over $577m in assistance to coun-tries in 2019, according to its annual report.

Khalifa bin Jassem Al Kuwari (pictured), Director General of QFFD, stated at the launch of 2019 annual report of the Fund, “The Fund pro-vided financial tools to coun-tries and responded in an effective manner to provide humanitarian and development assistance of more than $577m during 2019. It focused on empowering people through the promotion of education, health and economic devel-opment, reflecting the increase in the annual allocation of these sectors in the belief of QFFD as these sectors are the basic structure of human and eco-nomic development and a way to achieve the Fund’s mission, which is to establish peace and

justice among peoples.”QFFD, on behalf of Qatar,

has been able to fund projects worth more than $577m, including humanitarian and development assistance, dis-tributed to four key sectors, namely, education, health, eco-nomic development and infra-structure. By focusing on these sectors, QFFD seeks to promote human development and achieve sustainable devel-opment goals, to achieve its vision of giving hope and pro-moting peace and justice through sustainable and inclusive development.

The Fund has also worked through quest initiative to support Syrian refugees and displaced persons inside Syria and their host neighbouring countries. �P4

Call for sighting of Ramadan crescent today

QNA — DOHA

The Crescent Sighting Committee at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, yesterday, called upon all Muslims living in Qatar to sight crescent of Ramadan today.

The committee said that given the arrival of the month of Shaaban was not verified on Rajab 29, the committee called on all Muslims to sight Ramadan Crescent on Thursday night, Shaaban 30 of 1441 AH, corresponding to April 23, 2020. The Committee called on whoever witnesses the crescent to head to the headquarters of the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Dafna (Towers) area to report his testimony. The Committee will meet imme-diately after the Maghrib (sunset) prayer.

Ministry: Mosques

to remain closed

QNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs announced the continuation of the closure of mosques and the suspension of congregational prayers until the condition of safety and tran-quillity for the worshipers is met, while the call to prayer (Adhan) in all mosques continues. �P4

COVID-19: 608 new cases, 75 recovered & a deathTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has announced the registration of 608 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, yesterday. With the registration of 75 new recovered cases, the total number people to have recovered is 689.

The Ministry has also announced that one more person has sadly died taking the death toll to 10. Ministry con-ducted 3,287 tests yesterday taking the total tests done so far to 70012. The Ministry said that the new death was a 55-year-old resident, who had been

hospitalised on March 23, and died as a result of medical com-plications due to COVID-19. The

Ministry offered condolences and sympathy to the family of the deceased.

This Ramadan, while we must be physically separated, we will remain spiritually connected

Stefanie McCollum,Ambassador of Canada to the State of Qatar�P10

Wearing face mask made compulsory for shopping, workplaces & service providersQNA — DOHA

The Cabinet, in its meeting yesterday, made wearing of mask compulsory for shopping, people working in the service sector and workers in the construction sector from Sunday.

The Cabinet also fixed the official working hours for gov-ernment and private sector during the holy month of Ramadan. The Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, chaired the regular weekly Cabinet meeting via video conference.

Following the meeting, the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, said that at the beginning of the meeting, the Cabinet was briefed by H E the

Minister of Public Health on the latest developments of efforts to contain coronavirus (COVID-19). The Cabinet stressed the importance of adhering to the precautionary measures taken

to combat the epidemic.The Cabinet decided to

make it obligatory for shoppers to wear masks before they enter the food and catering stores and during shopping. Those

responsible for these shops must take the necessary measures not to allow the entry of shoppers who do not comply with this decision.

Cabinet decided that employees and workers in the government and private sectors, whose work requires providing services to the public and clients, are obliged to wear masks while carrying out their duties and tasks, and clients are required to wear masks. Offi-cials in the government and private sectors should take the necessary measures to prevent the entry of clients who are not committed to that.

Cabinet made it obligatory for workers in contracting sector to wear masks while car-rying out their duties and tasks, and officials in this sector should provide masks and adhere to the established pre-

cautionary measures.In the event of non-com-

pliance with this decision, the penalties stipulated in Decree Law No. (17) for the year 1990 regarding the prevention of infectious diseases shall be applied to the offender by imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years and a fine not exceeding QR200,000, or one of these two penalties.

Cabinet decided to set the government sector to four hours per day, starting from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon. For private sector the working hours will be six hours a day, starting from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. The stores of food-stuffs, pharmacies, and restau-rants working on deliveries and the contracting sector are excluded from the application of this decision. �P4

Opening of select Industrial Area streets A view of Al Wakalat Street in Industrial Area after its opening following a period of closure as part of the measure to curb the spread of COVID-19. In addition to Al Wakalat Street, streets one and two were also opened yesterday as the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management had announced on April 20 the gradual opening of the closed parts of Industrial Area. PIC: ABDUL BASIT/THE PENINSULA

Envoy lauds Qatar’s support for safe return of Kuwaiti citizensSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Ambassador of Kuwait to Qatar, H E Hafiz Mohammed Al Ajmi, has announced the return of 541 Kuwaiti citizens and their companions from Qatar to Kuwaiti through five flights.

H E the Ambassador Hafiz Mohammed Al Ajmi has praised the efforts of officials and rel-evant authorities in the State of Qatar for the support and facil-itation in procedures needed for the safe return of Kuwaiti citizens.

“On this occasion, I extend my thanks to all officials and

concerned authorities in the sis-terly State of Qatar for the good cooperation, support, and comfort in all procedures for the return of Kuwaiti citizens.”

“Special thank to the Min-istry of Foreign Affairs espe-cially the Permanent Com-mittee for Organizing Confer-ences, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Public Health as well as the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management, among others,” Ambassador said in a press statement.

He also said: “I would like to emphasise the keenness of the State of Kuwait to coop-erate with Qatar to confront the

coronavirus and the repercus-sions caused by the COVID-19 and to provide medical services, in the two countries, to contain the pandemic.”

The Ambassador also pointed out to a recent call between Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Amir of the State of Kuwait, H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, during which they discussed ways of strengthening brotherly relations between the two countries and reviewed the efforts made by the two coun-tries in combating the corona-virus and ways of cooperation

between them to limit its spread and prevent it.

“I would like to make it clear that from the first day, the Kuwaiti Ministry of

Foreign Affairs assigned the embassy to provide all nec-essary assistance to every Kuwaiti citizen stuck abroad.” �P4

Kuwait’s Ambassador to Qatar, Hafiz Mohammed Al Ajmi.

2,628,894

182,992

707,331

TOTAL POSITIVE

TOTAL DEATHS

TOTAL RECOVERED

GLOBALLY

COVID-19 QATAR UPDATES ON APRIL 22, 2020

608757141

68910

NEW CASES

ANNOUNCED

NEW

RECOVERIES

TOTAL

CASES

TOTAL

RECOVERIES

TOTAL

DEATHS

Public and private sector employees giving service to public must wear mask

Obligatory for workers in contracting sector to wear mask

Officials in contracting sector should provide masks to workers

For private sector, working hours will be six hours a day during Ramadan

Working hours will be four hours a day for government sector

EXCLUSIVE

QNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held yesterday via telephone a conversation with the Pres-ident of US, H E Donald Trump. They discussed stra-tegic relations and aspects of enhancing them, and reviewed the latest developments on the regional and international arenas. They also discussed means of combating the novel coronavirus epidemic and preventing and limiting its spread, in addition to areas of cooperation in this regard.

QNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani issued yesterday an Amiri gesture pardoning a number of pris-oners in consideration of the health and humanitarian conditions in light of the current situation in the country as a result of the novel coro-navirus (COVID-19) epidemic.

Amir holds telephone call with US President

Amir issues order to pardon prisoners

02 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020HOME

03THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 HOME

Sheikh Thani bin Hamad Al Thani participates in elderly telephone reassurance serviceQNA — DOHA

In the framework of the State of Qatar’s efforts to combat COVID-19, H E Sheikh Thani bin Hamad Al Thani participated on Tuesday in the elderly tele-phone reassurance service, launched by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

HMC prepared a plan to protect the elderly from the threats of COVID-19 in cooper-ation with the World Health Organization (WHO).

His Excellency met with the teams working to provide services ranging from raising awareness among the elderly to follow-up. He was also briefed during his visit on the measures that are currently being implemented to curb the COVID-19 spread.

The National Lead for Healthy Aging in Qatar, Medical Director of Rumailah Hospital, and Qatar Rehabilitation Institute Dr Hanadi Al Hamad

participated in holding a number of calls to elderly patients to check on their physical, mental, and social health, as well as to ensure if they needed any kind of support.

Sheikh Thani bin Hamad Al Thani was also briefed, during his visit on Tuesday to the Qatar Rehabilitation Center, about the virtual activities of the elderly clinic, which aims to create video and audio communi-cation between the consulting physician present in his clinic and the elderly patients in their homes who have appointments at the outpatient clinic.

The doctor examines the general condition of the patient through visual communication instead of the traditional clinical examination as part of the pre-cautionary measures against the spread of COVID-19. The clinic was met with a great response from patients and their families alike.

During the visit to Qatar Rehabilitation Center, Sheikh Thani bin Hamad Al Thani checked on a number of older persons who were receiving

treatment at the center. He was updated on a number of reha-bilitation sessions for older persons using the video call technology. Dr Hanadi Al

Hamad thanked Sheikh Thani bin Hamad Al Thani for the visit and said it represents a phyco-logical boost to the older persons' community.

H E Sheikh Thani bin Hamad Al Thani interacting virtually with the elderly patients at HMC on Tuesday.

Qatar reacted swiftly to curb COVID-19: WHO officialSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean at World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Ahmed Al Mandhari has said that Qatar has taken swift measures to curb the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Qatar took adequate measures to curb the spread of coronavirus and provided proper treatments and health services to the infected people,” said Dr. Ahmed Al Mandhari while talking to Al Rayan TV remotely.

He said that measures included conducting thermal screening at the airport, pro-viding appropriate treatments to the infected people, tracing the contacts of positive cases of coronavirus in the community

and quarantining and isolating them under medical care.

“A slew of preventive and precautionary measures were taken by Qatar on the level of healthcare and community as

well, like maintaining social distancing, closure of schools, mosques and those related to ensuring health safety at com-mercial outlets,” said Al Mandhari.

He said that at the same time, Qatar provided all neces-sities to the people to stay at homes following the State's pre-ventive and precautionary measures.

“WHO recommended to the countries all over the world to follow one system to curb the coronavirus which required involvement of all sectors not only health sector, as the role of the community members of all age groups is important in this regard,” said Al Mandhari.

He said that the integrated measures helped greatly in curbing the spike in the spread of the epidemic. “The recom-mendations of WHO are still in place which include main-taining social and physical dis-tancing, not going out of home except in extreme condition of need,” said Al Mandhari.

Dr. Ahmed Al Mandhari, WHO’s Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, talking to Al Rayan TV.

Over 2 million transactions conducted through Metrash2THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Over two million transactions have been completed through Metrash2 since the beginning of this year (2020), the Ministry of Interior has said.

In a statement released yes-terday, the Ministry said that the number of Metrash2 users exceeded one million since its launch, while the completed transactions since the beginning of the year 2020 has reached 2,375,218.

The total inquiries about the services provided in Metrash2 application reached 5 million.

Brigadier Abdo Al Rahman Ali Al Farahid Al Malki, Assistant Director General of the General Department of

Information Systems said that the number of services pro-vided through the application reached more than 200 services for the public and companies.

He also said that the sta-tistics showed that the most used services for the current year are renewing vehicle licenses, registering a national address, renewing ID, extension of visas, and payment of traffic violations, adding that these services are very popular with the public.

Al Malki noted that the new services in the Metrash2 app were replacing vehicle plates, criminal complaints, adding a baby to the national address, and a list of citizens’ travel notice.

Foreign Minister

receives phone

call from ICRC

PresidentQNA — DOHA

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani received a phone call yesterday from President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer.

The call focused on dis-cussing ways to cooperate in containing the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and topics of joint interest.

During the phone call, Maurer praised the efforts of the State of Qatar to combat the epidemic and the measures it has taken to protect citizens and residents in Qatar.

He also commended the role and contribution of Qatar Airways in the evacuation of people stranded in areas that had an epidemic outbreak.

04 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020HOME

Sidra Medicine Research develops new method for COVID-19 testingTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Sidra Medicine, a member of Qatar Foundation, has developed a new COVID-19 virus testing method.

The method addresses the challenge of global shortages in conventional kits, by pro-posing a different RNA (ribo-nucleic acid) extraction using alternative test components.

The COVID-19 outbreak has led to a global demand of materials to test individuals for the virus, which is usually done in three steps: first, by obtaining a nasal swab sample from the individual being tested; secondly, extracting all RNA from the swab sample; and step three, by testing the extracted RNA for the presence of the virus, usually using r e v e r s e t r a n s c r i p t i o n polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), a laboratory technique combining reverse tran-scription of RNA into DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

Currently the reagents1 for

the third step are widely available, however one of the biggest challenges has been the availability of kits required for the second step (i.e. to extract the viral the RNA from an indi-vidual’s swab sample).

Shortages in kits may result in longer waiting times to obtain results for individuals who have been already swabbed.

Dr. Patrick Tang, Division Chief of Pathology Sciences at Sidra Medicine said: “When extraction kits are limited, the delays in sample processing can lead to natural degradation of the viral RNA, potentially leading to false negative results. This comes with the risk of releasing infectious individuals back into the com-munity. COVID-19 has brought

the scientific and medical sectors together from across the world, to urgently seek effective and safe alternatives. As a CAP-accredited pathology lab at an academic hospital, Sidra Medicine’s clinical and research teams sought to come up with alternative solutions to address the global chal-lenges around the shortage of materials and delays in COVID-19 tests.”

Over the past two weeks, the teams of Dr. Mohammad Rubayet Hasan from the Molecular Infectious Diseases (MID) Lab in the Pathology Department and of Dr. Stephan Lorenz from the Clinical Genomics Lab (CGL) in the Research Department co-developed and extensively val-idated their custom, in-house

RNA extraction method using alternative test components. By leveraging Sidra Medicine’s enhanced robotics infra-structure, and combined with the team’s experience in single-cell RNA research, they imple-mented a solution that not only

matched the sensitivity of standard clinical methods being used worldwide, but also required less reagents and running time. Importantly, the entire mechanism was estab-lished in a controlled lab setting, making it possible to

implement right away.Dr. Khalid Fakhro, Acting

Chief Research Officer at Sidra Medicine said: “As an academic medical center, Sidra Medicine is ideally positioned to lead innovations that support clinical care. Our in-house extraction approach is an example of the resilience that Qatar has built by investing in sustainable biomedical research. It ensures we have alternative methods available to test for coronavirus even when there are critical shortages in supply chains around the world.”

The new method developed and implemented by Sidra Med-icine is of global importance as other nations face limited extraction kit availability and have to consider alternative options. To share this inno-vation, the research team at Sidra Medicine has published their protocol under an Open Access license for the benefit of other healthcare organisations around the world.

Dr. Khalid Fakhro, Acting Chief Research Officer at Sidra Medicine

Hassad signs agreements to develop marketing process in Central Markets

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hassad, Qatar’s premier investor in food sector, announced yesterday that in line with its plan to develop integrated marketing platforms, the company signed a number of agree-ments with major corporations operating in the food sector in Qatar, in order to operate key divisions of the central markets in A’Sailiya and Al Wakra.

Hassad signed an agreement with Al Meera Company to operate the designated spaces for the hyper-market, while it signed another agreement with Widam Food to operate the automated slaughter-house, poultry, fish and meat stores, as well as a percentage of the barns in Al Wakra and A’Sailiaya central markets.

Eng. Mohamed Al Sadah, Hassad Chief Executive Officer commented on the occasion “It is our pleasure to announce that we have signed agreements with Al Meera and Widam Food, to operate key divi-sions of the central markets in A’Sailiya and Al Wakra, such as the hypermarkets, automated slaugh-terhouse, poultry, fish & meat stores, as well as a percentage of the barns.

"Both companies are market leaders in their fields, and these agreements will certainly contribute to the development of the marketing process in the central markets.”

Al Sadah added “The agree-ments are in line with Hassad’s stra-tegic plan, that we already begun to implement, with the aim to develop the central markets, to become inte-grated marketing platforms, that satisfies the needs of producer, cus-tomer and trader, as well as con-tribute in achieving the country’s self-sufficiency.

Eng. Mohamed Al Sadah, Hassad CEO

The method addresses the challenge of global shortages in conventional kits, by proposing a different RNA (ribonucleic acid) extraction using alternative test components.

Wearing face mask made compulsory for shopping, workplaces & service providers

FROM PAGE 1

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in coordination with the concerned authorities, shall determine the other necessary activ-ities exempted from this decision.

The previous exceptions decided by the Cabinet with regard to working hours shall continue.

The Cabinet decided that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry shall take the necessary measures to

extend the registration periods in the commercial register and expired com-mercial licenses for a period of six months, and settle any fees due upon renewal.

The Cabinet approved a draft cabinet decision on terms and controls for the use of the lands of Alafjah area for recycling purpose of industries. The project included provisions related to the exploitation of the lands of the region, the coordinates of which are attached to the map attached to this decision by lease, the terms of the lease for individuals and entities, the jurisdiction of the support areas supervision committee, the priority arrangement in leasing, the duration of the lease con-tracts, and the obligations of the tenant.

The Cabinet approved draft decision of H E the

Minister of Commerce and Industry to establish and form the national spe-cialised committee for verification of conformity and approved draft decision of the Minister of Commerce and Industry to establish and form spe-cialized national technical committees for specifications and standards.

The Cabinet approved draft decision of H E the Minister of Com-merce and Industry to adopt European standards as Qatari standards and approved draft decision of the H E Minister of Com-merce and Industry to issue rules for the obligations of chartered accountants, merchants of precious metals or precious stones, trust fund providers and companies with requirements to combat money laun-dering and terrorist financing.

The Cabinet approved draft memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Culture and Sports in the State of Qatar and the Ministry of Sports Affairs in the Sul-tanate of Oman for cooperation in the field of youth. It also approved draft agreement for cooperation in the field of plant quarantine between the Ministry of Municipality and Environment in the State of Qatar and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Industry and Melioration in the Kyrgyz Republic.

QFFD provides $577m aidfor sustainable developmentto various countries in 2019

FROM PAGE 1

The most important international development initiatives, humanitarian assistance and the achievements of QFFD in 2019 revolve around projects to meet humanitarian needs, emer-gency response, reconstruction, relief, rehabilitation, the fund’s contributions to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, economic empowerment, the construction of roads for sustainable growth and the fund’s financing of infrastructure projects, particularly road transport and building projects.

The Fund has worked to promote the right to education and efforts to support educational facilities, training, primary, secondary, higher and tech-nical education, as well as health and development of supported projects in the health, infectious diseases and medical services sector, the success of the UNDP Development Impact Accel-eration Laboratories initiative.

In coordination with local and inter-national strategic partners, Qatar Development Fund has begun to provide health care through primary health clinics in the Iraqi city of Mosul, and in a similar context, many Rohingya refugees have sought safe haven in Bangladesh and Malaysia, and in turn Qatar Fund for Development supported Malaysia in hosting refugees by working with local implementing partners and local Malaysian NGOs.

In response to Yemen’s famine crisis, the Qatar Development Fund has launched a sustained and integrated

response to deliver life-saving food assistance. More than 250,000 food-insecure people benefited from this project.

It supported the payment of rent to provide shelter and housing for the affected and needy, and to meet the needs of more than 225,000 beneficiaries.

In 2019, Fund provided immediate relief to many communities affected by hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, including Somalia, and Albania. The Fund also supported the Government of the Bahamas and rehabilitation projects following Cyclone Dorian, and Qatar Fund for Development provided funding for rehabilitation as part of mutual government support between The State of Qatar and Cuba in order to alleviate the human tragedy of a powerful hurricane that struck the Republic of Cuba in January 2019. The Qatar Fund for Development has also introduced a unique project of cash-for-shelter, in a move to encourage homeowners to return to Mosul’s Old City, Iraq.

As for Sudan, the Fund implemented a rapid intervention program in the Republic of Sudan in August 2019, after heavy rains and floods in various areas, resulting in disrupting livelihoods, destroying homes and scrambling people to find shelter. Mobile health teams have also been formed, and support for the water and sanitation sector and the distribution of food and non-food items were provided to those affected.

Envoy lauds Qatar’s support for safe return of Kuwaiti citizensFROM PAGE 1

The embassy has formed a working group under my leadership with other diplomatic staffers as members. The team worked around

the clock to communicate with cit-izens coming to Doha from around the world,” the Ambassador said.

H E the Ambassador added: “We provided them what they needed

either related to accommodation by securing suitable accommodation in a hotel, necessary protective supplies including protection tools, masks, personal sanitisers etc.”

Ministry: Mosques

to remain closedFROM PAGE 1

The Ministry said that Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab Mosque is exempted from this decision, in which Friday prayers will be held exclusively.

The prayers would be in the presence of 40 prayers only, including the imams and the mosque’s employees, as well as isha and Taraweeh prayers during Ramadan, in the presence of the imam and four of the mosque’s employees, taking into account the health precautions directed by MoPH.

The Ministry confirmed that it will continue to communicate with the competent authorities to follow up on the situation of the COVID-19, and it will reopen all mosques once the epi-demic is contained.

The Ministry said that this pro-cedure has been adopted to ensure the safety of the community.

The Ministry added that these prayers will be transmitted to the public on television and radio channels, with the assurance that it is not permissible to perform prayer by listening radio, television and other means of communication.

The Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs extended sincere con-gratulations to Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Father Amir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and to the Qatari government and people and the entire Islamic nation on the advent of the holy month of Ramadan.

Al Meera Company will operate spaces for hypermarket, while Widam Food will operate the automated slaughterhouse, poultry, fish and meat stores.

05THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 HOME

06 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020HOME

Qatar’s economy is built on robust system: Al SadaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar’s economic policy is built on a robust system, and a stimulus scheme of $20.6bn over the coming three years is expected to absorb the shock of what is happening worldwide, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, the country’s former Minister of Energy and Industry, has said in an online seminar at Qatar Foundation.

