Thursday 30 April 2020

7 Ramadan - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8243

BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 06 SPORT | 12

Coe: IOC can't

'go on forever

postponing'

Olympics

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

Ooredoo Group

announces

increased revenue

of QR7.3bn in Q1

Ramadan Timing

Today's Iftar:

6:07pm

Tomorrow's

Imsak:

03:27am

3,179,494

226,173

964,957

TOTAL POSITIVE

TOTAL DEATHS

TOTAL RECOVERED

GLOBALLY

COVID-19 QATAR UPDATES ON 29 APRIL 2020

643

10911311

12430

NEW CASES

ANNOUNCED

NEW

RECOVERIES

ACTIVE

CASES

TOTAL

RECOVERIES

NEW

DEATHS

Amir inspects ventilator production at Barzan

QNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani visited yesterday in the afternoon the Research and Development Center at Barzan Holding Company affiliated to the Ministry of Defence at their head-quarters in the Qatar Science and Technology Park to view the production lines for the manufac-turing of the (Savr-Q) ventilators.

During the visit, His Highness listened to an explanation about the production lines of the (Savr-Q) ventilators. Barzan will produce the ventilators through a strategic

partnership with the American company, Wilcox, in order to cover the health sector’s requirements in the country, and to export abroad in light of the increased global demand for ventilators for the treatment of those affected by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

The company is estimated to produce 2,000 devices per week.

H H the Amir also met with a number of Qatari engineers at the center who are working to produce devices that comply with the standards of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA). �P2

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during a visit to the Research and Development Center at Barzan Holding Company, yesterday.

Amir pardons prisoners on occasion of RamadanQNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani issued yesterday an Amiri gesture pardoning a number of pris-oners on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan.

Qatar has ample health facilities, personnel to care for critical COVID-19 cases: Head of ICU in HMC QNA — DOHA

Dr. Ahmed Al Mohammed, Acting Chairman of Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Intensive Care Units (ICU), has said that Qatar has more than sufficient healthcare facilities and staff to cope with the current number of COVID-19 patients who require intensive treatment and advanced respiratory support.

In a statement to Qatar News Agency (QNA), Dr. Al Muhammad has also affirmed the readiness of the country’s healthcare system to provide care for a high number of cases of infection.

He explained that at the end of last month, HMC designated the Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital as a facility for treating patients with COVID-19 due to its advanced capabilities in terms of providing high-quality care for those infected by the virus and are in critical condition.

He said that the clinical capacity of this hospital has been

increased to nearly three times its previous capacity, as the number of beds has increased from 118 to 330 beds, with the possibility of increasing this number to 560 beds (for intensive and non-intensive care unit) through the exploitation of an attached field hospital that

was created for this the aim.Dr. Al Muhammad pointed

out that so far, more than 135 COVID-19 patients have been treated in the Intensive Care Unit of Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital, where more than half of these patients recovered or their health conditions improved

and no longer needed critical health care as they were trans-ferred either to the regular care departments or to the home-health isolation or quarantine facilities that were designated for this purpose.

He noted that the state’s healthcare system managed to deal with all the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the strategy for tracking the virus and to allocating enough capacity to provide good healthcare to all patients. He added that Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital is one of five facilities dedicated to treating COVID-19, with the hos-pital having more than 250 doctors in different specialities.

He pointed out that many countries around the world were facing a difficult challenge in providing ventilators for patients, as these devices are necessary to keep patients in critical conditions suffering from pneumonia alive. Despite that, he added, the healthcare

sector and hospitals in Qatar did not suffer from any shortage of these devices or in terms of the number of medical staff.

Dr Al Muhammad stated that most of the COVID-19 patients who received medical treatment in the intensive care department at Hazm Mebaireek General Hos-pital so far are between the ages of 35 and 70 years, and many of them suffer from chronic diseases, especially high blood pressure.

He added that those with critical conditions stay in the intensive care department between two and three weeks, but patient who suffers from chronic diseases may need a longer time to recover from the infection, stressing that Qatar will not witness a large numbers of deaths similar to other coun-tries in the world, but he stressed the need for society to be aware that COVID-19 is a dangerous virus and the impor-tance of adhering to preventive measures against this virus.

Qatar rejects

Haftar’s claim of

popular mandate

to govern Libya

QNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar has rejected a declaration by retired Major General Khalifa Haftar that he obtained a “popular mandate” allowing him to govern Libya, considering this a new affir-mation of his persistent attempt to stage a coup against international legitimacy and the Libyan national consensus as well as a clear disdain for the international community which have been watching for a long time without taking any action regarding the crimes committed against the brotherly Libyan people, espe-cially since the beginning of the attack on Tripoli last year.

In a statement yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed that the retired Major General Khalifa Haftar gave a false pretext in his declaration reflecting his disregard for the sanctity of Libyan blood and the minds of those who listen to him.

At a time when the world’s efforts are directed to stop the bloodshed in Libya and fight the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we see the contin-uation of the militarization of the scene and attacks on civilians and on the political track, without any regard for the tragedy of the children, women, elderly, and displaced persons of the Libyan people, it added.

The statement called on the international community and actors in the Libyan scene to shoulder their humanitarian and historical responsibility and to prevent the retired Major General Khalifa Haftar and his militias from killing more innocents and tearing the Libyan nation apart.

Housing over five workers in a place within

family residential areas declared illegalTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, issued a decision which stipulated that housing over five workers in a place within the family residential areas is considered violation of the law for banning labour camp in family residential areas.

The Ministerial Decision No. 105 for the year 2020 has been issued to specify family residence areas and what is considered workers’ accommodations within those areas and the excep-tions mentioned therein, said the Ministry in a release.

This decision comes in implementation of the pro-visions of Law No. (15) for the year 2010 regarding the ban on labour accommodation within family residential areas, as amended by Law No. 22 of 2019.

The aforementioned decision included deter-mining what is considered a gathering of workers (labour

accommodation) within the family residential areas.

The decision stipulated that housing more than five workers in a place within the family residential areas is considered violations to the provisions of the law.

The legal procedures provided for in the law, required to issue warning to the violator, whether landlord, tenant, or both.

After recording the vio-lation, the violator will be asked to vacate the property from the workers residing in erring accommodation.

In case of non-com-pliance, the forced eviction of the violating building will be done, as well as cutting the electricity and water connection from the vio-lating residence.

The law stipulates to punish the violators with jail sentence up to six month and fine from QR50,000 to QR100,000 or one of them.

The law allowed for the Minister of Municipality and Environment or his repre-sentative to make

reconciliation with violators against half of the maximum fine which is QR50,000 and vacating the violating housing from the workers.

The Ministerial Decision has excluded female workers from its provision regardless the nature of their work, as well as the housing of domestic workers and those come in this category, such as housemaids and drivers.

The decision comes within the framework of the Ministry’s efforts to protect the health of workers and limit the gathering over five workers in a accommo-dation in family residential areas.

It also aims at limiting the phenomenon of informal housing, which does not meet the specifications of adequate housing for workers.

The Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment called upon everyone to abide by the provisions of the aforementioned decision to avoid legal action.

QA helps hundreds of British, Filipino nationals return homeSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Qatar Airways (QA) continues to help thousands of stranded trav-ellers return home in these chal-lenging circumstances. The national carrier of Qatar has flown British and Filipino nationals to home safely. In the last week, Qatar Airways has helped over 1,200 British nationals, stranded in India, reunite with their loved ones.

“The 10th UK charter flight from Ahmedabad took off today with 253 British nationals on board. More

flights from Ahmedabad are arranged by UK government for this week,” said a statement posted yes-terday on the official twitter account of the British High Commission in Gujarat and Rajasthan in India.

Hundreds of British national were flown earlier in Qatar Airways flights from Gujarat in India. On Tuesday, Qatar Airways flight took off from Ahmedabad with approx-imately 260 British nationals on board while 288 British nationals had returned home from Qatar Airways flight from the same city on April 26. �P4

Capacity of Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital has been increased to nearly three times

The dedicated COVID-19 treatment facility has more than 250 doctors in different specialities and 560 beds for intensive and non-intensive care

Qatar did not suffer from any shortage of ventilators or medical staff

Qatar will not witness large numbers of deaths similar to other countries in the world

Included with today’sedition is a

special supplement

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020

PAGE | 2 PAGES | 4-5

Public HealthSPONSORS

PHCC keen

to provide

services to

all patients

Healthy

diet and its

importance

during Ramadan

FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

As the coronavirus pandemic rapidly sweeps across the world, it is inducing

and psychosocial support aspects of COVID-19.

In collaboration with Ministry of Public Health and Primary Health Care Corporation, Mental Health Service in Hamad Medical

sadness, and most of the time these feelings pass quickly, but for some people, these feelings persist and nega-tively impact their quality of life.

Dr Abdul Hakeem

Stay mentally healthy during COVID-19

F li i it bl t d d t

Some common early ‘warning’ signs that a person is struggling with their mental health may include:

Medical teams across Qatar’s healthcare system are working tirelessly to combat the spread of the

virus and ensure anyone with COVID-19 receives the very best medical care to

manage their physical symptoms.

During my visit today (yesterday) to the Research and Development Center affiliated with the Ministry of Defence, I was briefed about (Savr-Q) ventilators which our engineers successfully managed to develop in cooperation with our strategic partners. They are urgently needed these days because of the coronavirus pandemic.

02 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020HOME

Amir inspects ventilator production at Barzan

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani viewing the production lines for the manufacturing of the (Savr-Q) ventilators at Barzan Holding Company at Qatar Science and Technology Park, yesterday.

MoPH: Total recoveries reach 1,243; new cases at 643THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health has announced the regis-tration of 643 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, and the recovery of 109 cases, bringing the total number of recovered cases to 1,243, yesterday.

At present the total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar stands at 12,564 and there are 11,311 active cases under treatment. Ministry conducted 2,808 tests yesterday taking the total tests done so far to 91,415.

Most of the new cases reg-istered are due to expatriate workers in different occupa-tions who have been in contact with previously dis-covered cases, as well as recording new cases of

COVID-19 among groups of workers from outside the industrial area who were identified through testing by the Ministry. This has con-tributed to the early detection of new cases. The remainder

of new cases infected with the virus have come from citizens and residents who have con-tracted the virus from members of their families, who in turn had contracted the virus through their work-places or other places where they had been to exposed to infected people.

All the new infected cases have been quarantined where they are receiving the nec-essary medical care. The Min-istry of Public Health stated that most of the COVID-19 cases are experiencing only mild symptoms. The chain of

transmission of the virus has not changed in nature, as the majority of infections are con-fined to a specific category, and many of the newly dis-covered infections were for p e o p l e s u b j e c t t o quarantine.

The Ministry has stated that the noticeable increase in the number of confirmed new cases of coronavirus is due to several reasons, including that the spread of the virus has begun to enter the peak stage where numbers are expected to continue to increase before they begin to

gradually decline. The Min-istry calls on all members of society to stay at home and not to go out except where absolutely necessary.

The Ministry of Public Health also requests all members of society to coop-erate fully and adhere to all health guidelines and pre-ventive measures to reduce the risk of infection, including sticking to social and physical distancing guidelines. The Ministry also recommends to regularly visit MoPH website for the most up-to-date guidance on how to stay safe.

At present the total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar stands at 12,564 and there are 11,311 active cases under treatment. Ministry conducted 2,808 tests yesterday taking the total tests done so far to 91,415.

FROM PAGE 1

The production of ventilators (Savr-Q) by Barzan Holding Company comes in response to His Highness’s directives to the Ministry of Defence to contribute to the measures taken by the country in combating the novel coro-

navirus pandemic.H H the Amir was accompanied by the

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, and a number of Their Excellencies Min-isters and senior officials.

03THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 HOME

Officials pose after a QA flight carrying urgent Qatari medical aid arrives in the Republic of Rwanda.

Action against two firms for violating safety normsQNA — DOHA

Within the framework of its inspection campaigns in cooper-ation with the competent author-ities in the country to ensure companies adhere to the necessary precautionary measures to limit the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs (MADLSA) has taken action against two companies in Al Wakrah area.

In a statement, the Ministry said that the companies violated the directives during work and the deci-sions that obligate all workers to wear masks while working, adding the Ministry has referred the offi-cials of the two companies to the security authorities to take the nec-essary measures.

The Ministry stressed the need to adhere to the implementation of the decision. In the event of non-compliance, the penalties stipulated in Decree Law No. 17 of 1990 on protection from infectious diseases will be applied to the violator by imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years and a fine not exceeding QR 200,000 or one of the two penalties.

HMC cautions against unsupervised changes in medication FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

As the holy month of Ramadan has begun, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has urged patients who take daily medi-cation and fast to follow their physician’s advice in changing timing and dosage.

Dr. Moza Sulaiman Al Hail (pictured), Executive Director of Pharmacy at HMC, in a virtual interview with media persons also asked the public to contact the corporate pharmacy drug information centre at 40260747 or 40260760 and 40260759 for

queries about prescribed med-ications. The service is staffed by pharmacists and is open Sunday to Thursday, from 7am

to 8pm. According to Dr. Al Hail, several studies have shown that patients often change the intake time and dosage of their medication without first seeking medical advice.

“This behaviours could alter the pharmacological properties of a drug and impact the effec-tiveness of the medication and the patient’s tolerance of the drug,” she said. WShe also cau-tioned that unsupervised changes to medication timings during Ramadan can render a medicine useless and also cause serious health complications.

During Ramadan, all adult Muslims who fast are required to refrain from taking any food, liquids or oral drugs between dawn and sunset. However, those with chronic medical con-ditions such as diabetes, hyper-tension, heart and kidney dis-eases, as well as conditions like epilepsy, require daily medi-cation to effectively manage their condition and prevent complications. If these indi-viduals wish to fast, they are advised to consult their phy-sician or pharmacist before making changes to their medi-cation routine.

“If sick patients do fast, they should do so under the medical supervision of their doctor, pharmacist, or another health professional familiar with their condition and medical history,” said Dr. Al Hail.

Most religious scholars and healthcare practitioners agree that administration routes of some medication do not nullify fasting.