“We expect that next year our economy will exceed 3 percent growth, and I think the service sector particu-larly will rebound ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022,” H E Dr. Al Sada told the latest edition of the Al Maerifa virtual lecture series at Texas A&M Uni-versity at Qatar, a Qatar Foundation partner university.

“Our unemployment is nearly zero – which is unheard of in most of the countries – and so I feel our economy will manage.

From the very early stages of this pandemic, Qatar took the policy of “no

regret”, according to H E Dr. Al Sada who is also Chairman of the Joint Advisory Board of TAMUQ and a member of the Board of Directors of Qatar Foundation – and this policy meant the government was swift in

taking measures by perceiving the COVID-19 pandemic to be extremely serious.

The Supreme Committee for Crisis Management was established, and “all resources, including human and financial, were mobilised”, he told the lecture, also pointing to the fact that the latest credit ratings indicate the sta-bility of the Qatari economy, with assessments by both Standard & Poor and Moody’s providing confidence that it is solid and able to withstand shocks.

The dominant role of the hydro-carbon sector is reflected in Qatari GDP. Qatar is the world’s leading

exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), accounting for one-third of global LNG exports. And at the current rate of pro-duction, its proven natural gas reserves would last for an estimated 130 years, according to Moody’s.

With the oil and gas industry being the movers and shakers of economies worldwide, H E Dr. Al Sada has said that “salvaging the world’s oil and gas industry is very important in order to salvage the global economy and mit-igate the worldwide impact of the recession and, in fact, trying to stop it from going further into a depression.”

Addressing how the current

coronavirus crisis will have short- and long-term effects on gas development, H E Dr. Al Sada said: “Don’t look at what is happening today. Today is very unusual. “We look at it long-term, and that will be the balancing of the supply and demand. I think it will occur sometime around 2024 or 2025, because the curve of the consumption and demand is increasing more than any other form of energy.”

Qatar recently announced the LNG expansion project, where capacity is expected to be increased by 64 percent by 2027. “Gas, in particular, will have an excellent future,” said H E Dr. Al Sada.

“I looked at eight top forecasts from very renowned organisations, and they unanimously agree that the demand in gas will grow more than any other form of fuels.”

Qatar has launched drilling for the first phase of the North Field expansion, which is expected to add approxi-mately 64 percent to present capacity.

H E Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, former Minister of Energy and Industry

QRCS President checks work flow at Mekaines quarantine facilityTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Dr. Mohamed bin Ghanem Al Ali Al Maadheed, President of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS), has visited the quarantine facility in Mekaines, to follow up the work flow, discuss action plans and challenges, and explain future scenarios of the Coronavirus crisis.

Managed by QRCS under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), the Mekaines quarantine facility is one of the largest in Qatar, with seven complexes that are cur-rently accommodating 11,000 workers.

The visit was attended by Dr. Abdul-Salam Al Qahtani, board member and Head of COVID-19 Crisis Management Committee; Abdullah Al Qatan, Executive Director of the Medical Affairs Division; Dr. Hasan Kasem, General Medical Director of the

Medical Affairs Division; and Dr. Hassan Al Yafi, Head of Training and Development Department.

Dr. Al Maadheed had a firsthand overview of how the mechanism of work is applied at the quarantine facility, starting from safety measures and vital signs checks at entrance, and then the swapping room where samples are regularly taken from the referred cases.

Aiham Al Sukhni and Subhi Ejjeh, who manage the quar-antine facility, gave a detailed presentation on accommodation, catering, clothing, and other logistic services provided for the quarantined inmates, while observing the maximum safety precautions.

Dr. Al Maadheed com-mended the role played by QRCS’s personnel, thanks to the expertise they acquired from the Disaster Management Camp’s eight editions, which graduated

hundreds of well-trained relief workers. He said the work done by the Camp staff in the current situation reflects QRCS’s ability to manage disasters, particularly in relation to emergency shelter.

He thanked the medical staff at the quarantine center for their excellent work despite all risks and challenges. They were urged to keep up the good performance, realizing the important role of the medical sector in combating the coronavirus outbreak.

The President of QRCS expressed pride in QRCS’s effective contributions to the efforts of Qatari authorities against the virus, together with all government bodies and NGOs.

The visit was concluded with a meeting with the admin-istrative staff, who told Dr. Al Maadheed and his company how work is done, the admin-istrative structure, the needs required to ensure optimized

services. He stressed the com-pliance with international health crisis management standards.

“In this emergency, QRCS aligns 42 years of humanitarian experience both locally and glo-bally,” said Dr. Al Maadheed. “Inspired by the fundamental

principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, as well as the Qatari culture and values, we aligned over 1,000 employees and 15,000 volunteers to work 24/7 to protect society members. It is the first time for our country to face such a calamity, but I am

sure we will emerge out of it stronger and safer”.

Apart from the Mekaines quarantine facility, QRCS is managing a workers’ exami-nation center. Established within only 48 hours, it serves to examine expatriate workers for coronavirus infections

Dr. Mohamed bin Ghanem Al Ali Al Maadheed, President of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS), during his visit to the quarantine facility in Mekaines.

New loop bridge on Mesaimeer Interchange to open on April 26THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) will open on Sunday, April 26, a new loop bridge on the bridge between Rawdat Al Khail Street and Industrial Area Road on Mesaimeer Interchange to link traffic movement on bridge from Rawdat Al Khail Street to Souhern Doha Expressway and E Ring Road in coordination with General Directorate of Traffic.

The new loop exit will facilitate traffic for road users coming from D Ring Road and Rawdat Al Khail Street towards Al Thumama and Old Airport via E Ring Road as well as towards Sabah Al Ahmad Corridor and Al Wakra and Al Wukair through Sabah Al Ahmad Corridor.

The loop bridge is one of the exits on the bridge linking Rawdat Al Khail Street and Industrial Area Road and recently opened to provide free flow of traffic between Central Doha and Industrial Area and surrounding resi-dential areas such as Ain Khalid, Umm Al Seneem and Mesaimeer.

The Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ had opened in early April a

new underpass and bridge on Mesaimeer Interchange to traffic towards Al Wakra and Al Wukair from Industrial Area Road and E Ring Road.

The new three-level interchange is the first of its kind in Qatar as it con-tains nine underpasses providing free flow traffic. The interchange also con-sists of two major bridges. One of them connects Rawdhat Al Khail Street and Industrial area road in both directions, and the other one connecting E-Ring Road with the southern part of Doha Expressway in one direction, ensuring a smooth flow of traffic in all directions.

The 6.1-km long, interchange con-sists of three to four lanes in each direction to accommodate about 30,000 vehicles per hour in both directions.

The new interchange on completed in the second quarter of 2020 will sig-nificantly improve traffic flow, reducing travel time by more than 70% of travel time.

The Mesaimeer Interchange is the first of its kind in Qatar connecting six main roads, namely Mesaimeer Inter-change, Doha Expressway, southern

part of Doha Expressway, Sabah Al Ahmed Corridor, Industrial Area Road

and Rawdhat Al Khail Street.The interchange also provides a

vital traffic link between the south, central and north of the country. It links traffic from the south through the southern part of Doha Expressway, main carriageway of Doha Expressway and Al Shamal Road.

It also connects traffic between Industrial area road and the heart of Doha through a connection to Rawdat Al Khail Street, which intersects with D-Ring and C-Ring Road, as well as between the busy areas of Nuaija, Al Thumama, Bu Hamour, Al Maamoura, Mesaimeer providing an easy access to Al Wakra, Al Wukair and the Indus-trial area

It is located in a vital area that has many facilities including Al Thumama Stadium, one of the World Cup stadiums, where the interchange has three pedestrian bridges to ease people’s access to Al Thumama Stadium.

The interchange also serves many important educational, health and commercial facilities such as the Medical Commission, Meteoro-logical Department, many schools, health centers and nearby shopping malls.

DFI to screen short films online every ThursdayRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

The Doha Film Institute (DFI) has announced it will hold weekly screenings of short films online for free every Thursday starting today.

Announced through DFI’s social media channels, the “Short of the Week” series will bring the very best of DFI-supported films for movie buffs to enjoy in the comfort of their own homes via DFI’s YouTube channel. The series has been launched to encourage people to stay home amid COVID-19 out-break as well as show support to Qatari films and Arab cinema.

The Thursday screenings will also include exclusive releases and behind-the-scenes insights from the filmmakers, said DFI.

Kicking off the series is the short narrative “Al-Johara” helmed by Qatari filmmaker Nora Al Subai. The film is a Qatari take on the classic Cinderella fairytale accentuating Arabic traditions

with a modern twist.Made a servant in her own

home by her evil stepfamily, the titular character receives a wedding invitation from an old childhood friend. With the help of a neighbour — an eccentric, traditional old woman — Al-Johara might be able to attend her very first wedding and finally be like her beautiful sisters.

Al-Johara is a recipient of the Qatari Film Fund, an initiative the Institute launched in 2015 to support Qatari filmmakers.

In Arabic with English sub-titles, this 26-minute romantic comedy marked its premiere at the Ajyal Youth Film Festival and also made its way to the Festival de Cannes and the Sarajevo Film Festival. Last year, Al-Johara

received the Special Jury Award in the Made in Qatar section of the Ajyal Film Festival.

Qatari writer and director Nora Al Subai was born and raised in France. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar with a degree in Computer Science. Her 2013 short film “My Hero” premiered in the Ajyal Youth Film Festival, where it was named Best Short Film. “My Hero” also took part in Cannes, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the Children’s Film Festival Seattle, and the Latin Arab Festival in Buenos Aires.

Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, DFI has launched a number of online initiatives such as the first online youth ani-mation workshop and the inau-gural online screenwriting lab for beginners. It also successfully carried out the adapted online mentorship and support program for the 2020 edition of Qumra, its annual talent incu-bation event.

A scene from the film “Al-Johara” by Qatari filmmaker Nora Al Subai.

"Our unemployment is nearly zero, which is unheard of in most of the countries, and so I feel our economy will manage. From the very early stages of this pandemic, Qatar took the policy of “no regret”, and this policy meant the government was swift in taking measures [to curb the COVID-19 spread]."

Ashghal announces temporary

closure of Wadi Al Sail IntersectionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced a temporary closure on Wadi Al Sail Intersection in Al Bidaa, starting on April 24 at 1:00 am to 5 pm, for resurfacing and asphalt works.

During this closure which is in coordination with the General Directorate of Traffic, the traffic will be diverted to the shoulders of Majlis Al Taawon street and Mohammed Bin Thani Street for road users to reach their destinations, as shown on the attached map. The Public Works Authority will install road signs advising motorists of the closure and has requested all road users to abide by the existing speed limit and follow the road signs to ensure their safety.

07THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 HOME

HGH Medical Director calls for continued adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures during RamadanQNA — DOHA

Medical Director of Hamad General Hospital (HGH) Dr. Yousef Al Maslamani has said that the COVID-19 has led to changes in many aspects of daily life, which will also continue during the holy month of Ramadan, a matter which affirms the need that everyone continues to adhere to infection control measures that helps save many lives.

Dr. Al Maslamani added that Ramadan this year will be dif-ferent as the virus has affected the daily lifestyle, therefore, there are changes in many things that one accustomed to during Ramadan each year, including family and friend visits, having Iftar together and praying together, adding everyone should continue to apply all necessary measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection, the most important of which is social dis-tance and adherence to infection control practices to maintain the safety of the individual and the

safety of others.He explained that the month

of Ramadan represents a special occasion for all in view of its dis-tinguished atmosphere, and it is natural for some to feel some dis-comfort as a result of the lack to such atmosphere, including large family gatherings and Tarawih prayers in the mosque, especially as many families spend few days

before the holy month preparing for this month by purchasing their food needs to prepare tra-ditional meals and shopping for gifts, clothes and decorations.

Spending Ramadan safely and happily this year requires time planning, Dr. Al Maslamani said, adding purchasing food-stuffs should be done online when possible and it is better to

prepare a list of products and plan in advance if it is necessary to go to the market by buying what is enough for two weeks to reduce the number of times needed to go to the shopping centers.

He warned that visiting places where large groups of people exist increase the risk of exposure to the virus, thereby endangering the safety of family members.

He said that limiting direct contact with people as much as possible is the best way to combat the spread of the coronavirus, as the infected person can transmit the disease to others before one knows about his/her infection, which may inadvertently cause others to be at risk, especially people at greater risk of devel-oping severe health complica-tions if they become infected.

Dr. Al Maslamani reaffirmed the crucial importance of physical distance, by avoiding the traditional methods of greeting others, including shaking hands, kissing, and hugging.

AJE wins again at New York Festival TV & Film AwardsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Al Jazeera English (AJE) was named ‘Broadcaster of the Year’ by the 2020 New York Festival TV & Film Awards for the fourth consecutive year.

The channel collected an impressive array of gold, silver and bronze medals for its news coverage and programmes.

The Network’s Investigations Unit and the Digital division were also recognized with medal wins. The awards included entries from over 50 countries, covering a wide variety of US and international broadcasters such as NBC, HBO and SBS.

The winners were announced online on 21st April – this year’s ceremony being cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. In total, Al Jazeera Media Network won 14 gold, 19 silver and 23 bronze medals.

Among the gold medal winners were the Witness doc-umentary ‘A Thousand Girls Like Me’ about an Afghan woman’s fight against the prevalence of rape; the Al Jazeera Corre-spondent documentary ‘A Moral Debt’ looking at the legacy of slavery in the US; and ‘All Hail the Algorithm’, a five-part tech series exploring the impact of algorithms on our everyday lives.

Other medal wins included AJE’s news coverage of violence in the Sahel region in Africa; its environmental series ‘Earthrise’ and the hard-hitting ‘Head to Head’ interview with Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of Blackwater, the private military company.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit won a gold medal for its

two-part documentary ‘How to Sell a Massacre’, a three-year investigation into the pro-gun lobby while the Digital division earned a gold medal for ‘Bolivia’s Fight Club’, a short film about an annual festival involving street fighting to bring about a good harvest.

“We are honoured to be rec-ognised again for the quality of our content,” said Giles Trendle, Managing Director of Al Jazeera English. “Our journalists and filmmakers come from all corners of the globe and go out of their way to provide coverage that is grounded in impartial reporting and inspired story-telling. I believe our audiences appreciate our coverage of international issues and uni-versal themes which offers a truly global perspective that, in times such as these, is an important affirmation of the inter-connectedness of our lives on this planet.”

Al Jazeera English is a highly-decorated news and current affairs channel. In recent years it has won a Peabody, an Emmy, a NRMA Kennedy award for Excellence in Journalism and a Royal Television Society award. This year one of its documen-taries was nominated for an Oscar Academy Award.

QFBA-Northumbria University hosts webinar to

discuss COVID-19 impact on financial sectorTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Finance and Business Academy in partnership with North-umbria University (QFBA-North-umbria University) recently hosted a webinar with over 40 participants to engage the public in an open dialogue about the impact of the current COVID-19 crisis on the financial sector. The webinar took place on April 16 and it was led by Dr. Ali Malik, Accounting Programme Leader at QFBA-North-umbria University.

The webinar took place as part of QFBA-Northumbria University’s aim to foster fruitful dialogue and discussion surrounding the impli-cations of the current situation on the financial sector with students, working professionals and those interested in finance related fields around Qatar.

Dr. Ali Malik’s lead discussion featured key topics that explored the realities of financialised world, what makes financial system prone and vulnerable to financial crisis and to what extent Qatar’s economy

is vulnerable to current economic meltdown. It was then followed by an interactive Q&A session where participants were able to engage in a critical discussion about Qatar’s financial services sector.

Commenting on the webinar, Dr. Ali Malik, Accounting Programme Leader at QFBA-Northumbria said: “During the current situation and seeing how COVID-19 has impacted the global economy, it was a delight to have the opportunity to share

insight and discuss the resilience of Qatar’s economy with students and working professionals. Our hope is to continue similar initiatives in the future.”

QFBA-Northumbria Univer-sity’s aim continues to empower its students and furthermore the community to think critically about the financial world and con-tribute to actualizing the human development pillar of the Qatar National Vision 2030.

Participants during the webinar.

Aspetar launches 'Healthy Ramadan' campaignTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Aspetar, Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, has launched a new version of its “Healthy Ramadan” campaign for the tenth year in a row, which coincides this year with the special circumstances witnessed by the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

The updated campaign ranges from medical tips, guidance to athletes and the entire community in a creative way, to several exercises that can be carried out during the month.

Aspetar’s Ramadan cam-paign aims to increase awareness about the importance of adopting an active and healthy lifestyle on social media platforms through an evidence-based research and studies carried out by Aspetar experts in many areas such as; nutrition, exercise, fitness, psy-chology, oral and dental health.

This year’s campaign features an interactive design that enables

the public to interact with it through tips provided on Insta-gram’s “Story” feature, accom-panied by questions addressed to the audiences throughout the holy month. Also, various videos will broadcast on other social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

Speaking about the campaign, Khaled Ali Al Mawlawi (pictured), Aspetar’s Chief Administrative Officer, said: “The Healthy Ramadan Campaign is a good tra-dition that we have been following for a decade, and under the current circumstances that require everyone to stay at home, we have considered expanding the cam-paign of the athletes to all members of the community, we are using the outcome of Aspetar’s pioneers in research and sports medicine , who have spent years studying the effects of fasting on sports, and on public health for the benefit of the public.”

Launched annually by

Aspetar during the Holy month, Aspetar’s campaign aims to introduce the hospital’s expe-rience during the fasting month. Experts specialised in the fields of nutrition, psychology, research, exercise medicine, den-tistry and other specialties are presenting briefly many important advices provided in an innovative yet simple way.

The messages also touch on how to eat Healthy, sleeping pat-terns, the ideal bedtime, the optimal time for exercise and tips on oral

and dental health. Aspetar will also offer a range of exercises that can be done at home, to encourage fitness and healthy habits during the stay at home period.

To serve the community, Aspetar, through its leading role in sports medicine and exercise science, offers health education through various methods to reach the largest audience, based on reliable and evidence-based scientific research.

It is worth mentioning that in previous years Aspetar has pre-sented awareness campaigns in the Holy month of Ramadan. “Healthy Ramadan”, The stories and video series are all available through Aspetar’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels. The campaign follows the success of Aspetar’s innovative awareness initiatives such as ‘Ask the Doctor’ and ‘Beat the Heat’…, which aim to promote healthy living among both recreational and professional athletes.

Dr. Yousef Al Maslamani, Medical Director of Hamad General Hospital.

The channel collected an impressive array of gold, silver and bronze medals for its news coverage and programmes.

'Discover QF' talk focuses on maintaining mental health in a world of COVID-19THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The stresses and anxieties created by the global COVID-19 pandemic should not lead to people forgetting that they still have control over their lives – and that includes maintaining their mental health and wellbeing.

This was the message emphasised to an online audience by the World Inno-vation Summit for Health (WISH) at the latest edition of Discover QF, a platform that sees members of the Qatar Foun-dation community share their interests and expertise with others.

With the coronavirus crisis forcing people to isolate themselves from family and friends, and drastically changing their lifestyles, the potential mental health consequences of the pandemic are coming into increasingly sharp focus. Discover QF saw the mental health expertise that exists within WISH’s

international community of healthcare professionals being reflected by Nicholas Bradshaw (pictured), the QF global health initiative’s Director of Partnerships and Outreach, who said, “It gives us an uneasy sense of having a lack of control.

“We are bombarded with infor-mation, the situation directly impacts all of us, and it is easy to become over-whelmed by what we can’t control rather than what we can. But we really do have control, and by doing the things we are being asked to do – wash our hands, observe social distancing guidelines, eat healthily, exercise at home – we are actually demonstrating this.

“In the same way, taking time to care about our mental health is also some-thing we can control.”

In the webinar, Bradshaw – who, while not being a doctor, spoke about mental health from a WISH perspective in order to support awareness of the

issue – said that the pandemic may mean people can relate to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression more than ever. “Even though we are all in our homes, there is a connectedness, and it is recognized why people may be feeling low,” he said.

“Issues such as anxiety and depression can be triggered by life

events, and what is happening right now is a life event for all of us.”

In 2018, WISH published a research report on anxiety and depression which said there is a “fundamental necessity” to recognize these conditions as a public health priority and include them as part of universal healthcare programs, citing estimates that 322 million people worldwide have depression and 264 million live with anxiety disorders.

“We have to remember that it is normal to have issues, and success is no measure of mental health – you can be incredibly successful and put on a great face to the world, but be facing mental health issues that you need to be honest about,” said Bradshaw.

”It is OK not to be OK. You should be kind and good to yourself, willing to accept things may not go to plan, and confident about voicing your situation.”

The talk also discussed ways of staving off mental strain amid the ongoing pandemic, including limiting time spent watching news bulletins, and being wary of fake news and sources that lack credibility, all of which can add to anxiety; staying connected while not overusing social media; and engaging in hobbies.

“Cognitive reframing can help – you are not stuck at home, you are safe at home; you are not missing things you love, you are increasing your gratitude for the things you love; you are not missing your friends, you are protecting each other,” Bradshaw said.

“You can set up a ‘worry window’ – writing down your concerns and having a moment each day when you feel you need to strongly think about them – and congratulate yourself on even the little things, such as exercising when you said you would.”

Zakat Fund works remotely in collection, spendingQNA — DOHA

The Zakat Fund Department at the Ministry of Endow-ments and Islamic Affairs has confirmed the continu-ation of the remote work policy regarding collection and spending during the holy month of Ramadan, in line with the precautionary measures taken by the State to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and to preserve the Zakat payers and employees, until the current crisis resulting from the spread of this pandemic is over.

“The Zakat should to be paid at the time without stip-ulating that it be paid during Ramadan or in other months,” said Jassim bin Mohammad Al Kubaisi, Director of the Zakat Fund Department.

He pointed out that it is permissible to expedite its payment before its date, noting that the Fatwa Com-mittee of the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic

Affairs issued a fatwa per-mitting accelerating the payment of Zakat due to the circumstances of the pan-demic that currently affects the world and that con-tributed to ending the work or deduction of salaries of a large group of people whose work were disrupted due to the domestic isolation

imposed by the current conditions.

The Zakat Fund man-agement at the beginning of April this year called on the Zakat payers to submit their Zakat to the Fund by depositing it in the ATMs of the Qatar Islamic Bank or Al Rayan Bank, where the Zakat payer can deal with the option of paying zakat in favor of the Zakat Fund, where the Zakat amount will be transferred to the Fund account in the bank directly.