“Treatments and Proce-dures that Do Not Invalidate Fasting according to Resolu-tions and recommendations of the council of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, 23 — 28 Safar 1418 H

(June 28— July 3, 1997) and that include eye and ear drops, all substances absorbed into the body through the skin, such as creams, ointments, and medi-cated plasters, injections through the skin, muscle, joints, or veins, with the exception of intravenous feeding, oxygen and anaesthetic gases, nitro-glycerin tablets placed under the tongue for the treatment of angina, mouthwashes or oral sprays provided nothing swal-lowed enters the stomach, sup-positories/pessaries (rectal/vaginal), nebuliser, enema and asthma inhaler.”

QC provides food items to Tanzanian Embassy for its community in Qatar SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Embassy of the United Republic of Tanzania in Doha has received a consignment of food items for about 200 households of Tanzanian community in Qatar.

The food items, provided by Qatar Charity (QC), include rice, flour, salt, sugar, milk, pasta, cooking oil and beans.

The items were received by Fatma Mohammed Rajab, Ambassador of Tanzania to Qatar, and handed over to rep-resentatives of the Tanzanian community in Qatar.

In a statement to The Peninsula, she said, “The embassy is working closely with its community to identify those who are in need of food in this time of COVID-19 pan-demic. The Embassy try our level best to educate workers and ask them to adhere and abide to the rules and regula-tions that the Government of Qatar is emphasizing everyday in order to protect themselves and others. We also provide leaflets in our national language.”

The Ambassador also expressed her gratitude to Qatar Charity for its support of providing food items during this time of crisis, adding: “As the ambassador of Tanzania, I am very honoured to receive this support for my community.”

Regarding the number of Tanzanian community in Qatar, Rajab said that “Currently we have approximately around 3,000 Tanzanian working and living in Qatar.” They are working in many fields such as banking, police, defence and construction. She further said that Qatar charity will continue to provide food basket to those who are in need through their official link to be distributed to the ones who are needed it.

Qatar Charity has also ini-tiated the process of opening its branch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This will help us

strengthen our relationship with Qatar Charity as well as the Government of Qatar, she said.

The Ambassador pointed out that “During this ongoing pandemic, that will surely end by the grace of God, we highly commend the Government of Qatar for their continued efforts in ensuring the health and safety of its citizens and all nationalities living in Qatar.”

Besides the donations through the embassies, Qatar Charity is providing a food basket to workers also. It has distributed many food baskets during this crisis to workers, and until now over 45,000 food

baskets have been distributed. Also it has distributed more than 30,000 personal hygiene packages among workers.

With the support from the people in Qatar, Qatar Charity has initiated the implemen-tation of its Ramadan campaign “Calm You Heart by Giving” by implementing the “Feed a Fasting Person” project in 30 countries worldwide, including Turkey, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and others.

The ‘Feed a Fasting Person’ project, implemented outside Qatar, is valued at QR16m, and aims to benefit 424,396 persons by distributing food baskets and Iftar meals to them.

A Tanzanian community member receives food items, which were provided by the Qatar Charity, from Fatma Mohammed Rajab, Ambassador of Tanzania to Qatar.

Medical aid shipments arrive inNepal, Rwanda and Tunisia

The Ambassador expressed gratitude to Qatar Charity for its support during this time of crisis, adding: “As the ambassador of Tanzania, I am very honoured to receive this support for my community.”

QNA – KATHMANDU

Upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to send urgent medical aid as a support of the State of Qatar to the efforts made by the friendly Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal in combating coronavirus pandemic, the urgent shipment of medical aid arrived yesterday in the capital Kathmandu.

The shipment was received by the Minister of Health and Population of the Republic of Nepal, H E Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal; Ambassador of the State of Qatar to Nepal, H E Yousuf bin Mohamed Al Hail; and Director of Central and West Asia and Africa Division at the Nepalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Harish-chandra Ghimire.

Meanwhile, in implemen-tation of the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to send urgent medical aid in support of the State of Qatar to the efforts made by the friendly Republic of Rwanda in combating the pandemic of the COVID-19, the shipment of urgent medical arrived in the

capital, Kigali.The aid was received by

Minister of Health of the Republic of Rwanda, H E Dr. Daniel Ngamije; Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Republic of Rwanda, H E Abdullah Mohammed Al Sayed; and Permanent Secretary of the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Interna-tional Cooperation. The Rwandan Minister of Health thanked the State of Qatar for its tangible efforts in alleviating people crises and extending a helping hand towards their friends in the Republic of Rwanda.H E Ambassador Abdullah Mohammed Al Sayed said that the aid was urgently

provided to the Republic of Rwanda in support of the efforts of friends to fight the outbreak of the new pandemic of the coronavirus.

The urgent medical aid also arrived in Tunis provided by Qatar through QFFD, weighing of approximately 10 tonnes, to the Republic of Tunisia.

The aid were received by the Acting Charge d’Affairs at the Embassy of the State of Qatar to Tunisia, Abdulaziz Mohammed Al Sheikh; Director of the Department of Arab and Islamic Affairs at the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Youssef, and a delegation from the Tunisian Ministry of Health.

Enrollment at Lusail University to start on June 30THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Lusail University, first Qatari national private university was launched yesterday offering a number of programmes for Qatari and expatriate students.

The programmes include Bachelor of Law, Bachelor of Oil and Gas Man-agement, Bachelor of Marketing and Dis-tribution Technology, Bachelor of French Studies and Bachelor of Teaching English.

The university will begin accepting online applications on June 30, 2020 and detail about submitting applications will be announced on social site of the Uni-versity soon. The details about the new university were given in a press con-ference on Qatar TV yesterday.

“The board of the trustee of Lusail University held its first meeting chaired by Dr. Ali Bin Fetais Al Marri in the presence of all members of the board,” said Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Lusail University while addressing the press conference

He said that the university will be an added value to the higher education in the country by playing its role in achieving Qatar National Vision 2030 which focuses on the development of human resources in one of its goals. “Lusail University is launched at a time when higher education programs are needed in the country because of the coronavirus which came followed by the unjust blockade hindering persuasion of high studies in abroad,” said Al Nuaimi.

He said that Lusail University will offer the programs for Qatari and expa-triate students, the holders of senior sec-ondary school certificates who fulfill the enrollment conditions.

“The university will open in two shifts morning and evening creating educa-tional opportunities to the employees too,” said Al Nuaimi.

“We offer several programs at the university such as the Bachelor of Law, the Bachelor of Oil and Gas Management, the Bachelor of Marketing and Distri-bution Technology, the Bachelor of French Studies and the Bachelor of

Teaching English,” said President of Lusail University Dr. Mahmoud Khaled Al Musafer.

He said that all programs are accredited by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in the State of Qatar and the Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research in the Kingdom of Morocco. “We succeeded in attracting distinguished teaching staff from PhD and Masters holders from Qataris in addition to Arabs and other countries,” he added.“We offer special grants and facil-ities to citizens and residents holding

senior secondary school certificates, dis-tinguished students, invention holders, people with special needs, and brothers,” said Al Musafer. Regarding future plan, he said that near future plan of the uni-versity is to offer academic programs at the graduate, master’s and doctoral levels in the fields of management, economics, humanities, information technology, and engineering. Fatima Al Musleh, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, said: “The appli-cation online will be opened on June 30 , 2020, and the application mechanism will be announced on the university’s social networking sites later.”

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Lusail University; President of Lusail University, Dr. Mahmoud Khaled Al Musafer, and Fatima Al Musleh, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, addressing the press conference.

The shipment was received by the Minister of Health and Population of the Republic of Nepal, H E Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal; Ambassador of the State of Qatar to Nepal, H E Yousuf bin Mohamed Al Hail; and Director of Central and West Asia and Africa Division at the Nepalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Harishchandra Ghimire.

04 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020HOME

Nehmeh launches e-commerce platformTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Nehmeh, a leading provider of quality indus-trial solutions, is once again setting the standards. The company announced on Sunday the launch of its f i r s t i n n o v a t i v e e-commerce website enabling Industrial customers to order online in Qatar with delivery and payment options.

Online shoppers will now find award-winning brands, many of who are market leaders in their cat-egories, such as Makita, Koshin, Norton, Kohler-SDMO, Stampa, Portacool, U-Pol and more available on the Nehmeh Online

Store. Nehmeh has a wide

presence in the Auto-motive, Construction, Heat Transfer, Rental, Service and Woodworking Indus-trial Performance Solu-tions. In addition to Nehmeh’ large retail network in Qatar and B2C, B2B channel networks, the transition online will now enable tens of thousands of people access reliable industrial solutions. “In these uncertain times, we have looked to invest in the present and future so as to make our solutions available to our customers that can have a choice to deliver to them in a con-venient, accessible and

safe way.” said Alexander A. Nehme, Director of Stra-tegic Initiatives. “As we look at a post-COVID-19 era, it is important for businesses adapt and change their business models and embrace digital transformation as we are doing throughout our value chain,” added Alexander.

Being rolled out in phases, the Nehmeh Online Shop will allow both trade & industry customers to inquire and order online from thousands of products, accessories & spare parts. Delivery and

payment options will include collection in store, cash on-delivery, pay-ments in credit & debit cards or through special coupons exclusively for members of the “Rewards by Nehmeh” program, as well as PayPal.

The second generation of the Nehmeh App, the most popular industrial mobile application in Qatar, will follow suit in line with the e-commerce platform enabling pur-chases through its existing mobile apps already available on Google and Apple stores.

Qatar celebrates World Day for Safety and Health at WorkQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar, along with other countries of the world, celebrated the World Day for Safety and Health at Work which falls on the 28th of April every year, and aims to raise awareness about adopting safe prac-tices in the workplace and highlight the role of occupational safety and health services.

This years celebration of World Day for Safety and Health at Work comes in light of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the world, as this years celebration focused on tackling the spread of infectious dis-eases in the workplace, especially the (COVID-19) virus.

On this occasion, the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor & Social Affairs affirmed its keenness on the importance of implementing occupational safety standards and preserving the health of workers, stressing the need for employers to provide a healthy and safe envi-ronment for workers, and to provide safety equipment. The worker also has a responsibility to follow safety guidelines in the workplace and not to violate the specific health conditions.

The Ministry also affirmed the basic right of the worker to enjoy a safe and healthy work environment and to abide by all the rules and occu-pational safety and health guidelines

issued by the concerned authorities in the state.

It also indicated the necessity for the employer to ensure the safety of workers’ workplaces and to contin-uously train them on safety rules in addition to securing all required safety equipment.

On this occasion, the Ministry called on all workers to strictly follow safety instructions and use clothes and equipment for personal pro-tection at all times correctly to avoid the risk of accidents and diseases.

The Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor & Social Affairs called urged workers not to hesitate in contacting them to request assistance or other inquiries.

Call for artists to join Doha Festival City's Ramadan virtual galleryTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

In support of #StandwithCreatives campaign, Doha Festival City (DHFC) has announced the launch of its community-driven initiative targeted to all artists in Qatar in an opportunity to showcase their artwork in Ramadan-themed virtual gallery.

Under the umbrella of DHFC’s ongoing #QatarUnitesUs community initiative, both established and up-and-coming artists will have the oppor-tunity to get their artwork published on the mall’s highly-viewed platforms such as their website and social media channels, and enjoy the opportunity to put their creativity on display.

Doha Festival City encourages eve-ryone in Qatar to submit their Ramadan-themed artworks, whether it’s a painting, photography, digital art or calligraphy starting from May 1. Par-ticipants can submit their artwork on

the link: www.dohafestivalcity.com/home/whats-on/events/virtualgallery. Deadline for submission is on May 10.

All submitted artwork will be reviewed and selected carefully by des-ignated team DHFC. Once successful, the selected artworks will be posted on DHFC’s dedicated #QatarUnitesUs virtual gallery on their website www.dohafestivalcity.com as well as social media channels between May 11 and 15 with full credit to the artists in an effort to provide them the exposure and

recognition that they deserve.Successful applicants must ensure

all artworks are themed under “Ramadan in Qatar”, mentioning the artist’s name and supported by a statement in both English and Arabic languages along with the artwork title and description. Partic-ipants should also provide high-quality pictures or scans of their artwork, their social media handles, and website URL (if applicable).

Robert Hall, general manager of DHFC, said: “We are pleased to give all of Qatar’s artists, whether professionals or amateurs, the opportunity to be fea-tured across our channels. We take pride in supporting the #Standwith-Creatives initiative to promote crea-tivity within the community, and under our ongoing #QatarUnitesUs com-munity program, we hope to be able to give back to Qatar’s creative com-munity the recognition it deserves especially in times like these.”

Sidra offers guidance on maternal mental health during COVID-19THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Sidra Medicine, a member of Qatar Foundation, has shared perinatal mental health advice for pregnant women and women who have recently had a baby during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Felice Watt, Div. Chief of Adult Psychiatry for Women’s Mental Health at Sidra Medicine said, “While pregnancy and the period after having a baby is an emotional time, we have noticed increased levels of anxiety in many pregnant and postpartum women as well as their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxiety is a normal response to a difficult, stressful or threatening situ-ation, and there are some basic things that we can all do to maintain our mental and physical wellbeing during this pandemic.”

“In addition to proper hand washing and applying social

and physical distancing measures, it is important that pregnant women or women who have recently given birth, are getting adequate sleep, eating well and exercising reg-ularly. The support of family

members is critical during this time. With the 1st of May observed as World Maternal Mental Health Day, to mark the occasion the Women’s Well-being Clinic at Sidra Medicine have prepared a leaflet offering

guidance to pregnant and post-partum women in Qatar, on how to support their emotional well-being. We hope they and their families and friends will find the information useful,” continued Dr. Watt.

Sidra Medicine suggests

several steps for women to manage their anxiety during pregnancy or if they have just given birth. It advice to talk to the doctor or midwife during face to face or a telephone con-sultation and ask how you can contact them if feel anxious or worried about baby’s health.

Sidra Medicine also advice new mothers and pregnant women to talk with family and friends over the phone and through video calls.

It also suggest to stay away from disturbing social media and TV programs and request friends and family to avoid sending you messages that are negative.

Some women find it helpful to divide their day into four parts: rest, enjoyable activities, work and exercise, according to Sidra Medicine experts.

Experts also advice to talk to some one near and dear to reduce anxious thoughts and find ways to relax such as, yoga,

meditation, slow breathing, and mindfulness.

Family and friends can play a key role in supporting women during their prenatal and post-partum period by looking out for signs of worry or distress and listening to their concerns.

As with the current situation related to COVID-19, Sidra Med-icine advices pregnant women to follow the instructions from Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) and call the hotline number 16000 if they have any COVID-19 related questions or concerns.

The MOPH has designated certain hospitals to treat and care for people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 including pregnant women who have contracted the virus. Please note that Sidra Med-icine is not a COVID-19 hos-pital site and will not admit suspected or COVID-19 pos-itive patients.

Dr. Felice Watt, Div. Chief of Adult Psychiatry for Women’s Mental Health, at Sidra Medicine

"While pregnancy and the period after having a baby is an emotional time, we have noticed increased levels of anxiety in many pregnant and postpartum women as well as their families during the COVID-19 pandemic," Dr. Felice Watt said.

THE PENINSULA— DOHA

As part of its continuous efforts to encourage creativity in various fields, the Cultural Village Foundation - Katara has launched the Katara Award for Engi-neering Innovation 2020.

Katara is inviting engineers from dif-ferent parts of the world to participate in the award by presenting their engi-neering projects in different areas. The award comes in five categories including culture, sports, tourism, environment and medicine.

The award aims to enhance excel-lence in completed research projects with focus on human health and taking into account beauty and sustainability. It is also required in the joint project to address contemporary and future chal-lenges in keeping with innovation and creativity.

The projects are to be submitted in both Arabic and English along with a comprehensive engineering presentation of the project. Registration for the award is through the Katara website www.katara.net and the deadline for receiving entries is July 31, 2020.

The winner in each of the five cate-gories will receive prize of $10,000.

This award is considered one of the many and varied initiatives of Katara, through which it works to stimulate cre-ative capabilities in various cultural, artistic and scientific fields which comes as part of its strategy to build people, achieve sustainable development and enhance the comprehensive concept of culture as a basis for enriching society with all creative energies and its con-stant motivation for innovation.

The outcome of this award is expected to benefit the entire society as young energies will be encouraged to

innovate and be creative. It would support the creative economy which is the fourth sector of world economy, and is based on intellectual capital, where the award is directed to all engineers inside and outside Qatar. It promotes competition and contributes to producing projects with a very high degree of inno-vation, quality and excellence.

The Katara Prize for Engineering Innovation 2020 confirms Katara's belief on the importance of the field of engi-neering in developing comprehensive thinking, creativity and innovation, espe-cially as the award includes five vital areas which are culture, sports, tourism, environment and medicine. It comes within the framework of affirming Katara’s role in disseminating the values of creativity and innovation, and that Katara is a global hub for creativity, and for everything that contributes to the development of societies and the advancement of people. It extends bridges of communication between cul-tures and peoples through innovation and creativity.

Katara launches Engineering Innovation Award 2020

QA helps hundreds of British, Filipino nationals return homeFROM PAGE 1

On April 24, Qatar Airways flew 434 British national to their home from Ahmedabad.The multiple award-winning airline also helped over 300 hundreds of Filipino nationals stranded in Ethiopia unite with their family members.

“A total of 312 Filipino workers in Kombulcha, Ethiopia are returning home via Qatar Airways to the Philip-pines on April 29,” said Department of Foreign Affairs of The Philippines on

its official twitter account yesterday. By flying stranded passengers to

their homes, Qatar Airways has proved that it is a reliable partner for pas-sengers, governments, travel trade and freight companies in challenging circumstances.

Qatar Airways has helped reunite over one million passengers with their family members, operating a mix of scheduled and charter services plus extra sectors, said the airline in a press release yesterday.

In the past several weeks, the airline has helped repatriate over 45,000 pas-sengers back home to France, 70,000 home to Germany and over 100,000 cus-tomers 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. Qatar Airways is working closely with embassies across the globe to arrange charters to repatriate stranded citizens.

Katara is inviting engineers from different parts of the world to participate in the award by presenting their engineering projects in different areas. The award comes in five categories including culture, sports, tourism, environment and medicine.

05THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 HOME

QCS calls for healthy lifestyle during RamadanTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The holy month of Ramadan gives the opportunity to adapt a healthy lifestyle that helps in losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight and regulates blood sugar, said Heba Nassar, Head of the Health Education Department at Qatar Cancer Society (QCS).

In Ramadan people can reconsider unhealthy food habits, such as eating too much fatty food. Therefore, fasting helps in renewing and acti-vating body system and organs to get rid of accumulated body waste.

To maintain a healthy diet, it is preferred to start with dates and water then having soup which helps in controlling over the quantity of food the fasting person should have also, It is important to eat food slowly and wisely not too fast. As well as, it is recommended to drink plenty of water to avoid dehy-dration because water main-tains the balance of human body which is necessary for the absorption of many nutrients and it is very important to drink 2.7 litters – 3.7 litters of water per day, she added .

Nassar advised that you should avoid eating fried and fatty food such as fried potato and samosa as these foods contain high level of the daily

recommended fat and salt intake, so eating them fre-quently may increase the impact of fatigue and exhaustion, in addition, foods that contains high amount of salt such as pickles, can dehy-drate the body and affects the ability to absorb fluids.

She also advised that Pre-cautions should be taken and proper guidelines followed when working out before Iftar. Exercising just before Iftar should be limited and for no

longer than 60 minutes, pref-erably in an air-conditioned location. After you break the fast, drink sufficient amounts of fluids and water to replenish salts and minerals lost by the body, and have a good rest.

As it is advisable to perform physical activity three hours after you break the fast as by then the body has completed the digestion process in an air-conditioned place.

An American research has found that fasting for a short

period of time (for 3 days) renew the whole immune system and stimulates stem cells to renew white blood cells that resists infections. Another study has shown that fasting for a long period of time force human body to use glucose and fats storage which destroys most of the white blood cells. So, these changes lead to renew immune system cells by stem cells. Also, they found that prolonged fasting reduces the aging enzymes responsible for increasing the risk of tumours and cancer.

Therefore, prolonged fasting increases body resistance to infections and dis-eases. Also, decreases the risk of developing cancers and tumours, Nassar added .

“Due to the spread of COVID-19 which is an infec-tious disease that affects the respiratory system, this holy month can be used to enhance human immunity and resists contagious diseases. As we must be aware of the preventive measures to avoid the disease, such as washing your hands regularly with alcohol-based or with soap, avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth, because hands touch many surfaces and can pick up virus and try to maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing,” she said.

Heba Nassar, Head of the Health Education Department at Qatar Cancer Society.

Texas A&M at Qatar’s Alyafei named 'Energy Influence for 2020'THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Texas A&M University at Qatar’s Dr. Nayef Alyafei (pictured) has been named an Energy Influence for 2020 by The Way Ahead, a publication of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).

Alyafei is a Class of 2009 petroleum engineering graduate of Texas A&M at Qatar, a Qatar Foundation partner university, and an assistant professor in the Petroleum Engineering Program.

After completing his Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from Imperial College London in 2015, Alyafei joined the Texas A&M at Qatar faculty, becoming the youngest faculty member in the department and the first Texas A&M at Qatar graduate to join the faculty of the branch campus. He recently published his first textbook, Fundamentals of Res-ervoir Rock Properties, as well as two educational magazines.

Alyafei is considered a role model to his students and col-leagues due to his outstanding service in teaching, research and outreach. He plays an active role in providing guidance to the student body and is an advisor to Texas A&M at Qatar’s SPE student chapter. He has previ-ously won the university’s Teaching Excellence Award and the Texas A&M University Asso-ciation of Former College-level Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching — the youngest faculty member to receive these awards and also the first time for an assistant pro-fessor to receive them. In 2018, he was named Texas A&M at Qatar’s Alumnus of the Year for his teaching and mentoring activities.

With his ability to present challenging engineering and fun-damental concepts in a lucid manner, Alyafei is considered an inspirational teacher by his stu-dents. In the classroom, his enthusiasm and teaching skills

are readily apparent, and this creates an inspiring learning environment for the students. His contributions have strengthened Texas A&M at Qatar’s reputation in Qatar and regionally. He regularly leads many of the university’s STEM initiatives, helping the university recruit the highest quality Qatari and other students to enroll in its engineering programs.

In a short time, Alyafei gen-erated more than $2.5m in research grants. He leads a research group that focuses on understanding multiphase flow in porous media at the micro and macro scales — in particular, on wettability and spontaneous imbibition studies both experi-mentally and numerically.

Dr. César Octavio Malavé, dean of Texas A&M at Qatar, said that Alyafei has taken on the responsibility for educating future generations of engi-neering leaders in Qatar.

“In everything he does — whether in the classroom or the lab, or when he volunteers his time to our ongoing STEM out-reach activities — Dr. Nayef Alyafei leads by example,” Malavé said. “Nayef truly embodies the Texas A&M core values of excellence, integrity, leadership, loyalty, respect and selfless service, and we are proud to call him an Aggie engineer.”

Sherborne Qatar community unites behind the schoolTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

With over three billion people around the world currently in lockdown because of the coro-navirus pandemic, schools are faced with the tough challenge of delivering and keeping to the highest standards of teaching and learning.

In these challenging times health and well-being are more important than ever. The welfare of its pupils has been one of Sher-borne Qatar’s main considera-tions as it developed its new e-learning environment; teachers are having to embrace a variety of ways in order to engage and stimulate pupils and to encourage them to keep communicating with their peers.

With this in mind the school has designed and developed extra curricula fun activities to keep children entertained. The response has been fantastic as pupils and their parents engaged with the school projects with real enthusiasm and imagination.

The Stay Connected initiative for instance covered a range of areas such as getting active, culture, drama and music, humanities, ICT and mathe-matics. Pupils shared fantastic videos of exercise and sport rou-tines, animated video presenta-tions on the ‘COVID-19’ theme, dancing and music videos played with a range of instruments as well as designing informative posters and flyers. A new weekly Ramadan competition has just been launched by the Arabic and

Islamic Studies Department involving pupils listening to a short video of recitation of verses from the Quran, then recording and submitting their own recita-tions to qualify for the prize draw.

One of the highlights of the school closure has been the cre-ation of a music video collating clips of children and academic staff singing from home the classic uplifting anthem ‘Heal the World’. The video, an initiative of the Prep School’s Head of Music, Razwan Sarwar, was pro-duced by Sherborne Qatar’s parent company Sharaka Holdings and KidZania Qatar and has been viewed more than five thousand times on social media. The video offers a promise of hope for a united mankind and for a post pandemic world more aware of its excesses and fragile ecosystems.

It is in fact through a plethora

of video and communication technologies, by holding regular live online lessons and by gen-erating supporting materials in digital format, that the school has insured that the pupils’ education continues as fully as possible. Whilst it is impossible to com-pletely recreate the buzz and dynamics of a real classroom, Sherborne Qatar’s teachers have been working harder than ever to foster a stimulating online learning environment and to cover the whole curriculum.

The coronavirus pandemic is giving us an opportunity to think deeply about the values of empathy and solidarity while the shared experience of the lockdown is creating a stronger sense of community.

The Sherborne Qatar com-munity may be working remotely in many different locations around Qatar but, in a very

tangible sense, it is as united as ever, working in unison to support the school’s efforts during the lockdown and antic-ipating the time when all children in the country will be allowed back at school.

However, when that day comes it will be with renewed optimism for the future and with the knowledge that the school’s belief in the human spirit, its values and particularly those of teamwork, perseverance and kindness have seen it overcome the challenge of these difficult times.

In Ramadan people can reconsider unhealthy food habits, such as eating too much fatty food. Therefore, fasting helps in renewing and activating body system and organs to get rid of accumulated body waste.

Kahramaa launches Ramadan competition on efficient use of electricity and waterTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) represented by the National Program for Conser-vation and Energy Efficiency (Tarsheed), launched a number of awareness programmes during the holy month of Ramadan, within the campaign ‘Stay at Home and Act Sustainably’.

The programmes are pre-pared within the plans and goals of Tarsheed to increase awareness of the efficient of use electricity and water for the res-idential sector The episodes of the competition are broadcasted on Qatar TV every other day after the religious program, which is broadcast immediately after Maghrib prayer.

It is published also on the social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat) for both Kahramaa and Tarsheed. Thirteen episodes are displayed during the holy month of Ramadan in a fun and interesting way through cartoon characters loved by both children

and adults, as the competition is suitable for all members of society to urge them to adopt positive practices in the con-sumption of water and electricity.

It is possible to participate in the competition to win one of the valuable prizes offered by Kahramaa by sending the answer in an SMS to the toll-free numbers: 92119 for the Ooredoo network, and 97000 for the Vodafone network. The compe-tition can also be followed on the hashtag #Ask_Tarsheed and #StayHomeSustainably on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Among the conditions of the competition is that the indi-vidual has the right to partic-ipate once in order to equalize the chances of winning and give incentive to the largest number of participants to follow the correct behavior in consumption and rationalization, knowing that one winner will be announced for each question every two days on the social media sites at One o’clock in the afternoon after announcing the

correct solution of the previous episode.

Within the #StayingHome-Sustainably campaign comes 4 episodes recorded with a prom-inent Islamic scholar that aim to emphasize the orientation of Islam towards sustainability and to advise and guide community to follow the methods of ration-alization and the efficiency of using electricity and water such as saving water during ablution, as a religious duty before it is a social and environmental responsibility.

Tarsheed has launched 5 interactive workshops dedicated to children, aiming to educate them in various fields to pre-serve the environment and reduce harmful carbon emis-sions such as the recycling, building a home greenhouse, growing houseplants, hand washing with no waste, and the importance of using soap to combat germs.

The workshops are broad-casted on Gym TV for children and soon on several educational channels to reach school children studying at home now.