Zakat can also be deposited through personal account of the Zakat payer via the mobile banking appli-cation or the Internet banking, where the transfer will be made directly to the Zakat Fund account, in addition to the possibility of depositing Zakat through a government website.

The Zakat Fund also announced that Zakat payers could provide their zakat through the fast collector that works around the clock.

Jassim bin Mohammad Al Kubaisi, Director of the Zakat Fund Department.

08 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020HOME

QF RDI expert: Why the information age has helpedthe world understand the need for social distancingTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first major disease outbreak the world has seen over the past couple of centuries, but the way it is perceived and its repercussions could differ drastically from those of the past – largely due to the constant influx of information about the virus and the way it domi-nates the daily news cycle.

According to Dr. Richard O’Kennedy, Vice-President of Qatar Foundation Research, Development, and Innovation, the information age we now live in is responsible for the starkest contrast between present-day discussion around the coronavirus and public awareness surrounding history’s greatest previous crises, such as Spanish flu.

“The biggest difference between the perception of coronavirus and the perception of past pandemics is the availability of information through social and other media,” said Dr. O’Kennedy, who is an expert on immunology.

“During the great outbreak of Spanish flu from 1918 to 1920, several countries were restricted from releasing information due to wartime conditions. Today, we have access to so much more information.”

Widespread availability of data and a deeper public understanding of risks posed by COVID-19 have enabled gov-ernments and communities to take swift action, explained Dr. O’Kennedy, who has closely studied past pan-demics and virus outbreaks. “This time, there is a strong and much-needed emphasis on social distancing on a worldwide scale,” he said. “That is something that was not fully under-stood amid previous pandemics.”

When Spanish flu struck, the con-ditions caused by the First World War meant people across the world were brought together, but dispersed quickly

once the conflict was over, creating an ideal environment for the virus to spread far and wide. The aftermath varied significantly, depending on whether cities chose to implement strict social distancing policies.

In the United States, for example, Philadelphia held its Liberty Loan parade amid the Spanish flu outbreak, while St. Louis enforced the closure of public places like schools, churches, playgrounds, and libraries while closely monitoring the activity of vehicles and pedestrians. While Phil-adelphia ultimately followed suit, it ended up with a much higher death

rate than that of St. Louis, owing to its delay in employing non-pharmaceu-tical intervention in the form of social distancing.

“The reason why the social dis-tancing approach has proven to be so effective is that every individual plays a role in it, and thus it effectively mit-igates spreading of infection between individuals,” said Dr. O’Kennedy.

“Even today, the response to the virus in China, where it first emerged, was defined by swift action in terms of social distancing policies. Viruses aim to spread; that’s their goal. They want to propagate as much as possible, which is why limiting social contact is one of the first, and most crucial measures, that any society needs to take.”

Every past pandemic - whether Spanish influenza, cholera, or HIV/AIDS pandemic – became a key his-toric event that caused a ripple effect across society, economically as well as socially. Dr O’Kennedy said the COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to represent a turning point in history, dramatically changing the way the world works.

“We’re learning new ways of working, communicating, and edu-cating,” he said. “We wouldn’t nat-urally function in these ways, but

now that we are compelled to, there is the potential for us to take the ideas they give us forward, and change how we approach a lot of these activities.”

Qatar’s largely digitally-connected society could pave the way for a more efficient, sustainable system of working and learning, Dr. O’Kennedy believes. “Because of the pandemic, children are learning how to work online and are accessing an array of resources remotely,” he said.

“Earlier in my career, I was respon-sible for distance education in Ireland at one point, and we would distribute books and physical resources for stu-dents to utilize. All of this is now digital, and everything is on our doorstep.

“In fact, at Qatar Foundation, our Qatar Science & Technology Park is home to startups that are thriving in this environment because they provide services that can be delivered right to consumers’ doorsteps or utilized in their homes.

In Dr. O’Kennedy’s view, one of the defining features of a post-coro-navirus society may be that people drive themselves to develop more advanced solutions to enable society to achieve more, reducing the need for physical interaction in pursuing progress.

Dr. Richard O’Kennedy

According to Dr. Richard O’Kennedy, the information age we now live in is responsible for the starkest contrast between present-day discussion around the coronavirus and public awareness surrounding history’s greatest previous crises, such as Spanish flu.

Qatar Charity, Waseef organise awarenesscampaigns for workers to fight coronavirusTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Charity, in cooperation with Waseef, a property management company, has organised awareness and preventive campaigns to combat coronavirus (COVID-19), targeting workers residing in the projects run by Waseef.

The campaign, which falls within Qatar Charity’s con-tinued efforts aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, aims to provide all information about corona-virus to raise awareness among workers to protect them, in addition to providing health education in different languages to facilitate a better understanding and ensure their safety. Besides, sanitizing materials and personal hygiene items were provided to workers to reduce the pos-sibility of infection.

The beneficiaries of the campaign included workers residing in the Barwa Al Baraha project, Mukaynis, and the workers’ housing in Al Khor.

The number of benefici-aries of the campaign was approximately 12 ,000 workers, who received from Qatar Charity 12,000 health and awareness bags con-taining personal hygiene kits, sanitizers and masks, in addition to multilingual awareness leaflets for workers.

The Waseef Company thanked Qatar for all its efforts to educate the workers (living in the projects run by the company) on the importance of taking preventive and pre-cautionary measures to limit the spread of the virus, in addition to the great role

played by Qatar Charity, in cooperation with many bodies to fight the virus.

The Waseef Company notes that these campaigns come within its awareness efforts for workers, based on its commitment to its national duty and societal responsi-bility in the private sector, aiming to contribute to the efforts of the State of Qatar in the fight against COVID-19.

For its part, Qatar Charity affirms the continuation of its voluntary effort to limit the spread of the virus in line with the State of Qatar’s plan encouraging all institutions and organizations to partic-ipate in such efforts, especially those made for workers by distributing personal hygiene and preventive items, food supplies and awareness leaflets.

Qatar Charity also thanked the company for its cooper-ation and support in imple-menting this campaign, which comes within the framework of its care for the health and safety of workers.

Qatar Charity officials educating workers residing in the projects run by Waseef.

Clinical placements for QU’s Doctor of Pharmacy students switch to virtual rotationsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s College of Pharmacy (QU-CPH) switched its Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) student’s clinical placement to virtual rotations due to suspension of classes for students and to take precautionary measures to prevent coronavirus.

Online delivery of QU-CPH didactic courses was easily implemented overnight, the delivery of experiential courses due to the current situation. The PharmD program, which is heavily comprised of internships, requires students to complete 24-weeks of direct patient care prior to graduation. Since this requirement was fulfilled by the PharmD students prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the decision to transition the two remaining internships into a virtual based experience was practical.

Each PharmD student was reassigned to a cross-appointed faculty to deliver an online expe-rience based on their area of expertise. A few examples of virtual rotations offered by the program were pharmacy academia, pharmacy research, internal medicine, and mental health.

The program has already completed one round of suc-cessful virtual internships and is currently in the process of deliv-ering its last online experience

As the graduation approaches near, Dr. Bridget Javed, Director of PharmD Program said, “The PharmD

students are ready to enter practice. At this point of their academic careers and despite the transition to virtual learning, I am confident the students have met the educational outcomes as the program has built in many checkpoints throughout the year to assess their competency levels. With that being said, the tran-sition to virtual internships would not have been feasible without the support of our dedicated cross-appointed faculty and pos-itive mindset of our students.”

CPH Clinical Lecturer and cross-appointed faculty pre-ceptor Dr. Daniel Rainkie describes his experience with virtual internships as such: “While face-to-face patient care is the crux of pharmacy practice and inter-professional collabo-ration, the COVID-19 situation also presents us an opportunity

to identify how pharmacists can continue to provide care through telehealth services. Through this distance learning rotation, we were able to research complex controversial clinical questions and provide that knowledge translation service to the care providers involved in direct patient care.”

“Moving experiential clinical rotations to the virtual setting is not easy, however it was accom-plished. The key is making the best out of the situation and changing your goals and expec-tations. Online learning allowed me to read more literature and dive deeper into various disease states and simulated patient cases to further enrich my knowledge and understanding as a medication expert” said, Bodoor Aboujabal, PharmD student at QU.

Bodoor Aboujabal, PharmD student at QU.

UCL Qatar transforms conference on electronic publishing into innovative online eventTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

UCL Qatar, a Qatar Foundation partner University, concluded the 24th Inter-national Conference on Electronic Publishing, which took place online from April 20 and 21, 2020. The conference, titled “Charting the Future(s) of Digital Publishing”, was set to take place in Doha but had to be moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conference combined pre-recorded keynote speeches and paper presentations delivered on Twitter through @ELPUB_Conf. Participants were requested to prepare eight to twelve tweets on the main points of their presented papers. The tweets were then posted as per the confer-ence’s schedule and participants engaged with users by commenting

and replying to tweets. In addition, the four keynote papers (from Australia,

the Netherlands, Qatar and the USA) were shared on video and will also remain accessible after the event.

The conference welcomed over 120 registered participants from over 40 countries, , including Brazil, Australia and the United Kingdom. Twenty papers selected after a peer review of over 60 submissions were presented and covered key research topics within the publishing sector such as open

access, open science and the digital divide.

Dr. Milena Dobreva-McPherson, Associate Professor in Library and Information Studies and the General Chair of the conference, stated: “We are living in unprecedented times that call for creativity and innovation in everything that we do. Although we were looking forward to hosting col-leagues and friends from some 25 countries all over the world here in Doha, I am incredibly pleased that we were able to go ahead with the con-ference virtually and met online with even more colleagues. Even though this happened in times when most academic and practitioner events had been cancelled, the fact that we had stimulating discussions online was very positive; especially during these times of social distancing. In fact, it is

a great fit that we conducted a con-ference about digital publishing online, as it also has a positive envi-ronmental effect. It gives us an insight about the future of knowledge exchange and presents an incredible number of opportunities that we can take advantage of even after the pan-demic is over.”

Dr. Andreiwid Correa, Professor of Informatics/Computing at Federal Institute of Sao Paolo, Brazil, who presented a paper titled: “Open science-based framework to reveal open data publishing: an experience from using Common Crawl ”, tweeted: “I am proud to attend and present my paper at @ELPUB_conf virtually. In this time of #COVID-19 they designed an innovative way with the use of Twitter. I am ready to go!”

Dr. Milena Dobreva-McPherson

Action against 8 for littering of used masks, glovesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The municipal inspectors of Al Sheehaniya Municipality registered eight violations of throwing face masks and gloves after using it in front of shopping complexes.

The violations were recorded under the pro-visions of the law No 8 of 2017 of public hygiene,

said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in a release.

The Ministry urged people to dispose the waste in the designated garbage containers for the health and safety of public.

The agencies concerned at all municipalities will catch such violations, and legal actions will be taken against the violators.

The beneficiaries of the campaign included workers residing in the Barwa Al Baraha project, Mukaynis, and the workers’ housing in Al Khor.

09THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Iran launches military satellite into orbit, US tensions simmerAFP — TEHRAN

Iran said it put its first military satellite into orbit yesterday, making it an emerging “world power”, as US President Donald Tump issued a new threat amid rising naval tensions in the Gulf.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps broke the news of what it said was its own satellite launch, hailing it as a milestone for the country’s space programme.

“Today, we are looking at the Earth from the sky, and it is the beginning of the formation of a world power,” the Guards’ commander Hossein Salami said, quoted by Fars news agency.

The United States alleges that Iran’s satellite programme is a cover for its development of missiles, including ones that could one day carry nuclear warheads. Iran maintains it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons, and says its

aerospace activities are peaceful and comply with a UN Security Council resolution.

Tensions between the two countries again escalated last week with the US accusing Iran of harassing its ships in the Gulf.

US President Donald Trump took to Twitter yesterday to say he had “instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gun-boats if they harass our ships at sea”.

Sepahnews, the Revolu-tionary Guards’ website, said the satellite dubbed 'Noor' — meaning “light” in Arabic and Persian — had been launched from the Markazi desert, a vast expanse in Iran’s central plateau.

The satellite “orbited the Earth at 425 kilometres above sea level, said Sepahnews.

Iranian state television aired footage from multiple angles of a rocket blasting off into a mostly clear blue sky.

The rocket bore the name Qassed, meaning “messenger”, in what appears to be the first time Iran has used a launcher of this type.

Its fuselage also bore a Quranic inscription that read: “Glory be to God who made this available to us, otherwise we could not have done it.” There was no way to independently verify the details and timing of the reported launch.

Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad

Azari Jahromi took to Twitter to congratulate the Guards’ air force, adding he had visited the launch site three weeks ago.

“They were great,” he said of the satellite and what he described as a “three-stage solid fuel” launcher.

Iran has repeatedly tried and failed to launch satellites in the past.

The most recent attempt

was on February 9 when it said it launched but was unable to put into orbit the Zafar, which means “victory” in Persian.

The Islamic republic, bat-tling one of the world’s dead-liest novel coronavirus out-breaks at the same time as dealing with crippling US sanc-tions, has accused Washington of “economic terrorism”.

Tehran says the punitive

measures have denied it access to medical equipment needed to fight the virus.

Iran has requested a $5 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund to help it tackle the outbreak.

But the US, which effec-tively holds a veto at the IMF, has signalled it has no intention of agreeing to such a line of credit.

A military satellite named ‘Noor’ is launched into orbit by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, in Semnan, Iran, yesterday.

Virus cases rise in Kuwait, Oman and BahrainANATOLIA — MUSCAT/ MANAMA/ KUWAIT CITY

Health authorities in the Middle-Eastern countries of Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Morocco yesterday reported fresh cases of infections and deaths due to coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic.

In Oman, the health min-istry announced 106 new infections which brings total

infected cases to 1,614. The death toll in the country has now reached eight, with 288 recoveries as well.

The Kuwaiti Health Min-istry yesterday reported 168 infections which bring the country’s total infections to 2,248.

The ministry said that the fatalities have jumped to 13 after one death recorded over the past 24 hours.

In Bahrain, the Health

Ministry’s statement said that 20 new infections were reported making total infected cases to 1,973. So far seven people have died because of the pandemic. As many as 784 people have recovered, said the statement issued by the Health Ministry of Bahrain.

The Moroccan Health Min-istry in its daily briefing said the total infections have jumped to 3,377 after con-firming fresh 168 cases. The

recovered cases have reached 398.

In last 24 hours, five more people have recovered. The statement further said that the death toll of coronavirus has reached 149 after four more deaths were reported within the past 24 hours.

In Lebanon, the tally has reached 22 with one death. With five more infections con-firmed, the total cases have reached to 682.

Sultan of Oman

receives phone

call from British

Foreign Secretary

QNA — MUSCAT

H M Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman received yesterday a phone call from British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

During the call, aspects of the existing cooperation between the two countries were reviewed, as well as the efforts made at various levels to address the COVID-19.

Turkey evacuates its nationals Turkish expats take their luggage after a plane carrying 348 Turkish citizens in Kuwait land at Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, yesterday. Turkey brought its citizens from Kuwait as part of the measures taken to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease.

94 more deaths in Iran; infections slowAFP — TEHRAN

Iran announced yesterday 94 new deaths from the novel coronavirus but said the cases of people infected in the country was on the way down.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the fatalities detected in the past 24 hours took Iran’s overall death toll to 5,391.

The number of people infected with the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease

rose by 1,194, bringing the total to 85,996. “The gradual downward trend in cases of infections has been main-tained,” Jahanpour told a tele-vised news conference.

President Hassan Rouhani however called on people to remain vigilant.

“If we arrogantly think that the job is done and we have won, then this would be the biggest problem that could affect us,” he said during a weekly meeting of his Cabinet.

Iran has struggled to contain the virus outbreak since reporting its first cases on Feb-ruary 19 — two deaths in the city of Qom.

The number of Iranians killed and sickened by the virus is widely thought to be higher, however.

Despite that, Iran has allowed many businesses to reopen since April 11 after shutting most down in mid-March to prevent the spread of the disease.

Lebanon sees first virus casein Palestinian refugee campAFP — BEIRUT

A Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon was on lockdown yesterday after the UN announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in one of the country’s numerous and crowded camps.

The patient, a Palestinian refugee from Syria, has been taken to the state-run Rafic Hariri hospital in Beirut, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said in a statement late Tuesday.

Medical experts visited the Wavel camp in the eastern Bekaa Valley yesterday to carry out tests, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said.

The testing was to focus on the woman’s relatives and people she has interacted with, as well as 50 others chosen arbitrarily “inside the camp and its surroundings”, it said.

Workers in blue hazmat suits sprayed disinfectant at an entrance to the camp, also called Al Jalil.

In coordination with Leb-anese security forces, Pales-tinian factions in charge of security have imposed a lockdown on the camp, pre-venting anyone from entering or leaving, the NNA report said.

It said cars drove around the camp’s densely-populated neighbourhood as messages blared from loudspeakers urged residents to stay indoors.

A member of a popular committee living inside the camp said all shops had closed.

Lebanon has officially announced 682 infections including 22 deaths across the country.

The United Nations and aid groups have repeatedly warned that refugees and migrants in crowded camps worldwide are at special risk of the new coronavirus.

More than 70 million people globally have been forced by conflict, persecution, violence and abuses to flee their homes, including more than 20 million living as ref-ugees, according to UN data.

More than 2,000 people live in Wavel, according to sta-tistics released by Lebanon’s government after a 2017 census, but the UN agency says the population of those regis-tered in the camp are much higher.

Aid groups have warned that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in Lebanon’s over-crowded camps are the most vulnerable and that self-iso-lating patients in the camps where sanitation is weak would be one of the top challenges.

More than 174,000 Pales-tinians live in Lebanon, according to official figures.

But unofficial estimates say the Palestinians could number as many as 500,000.

5 children among 8 dead in Aden flash floods; national toll at 15AFP — ADEN

Eight people, including five children, have been killed and dozens injured in flash floods in Yemen’s second city Aden, officials said yesterday, as resi-dents faced submerged streets and destroyed homes.

The deaths take the national toll to at least 15 after the United Nations said that seven other people were killed by flooding in the north, where the coun-try’s long conflict is raging between the government and the Huthi rebels.

A government official told said that along with the deaths in southern city Aden, at least 10 homes were destroyed and 90 others severely damaged.

The flooding compounds the country’s troubles, as it

struggles to fend off water-borne diseases like cholera and also braces for the spread of the novel coronavirus, after recording one case so far.

Oxfam said yesterday that it was “extremely worried” about the recent storms, which have also hit other provinces across the country.

“People have died, houses damaged, (camps for displaced people) have been affected and this flooding may accelerate the spread of cholera,” Samah Hadid, director of advocacy for Oxfam Yemen, said.

More than three million people are displaced in Yemen, which has been ravaged by years of war, with many in camps that are especially vul-nerable to disease.

“Oxfam is projecting that

there could be one million cases of cholera this year with the start of the rainy season in Yemen,” Hadid said.

“This is occurring in addition to the serious threat of coronavirus in the country.” At least 35 families were stuck in their homes yesterday, their houses submerged in water and mud, residents in Aden said.

Hundreds of vehicles were stranded in the middle of flooded streets, and in one part of the city, a boy sat in a sty-rofoam box and used a plank to row across the thoroughfare.

Mohammed Abdulhakim, an Aden resident, said the situ-ation in the city was dire.

“There is water and mud in my home, cars have been swept along the roads, which are now completely blocked and destroyed,” he said.

The UN refugee agency said yesterday that the heavy rains and flooding have affected dis-placed Yemenis across the country, including the rebel-held capital Sanaa and the flashpoint northern province of Marib.

“Many families lost their

shelter, and everything they own,” the UNHCR said in a Twitter post accompanied by an image of a man transporting two children across the flooded streets in a tub.

The UN said on Tuesday that at least seven people have been killed and 85 injured in flash flooding in the northern gover-norates of Yemen this month.

The same day, Yemen’s prime minister Moeen Abdul-malik Saeed declared Aden, where the government has been based after the rebels seized Sanaa, a “disaster zone”.

An estimated 24 million Yemenis — more than 80 percent of the population — depend on some form of humanitarian aid or protection for survival, according to the UN.

Tarawih prayers

without public

attendance at Two

Holy Mosques

ANATOLIA — ANKARA

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz yesterday approved the holding of Tarawih prayers at the Two Holy Mosques without public attendance amid preventive measures due to the coronavirus.

According to a statement by the Presidency of the Two Holy Mosques, Tarawih, special night prayers per-formed during the holy month of Ramadan, starting this week, will be shortened and held without public attendance at the Grand Mosque (Masjid al Haram) in Makkah and the Masjid al Nabawi in Madinah.

On Monday, the presi-dency said Tarawih prayer will be performed by staff and can-celled Itikaf — the Islamic practice of secluding oneself in the mosque to pray — at both mosques.

Israeli police kill

Palestinian in

East Jerusalem

ANATOLIA — RAMALLAH

A Palestinian was shot by Israeli police after allegedly running his car into a border checkpoint and trying to stab a police officer in the West Bank’s occupied city of East Jerusalem.

In a statement, the Israeli police said that a Palestinian had rammed his car into an officer in a border checkpoint and attempted to stab the officer. The officer was slightly wounded before the Israeli police shot the Palestinian dead. Palestine’s Health Min-istry said in a statement that “Mohamed Ali Halsa, 25, was martyred by Israeli police in the container checkpoint near Bethlehem.” The ministry gave no further details.

Iran has repeatedly tried and failed to launch satellites in the past. The most recent attempt was on February 9 when it said it launched a satellite but was unable to put it into orbit.

An estimated 24 million Yemenis — more than 80 percent of the population — depend on some form of humanitarian aid or protection for survival, according to the UN.

Virus death toll

in Saudi Arabia

and UAE rises ANATOLIA — ISTANBUL

Updated figures on the novel coronavirus pandemic were presented yesterday by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia, the death toll stands at 114, after five patients died, while 1,812 have recovered.

Health officials said 1,141 people tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the number to 12,772.

The death toll in the UAE rose to 52 after six patients died yesterday.

The Health Ministry said 483 confirmed new cases brought total infections to 8,238, including 1,546 recoveries.

Unlike previous Ramadans, however, the current pandemic situation will make Ramadan 2020 different: Iftar gatherings will not be permitted; night (Taraweeh) prayers cannot be offered at mosques; and official Suhoor receptions - to my disappointment - will not feature in my Ramadan calendar.

10 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANSHEIKH DR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

QATAR Airways is winning hearts of passengers around the world by reuniting travellers with their families during these challenging times. When other airlines have grounded their aircraft, Qatar’s national carrier has flown thousands of passengers to their home.

Since mid-February, Qatar Airways has helped reunite over one million passengers with their loved ones, operating a mix of scheduled and charter services plus extra sectors. In the past several weeks, the airline has helped repatriate over 45,000 passengers back home to France, 70,000 home to Germany and over 100,000 customers back to the United Kingdom. Working with governments and group travel companies around the world, the airline operated over 90 charters and extra sector flights taking home over 26,000 stranded travellers.

The national carrier of the State of Qatar continues to operate approximately 60 scheduled flights a day to around 40 destinations and is working closely with embassies across the globe to arrange charters to repat-riate stranded citizens.

As an airline, Qatar Airways maintains the highest possible hygiene standards, which include the regular disinfection of aircraft, the use of cleaning products and thermal screening of crew. Qatar Airways has revised its distribution of cabin crew on flights, sending two groups on short-haul and medium-haul flights – the first to manage the outbound trip, the second to manage the inbound trip. For long-haul flights, crew members who have to stay overnight in a foreign city can only travel in Qatar Airways-approved transport and must remain in their rooms, limiting human interactions.

Hamad International Airport (HIA) is also robustly min-imising any risks to the health and safety of passengers and staff. As a vital pillar to Qatar’s national economy, HIA’s doors remain open as it continues its operations to take people home to their family through Doha, and to ensure food security of Qatar through cargo.

HIA has implemented stringent cleaning procedures and closed most of the non-essential passenger facil-ities. All passenger touch points are sanitized every 10-15 minutes. All boarding gates and bus gate counters are cleaned after each flight. Staff working at the airport have been provided additional training in terms of pro-tecting themselves and others in light of the current sit-uation and implementing the highest health and safety measurements. In addition, hand sanitizers are pro-vided at immigration and security screening points. A social distancing policy has been implemented at the airport, and staff are allowed to wear masks and dis-posable gloves to protect them from any infection. All staff are briefed to change their masks in line with WHO recommendations.

Flying passengers home safely

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OFFICE: TEL: 4455 7741 / 767FAX: +974 4455 7758

MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4462 7505

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4455 7769

LOCAL NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7743

BUSINESS NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4462 7535

SPORT NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7745

ONLINE SECTION: TEL: 4462 7501email: INFO@PEN.COM.QA

PUBLIC RELATIONS: TEL: 4455 7613email: PR@PEN.COM.QA

ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT: TEL: 4455 7837 / 780FAX: 4455 7870, email: adv@pen.com.qa

CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENT: TEL: 4455 7857email: adv@pen.com.qa

SUBSCRIPTION & DISTRIBUTION: TEL: 4455 7809 / 839 FAX: 44557819, email: info@tawseelqatar.com

D-RING ROAD, POST BOX: 3488, DOHA - QATAREMAIL: editor@pen.com.qa

Quote of the day

Whilst COVID-19 has caused a severe international

health and economic crisis, failure to tackle climate

change may threaten human well-being, ecosystems,

and economies for centuries. We need to flatten both

the pandemic and climate change curves.

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General

Faithful performing the Taraweeh prayer at Imam Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab Grand Mosque in Doha, in this file picture.

When famous Italian tenor Bocelli performed in an empty cathedral in

Milan on Easter Sunday, he described the event as a “prayer” not a concert. Livestreamed on his YouTube channel, he hoped the event would bring together people from around the world who have been isolated because of COVID-19. It did. In fact, it set a YouTube record as the biggest musical livestream of all time.

Yet Bocelli characterized the situation of being alone in a cathedral on Easter Sunday as “abnormal”.

Indeed, these are “abnormal” times, when the faithful around the world are trying to cope with the restrictive social and physical distancing measures imple-mented to limit the spread of COVID-19, while also seeking to maintain their spiritual connec-tions. Places of worship have been closed in many parts of the world, including here in Qatar, where mosques have been shut for several weeks. The same is true in Canada, including for the more than 1 million Muslim-Canadians who are not able to visit the many mosques across the country.

However, just because places of worship have been forced to close their doors does not mean they cease to function, as tech-nology and innovation are making things easier. Take for example the Al Rashid mosque in Edmonton, the oldest mosque in Canada. Its story has always been one of innovation since its con-struction in 1938, when its doors opened to worshipers through funds raised by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Now, despite its doors being closed because of COVID-19 restrictions, Friday sermons are livestreamed through the mosque’s Facebook page.

While for some spirituality is an individual and private matter,

for many around the world – like the millions who joined Bocelli’s Easter livestream prayer – it is a collective exercise with many communal aspects to it. Perhaps no other religious activity person-ifies this like Ramadan, which when compared to other religious activities, stands out for its duration. A month long spiritual journey, centered on fasting, but which also celebrates gatherings and socializing around prayers and food. From my past Ramadan experiences – in Canada, Egypt, and last year, here in Qatar – I learned that the communal aspect of the holy month is what makes it easier for many to observe the demanding dawn-to-dusk fasting for a whole month.

Unlike previous Ramadans, however, the current pandemic situation will make Ramadan 2020 different: Iftar gatherings will not be permitted; night (Taraweeh) prayers cannot be offered at mosques; and official Suhoor receptions - to my disap-pointment - will not feature in my Ramadan calendar.

It will be difficult. Humans by nature are social beings, and our desire to connect with family and friends may tempt us to practice

what we have done every pre-vious Ramadan. We should not. We should fight that desire, and collectively help each other to maintain social distancing and respect measures introduced by Qatari authorities.

Yes, sadly, the Bocellis of the Muslim world will have no audience to enjoy their beautiful recitation of the holy Qur’an as mosques will be closed. Many of us will miss being among family and friends during Iftars and Suhoors, when their company could help us to recharge to carry on with fasting. Perhaps Bocelli’s Easter reflection of his expe-rience in an empty cathedral can offer us some solace: “[the event] will be a prayer and as a conse-quence it will not be important who is present physically but rather who wants to be with me spiritually.”

While this year’s Easter has been unlike any in the past, the experience will stay with me and my family. Perhaps years from now many of us will look back and share with each other what we all acquired during this pan-demic - resilience and a sense of collective unity at a time of adversity. There is already evi-dence of this taking place in Qatar, with many Qataris and residents volunteering and donating to help with the efforts to deal with COVID-19. Fur-thermore, Qatar Charity has launched its Ramadan projects, including Iftar food baskets tar-geting some 420,900 individuals in Qatar, while the Qatari Red Crescent’s Ramadan Food Drive is bringing in record donations.

Ramadan, after all, is also about sharing and helping the needy.

During this holy month, I wish all our friends in Qatar a blessed, peaceful, and healthy Ramadan. While we must be physically seperated, we will remain spiritually connected.

Ramadan Kareem.

NARAYANA KOCHERLAKOTA BLOOMBERG

For a long time, the US Federal Reserve has played the leading role in managing the country’s economy. Its technocrats have sought to keep growth on a stable trajectory, primarily by moving a single interest rate up and down - in a process largely insulated from the pressures of electoral politics.

Now, though, the severity of the coronavirus crisis is placing more of the burden on Congress and the White House. As a result, stabili-zation policy is likely to get, and stay, a lot more politicized.

Last month, the Fed took

its interest-rate target about as low as it can go -- to 0.1 percentage point -- in an early effort to mitigate a sharp economic downturn. With epidemiologists forecasting that some form of social dis-tancing will persist through 2022, the Fed probably won’t be raising interest rates anytime soon.

It’s even possible that the Fed’s target will stay near zero throughout the 2020s. Even before COVID-19 showed up, economic growth hadn’t been strong enough to generate ade-quate inflation, which remained below the central bank’s 2% target for most of the 2010s. As a result, inflation expectations have decreased: Investors are betting that the Fed’s preferred

measure of inflation will average less than 1% over the coming decade. To prevent those expectations from falling further, and to avoid a decline into damaging deflation, the Fed will have to be very careful about raising rates.

As long as the Fed stays pinned at the “zero lower bound,” economic policy will work very differently. For the past 40 years, the central bank’s unelected technocrats have been able to fight reces-sions relatively free of pol-itics, because they have focused on whether to toggle a single policy instrument - short-term interest rates - up or down. Now, the gov-ernment will have to step in with fiscal policy - that is,

spending financed by sov-ereign borrowing. Its tools come in all shapes and sizes, and the choice among them will be highly political.

Consider the initiatives by Congress and the White House to rescue people and companies slammed by measures to contain the pan-demic. So far, their efforts have tilted toward large cor-porations. But there’s a strong argument to provide more support for individuals - for example, by sending out pay-ments of $12,000 per person instead of the $1200 promised in the Cares Act. How politi-cians choose among such fiscal measures depends on their ideology, and that of their voters and donors.

This Ramadan, while we must be physically separated, we will remain spiritually connected

/PeninsulaQatar

/ThePeninsulaQatar

/Peninsula_Qatar

/ThePeninsulaNewspaper

+974 6698 6188

www.thepeninsula.qa

Politicians are running the economy now

Established in 1996

STEFANIE McCOLLUM, AMBASSADOR OF CANADA

TO THE STATE OF QATAR

11THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 OPINION

The International Monetary Fund expects debt in the 19 countries sharing the euro to jump by more than 13% of GDP to 97% this year as Europe-wide lockdowns cause an unprecedented 7.5% euro zone recession. But despite massive expected borrowing, the effect on yields has so far been small.

Somalia must have shocked the world in the last few weeks as the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Inter-national Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Paris Club creditors came together to wipe off most of Somalia’s debts to their institutions and countries.

Through the latter part of February to early March 2020, the international financial institutions announced that Somalia had made the difficult but nec-essary economic reforms under successive IMF Staff Monitored Programs, and reached the Decision Point.

This meant Somalia qual-ified for debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Coun-tries (HIPC) initiative and therefore received debt relief totalling just over $800m.

This was followed by the successful Paris Club negotia-tions where Somalia’s debt to the Club of just over $3bn was reduced by $1.4bn. Now, the

Somali government has turned its attention to the group of Non-Paris Club cred-itors, mainly Arab Govern-ments and their institutions, to whom just over $700 million is owed to get a com-parable or better deal.

If Somalia’s positive reform trajectory continues, which is likely the case given the gov-ernment’s and people’s deter-mination and clear track record of delivering on earlier reforms, Somalia’s external debt will most likely be cleared at Completion Point. However, the main headline is and remains, to the aston-ishment of many, that Somalia and Somalis have done some-thing right. Finally.

Reaching Decision Point was a crucial achievement for Somalia. This historic mile-stone has helped the Somali government to normalize its ties with the international financial institutions, which, alongside traditional bilateral and multilateral donors, will now facilitate new devel-opment financing through much-needed grant resources.

These new resources will allow the Somali government to invest in key policy prior-ities to boost the economy, better address poverty, and

ensure sustainable devel-opment for its people.

Reaching Decision Point was also monumental because Somalia is no longer synon-ymous with civil and political turmoil. Simply put, Somalia is no longer a failed state. The debt relief milestone, which allows Somalia to reintegrate into the global economy after 30 years of absence, is a signal that the country is making strides towards stability and development.

Furthermore, the decision to relieve Somalia’s debts and the country’s membership of the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) which followed, should give the Somali private sector and international investors greater confidence to develop the country’s eco-nomic potential.

Reaching Decision Point has further significance for Somalia because the reforms under the successive IMF Staff Monitored Programs have strengthened good gov-ernance and enhanced trans-parency in the country.

Despite country’s ranking as one of the most corrupt nations globally still, the crucial reforms are under-taken by successive Somalia governments under the IMF

reforms, which included bio-metrically registering all security personnel, paying civil servants directly into their bank accounts on time and addressing corruption within the public sector, have won the confidence of both Somalis as well as the inter-national community.

Now, the attainment of debt relief after a difficult long reform journey — with still some way to travel to full debt cancellation after Completion Point— will most likely fuel the Somali authority’s deter-mination to maintain this pos-itive momentum.

Somalis like to reminisce about a glorious socialist past that never really existed and, coupled with dictatorship, triggered one of the costliest and devastating civil wars in modern African history.

However, for Somalia to achieve debt relief it had to confront this history by counting its multifaceted debt stock. For a fragile, slowly recovering nation, with a weak and fragmented economy, Somalia was never able to pay back the $5.3 billion it owed creditors.

It is here where the good news begins because this realization and honest assessment by the Somali government started the process of engaging the cred-itors, which included both countries and institutions, to find a way forward. Somalia no longer wanted to be drowning in debt and a pariah of the international financial system.

Under successive IMF Staff Monitored Programs, Somalia embarked on a long but successful journey of eco-nomic reforms starting in 2016, which made the gov-ernment leadership and the people face the stark reality of indebtedness and exclusion from global financial resources. There were stringent structural bench-marks, including the passing of primary legislation by law-makers, focused on improving domestic resource mobili-zation and strengthening Public Financial Management as well as good governance, which has been achieved.

For the first time Somali security personnel were audited, revenues rose year on year from 2017 and

international partners started to have confidence in the Somali authorities’ ability and commitment to deliver reforms.

These reforms were most certainly challenging but by leading on them, the Somali government and people com-municated clearly to them-selves (most importantly) and the world that it was no longer business as usual.

Despite the still remaining many socio-economic and political challenges, Somalia has moved forward.

It is not just the glowing reports from international partners and the attainment of debt relief that symbolize this but also the increasing confidence of the Somali gov-ernment and people that --yes, after much trauma and past failures-- they can actually change their future for the better.

Somalia is an important developmental laboratory for the world given the country’s unique opportunities and chal-lenges. It is, therefore, crucial to learn the lessons of economic reform from Somalia, espe-cially, for fragile and devel-oping countries where public debt remains a key challenge.

The most important of these lessons are the impor-tance of leadership and common ownership at all levels from the government leadership, lawmakers, the private sector to international partners and the need to con-stantly engage the public to build trust and gain and maintain public support for reforms that will strengthen the economic fundamentals and good governance of countries.

Most importantly, what Somalia’s debt relief process can teach the world is that reforms and development are truly possible where there is a genuine partnership across borders and institutions.

After all, in this age of greater interconnectivity and interdependence, it is better to work towards sustainable development as a collective to achieve common progress and prosperity.

Liban Obsiye is the Chief Policy Coordinator at the office of the Minister of Finance of Somalia. Abdinor Dahir is Researcher and Horn of Africa Analyst at TRT World Research Centre.

Somalia’s debt relief process: Relevance and reform lessons

Euro zone government debt will surge this year on the coronavirus pandemic, but while another debt crisis is unlikely, large differences in indebtedness as countries emerge from the downturn could seriously test their unity.

The International Mon-etary Fund expects debt in the 19 countries sharing the euro to jump by more than 13% of GDP to 97% this year as Europe-wide lockdowns cause an unprecedented 7.5% euro zone recession. But despite massive expected bor-rowing, the effect on yields has so far been small.

Interest on bonds of already highly indebted Italy, Spain, Greece or Portugal is up by only 40-50 bps - kept in check by massive European Central Bank bond buying.

“As the ECB is literally cleaning up all the secondary market ... the risk of a sov-ereign debt crisis is close to zero,” Saxo Bank’s economist Christopher Dembik said, echoing many economists and

officials.The biggest difference

compared to the euro zone debt crisis of 2010-2012 is the ECB. Then, there was no unconditional ECB pledge to do “whatever it takes” to support the euro. As soon as it was made, in mid-2012, the crisis ended.

Neither was there the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions scheme of unlimited sovereign bond purchases or an experienced bailout fund with an unused lending capacity of 410 billion euros, ready to lend cheaply and practically without conditions.

But rather than market panic, it is the fact that the South will have to recover from the downturn while car-rying huge debt, in contrast to the North, that worries markets and euro zone offi-cials alike.

The key risk is political: to stay intact, the euro zone must not allow nationalist and eurosceptic parties in the South to capitalise on the hardships of recovery with huge debt levels and swing public opinion against the EU, economists said.

“The ECB can buy a lot of Italian bonds but it cannot convince markets that Italy wants to stay in the euro forever,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank.

“The tail risk that a future Italian government may want to leave the euro is one the market is watching. It’s not about the details, it’s about the risk of political backlash,” he said.

The backlash could take the form of popular resentment in Italy at its rela-tively limited ability to respond to the epidemic com-pared with Germany or the Netherlands.

Germany’s immediate fiscal response to the pan-demic was almost seven times larger than in Italy, where the crisis has been harsher, the chairman of the euro zone’s finance ministers, Mario Centeno, told the European Parliament, adding that such “fragmentation” undermined the single market and the euro.

Yet the future debt differ-ences will be big. The IMF sees Greek debt rocketing almost 22 points to 200% of GDP this year, Italian almost 21 points to 156% and Spanish 18 points to more than 113%. France, Portugal and Belgium will also be badly hit.

By contrast, Germany is expected to increase its debt by only 9 points to 69% and the Netherlands by 10 points to 58%. Austria, Finland, Slo-vakia and the Baltics will see similar or slightly bigger increases, but to much lower levels than southern states.

“I would bet 100 euros that a debt crisis will not return in the next one or two years,” said ING economist Carsten Brzeski, noting the euro zone’s very strong political will to avoid such a crisis when all its economies are suffering from the epidemic.

“However, I would probably also bet another 100 euros that an existential crisis of the euro zone will return. To some extent, the corona crisis is an accelerator. It will bring back the fundamental question on what is the right policy and how to deal with high government debt,” he said.

“The current crisis will lead to new economic divergence between the North and the South. The South will be hit harder by the crisis and the North will get out of the crisis faster and stronger,” Brzeski said.

The issue lies at the heart of discussions that EU leaders will hold on Thursday on how to ensure equal chances for economies to recover given their very different starting points on public indebtedness. At stake is the EU’s biggest asset - the single market of 450 million consumers which cannot function well if differ-ences between countries are too big.

“There is a risk that the current crisis leads to further divergence of fundamentals

among euro area countries,” said Reza Moghadam, chief economic adviser at Morgan Stanley.

The solutions adopted so far have failed to address the problem of debt sustainability in high-debt countries like Italy and of euro zone “frag-mentation”: different rates of growth, productivity, unem-ployment, or bank lending, Moghadam said.

To prevent such diver-gence, the EU is scrambling for ideas to prevent a massive debt build-up in the South while at the same time avoiding debt mutualisation or transfers unacceptable in Berlin, The Hague, Vienna or Helsinki.

“There certainly is a very real risk of serious political tensions between the North and the South, both in the medium term and in the near term,” one senior euro zone official said.

“Debt levels are the main issue here, because they will rise a lot everywhere, but for the South the rise will be more critical and thus limit their room for manoeuvre a lot in the years to come,” the official said.

To avoid debt building up in the South, some, like Spain, call for grants - money that would be borrowed by the whole EU, but then trans-ferred to the neediest with interest on the loans serviced through, for example, an EU tax on polluters.

Pandemic won’t cause euro debt crisis, but a North-South divide

LIBAN OBSIYE & ABDINOR DAHIR — ANATOLIA

JAN STRUPCZEWSKI REUTERS

It is here where the good news begins because this realization and honest assessment by the Somali government started the process of engaging the creditors, which included both countries and institutions, to find a way forward. Somalia no longer wanted to be drowning in debt and a pariah of the international financial system.

A Somali woman sells fruits to a customer standing at a social distancing signage, as a measure to stem the growing spread of the coronavirus disease outbreak, at the market centre in Hamarweyne district in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Food for refugees

12 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020AFRICA

South Africa mulls flexible curbs after lockdownREUTERS — JOHANNESBURG

South Africa is considering introducing flexible restrictions on economic activity after it phases out a nationwide lockdown, according to a draft government presentation.

An “alert system” comprising five levels would identify which sectors are allowed to operate under different risk scenarios and enable the government to alter restrictions swiftly for different parts of the country.

Africa’s most advanced economy last month imposed some of the world’s strictest measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial 21-day lockdown has already been extended by two weeks and is now due to expire on April 30.

The draft presentation, which was put together by the presidency and health ministry, said evidence indi-cated the lockdown had successfully limited the disease’s spread. “However, there are serious risks associated with lifting lockdown restrictions too soon, or in an unsystematic and disorderly manner,” it stated.

Sit-in restaurants, hotels, bars, conference centres, cinemas, sporting events and religious gatherings will remain shut after the lockdown ends, regardless of the risk level, the doc-ument said. And no gatherings of more than 10 people outside of a workplace

will be permitted. In a speech on Tuesday, President

Cyril Ramaphosa said the government would adopt a phased approach to easing lockdown measures, which cur-rently require people to remain in their homes and allow only essential services to operate.

Ramaphosa’s spokeswoman con-firmed the document was authentic but said it did not represent the gov-ernment’s final plan, which Ramaphosa is expected to offer during an address to the nation today.

“There have been various itera-tions and various consultations since this version. The president will announce the risk-adjusted strategy to easing the lockdown when he speaks tomorrow,” Khusela Diko said.

Data embedded in the document

show it was last modified on Sunday by the office of health ministry Director General Anban Pillay. When contacted by Reuters, Pillay declined to comment until after Ramaphosa’s speech.

The presentation proposes tighter restrictions on economic activity in response to the virus’s spreading faster and the health system in a low state of readiness, and looser restrictions if the spread of the virus is slower and the health system’s readiness is higher.

Rather than nationwide measures, the system would allow the alert level to vary from province to province based on local conditions.

In determining which sectors can be reopened, the government will weigh the risk of transmission within each industry, the expected impact of a continued lockdown as well as its value to the economy.

Citing a survey of industries, the document showed that the tourism sector would be the sector hardest hit by a continued lockdown, with only 5% of payroll likely to be paid at the end of May and potential layoffs of 55% of the workforce. Commercial aviation could also shed 45% of jobs.