06 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Workers install metallic barriers along the facade of a bank as a protective measure against vandalism in the Lebanese capital Beirut, yesterday.

Arab League warns against escalation in LebanonANATOLIA — CAIRO

The Arab League yesterday warned of Lebanon’s “slide into the unknown” following bloody clashes between the army and protesters.

At least one protestor died and a dozen others injured in clashes in Tripoli, the country’s second largest city, late on Monday.

Anger over the crash of Leb-anon’s national currency that sent food prices soaring led to street violence. Protests were witnessed in the capital Beirut, and the city of Sidon as well.

The Arab League, in a statement, expressed its deep concern regarding “the acceler-ating developments on the Leb-

anese scene.”“There is a hope that the

wisdom of the army’s leadership and security services to act with professionalism and responsi-bility to prevent Lebanon from slipping into the unknown,” the communique read.

It pointed out that “the financial, economic and banking crisis in Lebanon is now requiring decisive and immediate treatment.”

Anti-government protests are continuing in Lebanon since last October, calling for eco-nomic and social reforms, an overhaul of the ruling class and

an end to corruption.The movement had led to

the resignation of premier Saad Hariri, despite introducing cuts to spending.

Oman reports 143 new coronavirus casesQNA — MUSCAT

The Omani Ministry of Health announced yesterday the registration of 143 new positive cases with coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Sultanate, including 42 cases for Omanis and 101 cases for non-Omanis.

This brings the total number of positive COVID-19 cases in the Sultanate to 2274, in addition to 10 deaths.

The Ministry added that a total of 364 cases have recovered from the disease.

The Ministry called upon all to fully adhere to social dis-tancing instructions issued by the Supreme Committee and the Ministry of Health and not leaving home unless necessary.

Yemen’s internationally recognised government yes-terday reported five new coro-navirus cases amid warnings by health and aid organisa-tions the pandemic could have dire consequences in the war-ravaged country.

The United Nations has declared Yemen, where war a conflict erupted in 2014, as “the world’s worst humani-tarian crisis” with millions suf-fering malnutrition and a crumpling healthcare system.

Iran reopens for business, but no end in sight to virus crisisAFP — TEHRAN

Iran reopened for business despite its persistent corona-virus outbreak as there was no end in sight to the crisis, its president said yesterday, as 80 new deaths were announced.

“Due to uncertainty about when this virus will end, we are preparing for work, activity and science,” said President Hassan Rouhani.

“We have to follow all the medical instructions, but work and production are as essential as these precautions,” he told a

televised cabinet meeting. His remarks came as the

health ministry announced that 80 new deaths from the novel coronavirus had taken the coun-try’s overall toll to 5,957.

Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said another 1,073 people tested pos-itive for the virus in the past 24 hours.

All but 20,000 of the 93,657 people who contracted the illness since mid-February have been discharged from hospital, he told a televised news conference.

Iran has struggled to contain the coronavirus outbreak since reporting its first cases — two deaths in the Shiite holy city of Qom — on February 19.

The actual numbers of those killed and sickened by the virus are widely thought to be much higher than the Iranian govern-ment’s official tolls.

Despite still battling the virus, the government has allowed many businesses to reopen since April 11 after shutting most down in mid-March to stem the spread of the disease.

Turkey extends distance learning until May 31ANATOLIA — ANKARA

Turkish national education minister yesterday announced that the country’s distance education will continue until May 31 as part of measures to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Turkey first began distance education through broadcasting school lessons on March 23 with National Education Minister Ziya Selcuk teaching the first class to millions of students.

The remote lessons are available online and on TV.

Selcuk said that in the first 15 days of distance learning, the number of lessons via Education Information Network surpassed 650,000. “Just 150,000 of these lessons were within the first week, and this number rose to

500,000 in the second week. We have established a new dimension to education by making nearly 200,000 of

these lessons on the weekend,” Selcuk added. On March 13, Turkey had announced all educational facilities from

primary schools to univer-sities would be suspended so the virus could be contained in the country.

A drone photo shows soldiers train while maintaining social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic at Foca Transport and Terminal Unit in Izmir, Turkey, yesterday.

Brotherhood puts plan against Israeli annexationANATOLIA — ISTANBUL

The Muslim Brotherhood suggested a three-step plan against Israel’s annexation plan of West Bank.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman Talaat Fahmi said in a statement that the Israeli plan to annex the occupied West Bank is an attack on Pal-estinian land and people.

Fahmi suggested a three-step plan, which calls for “forming a consensus on Pal-estine issue, urges Arab coun-tries for serious steps in cutting relations with Israel, UN to support international legit-imacy which regards actions that harm the status of occupied land as crimes.”

Before the early election in the country on March 2, Israeli P r e s i d e n t B e n j a m i n Netanyahu promised to “annex” illegal Jewish settle-ments in the West Bank and Jordan Valley.

Joint commission formed by the US and Israeli officials started the mapping process in West Bank in order to “annex” these regions, fol-lowing the so-called US peace plan.

Arab foreign ministers are expected on Thursday to hold an emergency conference via a video link to discuss Israel’s annexation plan.

UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia continue despite Yemen warANATOLIA — LONDON/SANA'A

Leading UK arms dealer BAE Systems has sold Saudi Arabia £15bn ($18.7bn) worth of arms and services as the kingdom continues to wage a crippling war in Yemen now in its fifth year.

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade, a London-based group aimed at abolishing the international arms trade, ana-lyzed BAE Systems’ latest annual report.

It found that the company made £2.5 billion from Saudi Arabia in 2019 alone and £15 billion between 2015 and 2019.

This makes the Saudi gov-ernment BAE’s third-largest client after the US and UK, racking up earnings of £6.5 billion and £3.9 billion in 2019, respectively.

Osamah Alfakih, advocacy

and communications director at Mwatana for Human Rights, told Anadolu Agency that UK-made weapons had been used by the Saudi and UAE-led coalition in “unlawful strikes” in Yemen. Mwatana is an inde-pendent Yemeni human rights organization.

Instead of playing a “pos-itive role” in Yemen, the UK is fueling “armed conflict” with arms sales, Alfakih explained.

“The UK should support efforts of accountability for human rights abuses committed by all parties to the conflict, including the coalition and the Ansar Allah group,” he added, referring to both the Saudis and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who overthrew Yemen’s gov-ernment in 2015, plunging the country in civil war.

The crisis escalated in 2015, when the Saudi-led military

coalition launched its devas-tating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis, including civilians, are believed to have been killed in the conflict, which has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis as millions remain at risk of starvation and disease.

Holly Topham, an editor at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, told Anadolu Agency that there was “a lot of evidence to suggest that UK arms sales and support of the Saudi Air Force play an important —if not instrumental role —in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on Yemen.”

Topham recounted that a UN-appointed panel found last year that the UK, among other states, may be “complicit in vio-lations of international law” due to its intelligence and logistical

support, as well as arms sales to Riyadh.

UK officials and British nationals working in the defense sector have implied that the coalition “could not carry out these airstrikes without the support of the UK,” she said.

Identifying a “persistent issue of transparency” sur-rounding the sales, she noted that the UK government neither provided information on the numbers of weapons sold nor tracked “what happens to them” after the weapons transfers were made. This makes accountability “problematic,” she explained.

“In terms of outlook, we’re seeing a general groundswell of calls for greater scrutiny of arms transfers globally,” she said, adding that the UK High Court ruled last year that the

British government’s proc-esses for granting export licenses to Saudi Arabia were “unlawful,” specifically in relation to assessing Saudi Arabia’s international human-itarian law record, domestic review either ongoing or being pushed for in other key exporting states like the US, Germany and France.

The British Court of Appeal halted the country’s arms sales to Riyadh in June 2019, ruling that sales could not resume until the government assessed whether the Saudi-led coa-lition was engaged in a “his-toric pattern of breaches of international humanitarian law.”

The UK government is appealing the decision in the Supreme Court.

“But equally, the UK-Saudi relationship remains strong and

the kingdom is by far the top buyer of UK arms sales -- almost half of the total weapons sold by the UK over the past decade have gone to Saudi Arabia. The sector employs over a quarter of million either directly or indirectly,” Topham said.

She warned that pressure for greater scrutiny would continue to face resistance from “those who advocate the sector’s economic necessity.”

“With Brexit and the reper-cussions of COVID-19, we are likely to see this economic rea-soning become ever more forceful.”

Despite this, neither the UK nor BAE, however, accept any wrongdoing. A recent article in the Guardian quoted a British official as saying that the UK took its export responsibilities “seriously.”

ANATOLIA — IZMIR, TURKEYContracting the novel coronavirus at the very first days of his life, Syrian baby has recovered from COVID-19 after treatment in Izmir, on the Aegean coast of Turkey.

Syrian baby Aziz was diagnosed with the disease just five days after opening his eyes to the world, and he was dis-charged from the hospital with a round of applause after nearly a month of fight.

Mustafa Al Mahmoud and Siham al-Tamar, parents of Aziz, got married five years ago in Aleppo province of Syria.

Fleeing the internal conflict in his country, Mahmoud came to Izmir four years ago and started shoe-making to gain his life.

Mahmoud brought his spouse to Izmir last year. After Tamar had high fever around a month ago, Mahmoud took her to a hospital where she delivered a baby boy at 33rd week.

Baby Aziz was taken in intensive care unit for newborns as he had diffi-culty in breathing. He tested positive for COVID-19.

A tube was inserted into his stomach

for medical treatment. He responded to the treatment and was delivered back to his family after testing negative for the disease after a month of treatment.

Defne Engur, newborn clinic admin-istrator of the hospital, told Anadolu Agency that health workers in the intensive care unit gave a long fight to save baby Aziz.

Stating that they monitored the baby in a negative pressure isolation room for a month, she said: “As it was a pre-mature baby, he could breathe with a ventilator. After he tested positive for

COVID-19, we started to apply dual medication treatment.

“We took him off the ventilator after he responded positive to the treatment.”

Engur said that it was an emotional time for all the intensive care unit staff when the mother met her baby for the first time.

“Now, the baby can comfortably be breastfed,” she said, adding that “there is a baby being discharged from hos-pital today, and there is a health army behind this success.” “We are so happy and proud as the team,” Engur stated.

Malls fill againas Saudi easesrestrictionsREUTERS — RIYADH

Saudis began tentatively returning to shopping malls and open-air markets yesterday after authorities relaxed restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Security guards took shoppers’ temperatures as a small number of visitors entered upscale malls in central Riyadh. A strong smell of sanitizer wafted through the homewares, cosmetic and clothing stores.

Many welcomed the sem-blance of normalcy after being cooped up at home due to curfews imposed since late March, especially with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Friday.

The kingdom on Sunday eased movement restrictions between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. except in Mecca. Schools, res-taurants, mosques and other public venues where physical distancing is difficult to maintain remain closed and social gatherings of more than five people are banned.

Newborn Syrian baby recovers from COVID-19 in Turkey

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani chairing a cabinet session in the capital Tehran, yesterday.

Anger over the crash of Lebanon’s national currency that sent food prices soaring led to street violence. Protests were witnessed in the capital Beirut, and the city of Sidon as well.

Fighting malaria

07THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Turkey vows to defend Tripoli against Haftar dictatorshipAFP — TRIPOLI/BRUSSELS

Turkey yesterday accused Libya’s strongman Khalifa Haftar of seeking to “create a military dictatorship” and vowed to “defend” the government in Tripoli.

The oil-rich North African nation has been mired in chaos since the ouster and killing of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with rival administrations in the east and west vying for power.

Haftar, who controls swathes of eastern Libya and in April last year launched an offensive to seize Tripoli, said on Monday that his self-styled army had “accepted the will of

the people and its mandate”. Turkey’s foreign ministry

denounced the claim. “With this announcement,

Haftar has once again demon-strated that he does not seek a political solution to the crisis in Libya, does not support inter-national efforts in this regard... and aims to create a military dictatorship in the country,” it

said. Turkey backs Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord in the capital Tripoli, and has dispatched troops and pro-Turkish Syrian fighters there.

The ministry urged the international community to “respond, without further delay, to this person, who undoubtedly exposed his intention to

establish a junta regime in Libya.” And it assured in a statement that Turkey would “definitely continue to stand by the brotherly Libyan people in defending the Government of National Accord and all other legitimate institutions of Libya.”

The EU’s delayed naval mission to enforce an arms embargo on Libya will be ready to begin work in the coming days, officials said.

Agreement was reached among EU states on Monday to equip the new operation with ships, planes and satellites, a spokesman for the bloc’s dip-lomatic chief said.

Operation Irini, as the mission is known, aims to halt

the flow of arms into Libya, where the UN-recognised Tripoli government is under attack from the forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar, who controls much of the country’s south and east. “Irini has the nec-essary resources to begin its mission,” Peter Stano, spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, said. An Italian navy ship will reach the zone of operations — in the eastern Mediterranean —in the coming days, a diplo-matic source said.

It will be supported initially by other EU nations’ ships in the area, until the arrval of vessels actually attached to the Irini mission. Irini replaces the con-troversial Operation Sophia, set

up in 2015 to fight people-smuggling across the Mediter-ranean at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, which formally ended at the end of March.

The new mission was sup-posed to start immediately, but it was held up for nearly a month by bickering between Italy and Greece over who should hold the command.

Agreement over Irini has been hard fought. The 27 EU states finally reached an accord in principle in February over objections from Austria and Hungary. They feared the new mission would create a de facto rescue fleet that would ferry migrants across the Mediter-ranean to Europe.

Most Kenyan regions ill-prepared to tackleCOVID-19, warns panelREUTERS — NAIROBI

Most of Kenya’s 47 local authorities are not properly equipped to deal with the coro-navirus health crisis, which weakens the country’s fight against the pandemic, a senate committee warned.

The East African nation has 384 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease and local authorities are central to the fight against the pandemic since they are in charge of health services, under the co-ordination of the ministry of health.

“Most counties still lack adequate supplies of personal protective equipment; have poorly equipped isolation and treatment facilities,” the com-mittee said in a report seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

“(They) have not facilitated adequate COVID-19 training and sensitization for their health workers.”