“Sectors with a high risk of trans-mission should not be allowed to resume activity until this risk is reduced, regardless of the potential impact on their sector or their value to the economy,” the presentation said.

Libya’s GNA focused on Tripoli battle: MinisterREUTERS — TUNIS

Libya’s internationally recog-nised government is focused on trying to push its enemies out of artillery range of Tripoli after making advances in the main western battle fronts last week, the interior minister said.

Driving the forces of com-mander Khalifa Haftar out of the town of Tarhouna, southeast of the capital, could end the country’s civil war, Fathi Ali Bashagha said by phone. But this would be “the most difficult mil-itary option” at this moment in the Government of National

Accord’s (GNA) fight against eastern-based Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), Bashagha said.

“All our focus is on how to protect Tripoli and the people of Tripoli and keep the artillery bombardment away from them,” he said.

REUTERS — JOHANNESBURG

South Africa’s president announced an “extraordinary budget” of $500bn rand ($26bn) to address the huge socioeconomic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that “our country and the world we live in will never be the same again.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa in a national address said the “historic” amount is roughly 10% of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa’s most developed country. The top priorities are combating the virus and relieving “hunger and social distress” as millions of South Africans struggle to survive under lockdown, he said. One-tenth of the new special budget will go toward the country’s most vulnerable people over the next six months in one of the world’s most unequal nations. The pandemic has exacerbated inequalities, Ramaphosa said.

South Africa announces $26bn to help struggling nation

HRW slams Kenyan police ‘brutality’ during virus curfewAFP — NAIROBI

Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday accused Kenyan police of killing at least six people and beating and extorting others while enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

Kenya imposed the 7pm-5am lockdown from March 27.

The rights watchdog said police had imposed the measure in a “chaotic and violent manner from the start”, sometimes whipping, kicking and teargassing people to force them off the streets.

“At least” six individuals had been killed, it said.

It described the case of a 13-year-old boy who died in the capital Nairobi on March 31 after being shot while standing on his balcony as police forced people into their homes on the street below.

In others, a tomato seller died in western Kakamega after being hit by a teargas canister,

while four men were beaten to death in different parts of the country.

“It is shocking that people are losing their lives and live-lihoods while supposedly being protected from infection,” said Otsieno Namwaya, senior Africa researcher at HRW, in a statement. “Police brutality isn’t just unlawful; it is also counterproductive in fighting the spread of the virus.”

The rights organisation urged authorities to “urgently investigate” the cases of police brutality.

Kenya’s police force is often accused by rights groups of using excessive force and carrying out unlawful killings, e s p e c i a l l y i n p o o r neighbourhoods.

In January, HRW said at least eight young men had been shot in three low-income neighbourhoods s ince Christmas, and a 2019 report detailed the killings of 21 young men and boys by police “appar-ently with no justification”.

“Although many killings by

the police have been well doc-umented by both state institu-tions and rights organizations, the security officers have rarely been held to account, including by the police oversight authority,” said the statement.

On April 1 Kenyan Pres-ident Uhuru Kenyatta apolo-gised for “some excesses” by police in the enforcement of the curfew.

HRW criticised him for not instructing police to end the abuses. Kenyan police spokesman Charles Owino admitted there had been some problems but these had been resolved.

“We have mechanisms of dealing with errant police officers and actually we had a problem in the first days (of the curfew) and those individual cases were dealt with. Some officers were suspended and others sacked,” he said.

“What HRW is doing is an abuse of democracy. They should instead use funds to rally people to comply instead of demonising the police.”

AFP — JOHANNESBURG

Scores of government officials, including 89 police officers, have been arrested for flouting South Africa’s coronavirus regulations, many of them for selling confiscated liquor, the police minister said.

“Altogether 131 people including officials, councillors, health officials, cor-rectional services, have been arrested,” Police Minister Bheki Cele told the media in Durban. “Out of those, 89 of them are South African Police Service members.” Cele said many of the officers had been arrested for selling liquor they had confiscated from members of the public.

More than 20,000 police officers have been deployed along with the mil-itary to enforce a five-week lockdown under which alcohol sales are prohibited.

89 policemen held for flouting lockdown orders

North Nigeria packs up child beggars over virus fearsAFP — KANO

Hundreds of boys have their names and temperatures checked as they wait to board buses in a northern Nigeria’s city to transport them back to their villages.

The children are pupils of controversial schools who would usually be found begging in the streets of Kano for small change.

Now, they are the first batch in a programme that seeks to curb the spread of coronavirus by clearing some 250,000 children from the city’s streets and squalid seminaries.

“For now we have a total of 1,595 children which we are going to evacuate,” Muhammad Sanusi Kiru, Kano’s education commissioner, said as the first buses left yesterday.

“This is a gradual process,

we are doing it in phases, we a r e p i c k i n g t h e m step-by-step.”

Usually a vibrant city of four million people, Kano is the third hardest-hit area by the virus in Nigeria, with 73 confirmed cases and one death.

Residents are under a week-long lockdown that has seen roads emptied and people largely remaining indoors.

As part of the clampdown,

the authorities have also turned their attention to child beggars who, according to one estimate, could number several million in this state.

For generations, parents in majority-Muslim north Nigeria have sent their sons from as young as six to unlicensed schools known as Almajiris.

The lessons are free, but the children must fend for them-selves, usually by begging or

performing menial jobs.The seminaries —which

often double as so-called “rehabilitation centres” for drug addicts — came into the spotlight last year after raids across northern Nigeria uncovered men and boys held in atrocious conditions. Some residents were found chained up, while hundreds were crammed together in filthy rooms.

Cameroon President acknowledges army massacre of civiliansAP — YAOUNDE

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has acknowledged that the military massacred innocent people, including women and children, in a northwestern village in February after the government first denied it.

“The corpses of the three women and 10 children, whom the military killed and tried to cover up their actions by also torching several houses and blaming separatist fighters, will be exhumed for the state to conduct decent burials,” a statement from Biya’s office said.

The president has asked for legal action, it said. Three sol-diers have already been arrested. Innocent Laban, a spokesman for the people of the English-speaking north-western village of Ngarr-buh who escaped fighting between

armed separatists and the mil-itary, said he was pleased that Biya was for once acknowl-edging that troops have com-mitted atrocities.

Laban called on Biya to apologise to the rights groups he accused of fabricating the massacre to tarnish the military’s image. “This declaration comes to confirm the fact that the Cam-eroonian military is so unprofes-sional. A military that is killing the people rather than protecting them,” he said. “This comes to show us that human rights activists are doing a good job.”

On the night of February 14, residents said, soldiers raided their village and killed dozens of people. An international outcry by civil society organi-zations and rights groups fol-lowed, but the government said the military was professional and did not commit atrocities.

15 dead and 20missing aftermudslide in Kenya

ANATOLIA — NAIROBI

At least 15 people are dead and 20 are missing following a mudslide in western Kenya, local media reported yesterday.

The mudslide occurred on Saturday night after heavy rains and affected areas in the West Pokot and Elgeyo Mar-akwet counties, according to a report by Capital FM News.

“We have found three more bodies today [Tuesday]. The operation continues until we can account for everyone,” Rift Valley Regional Commis-sioner George Natembeya told the local media outlet by telephone.

He said the mudslide had caused “extensive” damage in the area.

The report said multiple homes, a shopping center, and a police post were damaged, and a police officer was among the dead.

With more rains predicted over the coming days, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i said the government is drawing up a plan to help residents of the affected areas.

“We are putting our heads together and organizing our-selves to deal with a clearly impending challenge … we are working jointly to see how we can effectively support Kenyans camping in schools and other facilities to avoid the negative consequences of the rains,” he told a news briefing on Monday.

The Raoued Municipality distributing food packages to African refugees amid coronavirus pandemic measures in Ariana, Tunisia, yesterday.

Ethiopia at high risk of yellow fever outbreakBLOOMBERG — ADDIS ABABA

Ethiopia, already battling COVID-19, is at high risk of a second scourge after yellow fever was reported in the south of the nation, the World Health

Organization said.The first two cases were

reported on March 3 in the SNNP Region and had risen to six by April 6, the WHO said.

“The high number of suspect cases reported over a

short time period is of high concern,” according to the statement. “The onset of the rainy season could increase density of mosquito vectors, thereby further exacerbating risk of spread.”

The Interior Minister of Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), Fathi Ali Bashagha, speaking at a press conference in Tripoli, yesterday.

Africa’s most advanced economy last month imposed some of the world’s strictest measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial 21-day lockdown has already been extended by two weeks and is now due to expire on April 30.

13THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 ASIA

HK leader Carrie Lam says reshuffle aimed at post-coronavirus recoveryREUTERS — HONG KONG

Hong Kong unveiled a government shake-up yesterday that it said was aimed at reviving the financial hub’s beleaguered economy and had nothing to do with a recent controversy over Beijing’s role in the city’s affairs.

Director of Immigration, Erick Tsang, will replace Patrick Nip as head of the Constitu-tional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said, shortly after China’s state council said it had approved the appointments.

The move comes two days after Nip apologised for con-flicting statements over the role of two Beijing institutions over-seeing the global financial cen-tre’s affairs.

Nip has been reassigned as the head of the city’s civil service, replacing Joshua Law.

“Hong Kong is in a very dif-ficult position now, apart from the pandemic, we are going through a major economic recession with high unem-ployment and so we really need to start planning for Hong Kong’s economic recovery,” Lam said at a briefing.

The government also announced new secretaries for technology, financial services and home affairs.

Some lawmakers said the moves reflected Beijing’s tight-ening grip over the city.

“This is not an ordinary reshuffle. This is a show of power,” Civic Party lawmaker Alvin Yeung said. Political ten-sions have escalated in Hong

Kong over the past week after Beijing’s top representative office in the city said it was not bound by a law that restricts interference by other mainland Chinese agencies in the former British colony.

The remarks prompted con-flicting statements from the Hong Kong government regarding the legal status of Bei-jing’s Liaison Office, and Nip apologised for the confusion.

Hong Kong returned to Beijing in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees it broad freedoms not seen in mainland China, and its high degree of autonomy is widely seen as key to its prosperity as an interna-tional financial hub.

Many in Hong Kong fear Beijing is increasingly meddling

in the city’s affairs, which the central government denies.

A war of words intensified last week when Beijing’s top official in Hong Kong urged the local government to work to enact national security legis-lation “as soon as possible”, fuelling worries over what many see as encroachment on the territory’s freedoms.

Fear that Beijing is flexing its muscle over Hong Kong risks a revival of anti-government protests after months of relative calm amid social distancing rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The government shake-up is the biggest under embattled

leader Lam, who has rejected repeated calls to step down even after admitting she had caused “unforgivable havoc” by igniting political turmoil last year.

Protests that escalated in June evolved into a broader pro-democracy movement, which is expected to rebuild momentum once social dis-tancing rules to curb corona-virus are lifted.

Hong Kong’s Security Sec-retary John Lee said yesterday the Chinese-ruled city was facing the risk of “home-grown terrorism” after several police reports of finding explosive materials.

Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office also ratcheted up tensions last week when it slammed opposition lawmakers who use “malicious filibustering” to paralyse the legislature, where a backlog of bills has angered the central government.

Days later, authorities arrested 15 pro-democracy activists in the city’s biggest crackdown on the movement, drawing a swift rebuke from Washington and London.

Beijing said on Tuesday it supported the arrests, adding certain “radicals” in the city were blind to the interference of outside forces.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (third right) with top officials pose for a group photo while wearing face masks following a government reshuffle, in Hong Kong, yesterday.

Hong Kong teens

charged with

murder over

protest death

AFP — HONG KONG

Hong Kong police charged yesterday two teenagers with murder over the death of an elderly man in a clash between rival protesters during the city’s political unrest last year.

Luo Chang-qing died in November when pro-democracy supporters and gov-ernment loyalists started hurling bricks at each other in the border town of Sheung Shui.

The fight was one of dozens that broke out between ideo-logical opponents during the seven straight months of pro-democracy protests that upended the city.

Luo, 70, died from a blow to the head.

Local media reported at the time that he had been filming a fight between the two sides on his mobile phone.

Yesterday police said they had charged two boys, aged 16 and 17, for his murder.

“The two were jointly charged with murder, wounding with intent and rioting,” a police spokesman told reporters.

Even though they are minors, the teens face up to life in prison if convicted.

Hong Kong’s protests were sparked by an attempt to allow extradition to China’s opaque justice system but soon morphed into a popular revolt against Beijing’s rule.

Millions of people took to the streets to protest for greater democratic rights and the dem-onstrations had often ended with violent clashes between protesters and police.

Taiwan President apologises for virus infections on navy shipAFP — TAIPEI

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen apologised yesterday for “major shortcomings” within the military after a cluster of coronavirus infections emerged on a navy vessel recently returned from a goodwill mission to Palau.

So far 28 people on board the frigate “Panshi” have tested positive for the virus after returning from a trip to the Pacific island nation — one of just 15 countries that still

diplomatically recognise Taipei over Beijing.

“I am the Commander-in-Chief, the military’s business is my business and my responsi-bility,” Tsai said in a speech broadcast live.

“There are major short-comings in the navy’s pandemic prevention measures during this mission, and the public is now bearing the risks. I want to give my apologies.”

Taiwan has been held up as a model for its swift response to the outbreak, with just 426

confirmed cases and six deaths despite its close proximity and economic ties to China.

It has also won diplomatic praise for shipments of masks and other protective equipment overseas, including to Europe.

The outbreak on the Panshi, however, threatens to undermine the island’s impressive track record.

Criticism has mounted in recent days over why the navy pushed ahead with mission despite the pandemic — and whether officials hid the fact

that some sailors were running fevers during the voyage.

The fleet’s commander, Rear Admiral Chen Tao-hui, was grilled by lawmakers yesterday.

“I swear with my life that I absolutely didn’t cover up any infection,” he said.

“As soldiers we would rather die at sea, die in the ship. I would not let the virus endanger our countrymen who we should protect,” he added.

The ship arrived in Palau on 15 March and left three days

later. The vessel returned to the port of Kaohsiung on 9 April where crew members were allowed to disembark six days later.

The first infections were confirmed over the weekend.

In recent days authorities have raced to track where crew members have been and who may have had contact with them.

Chen and another admiral have been removed from their posts pending further investigation.

Bangladesh

reports first virus

case in prisonANATOLIA — DHAKA Bangladesh reported its first prison case of the novel coro-navirus on Tuesday after a guard at Dhaka Central Jail tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to a hospital.

“Mohammad Yasin, 28, is the first COVID-19 patient in a jail,” leading English language daily newspaper New Age reported, citing the prison’s doctor Mahmudul Hasan as saying.

For the last couple of days, Yasin performed his duties at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), one of the country’s most crowded hospitals in the capital.

Yasin might have contracted the virus at DMCH, where he was guarding prison inmates, said Hasan.

All four of Yasin’s room-mates have been sent to home quarantine. The report has raised concern among inmates as well as prison authorities across the country.

According to government data, the country’s 68 prisons house around 90,000 inmates, more than double the overall capacity, with nearly 10,000 at the central jail.

Following the outbreak of the coronavirus in Bangladesh in early March, the country’s prison authorities have been keeping any new inmates quar-antined for two weeks.

Dozens of prisoners have already been quarantined with coronavirus symptoms, according to media reports.

The South Asian nation of more than 165 million people reported 110 deaths from the virus as of Tuesday with 2,382 confirmed cases and 87 recoveries.

India plans wristband patient surveillance as lockdown easesAP — NEW DELHI

India said yesterday that it plans to manufacture thousands of wristbands that will monitor the locations and temperatures of coronavirus patients and help perform contact tracing.

The wristband project aims to track quarantined patients and aid health workers and those delivering essential services. India is ramping up surveillance as it begins to ease one of the world’s strictest virus lockdowns.

It has 19,984 confirmed cases of coronavirus, including 640 deaths, and experts fear the epi-demic’s peak could still be weeks away. Thousands of wristbands are expected to be deployed, but an exact figure has not been released. The wristbands mirror a similar programme in Hong Kong, where authorities used bands to monitor overseas trav-ellers ordered to self-isolate.

Broadcast Engineering

Consultants India, a government-owned company, will present wristband designs to hospitals and state governments next week and work with Indian start-ups to manufacture them.

George Kuruvilla, the com-pany’s chairman, said the wrist-bands are likely to be rolled out in May.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the country’s 1.3 billion people to download a gov-ernment contact-tracing app called Arogya Setu to help determine their infection risk. It has been downloaded over 50m times since it was launched on April 2. Kuruvilla said the wrist-bands could integrate data cap-tured in the app.

He said the wristbands will be used to monitor the movements of quarantined patients, both at home and at hospitals, and any spikes in their body temperature. It will send an alert to public health officials if patients move

outside their quarantine zone. The device will also have an emer-gency button that wearers can use to call for help.

The wristband will let health workers know if people they encounter have been to high-risk areas or have been in contact with an infected person, while aiding

those delivering essential services such as groceries or medicines.

The wristband will capture all the places an infected person has visited, the routes they took, determine if they had any foreign travel and identify those who were in their vicinity. It will also tell people if a sick person is

nearby. It will also help in creating a geofence, or a virtual perimeter, around areas being monitored, such as common meeting places, public transit or places for reli-gious gatherings. A person leaving or entering the virtual perimeter could be alerted through the wristband.

Health workers check the body temperature of policemen at a hospital during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown, in Amritsar, yesterday.

South Korea finds patients testing positive post-recovery from coronavirus barely infectiousREUTERS — SEOUL

Patients who tested positive for novel coronavirus after recovering from their first bout of the illness appeared to be far less infectious the second time round, South Korea’s health authorities said yesterday.

While the trend in new cases in the country remained downward, the Korea Centers

for Disease Control and Pre-vention (KCDC) has begun investigating a growing number of people testing pos-itive after recovering.

More than 180 such cases have been reported so far in South Korea but none were found to have infected anyone else.

The medical authorities in South Korea initially conduct polymerase chain reaction

(PCR) tests on suspected cases.But investigating people

who appear to suffer a relapse after recovering from COVID-19, the KCDC takes cultures of the virus, a process that takes more than two weeks before reliable results become evident.

So far, culture tests are underway for 39 cases, but all six completed so far have been negative.

“That means the virus in the relapse cases have little to no infectiousness,” KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong told a briefing.

Jeong dismissed the idea of replacing PCR tests with culture tests to determine whether a patient has fully recovered, due to the amount of time and resources that they require.

The KCDC said it is still

examining why some patients test positive again after recovering.

Among the main possibil-ities are re-infection, a relapse, or inconsistent tests, experts say, and Jeong has said the virus may have been “reacti-vated” rather than the patients being re-infected.

The KCDC reported yes-terday 11 new coronavirus cases, taking the total

infections to 10,694. The daily tally of new cases has been hovering around 10 for the past five days. The death toll stands at 238.

After grappling with the first major outbreak outside China, South Korea has largely managed to bring the outbreak under control without major disruptions thanks to a massive testing campaign and intensive contact tracing.

“Hong Kong is in a very difficult position now, apart from the pandemic, we are going through a major economic recession with high unemployment and so we really need to start planning for Hong Kong’s economic recovery,” Lam said at a briefing.

14 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020ASIA

Japan grapples with new cruise ship virus cluster

REUTERS — TOKYO

More than 30 crew members on an Italian cruise ship docked for repairs in Japan’s Nagasaki prefecture have tested positive for the new coronavirus, raising concern about the impact on the local community.

The cluster of infections found on board the Costa Atlantica follows the case of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama two months ago, where more than 700 were found to be infected, although this time only crew members were on board.

The Costa Cruises-operated ship was taken into a shipyard in Nagasaki city, in western Japan, in late February by a unit of Mit-subishi Heavy Industries after the virus pandemic had scuttled plans for scheduled repairs in China. The vessel has 623 crew, and after detecting one had been infected tests were carried out on close contacts among fellow crew members. Nagasaki prefectural authorities yesterday said they had confirmed a total 34 infec-tions on the ship and appealed for help from the central gov-

ernment to tackle the incident.“There are a lot of infections

on board, and we don’t have the medical system to confirm the health situation and to separate” those who test positive and neg-ative, Governor Hodo Nakamura told a news conference.

“We’ll also need a system for transporting patients. It’s difficult for the prefecture to carry out decontamination work so I want to seek the country’s support.” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, told a separate news conference that the health ministry was cooperating with the Italian government and had sent specialists and cluster infection experts to the ship.

Concern was growing, however, about the potential impact on Nagasaki residents after revelations that some crew had left the restricted area where the ship was being repaired.

A Mitsubishi official, at the same news conference, said the company had been assured by Costa Atlantica that crew would

not leave the terminal as of March 14, but it later found out that some had left, for reasons such visiting hospital or going to the airport to return home upon completion of their work contract.

“Our understanding is that any departure was not for pur-poses such as sightseeing or eating out,” the official said. He added that anyone leaving the terminal area was screened, with no one allowed out if they had a fever of over 37.5 degrees Celsius.

“We had been told that there was no embarking or disem-barking so this is a very regret-table situation,” Nakamura said in response.

The governor also faulted the Italian cruise ship operator for not managing the movements of its crew in the manner it had promised, when asked his view on Mitsubishi’s responsibility.

News of the ship infections were trending on Twitter and sparked comparisons to the Diamond Princess, which had

been quarantined in February. The virus spread to more than 700 people on board the Diamond Princess and experts criticised the government’s quar-antine process.

“What, have none of the lessons of the Diamond Princess been learned? It was docked for repairs but were they urgent enough to require this, why was this allowed?” one user tweeted.

“They should go back to their own country as soon as possible.” Japanese health authorities are testing other crew on board the Costa Atlantica.

Those who test positive with slight symptoms or who are asymptomatic will stay aboard for monitoring, while those in serious condition will be taken to medical institutions, Nakamura said, with those testing negative sent to home nations. Japan has seen more than 11,500 infections and close to 300 deaths from the new coronavirus, excluding figures from the Diamond Princess.

A medical worker conducts a simulation for drive-through polymerase chain reaction tests for the coronavirus disease at Edogawa ward, in Tokyo, yesterday.

Imran, Trump discussglobal impact ofCOVID-19 pandemic INTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Trump held a telephonic conversation yesterday.