There were only 297 ven-tilators, with just 90 of them in public hospitals, the committee found. At least 30 new venti-lators acquired by the ministry of health due to the pandemic were yet to be distributed, it said.

“Critically... a shortage of oxygen and basic oxygen equipment in the counties further threatens Kenya’s ability to care for and manage COVID-19 patients,” the sen-ate’s special committee on the response to the pandemic said in the report.

The ministry said it has been deploying the equipment based on requirements as assessed by its experts, as well as within the constraints of the resources available.

Crucially, the report found that statements by public health authorities diverged with the reality reported by frontline workers.

While the ministry main-tained that adequate quantities of personal protective equipment had been dis-tributed to counties and health facilities, the committee cast doubt.

“These claims were at var-iance with the overwhelming majority of stakeholders who appeared before the com-mittee, including the COG (council of governors) and health worker associations and unions,” it said.

At least more than 5,000 workers are also being recruited by the county author-ities to help in the fight against the coronavirus, the senate committee said in its report.

Other obstacles hampering the effective fight against the pandemic include lack of material to carry out more tests for the disease, the committee said.

Only about 18,000 tests have been carried out so far, according to health ministry briefings, in a population of 47 million, and against a capacity to carry out 37,000 tests daily.

The committee blamed the low testing rate on lack of skilled lab personnel, lack of adequate sample collection kits, insufficient reagents and some faulty test kits which were received as donations.

It called for an additional funding allocation of 790 million shillings to the coun-try’s medical research institute in order to redress the testing situation.

Charles Kinhouande Zinsou, district manager of Agla, and agents pose with mosquito nets in Cotonou, Benin, yesterday during a door-to-door distribution aiming at fighting malaria amid the the novel coronavirus pandemic. As the rainy season approaches, Benin is the first country in West Africa to take on the challenge of providing mosquito nets to protect the population from malaria despite the disruption caused by COVID-19.

Africa reports 54new virus deathsin last 24 hours

ANATOLIA — ADDIS ABABA

Africa’s death toll from coro-navirus climbed to 1,521 yesterday with 54 new fatal-ities reported in the last 24 hours, a health authority said.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Pre-vention (CDC) figures showed the tally of cases has risen to 34,915.However, recoveries have gone up to 11,309, a welcome sign.

Northern Africa continues to be the hardest hit of the five geographical regions in Africa followed by Western, Southern, Eastern and Central.John Nkengasong, director of Africa CDC, told Anadolu Agency that coronavirus cases in the con-tinent have grown 400% in the last four weeks in four African nations: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa.

According to the latest tally, Egypt recorded 5,000 cases, Morocco 4,300 and Algeria 3,600 and South Africa 5,000. In terms of deaths however, Algeria is the worst-hit with 437, Egypt 359, and Morocco 165 fatalities.

Virus lockdown worsens sufferingfor poor people in Johannesburg AP — JOHANNESBURG

Inock Mukanhairi shows the small amount of food that he has for himself, his wife, Angeline, and five children — barely enough to make it through another week of South Africa’s strict coronavirus lockdown.

The 58-year-old and his wife are both blind. Normally, they would be begging at traffic lights on Johannes-burg’s streets, relying on handouts from motorists, pedestrians and shop owners. But the lockdown, now in its fifth week, has changed that.

Police are preventing them from leaving their dilapidated building to beg on the empty streets and barren sidewalks.

The building houses about two dozen blind or otherwise disabled foreigners who rely on handouts to make enough for food and rent. With their children, they make up about 70 people. Many have entered South Africa illegally from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi.

“I really understand that the coronavirus is killing a lot of people. But at the same time, I’m locked inside my room,” said Mukanhairi. “So death is death, due to corona or due to hunger.”

South Africa has the most con-firmed cases of COVID-19 in Africa, with more than 4,360, including 86 deaths. The country’s far-reaching restrictions have been in effect since March 27 and residents must stay

home, except for visits to grocery stores, pharmacies and health facil-ities. The lockdown will be eased starting May 1, but this is unlikely to help the beggars, because people will still be required to stay home.

Families of six to eight people are crammed into small rooms where they cook, eat and sleep. Under such conditions, social distancing is not possible. The building has a few taps for water, so regular hand-washing is also difficult. The elderly and blind often just sit on their beds as their children play in the dimly lit and narrow hallways, where loose

electric cords dangle from the ceiling.Without any donations, they say

they are uncertain about where they will get their next meals.

Last week, South Africa announced an increase in social grants for the poor, elderly and dis-abled, but these immigrants are not eligible for that aid.

At the start of the lockdown, authorities swept the homeless from the streets and took them to a housing facility where food is pro-vided. The beggars say they fled to their own building at the time to avoid being rounded up.

Tunisia to partially reopen food and construction sectors next weekREUTERS & QNA — TUNIS

Tunisia will start relaxing its coronavirus lockdown next week, reopening parts of the food and construction sectors and allowing half of government employees to return to work, it said yesterday.

Its lockdown, in place since March, has stopped 25,000 cases of the virus and 1,000 deaths, Health Minister Abdelatif Al Makki said on television. Tunisia, which has about 500 intensive care beds, has confirmed fewer than 1,000 cases in all.

“Tunisia has controlled the

first wave of the pandemic, but we do not know about a pos-sible second wave,” he said.

The lockdown will begin to be eased on May 4. Further easing after May 11 will include clothing shops and malls, said Lobna Jribi, the minister in charge of major projects, in the same broadcast.

Public transport will par-tially reopen from May 4, she said. “The plan is we can open the economy gradually, but still control the pandemic,” Jribi said.

Tunisia’s economy is expected to shrink by 4.3% this year as a result of the crisis,

according to the International Monetary Fund.

Meanwhile, Tunisian Pres-ident Kais Saied decided yes-terday to extend the nationwide state of emergency for 30 days, starting from April 30, 2020.

The President had extended the state of emergency for three months from January 31 to April 29.

The state of emergency has been ongoing since November 24, 2015 nationwide, following the terrorist attack against a presidential guard bus in the capital, leaving 13 dead and 16 injured.

A volunteer for the grassroots charity, Hope for Vrededorp, reaches out to a woman with a container of home-cooked food, at a daily food distribution in the impoverished district of Vrededorp in Johannesburg, yesterday.

Turkey accused Libya’s strongman Khalifa Haftar of seeking to create a military dictatorship, while, the EU officials said its delayed naval mission to enforce an arms embargo on Libya will be ready to begin work in the coming days.

7 dead in jail break attempt in Sierra Leone

AFP — FREETOWN

Two prison guards and five inmates died during an attempted jail break and ensuing riot in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown yesterday, the police said.

Authorities discovered the colonial-era prison Pademba Road Prison ablaze last morning and rushed security officers to secure the scene.

This debate over limiting liability has just begun, and it’s already taken a partisan turn. That’s unfortunate, because there’s a straightforward middle-ground solution available.

08 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFIeditorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

QATAR’S foreign merchandise trade balance, which represents the difference between total exports and imports, has showed a surplus of QR7.6bn in March. According the figures released this week, the total value of exports of goods, including exports of goods of domestic origin and re-exports, in March 2020 reached at QR15.9bn.

In March 2020, the US was the leading country of origin of Qatar’s imports with about QR1.4bn, a share of 17.2 percent of the imports, followed by China with QR800m almost, a share of 9.5 percent, and Germany with QR700m, a share of 8.1 percent.

The resilience of country’s economy can also be seen in Qatari companies. Recently, Qatar Petroleum had announced the start of the development drilling campaign for the North Field East Project, or NFE.

This phase of the North Field expansion project will increase the State of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) production capacity from 77 million tons per annum (Mtpa) to 110 Mtpa. The second phase of the North Field LNG Expansion Project, called the North Field South Project (NFS), will further increase Qatars LNG production capacity from 110 Mtpa to 126 Mtpa.

Qatar Petroleum had earlier awarded a number of contracts for jack-up drilling rigs to be utilized for the drilling of 80 development wells for the NFE. The instal-lation of the first four Offshore Jackets in Qatari waters is underway and is expected to be completed by the end of this month.

Also, QP last week, entered into an agreement to reserve LNG ship construction capacity in China to be utilized for Qatar Petroleum’s future LNG carrier fleet requirements, including those of its ongoing North Field expansion projects.

The agreement was entered into between Qatar Petroleum and Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group (Hudong), a wholly owned subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited (CSSC).

Pursuant to the agreement, a significant portion of Hudong’s LNG ship construction capacity will be reserved for Qatar Petroleum through the year 2027.

Other companies have also announced positive results showing that Qatar’ economy is supporting com-panies. GWC, the leading logistics provider in the State of Qatar, posted net profits of QR50.3m and a gross revenues of QR296.3m for the first quarter of 2020 while Aamal reports QR374m in revenue for the first quarter of this year. Similarly, Qatar Aluminium Manufacturing Company (Qamco), a 50 percent joint venture partner in a successful smelter that produces premium high quality primary aluminum products in Qatar, reported a net profit of QR10.7m for the three months period ended March 31, 2020.

Qatar’s strong economy

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Quote of the day

We must hold the Olympics as a testament to humanity’s victory over the coronavirus. If we’re not in such situation, it’s difficult (to hold) the Games.

Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan

Firefighters from FDNY Engine 47 salute healthcare workers during “Clap Because We Care” outside of Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in New York City, yesterday.

Whenever we’re ready to re-open COVID-closed busi-nesses, we’ll have to resolve some important questions about how to do so safely. One of them: what kind of measures should businesses take to keep employees and customers safe, and how should business owners be held accountable if they play fast and loose with others’ health?

This debate over limiting liability has just begun, and it’s already taken a partisan turn. That’s unfortunate, because there’s a straightforward middle-ground solution available.

Republicans have called for federal legislation to render businesses immune from law-suits; Democrats are skeptical of the whole idea. Both sides are on to something important. The risk of being sued - and having to pay outsize damages if people become sick - is real. But so is the risk that complete immunity from lawsuits would lead to lax safety standards that endanger public health.

Congress should direct the CDC to issue a specific pro-tocol designed to keep workers and customers safe. Businesses that follow these federal rules should have a safe harbour from liability, even if some people get sick on their premises. Those who break the rules should be able to be sued for breaches that lead to infection.

This approach would follow the basic rule of tort law, which is that if you make “reasonable” efforts to avoid accidents, you shouldn’t be liable; if you don’t, you should pay the costs of damages that ensue.

At the same time, linking liability a clear federal guideline would solve the most serious problem associated with potential COVID lawsuits: uncertainty about which pre-ventive measures would count as reasonable, creating disin-centive for businesses to take the risk of reopening.

Ordinary tort liability won’t work very well here, because it relies on after-the-fact judg-ments by juries about what counts as reasonable precau-tions. The great Judge Learned Hand proposed that reasona-bleness should be quantified

by measuring whether the cost of the burden of accident pre-vention (known as B) out-weighs the expected value of the accident - the probability of the accident (P) multiplied by the gravity of the loss (L). That’s more predictable than a jury’s instinct. But it still relies on a business owner’s capacity to predict the probability of an accident and the magnitude of its costs. Doing so is inordi-nately difficult during a devel-oping pandemic.

If business owners cannot know reliably how likely it is for employees to get infected and how costly their infec-tions will be, then there’s no simple way for the business owners to set the correct level of prevention. Consequently, business owners might stay closed for weeks or months longer than they need to.

Yet opponents of a com-plete liability waiver are also correct to worry that it would create the wrong incentives for businesses, allowing them to ignore even the most basic life-saving safety measures. Most workers shouldn’t be thought of as willingly assuming the risk of infection by coming to work. Most aren’t truly free to decide whether to come back to work; they’re constrained by the threat of losing their jobs, not to mention the imperative to feed their families. And anyway, modern tort law imposes a duty of reasonable care on employers when workers come to work even under ordinary, non-pan-demic conditions.

The solution in this situation

is to specify the content of rea-sonable care - in advance. The way to do that is not state by state but nationally, with a single standard that will apply everywhere. That way busi-nesses won’t have to guess what reasonable precautions are. They will know the rules. So long as they follow the rules, they will be safe from liability. If they break the rules, they will have to pay.

Congress probably shouldn’t lay out the exact prevention rules itself, since members of Congress don’t have any special expertise in viral transmission. Congress should therefore do what it typically does when it needs expert judgment to become part of a law: delegate that part of the decision to an expert agency like the CDC.

The CDC protocol would have to have some specifics for what is safe in different kinds of workplaces, from factories to restaurants to offices to construction sites.

Once in place, however, the protocols could all be made to work the same way by a congressional mandate specifying that the new federal rules preempt state tort law. Congress could also specify what the damages would be for breaking the rules. They might not have to include all the costs of sickness and death; although the damages should certainly be high enough to deter rule breaking.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and host of the podcast “Deep Background.”

CATHY O’NEIL — BLOOMBERG

The debate about when and whether the world can reopen keeps coming back to testing. If only we could test everyone all the time, the logic goes, we could isolate the ill and everyone else could go back to school, work and life as we once knew it.

Sadly, that’s not quite right. The prerequisite for reopening is better tests, not just more tests.

A “good test” has three properties: It’s rapid (like less than an hour), accurate and widely available. Only with all three can it be used to screen people before they go to the office, get on an airplane, or attend a class or conference. And only then - barring an effective vaccine - can authorities safely allow

people to do all those things.Current tests fall short.

The turnaround time for typical nasal swabs that detect the virus’s RNA can be hours or days - far too long to be useful as a screen, and plenty of time for people to get infected while awaiting the results. And even if people were willing to wait in quar-antine for days, many of the available tests are not accurate. They have very high false negative rates, meaning that they would erroneously allow a lot of sick people to interact with everyone else, all but guaranteeing more super-spreader incidents. There are some promising tests that are both fast and relatively accurate, but they require nearby expensive machines, so they won’t become universally available.

Checking people’s tem-peratures is no substitute. Thermometer guns and cameras are famously inac-curate, in part because the temperature of your face doesn’t necessarily reflect your internal temperature. More important, people infected with coronavirus are highly contagious long before they show any symptoms, and many never experience a fever.