The two leaders discussed COVID-19 pandemic related challenges, its implications on global economy, and ways to mitigate its impact.

They also exchanged views on regional issues and further strengthening of Pakistan-US cooperation.

Prime Minister Imran Khan conveyed sympathies and condolences on the loss of so many precious lives in the US due to the coronavirus.

Prime Minister Imran Khan also highlighted Paki-stan’s efforts to contain the spread of the virus.

He emphasised that Pakistan was facing a dual challenge of overcoming the pandemic and saving people, particularly the most vul-nerable segments of the pop-ulation, from hunger due to lockdown.

He underlined that the government had put together a $8bn package to support the af fected people and businesses.

While thanking President Trump for the US support in the IMF and other fora, Prime Minister Imran Khan said that it would provide necessary fiscal space to Pakistan and help in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

The Prime Minister’s call for “Global Initiative on Debt Relief” for the developing countries is in the same context.

In the regional context, Prime Minister Imran Khan highl ighted Pakistan’s

steadfast support for a peaceful and stable Afghan-istan and the importance of political settlement.

The Prime Minister reaf-firmed Pakistan’s support for facilitation of the Afghan peace process and under-scored the importance of next steps leading to the earliest commencement of Intra-Afghan negotiations.

President Trump appre-ciated Prime Minister’s tele-phone call and expression of support for the US efforts to combat COVID-19.

He also reassured of US support to Pakistan in the efforts to combat COVID-19, including by making available ventilators as well as in the economic arena.

Having learned about testing of Prime Minister Imran Khan, President Trump offered to send the latest rapid testing machine for COVID-19 to the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister thanked him for the gesture.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan

Pakistan govt to launch $595m funding appeal to fight virusINTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan is launching a $595m funding appeal for meeting its needs for halting the spread of the coronavirus and recovering from its impact.

The appeal will be launched at a virtual event today. Besides Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and other senior Paki-stani officials, the meeting will also be attended by World Health Organisation Director Deneral Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,

the Asian Development Bank’s vice president and the World Bank’s managing director.

“The Government of Pakistan is launching an initial $595m coordinated multi-sectoral Pre-paredness and Response Plan to combat COVID-19 in a bid to sup-press and mitigate the spread of Coronavirus,” a statement from the Foreign Office (FO) said.

It further said the donors would be asked “to fund and par-ticipate in combating the imme-diate and long-term impacts of

the COVID-19 crisis on health sector”.

FO spokesperson Aisha Farooqui said a plan for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic was being presented to the United Nations, multilateral donors and other countries. The plan, she said, identified funding gaps for dealing with the challenge.

She said it is expected that countries and donor organisa-tions would come forward with pledges.

The appeal has been developed jointly by the National Disaster Management Authority and other government agencies involved in the fight against COVID-19.

Pakistan has earlier got $1.4bn under IMF’s Rapid Financing Instrument for addressing the economic impact of COVID-19.

The World Bank separately provided $238m loan for strengthening the country’s n a t i o n a l h e a l t h c a r e

systems, mitigating socioeco-nomic disruptions and procuring urgently needed medical equipment and supplies.

The Asian Development Bank had, meanwhile, chipped in with a $2.5m grant for funding imme-diate purchase of emergency medical supplies, personal pro-tective equipment, diagnostic and laboratory supplies and other equipment. At the bilateral level, contributions have been made by the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Japan protests

Chinese patrols

near disputed

Senkaku Islands

ANATOLIA — TOKYO Tokyo has lodged a protest with Beijing over the presence of Chinese ships in Japan’s territorial waters near Senkaku Islands in East China Sea.

According to Kyodo News agency, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in a phone call on Tuesday evening.

Chinese ships have entered waters near the Jap-anese-controlled islets seven times this year, with the latest intrusion last Friday when four vessels sailed through the area for about 90 minutes, the report said.

The Senkaku Islands, which China calls Diaoyu and claims as its own, are a matter of dispute between the two countries.

Motegi also conveyed Tokyo’s concerns over China’s move to establish dis-tricts to administer the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, according the report.

He also addressed the subject at a news conference on Tuesday, saying the issue was “directly related to regional peace and stability.”

“We are monitoring the recent situation in the South China Sea with concern. Issues concerning the South China Sea are legitimate matters of concern for the international community that are directly related to regional peace and stability,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“Japan strongly opposes any actions that increase ten-sions in the South China Sea. Japan … [urges] all the parties related to the South China Sea issue [to] exert efforts toward the peaceful resolution of conflicts based on interna-tional law.”

Vietnam to ease nationwide virus lockdownREUTERS — HANOI

Vietnam, which has reported under 300 cases of coronavirus and no deaths since the first infections were detected in January, said yesterday it would start lifting tough movement restrictions as most of Southeast Asia remained in lockdown.

No provinces in Vietnam were now seen as “highly prone” to the pandemic, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in a statement, although some non-essential businesses will remain closed.

Vietnam has won plaudits for appearing to contain the virus despite being less wealthy than other places seen as rela-tively successful such as South Korea and Taiwan. It has reported no new infections for nearly a week.

It has used a combination of the mass quarantine of tens of thousands, contact-tracing and testing to successfully contain relatively small clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Hanoi may have also gleaned crucial early infor-mation from China.

Yesterday, US cybersecurity firm FireEye said Vietnamese state-backed hackers had

attempted to break into organ-isations at the centre of Beijing’s efforts to contain the outbreak, days before the first interna-tional COVID-19 cases were reported.

It also took other early measures. One day after the first two cases were detected in Vietnam, Hanoi suspended flights to China’s Wuhan, where the outbreak started.

Days later, Vietnam closed its porous 1,400km border with China to all but essential trade and travel and, by March, made the wearing of masks in public places mandatory nationwide.

Vietnam, which in 2003 became the first country outside China to be infected by the SARS epidemic, also has by far the largest ratio of testing to con-firmed COVID-19 cases in the world.

According to data published by Vietnam’s health ministry yesterday, Vietnam has carried out 180,067 tests and detected just 268 cases, 83 percent of whom it says have recovered. There have been no reported deaths.

The figures are equivalent to nearly 672 tests for every one detected case, according to the Our World in Data website.

The next highest, Taiwan, has conducted 132.1 tests for every case, the data showed.

Communist-ruled and tra-ditionally secretive Vietnam has made much of its data public.

Movement restrictions remain across most of Southeast Asia, where the virus has killed more than 1,200 people and infected more than 33,000.

Singapore, which initially managed to contain the out-break but has been hit by a swell in cases in migrant worker dor-mitories, has extended a partial lockdown by four weeks until June 1.

In Thailand, where a state of emergency is due to expire at the end of April, the health ministry has proposed that lockdown measures be lifted in provinces where no coronavirus cases have been reported for two weeks.

Malaysia has not yet decided whether to extend or lift social distancing measures, but a senior minister said on Wednesday that the government would explore the idea of allowing people who had left urban areas to return.

In Indonesia, which with 653 deaths has reported the highest

number in the region, the capital Jakarta said it would extend social distancing measures to May 22.

Not all of Vietnam will have social distancing measures lifted, state media said. A town of 7,600 people in the northern moun-tainous province of Ha Giang was locked down near the border with China after one case was detected there this month.

Two rural villages with a combined population of 12,000 people on the outskirts of the capital, Hanoi, will remain on lockdown, state media said.

A woman wearing a face mask walks past the closed Dong Xuan market amid Vietnam’s nationwide social isolation efforts as a preventive measure against coronavirus, in Hanoi, yesterday.

The cluster of infections found on board the Costa Atlantica follows the case of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama two months ago, where more than 700 were found to be infected, although this time only crew members were on board.

15THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 ASIA

Chinese city tightens travel curbs amid virus outbreakREUTERS — BEIJING

A northeastern city of 10 million people, grappling with what is now China’s biggest coronavirus outbreak, further restricted inbound traffic yesterday to contain the spread of the highly contagious disease.

Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang and its biggest city, has banned entry to residential zones by non-locals and vehicles registered elsewhere, state media said. It had already ordered isolation for those arriving from outside China or key epidemic areas.

Heilongjiang has been in the forefront of China’s latest efforts to identify infected citizens arriving from Russia, with which it shares a border, to curb the spread of the virus.

“All confirmed cases, sus-pected cases, close contacts of asymptomatic people, and close contacts of close contacts should be quarantined and tested,” state media cited the city government as saying.

Harbin said this month it was ordering 28 days of quar-antine for all arrivals from abroad, with two nucleic acid tests and an antibody test for each. It also set 14-day lock-downs for residences where

confirmed and asymptomatic cases are found.

“I’m not taking my daughter or parents outside anymore. If we need any food or vegetables, we just let my husband buy it on his way back,” said a 34-year-old Harbin resident surnamed Sun.

“And whenever anyone has to go outside, he or she will leave their shoes outside the door to avoid bringing back any virus.” Harbin, which has air links with Russia, reported seven new confirmed cases on Tuesday, taking its local infec-tions to 52, excluding recoveries discharged from hospital.

Additionally, three infected travellers arrived from Russia. About 1,400 people are being observed for signs of the virus.

By Tuesday, Heilongjiang reported 537 local confirmed cases, including 470 discharged from hospital. Besides Harbin, the city of Mudanjiang has two

current confirmed cases.“Prevention measures have

been more strict recently, and people from Mudanjiang or Harbin will not be allowed to come into our town,” said a civil servant surnamed Zhang, who lives in Mishan town on the eastern edge of Heilongjiang.

One persisting cluster in Harbin centred on an 87-year-old man surnamed Chen who had stayed at two hospitals since April 2, four days after dinner at home with his son’s friends, two of whom later tested positive.

By Tuesday, Chen had infected 78 people, with 55 con-firmed, though 23 who tested positive have yet to show virus symptoms.

Those infected were mainly family members, hospital patients and their families, and doctors and nurses in direct or indirect contact, provincial health officials said.

Of seven new confirmed cases in Heilongjiang on Tuesday, four were patients who had stayed in the same ward as Chen, while three were healthcare workers at one hos-pital. The virus that infected the cluster has travelled beyond the province, with health officials in neighbouring Liaoning

reporting on April 16 a con-firmed case whose father had stayed at the same hospital as Chen.

On Monday, the northern region of Inner Mongolia reported a confirmed case in an individual who had stayed at one of the Harbin hospitals at the same time as Chen and the

Liaoning patient.Mainland China reported 30

new confirmed cases on Tuesday, 23 of them imported, involving travellers from overseas, up from 11 the pre-vious day.

Mainland China’s tally of confirmed cases stands at 82,788, with 4,632 deaths.

Office workers wearing face masks amid concerns about the coronavirus walk during their lunch break, in Beijing, yesterday.

Australia seeks support for international probe into coronavirus spreadREUTERS — SYDNEY/GENEVA

Australia sought support for an international probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in calls with US Pres-ident Donald Trump and major powers, but France and Britain said now was the time to fight the virus and not apportion blame.

Australia’s push for an inde-pendent review of the origins and spread of the pandemic, including the response of the World Health Organisation (WHO), has drawn sharp crit-icism from China, which has accused Australian lawmakers of taking instructions from the United States.

Morrison said on Twitter he had “a very constructive dis-cussion” with Trump on the two nation’s responses to COVID-19 and the need to get economies up and running.

“We also talked about the WHO & working together to improve the transparency & effectiveness of the interna-tional responses to pandemics,” he tweeted.

The White House has been fiercely critical of China and the

WHO, and has withdrawn US funding from the UN agency.

Morrison also spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Macron by phone about the role of the WHO, his office said.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has repeatedly said that the UN agency will evaluate its han-dling of the pandemic after it ends and draw the appropriate lessons, as it does after all emergencies.

Macron told Morrison now was not the time for an inves-tigation, a French official said.

“He says he agrees that there have been some issues at the start, but that the urgency is for cohesion, that it is no time to talk about this, while reaf-firming the need for trans-parency for all players, not only the WHO,” an Elysee official said.

In Berlin, the government confirmed that Merkel had spoken with Morrison on Tuesday.

Last Friday, her spokesman said: “The coronavirus appeared first in China. China has suf-fered a lot from the virus and

did a lot to fight against spreading.”

The coronavirus, believed to have emerged in a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was first reported by China to the WHO on December 31.

The virus has since infected some 2.3 million people globally and killed nearly 160,000, according to.

Australia is examining whether the WHO should be given powers, similar to

international weapons inspectors, to enter a country to investigate an outbreak without having to wait for consent, a government source said. Senior Australian law-makers have also questioned Beijing’s transparency over the pandemic.

China’s embassy in Can-berra said in a statement late on Tuesday that Australian law-makers were acting as the mouthpiece of Trump and “certain Australian politicians

are keen to parrot what those Americans have asserted and simply follow them in staging political attacks on China”.

Australia has recorded just over 6,600 cases of the virus nationally, with four new cases yesterday.

Infection rates have slowed from 25 percent in mid-March to less than 1 percent a day.

Lawmakers plan to ease some curbs, with Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach to partially reopen next week.

Residents (centre) arrive at a hotel in Adelaide for a mandatory 14-day quarantine after returning on a repatriation flight due to the coronavirus outbreak, in Australia.

North Korean media silent on Kim Jong-Un’s whereabouts as speculation on health ragesREUTERS — SEOUL

North Korean state media yesterday made no mention of leader Kim Jong-Un’s health or whereabouts, a day after intense international specu-lation over his health was sparked by media reports he was gravely ill after a cardio-vascular procedure.

North Korean media pre-sented a business as usual image, carrying routine reporting of Kim’s achieve-ments and publishing some of his older, or undated, comments on issues like the economy.

South Korean and Chinese officials and sources familiar with US intelligence have cast doubt on South Korean and US media reports that he was seri-ously sick, while the White House said it was closely mon-itoring the matter.

US President Donald Trump, who held unprece-dented summits with Kim in 2018 and 2019 in an attempt to persuade him to give up his nuclear weapons, said the reports had not been confirmed and he did not put much cre-dence in them.

“We’ll see how he does,” Trump told a White House news conference on Tuesday.

“We don’t know if the reports are true.” Speculation

about Kim’s health first arose due to his absence from the anniversary of the birthday of North Korea’s founding father and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, on April 15.

Yesterday, the main head-lines from the North’s state news agency, KCNA, included pieces on sports equipment, mulberry picking, and a meeting in Bangladesh to study North Korea’s “juche” or self-reliance ideology.

The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried older or undated remarks attributed to Kim in articles about the economy, the textile industry,

city development, and other topics. As usual Kim’s name was plastered all over the news-paper, but there were no reports on his whereabouts.

A spokesman for South Korea’s presidential Blue House said they could not confirm Kim’s whereabouts, or whether he had undergone surgery. South Korea had detected no unusual activity in North Korea, the spokesman said.

Daily NK, a Seoul-based website, reported late on Monday that Kim, who is believed to be about 36, was hospitalised on April 12, hours before the cardiovascular

procedure. The report’s English-language version carried a correction on Tuesday to say the report was based on a single unnamed source in North Korea, not multiple as it earlier stated.

It said his health had dete-riorated since August due to heavy smoking, obesity and overwork, and he was now receiving treatment at a villa in the Mount Myohyang resort north of the capital Pyongyang.

“It does look like something is going on, based on the repeated absences of last week,” said Chad O’Carroll, CEO of the Korea Risk Group, which monitors North Korea.

“A health issue seems to be the most logical explanation for all this, but whether or not it’s cardiac-related seems to be too early to tell.”

On Tuesday, CNN reported an unidentified US official saying the United States was “monitoring intelligence” that Kim was in grave danger after surgery. However, two South Korean government officials rejected the CNN report. China, North Korea’s only major ally, also dismissed the reports.

Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, told Fox News the White House was monitoring the reports “very closely”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Cebu City jailsees 123 newCOVID-19infectionsREUTERS — MANILA

A prison in the Philippines is suffering from a major outbreak of the new corona-virus with 123 infected inmates, officials said yesterday, adding to concerns among activists about contagion risks in some of the world’s most over-crowded jails.

The mayor of Cebu City said a new building in the prison capable of handling 3,000 people would be used as an iso-lation facility to contain an out-break that accounts for 40 percent of cases in the Philip-pines’ second biggest city.

There were no details about the possible source of the out-break. Eighteen cases have been found at a jail in Manila’s Quezon City, among them nine members of staff, and media has reported infections at other facilities.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) was among several groups that called for inmates held for minor, non-violent offences, or those with health conditions, to be freed from Philippine prisons to create more space.

Activists globally have been urging governments to free political prisoners.

HRW this month warned of the likelihood of a serious coro-navirus outbreak in the Philip-pines “threatening the lives of prisoners whose health the authorities have a duty to protect”.

The Cebu jail outbreak is among the biggest known coro-navirus clusters in the Philip-pines, which as of yesterday had 6,710 infections and 446 deaths. About 70 percent of cases are in the capital, Manila.

Philippine prisons are noto-riously overcrowded due to a combination of poverty, high crime rates and a judicial system unable to cope with a huge case volume.

A shortage of public defenders, overwhelmed judges and insufficient funds to post bail means suspects typi-cally spend long periods - sometimes years - in detention awaiting court hearings that often end up with acquittals.

As of December, nearly 90,000 people in the Philip-pines were detained awaiting trial, corrections bureau data showed.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has exacerbated the problem, each year adding tens of thousands to jails, with 71 percent of inmates held on drugs-related charges. The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that due to concerns about the coronavirus, judges should urgently free prisoners eligible for temporary or early release.

One-month-old infant recovers from virus in ThailandREUTERS — BANGKOK

A one-month-old Thai baby, the country’s youngest coronavirus patient, has successfully recovered from the illness thanks to a team of medics and the use of a cocktail of antiviral drugs, a doctor said yesterday.

After close consultations with pharmaceutical physicians and other medical experts, the team decided to use four anti-viral drugs to cure the baby.

“The strategy used to treat this child was to give him med-ication for 10 days,” Visal Moo-lasart, the paediatrician who treated the baby at the Bamra-snaradura Infectious Diseases Institute in Bangkok, said.

“We conducted a health check on him every day and three to five days after that, his X-rays showed signs of gradual recovery.”

Despite the challenges in treating infants under a year old due to restrictions on certain medications, Visal said the symptoms in young children tend to be less severe than in adults. Thailand yesterday reported 15 new coronavirus cases and one new death, bringing the national total to 2,826 confirmed cases and 49 deaths.

Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang and its biggest city, has banned entry to residential zones by non-locals and vehicles registered elsewhere, state media said. It had already ordered isolation for those arriving from outside China or key epidemic areas.

16 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020EUROPE

Cars line up at the drive-through testing facility, as soldiers help conducting COVID-19 testing for NHS key workers at Haydock Park Racecourse near Liverpool, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in Britain.

UK govt accused of slow response to virus outbreak as death toll rises to 18,100AFP — LONDON

The new leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour party yesterday accused the government of being slow in its coronavirus response, as lawmakers met for a virtual session in parliament.

A total of 18,100 people with coronavirus have died in hos-pital in Britain, new health min-istry figures showed yesterday, up 763 from the previous day’s toll.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock had earlier said that Britain was “at the peak” of its outbreak of COVID-19, one of the worst in the world.

Tuesday’s toll, which does not include care homes or deaths in the community, was 17,337, which would suggest a daily increase of 763. But offi-cials said the historic data has been revised.

In his first chance to quiz ministers since being elected leader earlier this month, Keir Starmer said there was “a sig-nificant gap between promise and delivery” in the handling of the crisis.

The government is facing

increased scrutiny of various aspects of its response, from ordering social distancing measures weeks later than European neighbours to its pro-vision of safety equipment to frontline health workers.

“There’s a pattern emerging here: we were slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on protective equipment,” Starmer said, as he also ques-tioned Britain’s sluggish testing regime.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he recovers after being hos-pitalised for COVID-19, insisted ministers had been guided by scientific and medical advisers “at every step along this way”.

“I don’t accept his premise that we’ve been slow,” he said.

“If he thinks he knows better than they do, with the

benefit of hindsight, then that’s his decision. But that is not the way we’ve proceeded.”

Britain is one of the coun-tries worst hit by the pandemic, with 18,100 deaths in hospital alone— and many more feared in care homes and the community.

The government ordered a national lockdown on March 23, but has seen mounting criticism about the extent of screening for the virus and for refusing to detail an exit strategy from the social distancing regime.

Ministers have also become embroiled in a simmering row about Britain’s delay in joining an EU scheme to bulk buy medical equipment, and whether it was linked to Brexit.

The government says the delay was due to “communi-cation problems” -- but the foreign ministry’s top civil

servant on Tuesday said it was a “political decision”.

In an extraordinary U-turn, Simon McDonald then retracted his evidence to the foreign affairs committee, writing to tell them it was “incorrect”.

On Tuesday evening, Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed that he had now agreed to join the EU scheme on an “associate” basis, but said it had yet to deliver anything.

Britain left the EU on January 31, but both sides agreed a transition until the end of the year in which relations

remain largely the same. European Commission

spokesman Stefan de Keers-maecker told reporters in Brussels that Britain was legally able to participate in joint pro-curement schemes for coronavirus.

He said the UK, like all EU members, was aware of the work being carried out and had “ample opportunity” to ask to join. “As to why it did not par-ticipate, this is obviously some-thing on which we cannot comment.”

In a move that could

potentially help ease some of the pressure, a Royal Air Force plane landed in Britain from Turkey on Wednesday after being sent to collect a shipment of equipment, including 400,000 badly-needed surgical gowns.

Meanwhile, Matt Hancock yesterday doubled down on a target to test 100,000 people daily by the end of next week.

“As we reach the peak and as we bring the number of new cases down, so we will introduce contact tracing at large scale,” he told MPs.

An empty Grand Canal is seen as Italy’s lockdown measures continue to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease in Venice, yesterday.

Spain to let children out,aims to ease lockdownREUTERS — MADRID

Relieved Spanish parents welcomed yesterday a decision allowing children out on short walks for the first time in more than a month as the government contemplated a broader easing of one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns next month.

With Europe’s second highest death toll of 21,717 and the world’s second most infec-tions at 208,389, Spain’s tough restrictions have included a controversial ban on children leaving their homes since mid-March.

However, on Tuesday night, the government bowed to public pressure — including pot-banging protests on bal-conies — and said those under 14 would be able to take short walks outside under super-vision from the weekend.