Granted, current tests do have their uses. New York, for example, recently used antibody tests to estimate that about 15% of people in the state - and about 25% in New York City - had already been infected. This might be useful for understanding whether a place is nearing “herd immunity” - but only if infection grants immunity for

a significant period, which we don’t know yet. Also, it’s worth noting that New York’s test wasn’t a random sample: Participants were selected at shopping centers, so the results aren’t representative of a population that is to some extent hunkering down at home.

None of this means that people shouldn’t use the available tests. Done right, testing and tracing can slow the pandemic’s spread. And even slow bad tests can provide some marginal risk mitigation for people working in hot spots. Hospitals should get access to the expensive machines to further mitigate risk. But the remaining danger, unavoidable in a hos-pital, is unacceptable in a college dormitory or industry conference.

A solution to the COVID-19 liability problem

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We can’t get together until tests get better

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09THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 OPINION

Since Pakistan locked down starting March 23 to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, unemployed day labourers have been given new jobs as “jungle workers”, planting saplings as part of the country’s 10 Billion Tree Tsunami programme.

The most developed econ-omies in the world faced a major health crisis due to the new coronavirus pandemic. Despite their technological economic advantages, coun-tries such as the US, China, the UK, Spain, and Italy are strug-gling to put an end to the spread of the virus. Even with all the effort put in, tens of thousands are losing their lives in these countries, as the virus continues to spread. While scientists are putting enormous amounts of effort into developing a treatment to and a vaccine for this disease, all eyes are on the African continent which has a weak economy and health industry. The developments that might take place in Africa is followed closely by the whole world. This is a major source of anxiety for many due to the possibility of underdeveloped African countries not being able to fight the virus. People are afraid of the horrific destruction potential of the virus in such countries in case of the virus spreading to a wide section of societies in the continent.

So the UN Economic Com-mission for Africa, in its report regarding the effect of the pandemic on the economy and social life, announced that the COVID-19 pandemic might end up taking the lives of between 300,000 and 3.3 million people in the African continent if necessary measures are not taken. The

report highlighted that the continent’s economy will take a major hit from the pan-demic, even if the virus is taken under control.

But despite thesde terri-fying predictions, it is observed that the numbers of cases and deaths in African countries are quite low com-pared to other countries, so far. The World Health Organi-zation (WHO) has reported that the total number of cases in the entire continent has reached 19,895, and the number of deaths has sur-passed 1,000 as of April 17. While the total numbers are lower, the death-to-case ratio is significantly different in the continent, compared to other countries. For instance, while the number of reported deaths per case is at around 2.5% in Turkey, that ratio is 4.3% in Africa. It is thought that the difference is caused by insufficient healthcare on the continent.

It is still unknown whether the reason for lower numbers in the African continent is the lack of testing or that the virus is truly not affecting as many people in the region. There is currently no tangible evidence on it. This situation is sup-posed to be worrying if the lower numbers are due to the lack of testing as its conse-quences will be apparent in no time, and the true dimen-sions of the pandemic will surface.

African countries facing such a situation is truly wor-rying. Particularly, sub-Saharan African countries lack the opportunities and required healthcare sector to fight the disease. Most African countries are facing the same threat. The spread of the virus might be catastrophic. The reasons for this may be listed as follows:

The main reason for the fast spread of this virus is shown to be the ease of trans-mission from one person to another. Avoiding interper-sonal contact, practicing social distancing as much as possible and similar precau-tions are very important. According to a WHO report, 56% of the African population is living in densely populated residential areas, which makes it harder to practice social distancing within the continent. The governmental units in African countries not having necessary financial

resources is another reason for their inability to fight the spread of the virus to a large number of people. It is known that most of these countries do not have sufficient number of medical masks, clothing, respiratory devices, and medicine.

While there is no specific approach for the treatment of this disease, hospitals provide breathing support, and use certain treatment methods to boost the immune systems of their patients. It is known that hospitals in many African countries are not capable of giving such support. Poor hygiene in hospitals and espe-cially the lack of intensive care units, as well as other similar shortcomings, can be considered among the major disadvantages of African countries in fighting this disease. Experts say hand washing and hygiene are extremely important in pre-venting this disease. A signif-icant portion of the people in the region -- especially those living in camps -- being deprived of a hygienic envi-ronment is also particularly dangerous, in that sense. The WHO report mentioned above reported that 36% of the African population does not even have the opportunity to wash their hands.

The places where a signif-icant part of the people live on the continent have impossi-bilities making it difficult for the people to protect them-selves from the disease. In many homes, sinks, soaps, cleaning materials, and similar products are not available in sufficient quan-tities. The extent of the danger posed by this issue will be better understood if the statement of the UN Chil-dren’s Fund (UNICEF) reporting that 3 billion people

worldwide do not have a sink to wash their hands with water and soap, one-third of the schools do not have wash-basins where children can wash their hands, and 16% of health centers do not have functional toilets and wash-basins are considered.A large portion of the people living in Africa does not have access to masks and similar protective material, fruits, and vege-tables or other food that strengthens immunity. This situation will be a very important factor in the case of a potential major outbreak.What’s more dangerous than all of this is the lack of awareness among the people of the continent. In many countries, people are not avoiding social contact despite the warnings. Some African countries are forcing people to take precautions in public using weapons, whips, and tear gas. During such pre-cautions, there have been deaths. Eight people lost their lives during the intervention of the police against people who were not obeying the curfew in effect since March 26 in South Africa, where the greatest number of COVID-19 patients have been reported in the continent.

On another note, 71% of the African workforce is made up of unregistered employees. Such measures taken will cause most informal workers to lose their jobs. Those who are not able to work from home will face major financial difficulties. Most African countries are not in a position to support these people finan-cially, which will be a major roadblock to implementing isolation-related precautions.In opposition to these nega-tives, some factors also give us hope. It is possible to list these points as in the following:

African countries generally have a warm climate. The central region of the continent, especially, has the hottest climate in this period. Although healthcare profes-sionals do not explicitly talk about the existence of an inter-action between the spread of the virus and air temperature, they do not exclude the pre-ventative role that higher air temperature may play in this outbreak. Some studies show that the sun or high tempera-tures, in general, are possibly unfavourable conditions for the virus. This is hopeful for the spreading rate of the virus since the temperature is gen-erally very high in the African continent during this season. Considering the insufficient healthcare sector and measures in the continent, this factor is expectedly prominent.

It is also possible that the genetic makeup or the immune systems of the people in the region play a role against the spread of the virus.

The people in the region may have possibly developed a significant amount of immunity to the virus after exposure to virus outbreaks like Ebola, swine flu, SARS, and MERS in the previous years since these viruses are from the same family. Malaria, especially, is very common in the continent and almost anybody gets this disease, at least once in their lifetime. Many people have been vacci-nated and used drugs against these diseases. This may have rendered the people of the region immune to such viruses. This argument is strengthened by the fact that malaria medication is used in the treatment of this virus in some countries.One of the advantages of the continent is that the majority of its popu-lation is young. Approxi-mately 60% of the continent’s population is made up of young people. Experts argue that among those who suffer from this disease, young people are at a lower risk. Even if they contract the virus, most recover without any symptoms, and fatalities occur mostly among older patients. The continent’s young population structure might be helping them survive this outbreak with less damage.

In conclusion, it is uncertain what the conse-quences of this pandemic will be for the African continent. Although the climate condi-tions, young population structure, and the immunity history of its people give some hope, it is obvious that the continent will face a great danger otherwise. It will not be possible for the world to overcome this crisis alone or with measures targeting only their own people. It also con-stitutes a significant handicap that developed countries are neglecting Africa while focusing on their problems due to the outbreak. The WHO reducing the amount of support provided to Africa due to challenges faced by the organization itself may also cause major problems. US President Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will cut the funds provided to the WHO will significantly affect the operational strength of the organization. But the fight against this disease is a global one, and it requires sol-idarity. It is crucial for the global success of this fight that developed countries do not leave African countries to their own fate. Otherwise, while these countries will be able to get the virus under control within their borders, it will not be easy to contain and eradicate the virus globally.

The writer is the director of the Institute for Eastern and African Studies in Tur-key’s Social Sciences Uni-versity of Ankara (ASBU).

Potential consequences of COVID-19 pandemic in Africa

When construction worker Abdul Rahman lost his job to Pakistan’s coronavirus lockdown, his choices looked stark: resort to begging on the streets or let his family go hungry. But the government has now given him a better option: Join tens of thousands of other out-of-work labourers in planting billions of trees across the country to deal with climate change threats.

Since Pakistan locked down starting March 23 to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, unemployed day labourers have been given new jobs as “jungle workers”, planting saplings as part of the country’s 10 Billion Tree Tsunami programme.

Such “green stimulus” efforts are an example of how

funds that aim to help families and keep the economy running during pandemic shutdowns could also help nations prepare for the next big threat: climate change.

“Due to coronavirus, all the cities have shut down and there is no work. Most of us daily wagers couldn’t earn a living,” Rahman, a resident of Rawalpindi district in Punjab province, said.

He now makes 500 rupees ($3) per day planting trees - about half of what he might have made on a good day, but enough to get by.

“All of us now have a way of earning daily wages again to feed our families,” he said.

The ambitious five-year tree-planting programme, which Prime Minister Imran Khan launched in 2018, aims to counter the rising tempera-tures, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather in the country that scientists link to climate change.

The Global Climate Risk Index 2020, issued by think tank Germanwatch, ranked Pakistan fifth on a list of countries most affected by planetary heating over the last

two decades - even though the South Asian nation con-tributes only a fraction of global greenhouse gases.

As the coronavirus pan-demic struck Pakistan, the 10 Billion Trees campaign ini-tially was halted as part of social distancing orders put in place to slow the spread of the virus, which has infected over 13,900 people in Pakistan, according to a Reuters tally.

But earlier this month, the prime minister granted an exemption to allow the for-estry agency to restart the programme and create more than 63,600 jobs, according to government officials.

While much of the country is still observing stay-at-home orders, local police and dis-trict authorities have been told trucks carrying trees should be allowed to travel and villagers permitted to leave their homes to work with the project.

A recent assessment by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics found that, due to the lockdown, up to 19 million people could be laid off, almost 70% of them in the

Punjab province.Abdul Muqeet Khan, chief

conservator of forests for Rawalpindi district, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the planting project is in “full swing”.

Much of the work is hap-pening on 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares) of land near the capital Islamabad, he said, as well as on other tracts of state-owned forest land around the country.

This year the programme is employing triple the number of workers it did in its first year, said Malik Amin Aslam, climate change advisor to the prime minister.

Many of the new jobs are being created in rural areas, he said, with a focus on hiring women and unemployed daily workers - mainly young people - who were migrating home from locked-down cities.

The work, which pays between 500 rupees and 800 rupees per day, includes setting up nurseries, planting saplings, and serving as forest protection guards or forest firefighters, he said.

All the workers have been told to wear masks and

maintain the mandated two metres (six feet) of social dis-tance between them, he added.

“This tragic crisis provided an opportunity and we grabbed it,” Aslam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

“Nurturing nature has come to the economic rescue of thousands of people.” According to Germanwatch, Pakistan reported more than 150 extreme weather events between 1999 and 2018 - from floods to heat waves - with total losses of $3.8 billion.

Environmentalists have long pushed reforestation as a way to help, saying forests help prevent flooding, sta-bilise rainfall, provide cool spaces, absorb heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions and protect biodiversity.

According to green group WWF, Pakistan is a “forest poor” country where trees cover less than 6% of the total area. Every year thousands of hectares of forest are destroyed, mainly as a result of unsustainable logging and clearing land for small-scale farming, the group said on its website.

As a ‘green stimulus’ Pakistan sets virus-idled to work planting trees

ENVER ARPA ANATOLIA

RINA SAEED KHAN REUTERS

It will not be possible for the world to overcome this crisis alone or with measures targeting only their own people. It also constitutes a significant handicap that developed countries are neglecting Africa while focusing on their problems due to the outbreak. The WHO reducing the amount of support provided to Africa due to challenges faced by the organization itself may also cause major problems.

Passengers walking through a disinfectant tunnel following social distancing rules as they prepare to board the commuter train service by the Kenya Railways Corporation, as a measure to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease, in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday.

10 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020ASIA

Virus deaths in Indiasurpass 1,000; lowtoll puzzles experts

AFP — NEW DELHI

India’s confirmed coronavirus death toll passed 1,000 yesterday following its highest daily increase, but the numbers remain low compared with Europe and the United States in a phenomenon that is puzzling experts.

With massive slums and a shaky healthcare system, there were fears India would be ravaged by the pandemic that has

killed more than 214,000 people worldwide.

The latest daily toll of 73 deaths was India’s highest, offering a warning that the giant South Asian nation was not yet in the clear.

A lack of testing and many other factors mean that India’s official toll of 1,007 deaths could be far below the real number of

coronavirus victims.“We see low numbers but we

do not know how to validate those numbers or rates,” virol-ogist T Jacob John said.

“Governments desire under-reporting and... we are flying blind for true rates and numbers.”

India appears so far to have been spared the devastation seen in New York, Milan and other

hard-hit parts of the world, where hospitals have been over-whelmed by cases of coronavirus. Experts have offered a number of theories and factors, but there is no definitive explanation yet.

“It might well be true that the trajectory of the Indian epidemic is very different for reasons that we do not understand... but those are all theories right now,” Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, said.

One possible factor is that India imposed a lockdown on its 1.3 billion people on March 25, when there were 606 confirmed cases and 10 deaths, and it has been rigidly enforced.

The government says the number of infections could have

reached 100,000 without it.There are also other issues

that could also have kept the risk low — including a young popu-lation and the possible positive effects of the BCG tuberculosis vaccine, said John.

Another factor could be decades of widespread dengue fever providing communities with some “innate immunity”, he speculated.

Still, experts caution that no-one has an accurate picture of the pandemic in remote rural villages and deep in slums.

Even in normal times, accu-rately recording deaths or causes in India can be a difficult task, where many poor people fall sick and die without entering a

hospital or seeing a doctor. Just under half of the country’s esti-mated 10 million annual deaths are not recorded, according to Jha, who leads the Million Death Study that regularly surveys Indian households on the issue.

He said authorities could use his study’s framework to survey households and get a sense of the pandemic’s spread beyond the small testing regime, or find answers to why the coronavirus is not devastating communities.

“A survey likes this, if it showed lower death rates than expected and was able to get at the cause, would be important,” he said.

“India needs to count the dead, quickly.”

Municipal workers wearing hazmat suits walk in a residential area for a door-to-door health survey during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown, in Kolkata, yesterday.

India starts allowing conditional movement of migrant workers

ANATOLIA — NEW DELHI

India yesterday allowed conditional movement of migrant workers, students and tourists stranded during the coronavirus lockdown.

In a notification, the Ministry of Home Affairs asked all states to designate nodal authorities and develop standard protocols for receiving and sending such stranded persons.

According to the official statement, the movement of these individuals will be possible by road only. “They would be allowed to move between one State/ UT(Union territory) to another State/ UT, after the states concerned consult each other and mutually agree,” it said.

Upon arrival, the communique added, they would be assessed by local authorities and placed in home quarantine if the condition does not require hospitalisation. “They would be kept under watch with periodic health check-ups,” the order said.

38 perish inwarehouse firein South KoreaAFP — SEOUL

A fire at a warehouse in South Korea killed 38 people and left another 10 injured yesterday, according to reports.

The blaze at the unfin-ished four-storey building in Incheon, 80km southeast of Seoul, spread “extremely quickly” and rendered those inside “unable to evacuate”, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported citing fire officials.

Eight of the injured are in a serious condition, local offi-cials said.

Suh Seung-hyun, chief of the Icheon fire station, told Yonhap that oil droplets may have ignited to start the blaze, but police and firefighters are investigating the exact cause of the accident.

Witnesses said they heard at least 10 explosions, the news agency said.

President Moon Jae-in ordered government officials to mobilise all available resources in the search and rescue effort, Blue House spokesman Kang Min-seok said. Moon hosted an emer-gency meeting and ordered medical support for the injured, Yonhap said.

The president also voiced regret that another massive blaze had occurred in spite of new government safety measures following fatal fires in 2017 and 2018.

“It is regrettable that a similar accident reoccurred. It means we’ve not learned the lesson from previous acci-dents,” Moon was quoted as saying by Kang.

In December 2017, a fire at a sports centre in the central city of Jecheon killed 29 people and wounded 40 others. One month later, a hospital fire occurred in the southeastern city of Miryang, killing 45 people and injuring 147 others.

Myanmar military may be committing new war crimes: UN envoyREUTERS — YANGON

The departing UN human rights envoy for Myanmar said its military is engaged in activities against rebels that may amount to “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Rakhine and Chin states, and that she was “enraged” and “saddened” by the situation in the country after six years in the role.

The South Korean special rapporteur said the basis for her conclusion about possible war crimes was that the armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, have ramped up attacks against civilians in recent weeks with air and artillery strikes.

Two military spokesmen did not answer phone calls seeking comment. A government spokesman also did not answer phone calls seeking comment. The army has denied targeting civilians and has declared the insurgent group it

is fighting, the Arakan Army, a terrorist organisation.

“While the world is occupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Myanmar military continues to escalate its assault in Rakhine State, targeting the civilian

population,” Yanghee Lee said yesterday in her final statement as rights envoy, calling for an investigation into the accu-sations “in accordance with international standards”.

Government troops and fighters from the Arakan Army, which wants greater autonomy for Myanmar’s western region and recruits largely from the region’s Buddhist majority, have been fighting for more than a year, but clashes have intensified recently.

Dozens of people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced.

The government has repeatedly refused requests by Lee to enter Myanmar. She has previously accused the army of genocide and other war crimes against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine in 2017, when some 700,000 fled an army crackdown.

The army and government have con-sistently rejected such accusations and

said the military was responding to attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents.

Lee spoke on phone from South Korea that the democratic opening that brought Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to power in 2016, ending half a century of military rule, had failed to bring the hoped-for expansion of rights and freedoms.

She criticised what she described as the “systemic failure” of the international community, including the United Nations, to stop grave human rights violations.

“We repeat the phrase, ‘Never again’. It goes on and on,” she said.

Lee has been a divisive figure inside Myanmar. Her defense of the Rohingya made her a popular target of Buddhist nationalists. The last time she was allowed to visit the country was in 2017, shortly after the expulsion of tens of thousands of Rohingya during a military campaign.

Yanghee Lee, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar.

As virus infections dwindle, Hong Kong protests gain steamAP — HONG KONG

Demonstrators chanted pro-democracy slogans in a luxury mall in Hong Kong yesterday, the latest in a string of small but determined protests as the city’s coronavirus outbreak slows.

More than 100 protesters gathered at lunchtime in the Landmark Atrium mall in Central, a prestigious business and retail district, despite social distancing rules that prohibit public gath-erings of more than four.

They sang a protest anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong,” and held up signs reading “Free Hong Kong, Revolution Now” and “Hong Kong Independence.” One protester hung a banner cursing Hong Kong police and their families.

“The protests had calmed down previously because of the coronavirus, but now we must step up and let the world know that we have not given up,” said

Mich Chan, who works in the legal industry.

“We’re still fighting for what we fought for last year.”

Holding up a sign calling for the movement’s five demands to be met, Chan said she was not worried about possible trans-mission of the virus during the protests because the people of Hong Kong are “disciplined and know how to protect themselves” by wearing masks.

Police entered the mall about half an hour after the protest began, urging people to leave and warning those assembled that they were violating social dis-tancing rules and participating in an unlawful assembly. The police detained several protesters but later let them go, with no arrests made.

The protest followed similar ones in malls on Sunday and Tuesday in which police dis-persed the crowds. They are a continuation of a movement that

began last June to protest an extradition bill that would have allowed detainees in Hong Kong to be transferred to mainland China. Although the bill was later withdrawn, the demonstrations continued, with protesters demanding full democracy and an independent inquiry into police behavior.

Organisers are planning further protests in May, with an eye to a major march on July 1, the day when Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997.

Activists expect protesters to return to the streets again, as the city’s daily virus cases have dwindled to single digits for over two weeks.

Adrian Wong, who works in banking, said he came out to protest despite worries about the coronavirus.

“I am concerned about the virus but I think I still have to come out, so that Hong Kong’s people won’t forget what hap-pened in the last year,” Wong said.

Pro-democracy protesters observe social distancing measures in groups of four or less as they gather at a shopping mall during a ‘Lunch With You’ rally, in Hong Kong, yesterday.

Bangladesh reports 8 new virus deaths, 641 more cases in 24 hoursANATOLIA — DHAKA

Bangladesh reported eight new deaths from the coronavirus - including that of a police constable and a journalist - and 641 new cases over the past 24 hours, officials said yesterday.

Jasim Uddin, a 40-year-old police constable, fell sick with coronavirus symptoms on April 25 and was kept in isolation, according to a police

statement. He was taken to Dhaka Medical Hospital College Hospital on Tuesday after his condition worsen and died there at night, the statement said, adding the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) confirmed the constable tested positive for the virus.

Bangladesh police are working on the frontline since the COVID-19 case was first confirmed in the country on

March 8. Some 420 police personnel across the country have so far tested positive for the virus.

Among the total, 240 are from Dhaka while some 1,026 are currently under quarantine, according to official figures provided by the media cell of police.

Meanwhile, Homayuan Kabir Khokon, the chief reporter of a local newspaper Shomoyer Alo, died on

Tuesday night with COVID-19 symptoms in a hospital in Dhaka.

“The journalist was admitted to our hospital on Tuesday 7 pm and died around 9:45 pm local time. His physical condition was COVID-19 suspected,” said Tarik Shibly, an official at the hos-pital, told Anadolu Agency.

“We sent samples of the deceased to the disease control authority, Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and

Research, yesterday night for confir-mation of COVID-19,” he added.

An official at the IEDCR, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media, told the Anadolu Agency the journalist was tested pos-itive for COVID-19, and the test result was sent to the hospital.

The hospital management, however, said that they were yet to receive any confirmation from IEDCR.

The latest daily toll of 73 deaths was India’s highest, offering a warning that the giant South Asian nation was not yet in the clear. A lack of testing and many other factors mean that India’s official toll of 1,007 deaths could be far below the real number of coronavirus victims.

11THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 ASIA

Pakistan prepares to ease virus curbs with infections below projectionsREUTERS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan is preparing to loosen coronavirus lockdown restric-tions as the number of infections and deaths are well below previous projections, officials said yesterday.

The South Asian nation, which has registered more than 15,000 cases of COVID-19 including 335 deaths, has already granted exemptions to dozens of sectors to open up over the last few days.

“The mortality numbers are nowhere near the same as we see in other countries,” Planning Minister Asad Umar, who oversees the response to the virus, told journalists.

He said infections and deaths in Pakistan were lower 30-35 percent lower than projections and, if things remained this way, the country could open up further in coming days.

Experts say Pakistan’s low numbers are due to limited testing. Currently Pakistan, a country of more than 207 million people, conducts about 8,000 tests a day.

On Tuesday, the country reg-istered 800 positive cases and 26 deaths — the highest number of deaths in a single day. Experts

and officials say infections will peak in mid-May.

Umar said that despite the rising numbers, the disease was under control, but the economic cost had been “tremendous” as revenues and exports had been hit during a month-long lockdown.

The IMF has projected that Pakistan’s economy will contract 1.5 percent this financial year.

Pakistan a few days ago launched a new “Test, Trace and Quarantine” system, which offi-cials say will allow it to steadily open up commercial and indus-trial activities over the next few weeks without risking further infections.

Officials at the briefing did admit there remained areas of concern — particularly the high incidence of infections in health workers. Zafar Mirza, the top health official, said at least 480 health workers, including doctors, had been infected.

He added that because of the lockdown and the focus on the coronavirus, a number of other health programmes, such an anti-polio campaign, had been affected.

Pakistan has also removed restrictions on congregations at

mosques for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, leading doctors to raise the alarm on the risk of mass infections.

But Mirza said safety proce-dures for mosque gatherings had been worked out between the government and clerics.

Policemen disperse vendors during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown along a street in Peshawar, Pakistan, yesterday.

REUTERS — SYDNEY

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday bans on international travel and large gatherings would stay in place even as the government eases lockdowns and moves towards a “COVID-safe” economy and society.

Some states have already started to lift restrictions amid a slowdown in new corona-virus infections — something Canberra has put down to its measures and widespread testing.

Health minister Greg Hunt said Australia would expand screening further after securing 10m more testing kits — enough to last it through 2020.

“When we move back into this more COVID-safe economy and society, it is important to know that with the easing of those restrictions, of course there will continue to be additional cases,” Mor-rison told reporters in the capital.

“It won’t be exactly like it was before. I can’t see inter-national travel occurring anytime soon. The risks there are obvious. I can’t see (Aus-tralians) going along to a game for a while, those larger mass gatherings,” Morrison said.

Australia has recorded 6,738 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 89 related deaths as of yesterday — way below the figures reported in the United States, parts of Asia and Europe and other hotspots.

Northern Chinese region, including Beijing to ease coronavirus restrictionsREUTERS — BEIJING

A populous region in northern China that includes Beijing will ease restrictions imposed to halt the spread of the new corona-virus, as the country gradually transitions to a new state of normal amid dwindling cases of COVID-19.

The municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin, as well as neigh-bouring Hebei province, will lower their COVID-19 emergency response level to level II from level I starting at midnight today, their respective governments said yesterday.

Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are among the last few areas in China that have stuck to the highest level of emergency response on the four-tier system. Many other provinces have eased curbs to restart and repair local econ-omies, with the national daily tally for new infections in the single-digits compared with

thousands of cases every day in early February. With the down-grade, Beijing will remove 14-day quarantine requirements for people arriving from low-risk parts of the country. People in quarantine at home or at a cen-tralised venue will also be released from their obligation to isolate themselves, Beijing’s vice secretary-general Chen Bei told a news conference.

The Chinese capital will addi-tionally not require residents returning from those areas to be quarantined on their return.

The decision by Beijing to lower its emergency response measures came on the same day that China said parliament would begin its key annual meeting in the capital on May 22.

Beijing has reported 13 cases so far in April, with the last infec-tions confirmed 14 days ago.

The emergency response downgrade will mean people in Beijing will not be required to

wear masks outdoors.However, the lifting of quar-

antine rules in the Chinese capital does not apply to overseas arrivals and people travelling from central Hubei province and other high-risk places.

The Beijing easing came days

ahead of a five-day Labour Day holiday starting on May 1, poten-tially a boon for the travel, catering and hospitality sectors in other parts of China.

In the first half-hour after Beijing said it was loosening curbs, bookings of tickets on

flights departing from the city surged by more than 15 times, with people planning trips to cities including Chengdu, Chongqing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, state media reported, citing Chinese online travel agency Qunar.com.

People wearing face masks following the coronavirus outbreak stand in line to enter an office building in Beijing.

Australia marks

250th anniversary

of Cook landing in

muted fashion

AFP — BOTANY BAY

The 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s conten-tious landing in Australia went largely unmarked yesterday as the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of long-planned commemorative events.

On April 29, 1770, Captain Cook sailed the Endeavour into Botany Bay — called Kamay in the local indigenous language — an event that is increasingly being seen through the eyes of the Aboriginal Australians who were on the shore.

Prime Minister Scott Mor-rison said the anniversary rep-resented “a merging of his-tories”, calling Cook an “extraor-dinary individual”.

“The day Cook and the local indigenous community at Kamay first made contact 250 years ago changed the course of our land forever,” he said.

“It’s a point in time from which we embarked on a shared journey which is realised in the way we live today.”

Australia’s government was forced to cancel events marking 250 years since Cook’s landing due to the COVID-19 outbreak, including the planned Aus$6.5m circumnavigation of Australia by a replica of the Endeavour.

The first contact between the British navigator and Abo-riginals foreshadowed the col-onisation of the continent and centuries of dispossession for indigenous Australians.