Parents welcomed the concession, though it came late for some, after nearly six weeks cooped up at home.

“The escalation of anxiety, tantrums, irascible behaviour... have been in crescendo,” said Dr Iban Onandia, 35, a neu-ropsychologist in the Basque province of Bizkaia.

Youngsters have paid an “indecent” price during the lockdown, added the father of two children, aged four and two. Ramon Motta, a Madrid-based maitre d’hotel with two daughters Carla, 11 and Ariadna, 8, resorted to setting up a tent in their fifth-floor apartment to keep them entertained.

“We have Disney +, Netflix and videogames, but you don’t want your kids spending five-six-seven hours in front of a screen, yet at the same time there’s not much else to do,” he said.

“After such a long time locked in, kids and parents start losing patience pretty quickly. A couple of times Carla went into a tantrum.”

As his left-wing coalition marked 100 days in office, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez sought parliamentary approval to prolong a state of emergency until May 9 - the third such

extension. With the epidemic seemingly past its peak, the lockdown could start to be phased out towards the end of May, though measures will be eased gradually, he told lawmakers.

A slowdown in infections and deaths has Spaniards opti-mistic their nightmare may be easing. The official tally, however, fails to account for those who were more than likely killed by the virus but never tested.

The Madrid region yes-terday released its own tally, showing 4,275 extra deaths, or 56% more than health ministry data. Nearly 4,000 of these were care home residents.

Nevertheless, officials were increasingly focused on restarting the flagging economy.

COVID-19 toll exceeds 25,000 in ItalyAFP — ROME

Italy’s official death toll from the novel coronavirus topped 25,000 yesterday, but the number of those currently being treated declined for a third consecutive day as the government considers easing some of the lockdown measures.

With 437 fatalities reported by the civil protection services over the past 24 hours, the Med-iterranean country’s official toll over the past two months rose to 25,085 —the second-highest in the world after the United States.

Nevertheless, most doctors believe that Italy’s actual toll is substantially higher because most care home deaths are not counted and the number of people who died outside hos-pitals is unknown.

The decline in the number of active virus cases was accompanied by a fall in the number of people receiving intensive care treatment to the lowest level since March 18.

Both figures are being watched closely by the Italian government as it considers

which restrictions to lift and which to extend when the nation’s current lockdown ends on May 3.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has promised to outline his plan for the next stage in Italy’s battle against the virus

by the end of the week. He was meeting with

regional and labour union leaders Wednesday to prepare for a possible easing of some of the strictest measures.

Italy’s national lockdown is the longest one currently in

force anywhere in the world. Its stay-at-home orders —

introduced on March 9 — have since been replicated by other European nations. Conte ordered all shops except for pharmacies and grocery stores to close on March 12.

AFP — MADRID

Spain said yesterday another 435 people died in the past 24 hours, a slight increase in the figures for a second day running and bringing the overall death toll to 21,717.

Spain has suffered the third-highest number of deaths in the world after the United States and Italy, with infections now hitting 208,000 cases, health min-istry figures showed. Mon-day’s figure of 399 deaths was the lowest in four weeks, but a day later, it rose to 430 with officials explaining the numbers tend to go up slightly on Tuesdays following delays in receiving regional data on weekend deaths.

The March 14 lockdown has been twice extended with parliament yesterday expected to prolong it until May 9. But from Sunday, the conditions are to be eased for youngsters in Spain, who have not been allowed out of the house for nearly six weeks under one of the most restrictive lockdowns in the world.

Deaths up slightly for second day

Spanish mayor

resigns after

attacking policeAFP — BARCELONA

A Spanish mayor resigned yesterday just hours after being arrested for drink driving and attacking police who stopped him, a court and local media reported.

Nearly six weeks into one of the most restrictive coro-navirus lockdowns in the world, Alex Pastor stepped down as Badalona mayor fol-lowing reports he was caught driving under the influence and bit an officer who tried to give him a breathalyser test.

“Alex Pastor has resigned,” said a statement from the Badalona town hall, a beach-front town just north of Bar-celona that is home to 200,000 people.

He was arrested in Bar-celona on Tuesday night and later charged with “a road safety violation and for attacking police”, a court statement said. “He was arrested after showing symptoms of having drunk alcohol,” Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch told local radio, without giving further details. Local press reports said Pastor physically lashed out at police, even biting one of the officers. Local coun-cillor Ruben Guijarro later con-firmed the details.

Spain arrests one of Europe’s most-wanted IS fightersREUTERS — MADRID

Spanish police detained one of Europe’s most wanted fugitive Islamic State (IS) fighters in the southern town of Almeria, the government said.

The Egyptian man, who has fought in Syria and Iraq, was hiding in an apartment with two

other people who were also arrested and were being iden-tified by police, the interior ministry said in a statement.

A European security source said the man arrested was Abdel Majed Abdel Bary. “This is a sig-nificant arrest,” the source said.

Bary has appeared in gory propaganda pictures of IS

crimes, the ministry said. “The detained man spent

several years in the Syria-Iraq area and presents peculiar per-sonality features such as an extremely violent criminal profile which caught the attention of police and intelli-gence services in Europe,” the statement added. The three

suspects had come via North Africa and were keeping a low profile during Spain’s corona-virus lockdown, exiting the apartment one-by-one and wearing protective masks.

A prominent IS foreign fighter, Bary was stripped of his British citizenship because of his links with the violent group,

The Guardian newspaper reported.

Police are eager to intercept many of the dozens of Spanish Muslims who left for Syria and Iraq to fight alongside IS and may now want to perpetrate attacks on home soil such as the killing of 16 people in Barcelona in 2017.

Switzerland to stock shops with a million masks a dayAFP — GENEVA

Switzerland said yesterday it would deliver to shops a million masks a day, but insisted it would not make it mandatory to wear them as corona-virus restrictions start to ease.

The army will be used to distribute the million masks daily for the next two weeks, for stores to be able to sell to the public.

Switzerland stopped short of imposing full confinement in emergency measures introduced last month to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.

But on Monday it will begin to ease the restrictions as the spread of COVID-19 has slowed.

Health Minister Alain Berset stressed at a press conference in Bern that the government “does not recommend wearing masks in eve-ryday circumstances”, adding that physical dis-tancing and handwashing were the most effective protection measures.

Nevertheless, businesses which are due to reopen on Monday need to put in place protection plans for their customers and employees, and

the government said that might involve adopting masks.

“If it becomes necessary to wear a mask as part of protection plans, it may be a good idea. Just buy these masks as you need them,” said Berset.

More than 28,000 people in Switzerland have tested positive for coronavirus, while more than 1,200 have died in the landlocked European country of 8.5 million people.

The Alpine nation has announced a three-stage easing of the restrictions imposed to sup-press the COVID-19 pandemic, with some shops and services allowed to reopen from Monday.

Doctors’ surgeries, dentists, creches, hair-dressers and massage and beauty salons will be able to reopen.

Hospitals will be able to perform all proce-dures, including non-urgent ones, while DIY stores, garden centres and florists will also be able to open up again.

Mourners outside the immediate family will once more be able to attend funerals, while food shops that also sell other goods will be able to reopen the whole store.

“There’s a pattern emerging here: we were slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on protective equipment,” the main opposition Labour party leader Keir Starmer said, as he also questioned Britain’s sluggish testing regime.

Social distancing

17THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 EUROPE

Monaco’s royal house goes frugal as virus crisis bitesAFP — NICE, FRANCE

Monaco will reduce spending on the royal household by 40 percent to cope with the coro-navirus fallout in the princi-pality on the French Riviera, the palace said.

“The gravity of the situ-ation demands rigorous financial management... that leads to an overall reduction in state expenses,” the palace said in a statement.

As a result, the allocation for the royal living expenses will fall to eight million euros ($8.7bn) from 13.2m before the crisis. Head of state Prince Albert II tested positive for COVID-19 last month, though he came out of quarantine on March 31.

Monaco has been battered by a wave of event cancellations including the Formula One Grand Prix, a glittering fixture on the world motorsport cal-endar that was supposed to be held on May 24. And with no high-spending tourists in its luxury boutiques or playing the tables at the Monte-Carlo or other casinos, tax revenues have plummetted.

Race for virus vaccine picks up as Germany, UK start trialsAFP — BERLIN

The race to develop an effective vaccine against the novel coro-navirus gathered pace this week, as clinical trials on humans were approved in Germany and launched in the UK.

Though there are now around 150 development projects worldwide, the German and British plans are among only five clinical trials on humans which have been approved across the globe.

In Britain, volunteers in a trial at the University of Oxford are set to be given on Thursday the first dose of a potential vaccine based on a virus found in chimpanzees.

Meanwhile yesterday, German regulatory body PEI green-lighted the country’s first trials on human volunteers for a vaccine developed by German firm Biontech and US giant Pfizer. The Oxford trial, run by the university’s Jenner Institute, will involve 510 volunteers aged between 18 and 55 in the first phase.

Research director Professor Sarah Gilbert estimated that it has around an 80 percent chance of being successful.

The institute aims to develop a million doses of the vaccine by September, so as to distribute it as quickly as pos-sible after approval.

The Oxford trial is part of a nationwide effort in the UK which since Friday has been spearheaded by a government taskforce.

In Germany, meanwhile, the PEI said its approval of the

Biontech trial marked a “signif-icant step” in making a vaccine “available as soon as possible”.

In the first phase, it will see “200 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 55 years” vac-cinated with variants of the vaccine, while the second phase could see the inclusion of vol-unteers who belonged to high-risk groups.

Yesterday, Biontech CEO Ugur Sahin told a press con-ference that tests would begin “at the end of April”.

He added that the firm expected to have collected first data by “the end of June or beginning of July”.

Biontech also said that they and Pfizer hoped to gain regu-latory approval soon to test the same vaccine candidate in the US. The PEI meanwhile claimed that “further clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine can-didates will start in Germany in the next few months”.

There are currently no approved vaccines or medi-cation for the COVID-19 disease, which has killed more than 170,000 people worldwide and infected more than two million.

Experts estimate that it will take at least 12 to 18 months to develop a new vaccine.

Last week, UN

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a vaccine was the only thing to return “normalcy” to the world, and called for development projects to be accelerated.

A UN resolution adopted on Monday, meanwhile, called for “equitable, efficient and timely” access to any vaccine that might be developed.

Aside from Biontech and Oxford, three other clinical trials on humans have been approved worldwide since mid-March, with Chinese and US developers among the first to move.

Beijing approved the first trial for a vaccine developed by the military-backed Academy of Military Medical Sciences and Hong Kong-listed biotech firm CanSino Bio on March 16.

That day the US drug developer Moderna said it had begun human tests for their vaccine with the US National Institutes of Health.

Another US lab, San Diego-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals, began first phase human trials on April 6.

Yet while Biontech hailed what it called a “global devel-opment program” on Wednesday, the search for a vaccine has also been a cause o f f r i c t i o n b e t w e e n countries.

Pupils sit on distanced tables as they attend the high school graduation examination in the assembly hall of the Paul-Natorp-Gymnasium secondary school in Berlin, Germany, yesterday amid the new coronavirus pandemic.

Virus death toll

surpass 4,000 in

the NetherlandsANATOLIA — THE HAGUE

The death toll from corona-virus surpassed 4,000 in the Netherlands, authorities said yesterday.

With 138 more fatalities the death toll rose to 4,054, according to the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

Meanwhile, the tally of cases rose to 34,842 with 708 new cases. “Since not all COVID-19 patients are tested, the actual numbers in the Netherlands are higher than the numbers stated in the report,” the RIVM said in its daily update.

There are currently 10,021 patients under treatment at hospitals across the country, with 124 more admissions reported on Wednesday.

“The number of new reports of hospitalized patients per day still shows a declining trend. The same applies to the number of reported deceased patients,” the RIVM said.

Russian communists defy lockdown with Red Square paradeREUTERS — MOSCOW

Dozens of Russian communists defied Moscow’s coronavirus lockdown yesterday by marching across Red Square to lay flowers outside Vladimir Lenin’s tomb to mark 150 years since the birth of the Bolshevik leader.

Led by Gennady Zyuganov, head of Russia’s Communist Party, a small group of people, some holding red flags, marched to the granite mausoleum where Lenin’s embalmed body lies to pay their respects.

The ritual, which is observed annually on April 22, comes with Moscow in its fourth week of a lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the new virus.

Muscovites are only allowed outside to buy food or medicine nearby, receive urgent medical treatment, walk the dog or take out the trash. A policeman guarding Red Square, which has been closed off to the public and was otherwise empty as it snowed yesterday, said the com-munists had received special per-mission to stage the event.

The Moscow police and the

mayor’s office did not immedi-ately respond to requests for comment.

Speaking to reporters on

Red Square, Zyuganov said the Russian authorities’ efforts to contain the virus were no match for the Soviet approach to

fighting a smallpox outbreak in Moscow in 1960.“Now they can’t even produce masks in three months,” he said, referring

to the current Russian author-ities. Some Russian regions have experienced shortages of pro-tective gear for medical workers but the country has still exported equipment to countries including the United States, Italy and Serbia.

Moscow, a city of more than 12.5 million, has been the hardest-hit of Russia’s regions by the coronavirus outbreak and yesterday recorded 2,548 new cases, pushing the nationwide tally to almost 58,000. Similar events were held across the country to honour Lenin. The initiatives, however, have drawn criticism from people who say the com-munist events violate lockdowns.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the outspoken head of Russia’s nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, has said the people laying flowers on Lenin’s tomb during lockdown should be arrested.

Russia abandoned com-munism when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but the tomb remains a popular attraction among tourists and Russian communists.

Russian Communist party members and supporters walk towards the Mausoleum of the Soviet state founder and revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov aka Lenin to hold a flower-laying ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of his birth day on Red Square in Moscow, yesterday.

Lithuania to ease coronavirus lockdown measures this weekREUTERS — VILNIUS

Shops, open-air restaurants and many other services will be allowed to reopen in Lithuania in an easing of restrictions imposed last month to limit spread of the novel corona-virus, the government said yesterday.

“Due to the strict restric-tions, Lithuania avoided a sharp increase of COVID-19 cases which was seen elsewhere in Europe, such as in Italy, Spain, Great Britain,” Lithuania’s public health authority chief

said in a letter to government.Shops and malls can

resume operations from Thursday and customer service businesses, such as hair-dressers, libraries, museums and golf courses, can restart from April 27, according to the government website.

Businesses will need to limit numbers of customers on their premises to no more than one person per 10 square meters.

However, the government said it had delayed a full lifting of lockdown measures to May

11 from April 27. All shops, restaurants and

customer-facing businesses were told to close on March 16, with exceptions for takeaways and services over the internet, and for crucial businesses such as grocery shops and gas stations.

All educational institutions and non-emergency medical services were also closed.

By yesterday morning, the Baltic country had reported 1,370 coronavirus cases and 38 deaths from the COVID-19 lung disease.

Austria’s Kurz says Germany copied his country’s lockdown easing planREUTERS — VIENNA

Austria’s conservative Chan-cellor Sebastian Kurz said yesterday his country has been so successful in slowing the spread of the coronavirus that others, particularly Germany, have copied its plan for loos-ening its lockdown.

The Alpine republic acted early in its outbreak to close restaurants, bars, theatres, non-essential shops and other gath-ering places more than a month ago. It has told the public to stay at home and work from there

if possible. Those lockdown measures have helped cut the daily increase in infections to less than 2% and Austria has reported 510 deaths so far, as many as some larger countries have suffered daily. Germany has taken similar measures and the two have roughly the same mortality rate.

“It is interesting that not only regarding lockdown measures many countries copied our way, but also during the resumption of activities now other countries like, for example, Germany are adopting

our plan step-by-step,” Kurz, 33, told the lower house of parliament.

“And that shows in my opinion first of all that the measures we took were right,” Kurz said, adding that Aus-tria’s daily infection numbers were “a top f igure internationally”.

Austria took a first step in loosening its lockdown last week, on the Tuesday after Easter, when DIY and garden centres as well as shops of up to 400 square metres — roughly twice the playing area of a

s ingles tennis court — reopened.

When Kurz announced the plan for a first wave of openings due to be followed by shopping centres, larger shops and hair-dressers from May 1, his German counterpart Angela Merkel said it was too early for Germany to do the same.

The bigger neighbour eventually followed suit, however, with Germany letting shops of up to 800 square metres as well as car and bicycle dealers and book-stores reopen this week.

Kurz said he hoped the two could agree to reopen their shared border as EU countries start to consider allowing travel between member states that have low infection rates.

Austria’s tourism industry relies heavily on German vis-itors, though a date from which hotels will reopen fully has yet to be announced.

“I hope we are soon able to take steps forward, particularly with Germany because we have a long border with Germany and many families have been separated,” Kurz said.

REUTERS — LONDON

The family of acclaimed phys-icist Stephen Hawking (pictured), has donated his ventilator to a hospital that had treated him in Cambridge, the English university city where he lived and worked, to help care for COVID-19 patients.

The scientist died in March 2018 at age 76 after a lifetime spent probing the origins of the

universe. He was diagnosed with a rare early-onset form of motor neurone disease at the age of 21. “Professor Stephen Hawking’s family has donated his ventilator to Royal Pap-worth Hospital as we care for increasing numbers of COVID-19 patients,” the hos-pital said yesterday.

His daughter Lucy Hawking described the care her father had received there as “brilliant,

dedicated and compassionate”, it said.

“We’d like to say a huge thank you to the Hawking family for supporting us at this chal-lenging time,” said the hospital, which is a world-leading centre for heart and lung transplants.

The medical equipment was bought by Hawking himself, the BBC reported, and after checks had been added to the hospital’s fleet.

Hawking’s family gives his ventilator to UK hospital

Though there are now around 150 development projects worldwide, the German and British plans are among only five clinical trials on humans which have been approved across the globe.

18 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020AMERICAS

Trump says states reopeningsafely; New York Governorcautions against easing curbsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump yesterday applauded steps by a handful of Republican-led US states to reopen their econ-omies, but New York’s governor, wary of a potential fresh surge of coronavirus cases, cautioned that it was no time to act in a bad way.

About a half dozen US states, mostly in the South, are loosening stay-at-home guide-lines, allowing an array of non-essential businesses to reopen in the hope of reviving their devastated state economies.

Trump, a Republican seeking re-election on November 3, gave these states a show of support on Twitter.

“States are safely coming back. Our Country is starting to OPEN FOR BUSINESS again. Special care is, and always will be, given to our beloved seniors (except me!),” wrote Trump, who is 73.

States and local govern-ments previously issued “stay-at-home” or “shelter-in-place” orders affecting about 94 percent of Americans to try to limit the number of new cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

The restrictions have bat-tered the US economy, with mandatory business closures leaving millions of Americans unemployed. Political leaders have engaged in an acrimo-nious debate over when and how to reopen the economy.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who met with Trump on Tuesday, said his state was showing more signs the worst

was over, including a drop in hospitalizations. Even so, he warned of a potential “second wave” if restrictions are relaxed irresponsibly.

“This is no time to act stu-pidly,” Cuomo added. “More people are going to die if we are not smart.” Cuomo acknowledged that local officials feel political pressure to reopen businesses but warned against making decisions based on such factors.

“We make a bad move, it’s going to set us back,” he said.

Cuomo said there were 474 coronavirus-related deaths in his state in the last day, the lowest since April 1. But that pushed the overall death toll in New York, the US epicenter of the pandemic, past 20,000.

US coronavirus deaths have exceeded 45,800 nationwide as cases climbed to more than 811,000, according to a tally. At current rates, US deaths could reach 50,000 later this week.

A University of Washington model, often cited by the White House, now projects nearly 66,000 US coronavirus deaths by Aug. 4, an upward revision from its previous projection on April 18 of a toll of about 60,300.

Cuomo said his state will

work with neighboring Con-necticut and New Jersey to launch a joint program to trace the contacts of infected people to prevent further spread.

Cuomo said former New York mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg had volunteered to help develop the program. Bloomberg would make a financial contribution of “upward of $10m”, Cuomo’s aide Melissa DeRosa said.

Greg Abbott of Texas on Wednesday became the latest Republican governor to signal his intention to start lifting restric-tions. Abbott said he would announce a plan next week to broadly reopen the state’s economy in the first week of May.

“It’s going to be broad-based. We want to make sure we open as many businesses as possible,” Abbott told Fox Business Network. “However, we want to make sure we do it in a very safe way that does not stoke an expansion of the COVID-19.”

Georgia is giving the green light to gyms, hair salons, bowling alleys and tattoo and massage parlors to reopen on Friday, followed by movie houses and restaurants next week. Republican Governor Brian Kemp ordered the actions.

Cherish Burnham, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mother from Roswell, Georgia, said she was stunned by the governor’s decision, saying it could put more lives at risk.

“I saw his announcement flash on my phone and my jaw dropped,” Burnham said.

FROM LEFT: US First Lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence and Karen Pence participate in a tree planting ceremony to mark Earth Day and Arbor Day on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Trump may push back signing of immigration order amid legal reviewREUTERS — WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump might delay approving a plan to tempo-rarily halt giving foreigners permanent residence in the United States which he says will protect American workers during the coronavirus pandemic, an aide said yesterday.

White House adviser Kel-lyanne Conway said lawyers were poring over the details of an executive order that Trump had planned to sign yesterday. The order would have sus-pended the process to grant for-eigners “green cards” for per-manent residence.

“It has to be cleared legally,” Conway told reporters. “I know he’s itching to sign it, but it’s a matter of when it’s ready,” she said.

A White House official who

requested anonymity to discuss the process also suggested the timeline for the order could be pushed back.

“The lawyers are still hacking it out and getting down to the details,” the official said. “We don’t know if it’s going to be ready for signature tonight. It’s a complex thing.”

The president, a Republican, won the White House in 2016 in part on a promise to crack down on immigration. Critics saw his announcement as a move to take advantage of the corona-virus crisis to implement a long-sought policy goal ahead of this year’s presidential election.

A person familiar with the internal debate at the White House said Trump and his advisers had discussed the executive order over the weekend and that the move

was directed at his electoral base.

“He’s wanted this all along,” the person said. “But now under this pandemic he can absolutely do it.” Business groups expressed opposition to Trump’s plan on Tuesday, arguing it would only further depress the economy.

Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development, said that a range of industries would be hurt including ones that are critical during a public health emergency such as food processing, warehousing, shipping, eldercare, childcare, c o m m u n i c a t i o n a n d technology.

Many of those jobs are filled my immigrants and the family members they reunite with from abroad, he said.

US govt expertswarn againstuse of drugcombination

AFP — WASHINGTON

A US government expert panel has formally recommended against using a drug combi-nation promoted by President Donald Trump to fight the coronavirus, because of its potential harmful impact on the heart.

The National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines warned doctors not to use the malaria drug hydrox-ychloroquine in combination with the antibiotic azithro-mycin outside of clinical trials.

Taken together, the medi-cines were “associated with QTc prolongation in patients with COVID-19,” the panel said.

The QTc is a measure of how fast the heart is electri-cally recharging for its next beat and slowing it down too much increases the risk of blackouts, seizures and cardiac arrest.

The drug combination has been promoted by Trump, who tweeted last month that it had “a real chance to be one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine.”

As for using hydroxychloro-quine on its own, the panel, which comprises leading doctors from around the country, said there was not enough evidence either way.

It said the same of the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir which has shown early promise against the virus.

US says review of WHO to assess its efficiencyREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The US government will assess whether the World Health Organization (WHO) is being run the way that it should be, after President Donald Trump paused US funding to the global body, the US Agency for Inter-national Development’s Acting Administrator John Barsa said yesterday.

Washington will also use this pause to look for alternative partners outside the WHO to continue to carry out “important work” such as vaccines, to ensure it does not have a

disruption in its aid efforts, said Barsa, who heads USAID, the key US government agency that administers foreign aid.

“The review is going to be all encompassing, get into all manners of management oper-ation questions,” Barsa told a news conference at the State Department.

“There’s numerous ques-tions in terms of the man-agement of the WHO; how they have been operating holding member states accountable in their actions.”

“Is the management of the World Health Organization

running it the way it should be run?,” was the question at the heart of Washington’s review, Barsa added.

Trump announced a halt to US funding for the Geneva-based WHO last week while Washington reviews the organ-ization’s handling of the coro-navirus pandemic. Trump has accused WHO of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, saying this had probably worsened the outbreak.

WHO officials defended the agency’s handling of the pan-demic, saying the organization

alerted member states of the outbreak earlier in the year.

Despite the review, US assistance to countries was set to move forward, said Jim Rich-ardson, director of foreign assistance at USAID, but with different organisations.

“For every contract or every dollar flowing today, we’re just taking WHO off the table and we are going to provide that assistance to these other organ-isations in order to get the job done.”

Neither USAID official pro-vided any specific names on the organisations that the United

States could use to spend the aid dollars. But they said the US would be looking at whether groups like local community-based entities and faith-based organizations, some of which Washington is already working with and some which are new, can take over as partners.

The United States is the biggest overall donor to the WHO, contributing more than $400 million in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget. Senior admin-istration officials last week told Reuters that Washington could redirect these funds to other aid groups.

Social distancing inside bus

People try to keep social distance as they use the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus system in New York City, yesterday.

Trump: Iranian gunboats harassing US ships will be destroyedAFP — WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump said yesterday he has ordered the US military to attack and destroy any Iranian vessel that harasses US Navy ships.

“I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” Trump said on Twitter.

The order came one week after 11 small armed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps speedboats swarmed around six US Navy and Coast Guard ships in international waters in the northern Gulf.

US Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist called Trump’s tweet “an important warning to the Iranians,” while not saying whether the US has altered its formal rules of engagement in the Gulf.

“What he was emphasizing is all of our ships retain the right of self-defense,” Norquist told reporters in a briefing.

“What the president says sends a great message to Iran,” said General John Hyten, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We know how to translate that into our rules of engagement... They are based on the inherent right of

self-defense, they are based on hostile intent and hostile act. That’s all we need in order to take the right action.” “Nobody should doubt that the com-manders have the authority right now to respond to any hostile act or hostile intent,” Hyten said.

Trump was referring to an incident that took place on April 15 while US Navy vessels were engaged in exercises as part of their patrols in the region.

No shots were fired, but the Pentagon said the Iranians engaged in “dangerous and provocative actions” that risked collision or worse.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps boats “repeatedly crossed the bows and sterns of the US vessels at extremely close range and high speeds,” coming at one point within 10 yards of the bow of one ship.

The much smaller IRGC Navy vessels ignored warnings from the US ships for about an hour before finally responding to radio communications and then leaving, the US side said.

On Sunday, the Revolu-tionary Guards accused the US Navy of “unprofessional and provocative behaviour” that had interfered with their own exercises, according to Mehr News Agency.

Pace of deaths in Canada slows; provinces mull reopeningREUTERS — OTTAWA

Canada’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by less than 10 percent for the third day in a row, data showed yesterday, and some provinces prepared to start lifting shutdowns imposed to fight the outbreak.

The public health agency said the number of dead was 1,871, up 8.3 percent from the 1,728 reported on Tuesday. That follows a 7.3 percent rise on Tuesday and

6.9 percent on Monday, after a 12 percent jump on Sunday. Some days last month were marked by a 20 percent jump. The figure for positive diagnoses with the coronavirus had climbed to 38,932, up from 37,382.

Chief public health officer Theresa Tam said authorities were continuing to make progress. Even so, “We are seeing some bumps in the road that remind us we can’t let down our guard,” she told an

Ottawa briefing, citing, for example, the large number of deaths in seniors’ residences.

Ontario, the most populous province, said it would ask the federal government to send mil-itary personnel to deal with a rash of cases in long-term care homes. Quebec, the second most-pop-ulous province, has already made a similar request. It expects to announce plans for reopening schools and businesses next week, said Premier Francois Legault.

The western province of Sas-katchewan is due to unveil a plan on Thursday to start lifting restrictions on businesses and individuals’ movement. The tiny Atlantic province of Prince Edward Island says it will start relaxing the shutdown on May 1.

“I think we have to tread very carefully at this point,” said Tam, who is working with pro-vincial counterparts to find ways of judging whether any reopening could be done safely.

Virus deaths in US have exceeded 45,800 nationwide as cases climbed to more than 811,000. At current rates, deaths in US could reach 50,000 later this week.

19THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020 AMERICAS

Brazil govt, states fightfor pandemic suppliesAP — RIO DE JANEIRO

Last month, Dr. Riane Azevedo pulled off a master stroke. The superintendent of the largest public hospital in the poor Brazilian state of Ceara managed to procure a highly sought-after cache of venti-lators to treat the new corona-virus patients overwhelming her intensive care unit.

But just weeks before she was due to receive the ventilators, she got bad news. Her local supplier could no longer honor the agreement. Instead, she was told, the equipment was going to Bra-zil’s federal government.

“The health ministry confis-cated the ventilators for our hospital,” said Azevedo from the Instituto Dr. José Frota hospital, where she had planned to open up another 40 ICU beds in May. “It makes no sense … It’s like working against yourself.”

Amid a global pandemic, medical equipment needed to treat patients with COVID-19 and protect health workers has become a hot commodity, with countries around the world competing for crucial supplies. In Brazil, in a scenario also seen in the United States, the com-petition has become internal. Some states are vying for

material with the government of far-right President Jair Bol-sonaro, who is already sharply at odds with many governors over coronavirus containment measures. Supply shipments have also been seized in the state of Maranhao.

Experts fear such political rivalries could hurt efforts to fight the pandemic in Brazil, which has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the region at 43,079 and 2,741 respectively.

“It seems that there is a lack of trust between the federal government and governors,” said Walter Cintra Ferreira Jr, a professor in heal th

management at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas university in Sao Paulo. “What we expect from the health ministry is a quick dis-tribution of resources. In this time of crisis, I think this is not the moment to politicize these questions.”

In Maranhao, a northeastern state next to Ceara, the local gov-ernment has faced multiple set-backs in acquiring the equipment it needs. Maranhao’s Secretary of Industry, Commerce and Energy, Simplício Araújo, said the state had a delivery of 150 ventilators from a Brazilian provider seized by the federal health ministry on March 19. A second shipment from China got stuck in Germany, while a third never left the United States, Araújo said.

Undeterred, the secretary decided on a more unorthodox plan. With his Chinese contacts, Araújo orchestrated a complex scheme to bring the valuable material in a commercial freighter via Ethiopia. The oper-ation, which mobilised some 30 people in Brazil and China for nearly three weeks, avoided further delays by skipping customs in the large airport of Sao Paulo, only declaring the content of the shipment in Maranhao’s airport.

In response, Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service announced that it would pursue legal action, arguing the goods were imported without due licensing from authorities.

“The presidency should support this type of operation, not the opposite,” Araújo said, stressing that the medical equipment is currently exempt from taxes. “I think the lack of solidarity for this type of pur-chase, which is absolutely vital to our population today, is a mistake. It’s very serious.”

The disputes come as Bol-sonaro, who has likened COVID-19

to “a little flu,” rages against gov-ernors who have passed stay-at-home measures to limit its spread and recently fired his health min-ister who encouraged the policies, which he says will wreak eco-nomic destruction.

Experts and health execu-tives on the ground fear the newly appointed health min-ister will be influenced by Bol-sonaro’s feuds with the governors.

In a statement sent on Tuesday, Brazil’s ministry of health defended its overall strategy. It said that as a regu-lator in the pandemic response,

it needed to ensure that “all states in the country are sup-plied with the equipment and supplies necessary to face the disease.” In April, the ministry said, it delivered 30 ventilators to Ceara, 20 to Amazonas state, and 10 to Amapa state.

On the front lines, public sector medical staff, hospital executives and doctors’ unions are angered by the shortages in ventilators and the failure to provide protective equipment. They say the lack of masks and gloves is exposing doctors to the deadly virus, as well as their families and hospital patients.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (left) gestures as he speaks to supporters while leaving Alvorada Palace in Brasilia, yesterday, amid the new coronavirus pandemic.

Female prisoners

in Mexico make

health worker dolls

to fund families

REUTERS — MEXICO CITY

Some female inmates in Mexico’s prisons have come up with a new way to replace earnings lost after the corona-virus closed retailers that sold their handiwork — making soft toys dressed as doctors and nurses in facemasks.

About 30 percent of pris-oners in Mexico’s crowded, cash-strapped jails work for themselves, with female inmates making and selling crafts and other products, using the money to buy sup-plies from clothes to food, or to send to their children.

But the coronavirus has closed malls, stalls and retailers where prison-made products were sold, and forced prisons to restrict or stop vis-itors who brought in supplies and money.

That has put the estimated 10,000 women in Mexican prisons — about five percent of the total prison population — in a tough situation, with work drying up and outside help limited.

“They’re struggling a lot,” said Daniela Ancira, co-founder of La Cana, a social enterprise that sells soft toys made by women in prison with a mission to help those incarcerated.

“They started calling us to say please... we don’t have enough to send to our children, we don’t have enough to buy personal hygiene products.” To stem the drop in income, La Cana launched a new set of soft toys dressed as doctors and nurses wearing facemasks.

About one third of money raised goes to about 143 women who make them, another third to administrative costs, while t he rest buys pro-tective equipment for medical workers.

Brazil using soccer stadiums in fight against COVID-19ANATOLIA — SAO PAULO

With 40,581 confirmed cases and 2,575 deaths, Brazil is facing the coronavirus crisis with a health system on the brink of collapse.

For this reason, the con-struction of field hospitals has been stepped up.

Even in a country that is a five-time world champion, sacred soccer temples are becoming large-capacity medical complexes to exclu-sively receive the COVID-19 infected.

On April 1, when the pan-demic was already part of the daily lives of Brazilians, a 200-bed field hospital was opened in Paulo Machado de Carvalho Stadium, better known as Pacaembu, located in the central region of Sao Paulo.

The Pacaembu, inaugu-rated on April 27, 1940, served as the setting for the best days of Pelé. “El Rey” is, until today, the top scorer that has played in this field, with a record of 115 goals in 119 games.

In addition, it has already hosted five World Cup games in 1950 and three Copa Liber-tadores finals among various definitions of national and state championships.

“I am from Guapiara, in the interior of Sao Paulo, and I came to this city last year to work. I always dreamed of knowing this stadium, although I never imagined that it would be under these conditions,” said Edivaldo Lopes dos Santos, who was provisionally hired by the logistics team that operates Pacaembu during the emergency.

“I love football, I’m a fan of

Palmeiras, and here my team played a lot. But today, we are talking about another situation, something more serious,” said the 37-year-old employee, who currently performs electrical maintenance and other tasks.

Beyond the precautions taken, contact is inevitable between the people who work as managers of health and maintenance of the place.

“The fear of the contagion is always there, although we all work with masks and try to be apart. But you have to keep going because many sick people are helped here.”

In the Pacaembu, which was privatized a little over a year ago, two large tents of 6,000 square meters were installed on the lawn.

“The people who arrive at the Pacaembu are cases of low complexity. They stay there for

about 10 days and, once stabi-lized, they return home,” explained Bruno Covas, the mayor of Sao Paulo.

Those patients whose cases worsen will be referred to hos-pitals. Albert Einstein Hospital, one of the most prestigious institutions in Sao Paulo, is in charge of the tasks in the Pacaembu.

In Sao Paulo, there are 14,580 confirmed cases of coro-navirus and 1,037 deaths so far, making it the state with the highest number of infections in Brazil.

Maracana, a mythical sce-nario The Maracana is the most famous stadium in Brazil and one of the mythical stages of world football where Uruguay was consecrated after the famous “Maracanazo” and Germany beat Messi’s Argentina in World Cup Finals in 1950 and

2014 respectively.Work at the Maracana

began on March 31, and according to the state gov-ernment, the field hospital with 400 beds available will be inau-gurated on April 30.

The difference with Pac-aembu is that the field hospital will not be built on the Maracana grass, where Fla-mengo and Fluminense, the local clubs, played their matches every weekend. The provisional structure is being assembled where the Celio De Barros athletics track used to be.

In addition to the Maracana headquarters, another eight field hospitals are being built in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the second most affected region in Brazil behind Sao Paulo, with 4,899 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 422 deaths.

Stranded Bolivians in Chile prepare to head home

Bolivian citizens, who were stranded in Chile after the border was closed as preventive measure, prepare to leave from a shelter to board buses and travel to the border between Chile and Bolivia to cross to their country and comply with a preventive quarantine at Pisiga town, in Iquique, Chile.

Ecuador aims to restart after virus quarantineREUTERS — QUITO

Ecuador is readying a plan to reactivate its economy and authorise flights home for citizens stranded abroad, the government said on Tuesday, following a month of strict quarantine to curb the corona-virus pandemic.

With 520 deaths and 10,398 confirmed infections, the virus has devastated the economy of the oil-producing nation, while overwhelmed public health services in its outbreak epicentre of Guayaquil saw corpses left in homes or on streets for hours.

Now, as it seeks urgent external financing and renegoti-ation of external debt, Ecuador wants productive and com-mercial sectors to gradually resume work, following protocols to limit contagion and conserve capacity at public hospitals.

“It is an economic reo-pening plan that requires more discipline than the previous stage,” Minister Maria Paula Romo told reporters.

“Now we are going to have to organise ourselves to get out, any disorder in this next stage could provoke a spike in infec-tions,” the minister added, without elaborating.

Despite the reopening plans, curbs on education, transport and large gatherings, among other measures, will continue during May, Romo added.

Ecuador plans to receive thousands more citizens on authorized flights, Romo said, in addition to the roughly 2,500 who have returned from overseas.

But they will have to com-plete a 14-day term of isolation in hotels or other government-designated spaces.

Rights groups demand Mexico halt huge tourist train projectREUTERS — MEXICO CITY

The Mexican government must halt construction of the Mayan Train, rights groups said on Tuesday, writing in an open letter that building the railroad line would endanger workers and indigenous locals during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has declared a health emergency in Mexico and shut down non-essential businesses, but authorities have said work on the ambitious tourism project

will proceed as planned.Mexico has registered 712

coronavirus deaths and 8,772 infections, and authorities on Tuesday said the country had entered the most serious stage of the outbreak as trans-mission of the virus was intensifying.

The letter, signed by more than 200 academics, activists and rights groups including Greenpeace, said the project will put construction workers and locals at risk and said opponents could not take legal action while the gov-

ernment was shut down.“Until this pandemic that’s

hurting us all is... fully eradi-cated, the federal government should stop thinking about doing anything which isn’t a priority,” said Randy Soberanis, an indigenous activist with sig-natory group Equipo Indignacion.

The government should be paying attention to the failures of the health system exposed by the pandemic, he said.

Officials have warned that hospitals in Mexico could be overwhelmed if coronavirus

infections rise to European levels.

Representatives for Mex-ico’s Interior and Environment ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Mayan Train, a 1,470 km (913 miles) project, is designed to link tourist loca-tions on the Yucatan Peninsula along the Atlantic coast.

Construction is set to begin at the end of April, and the cost of the project is estimated to be just under $8 billion.

President Andres Manuel

Lopez Obrador has said the Mayan Train will boost local economies by connecting iso-lated regions that are less developed than the more indus-trialized north.

But environmentalists and indigenous groups have said the potentially negative ecological repercussions of the devel-opment outweighed the eco-nomic benefits.

“For the communities that will be impacted, it’s going to be devastat ing,” said Soberanis.

“There are nature reserves,

trees, fauna, flowers. It’s going to have a huge impact in that area.” The project was approved by a national referendum in 2018, but fewer than a million people voted, representing about 1.1 percent of eligible voters.

The United Nations has crit-icized the Mexican govern-ment’s consultation process among indigenous groups, noting that translations into indigenous languages were inadequate and most people who participated were local authorities.

Some states are vying for material with the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who is already sharply at odds with many governors over coronavirus containment measures.

20 THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020MORNING BREAK

FAJR SUNRISE 03.44 am 05.05 am

W A L R U WA I S : 24o↗ 28o W A L K H O R : 25o↗ 30o W D U K H A N : 22o↗ 29o W WA K R A H : 23o↗ 30o W M E S A I E E D 23o↗ 30o W A B U S A M R A 22o↗ 32o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 04:08– 17:30 LOW TIDE 11:52 – 00:00

Relatively hot daytime with some clouds and mild by night.

Minimum Maximum25oC 30oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.32 am06.02 pm

ASR ISHA

03.02 pm07.32 pm

No benefit, higher death rate for malaria drug in COVID-19 studyAFP — WASHINGTON

A malaria drug widely touted as a potential cure for COVID-19 showed no benefit against the disease over standard care —and was in fact associated with more deaths, the biggest study of its kind showed yesterday.

The US government funded analysis of American military veterans’ treatment courses was posted on a medical preprint site and has not yet been peer reviewed.

The experiment had several important limitations, but adds to a growing body of doubt over

the efficacy of the medicine that counts President Donald Trump and right wing news channel Fox News among its biggest backers.

Researchers looked at the medical records of 368 veterans hospitalised nationwide who either died or were discharged by April 11.

Death rates for patients on hydroxychloroquine were 28 percent, compared to 22 percent when it was taken with the anti-biotic azithro-mycin — a combination favoured by French scientist Didier Raoult, whose study on

the subject in March triggered a surge of global interest in the drug.

The death rate for those receiving only standard care was 11 percent.

Hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe illness, but the authors found that increased mortality per-sisted even after they statisti-cally adjusted for higher rates of use.

Other drawbacks include the fact that the study did not assign people randomly to

groups, because it was a retro-spective analysis meaning it looked back on what had already happened.

In addition, the results are hard to generalise because the population was highly specific: most of the patients were male, with a median age over 65, and black, a group that is dispropor-tionately affected by underlying illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.

There was no added risk of being on ventilator among the hydroxychloroquine only group, leading the authors to suggest that increased mortality among

this group might be attributable to side-effects outside the res-piratory system.

Previous research has found that the medicine is risky for patients with certain heart rhythm issues and can cause blackouts, seizures or at times cardiac arrest in this group.

Hydroxychloroquine and a related compound chloroquine have been used for decades to treat malaria, as well as the autoimmune disorders lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

They have received signif-icant attention during the novel

coronavirus pandemic and have been shown in lab settings to block the virus from entering cells and prevent it replicating — but in the pharmaceutical world, “in vitro” promise often fails to translate into “in vivo” success.

The true answer can only be determined through very large, randomised clinical trials that assign patients to receive either the drug under investigation or a placebo.

Several of these are underway, including notably in Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Facebook rolls out Messenger Kids to 70 new countriesAFP — SAN FRANCISCO

Facebook rolled out its Messenger Kids application to 70 new countries, saying it can help children deal with the challenges of distance learning and isolation during the virus lockdowns.

The app, which is aimed at children under 13, will also be adding a “supervised friending” feature enabling parents to approve new connections, starting in the US and gradually rolling out to other countries.

“With schools closed and people physically distancing, parents are turning to tech-nology more than ever to help their kids connect with friends and family,” Facebook’s global head of safety Antigone Davis said in a blog post.

“Messenger Kids is a video

chat and messaging app that helps kids connect with friends and family in a fun, parent-con-trolled space. Today, we’re starting to roll out Messenger Kids to more countries and we’re adding new choices for parents to connect kids with friends.”

Messenger Kids was launched in the United States in 2017 and expanded later to Canada and a handful of other countries, aiming at children too young for a Facebook account.

With the changes announced yesterday, kids will be able to connect in groups to help facilitate learning, under parental supervision.

Parents in the US, Canada and Latin America can also allow their children to make their name and profile photo visible as part of the move to

get more friends.Kids will be able to initiate

their own friend requests. Up to now these had to be initiated by the parents.

“Parents have told us they want to be able to give their kids more independence in managing their contact list while still main-taining parental supervision,” Davis said. “Previously, it was up to parents to invite and approve every contact for their child. Now with supervised friending, parents can choose to allow their kids to also accept, reject, add or remove contacts, while main-taining the ability to override any new contact approvals.”

Some privacy activists have argued the app could be harmful to children by drawing them into online activity and potentially gathering data on them.

Green protestMembers of the Asian Citizen’s Center for Environment and Health perform during an Earth Day event against climate change at Gwanghwamun Square, in Seoul yesterday. The group said that climate change and ecosystem destruction were the root causes of COVID-19.