‘Satellite images of luxury boats suggest North Korea’s Kim at favoured villa’REUTERS — SEOUL

Satellite imagery showing recent movements of luxury boats often used by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (pictured) and his entourage near Wonsan provide further indications he has been at the coastal resort, according to experts who monitor the reclusive regime.

Speculation about Kim’s health and location erupted after his unprecedented absence from April 15 celebrations to mark the birthday of his late grandfather and North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

On Tuesday, North Korea-monitoring website NK PRO reported commercial satellite imagery showed boats often used by Kim had

made movements in patterns that suggested he or his entourage may be in the Wonsan area.

That followed a report last week by a US-based North Korea monitoring project, 38 North, which reported satellite images showed what was believed to be Kim’s personal train was parked at a station reserved for his use at the villa in Wonsan.

Officials in South Korea and the United States say it is plau-sible Kim may be staying there, possibly to avoid exposure to the new coronavirus, and have expressed scepticism of media reports he had some kind of serious illness.

They caution, however, that

Kim’s health and location are closely guarded secrets and reliable information is difficult to obtain in North Korea.

The last time official media in North Korea reported on Kim’s whereabouts was when he presided over a meeting on

April 11, but there have been near-daily reports of him sending letters and diplomatic messages.

Kim’s seaside compound in Wonsan, on the country’s east coast, is dotted with guest villas and serviced by a private beach, basketball court, and private train station, according to experts and satellite imagery. An airstrip was bulldozed last year to build a horse riding track, while a boathouse nearby shelters Kim’s Princess 95 luxury yacht, valued at around $7m in 2013.

“It’s one of his favourite houses,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert at the US-based Stimson Center, who has compared Kim’s affinity

for Wonsan to US President Donald Trump’s favoured resort, Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Madden said Kim is believed to have about 13 significant com-pounds around the country, though he appears to only reg-ularly use about half of them.

“All of them are set up to serve as the leader’s headquarters, so they are all equipped for him to run the country,” he said.

Wonsan is one of the larger and better appointed compounds, but it also has a useful location that allows Kim to easily travel to other areas along the coast, or return quickly to Pyongyang in his private train or along a special highway designated for use only by the Kim family or top officials, Madden said.

Wonsan also holds symbolic power for the Kim dynasty: It was there Kim Il Sung, who helped found North Korea at the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945, first landed with Soviet troops to take over the country.

Wonsan is believed by some experts to be Kim Jong-Un’s birthplace, partly because he spent his early years at the fam-ily’s palace there, although official history has never con-firmed where he was born.

The Japanese chef Kenji Fujimoto, who worked for the Kims and visited Wonsan, recounted in his memoirs how a young Kim Jong-Un described rollerblading, playing basketball, riding jet skis and playing in the pool at the compound.

The South Asian nation, which has registered more than 15,000 cases of COVID-19 including 335 deaths, has already granted exemptions to dozens of sectors to open up over the last few days.

Travel ban to stay,

says Australia PM

Kazakhstan President outlines preparations for the post-virus periodAGENCIES — ALMATY

The coronavirus pandemic continues to dominate the inter-national agenda. Though it is too early to say whether the peak of the health crisis is behind us, a number of countries around the world are cautiously starting to lift quarantine measures that have been in place for a few months.

Compared to other countries, Kazakhstan has so far been for-tunate enough not to be impacted too severely by the spread of COVID-19. The chief state doctor announced last week that

approximately 4,000 cases of coronavirus are likely to be reg-istered in Kazakhstan by the end

of May. Nevertheless, if this figure is achieved, it can be considered a positive result for Kazakhstan, and proof that the quarantine measures taken by the author-ities to slow down the spread of the virus have been successful. At the same time, it is clear that there is no room for complacency and steps to lift quarantine measures should be considered very carefully.

In light of these dynamics, the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, made a statement on April 27 announcing that the state of emergency in the country will

end on May 11, unless a new massive outbreak of the pan-demic occurs.

The State Commission has been entrusted with determining the list of organisations that will begin their work in all regions of the country, following the example of the capital, Nur-Sultan.

First of all, industrial enter-prises, construction and road construction companies, transport companies, banks, and public service centres will begin their work provided they comply with all sanitary standards, and conduct regular

disinfection of workplaces. After almost a two-month

suspension, the Government will also open flights from tomorrow between the capital and Kaza-khstan’s largest city, Almaty. Ulti-mately, the country is slowly looking to begin the process of returning to normalcy.

Shopping and entertainment centres, cinemas, restaurants, parks and other crowded places will be closed for visiting. Dis-tance learning will continue in universities, colleges, and schools. All these measures are taken in order to ensure public security.

Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

12 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020EUROPE

UK has Europe’s secondhighest COVID-19 deathtoll, show new figuresREUTERS — LONDON

Britain now has Europe’s second highest official COVID-19 death toll with more than 26,000, according to figures published yesterday that raised questions about Prime Minister Boris John-son’s response to the outbreak.

Some 26,097 people died across the United Kingdom after testing positive for COVID-19 as of April 28 at 1600 GMT, Public Health England (PHE) said, citing daily figures that included deaths outside of hospital settings for the first time.

That means the United Kingdom has suffered more COVID-19 deaths than France or Spain have reported, though less than Italy, which has Europe’s highest death toll and the second worst in the world after the United States.

“We must never lose sight of the fact that behind every statistic there are many human lives that have tragically been lost before their time,” Foreign Secretary

Dominic Raab told reporters. “We are still coming through

the peak and...this is a delicate and dangerous moment in the crisis.”

Such a high UK death toll increases the pressure on Johnson just as opposition parties accused his government of being too slow to impose a lockdown

to limit contagion from the new coronavirus, too slow to introduce mass testing and too slow to get enough protective equipment to hospitals.

Johnson returned to work on Monday after recuperating from COVID-19, which had left him gravely ill in intensive care at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. He celebrated the birth of a baby son yesterday. Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer criti-cised Johnson’s response to the world’s worst public health crisis since the 1918 influenza outbreak. Johnson had spoken of Britain’s “apparent success” in tackling COVID-19 in a speech to the nation on Monday.

“We are possibly on track to have one of the worst death rates in Europe,” Starmer told parliament.

“Far from success, these latest figures are truly dreadful,” he added, referring to previously published data.

Starmer said his calculations showed 27,241 had died in the UK

from COVID-19, the lung disease caused by the coronavirus. In mid-March the government’s chief scientific adviser said keeping Britain’s death toll below 20,000 would be a “good outcome”.

Johnson initially resisted introducing the lockdown but changed course when projections showed a quarter of a million people could die.

Yvonne Doyle, PHE’s medical director, said the new figures put the UK roughly in line with its peers in Europe,

adjusted for population.Although international com-

parisons are difficult, the updated figures confirm Britain’s place among the European countries worst hit by the viral pandemic.

Italy said yesterday its death toll had risen to 27,682. Like Britain, its figures are based on deaths following positive coro-navirus tests in all settings.

Spain reported 24,275 deaths at the last count, less than Brit-ain’s new toll published on Wednesday. Spain’s population is around 20 million smaller, so

it has a higher prevalence of deaths per capita.

Still, early evidence for “excess deaths” — the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year - suggest Britain has fared poorly in comparison to other countries.

Although it takes a long time to form a full picture, academics prefer this measure to gauge the impact of an epidemic and the measures taken by countries to control it, since it is easier to compare across countries.

A medical worker tests a key worker for the novel coronavirus at a drive-in testing centre at Glasgow Airport, in Scotland, United Kingdom, yesterday.

Deaths from virus in France rise by 427 to 24,087REUTERS — PARIS

The number of people who have died from the coronavirus infection in France rose by 427 to 24,087 yesterday, with the rate of increase slightly speeding up again after slowing on Tuesday, the health ministry said in a statement.

According to the ministry, the number of confirmed cases now stands at 128,442, up 1,607 over 24 hours. The figure stood at 129,859 on Tuesday but was tweaked a day after Prime Min-ister Edouard Philippe said that France would not end its coro-navirus lockdown unless the number of new cases falls

below 3,000 per day. “It’s a statistical readjustment

linked to a change in the sam-pling”, a ministry spokesman said. The death toll has increased 1.8 percent over 24 hours, versus 1.6 percent on Tuesday and 1.9 percent on Monday. Out of the 24,087 total, 15,053 fatalities occurred in hospitals, a figure up

1.6 percent , and 9,034 in nursing homes, up 2 percent . As Britain added nursing homes deaths to the tally from hospitals to give a total of 26,097 fatalities, it became the third-most affected country in the world behind the United States and Italy and ahead of Spain and France. The number of people in French hospitals with

the COVID-19 infection fell to 26,834 from 27,484 on Tuesday, recording a 2.4 percent decline, its sharpest since a downward trend began 15 days ago. The number of people in intensive care fell 4.1 percent to 4,207, a figure almost half of the 7,148 on April 8 and down for the 21st con-secutive day.

Italy reports

323 new deaths;

expert warns

of reboundANATOLIA — ROME

Italy yesterday reported 323 new fatalities from the novel coronavirus, bringing the total to 27,682 with a drop in active infections.

Data released by the Italian Civil Protection Department confirmed that the contagion curve was further flattening, as the country braces for a partial resumption of activities and an easing of the current nationwide lockdown on May 4.

The tally of active infec-tions saw further decline, falling by 548, and now stands at 104,657.

Meanwhile, recoveries kept rising, jumping to 71,252 as the number of patients under intensive care con-tinued to fall, easing pressure on Italy’s struggling healthcare system.

The epicenter of the Italian outbreak remains the northern Lombardy region, where fatal-ities continue to rise, reaching 13,679 — about half of the country’s total deaths.

Italy’s government com-missioner for the coronavirus emergency said on yesterday that the country was now pre-pared for a second wave of infections “even bigger than the first,” in case the partial reopening of activities in May led to a new peak.

Spain readies to easelockdown, but warns discipline is neededREUTERS — MADRID

Spain’s lockdown is making progress against the new coro-navirus but a gradual easing from next week will require even more discipline, officials said yesterday, after the country recorded 325 deaths from the infection overnight.

The lockdown, one of the toughest in Europe, has halted public life since March 14 and nearly paralysed the economy.

In Madrid, workers were painting “keep your distance” signs on to zebra crossings in the capital in preparation for restrictions to be gradually removed.

The country’s overall death toll from the virus rose by 453 to 24,275, the health ministry said, adding that the additional cases were from the previous days in the region of Galicia.

The number of diagnosed cases rose by 2,144 from Tuesday to 212,917, the world’s second-highest tally after the United States, the ministry said.

“The evolution we are seeing is still very favourable and is in line with what we expected,” health emergency

coordinator Fernando Simon told a news briefing yesterday.

He said the so-called ‘R’ rate — the average number of infec-tions that one person with the virus causes — stood at below 1, signalling a downward trend, in almost all areas of the country.

The daily number of deaths has decreased sharply from the high of 950 seen in early April.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced late on Tuesday a four-phase plan to lift the lockdown that would culminate in a return to nor-mality by the end of June.

But Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told a news conference yes-terday that “the period of easing measures would take more dis-cipline than lockdown” itself.

Implementation will vary from province to province depending on factors such as how the rate of infection evolves, the number of intensive care beds available locally and compliance with distancing rules. These targets are yet to be announced.

Health Minister Salvador

Illa said the rules on visiting friends and family would be provided in the coming days.

The Hotel Business Associ-ation of Madrid yesterday expressed its “serious concern” over the plan, as well as its “dis-belief” that the government was contemplating reopening hotels “when the arrival of clients is impossible” because of closed borders and suspended flights.

The government’s plan does not specify when Spain will be

able to reopen its tourism industry, which is worth 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

“Foreign tourism is the hardest part to manage. We look at what has happened to those ahead of us (in Asia); when they started cross-border mobility there were outbreaks of imported cases,” said a gov-ernment official who declined to be named.

“We also want to take the

decision at (European) Com-munity level, especially in view of the Schengen area,” he added.

Data released on yesterday showed Spanish retail sales fell 14.1 percent in March from a year earlier on a calendar-adjusted basis, after rising 1.8 percent in February.

Most stores closed during the second half of last month as part of the lockdown and have remained shut in April.

Healthcare workers applaud and hold placards demanding better salary conditions outside a hospital in Barcelona, yesterday.

Germans urged to maintain social distancing disciplineREUTERS — BERLIN

Germans must persevere with social distancing or risk expo-nential growth in the number of coronavirus cases, four leading science institutes said yesterday.

Germany began easing its lockdown last week, when some shops were allowed to open provided they practised strict social distancing, but Chancellor Angela Merkel and government advisers are worried about the coronavirus infection rate rising.

The reproductive rate, known as ‘R’, is at just under one in Germany, Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), said on Tuesday. That means one person with the virus infects about one other person on

average. Earlier this month, the rate was at 0.7.

In a joint statement, sci-entists from Germany’s Fraunhofer Society, the Helm-holtz and Leibniz Associa-tions, and the Max Planck Society must be kept low.

“The situation is not stable, even a small increase in the reproductive rate would take us back to a phase of exponential growth,” they said.

“Therefore, until a

vaccine becomes available, the reproduction rate must be kept below 1,” they said, adding that “consistent contact restrictions” remained necessary. Germany has reported 157,641 coronavirus cases but carried out early and extensive testing and the death toll has been relatively low at 6,115.

The education ministers of Germany’s 16 federal states agreed on Tuesday that schools would slowly reopen

classes for all grades by the summer holidays, although pupils would have to work and learn in smaller groups.

Retailers with floor space of up to 800 square metres are now allowed to open, along with car and bicycle dealers, and bookstores, though they must practise strict social distancing and hygiene rules.

Merkel will discuss the next steps for easing the lockdown restrictions in a tel-ephone conference with the state premiers on Thursday, and again on May 6.

The scientists from the four institutes said data available so far showed that achieving herd immunity — when enough people in a pop-ulation have immunity to an infection to be able to

effectively stop that disease from spreading - would take several years if the healthcare system is not to be overloaded.

They called for a two-phased approach to tackling the virus and a further easing of the lockdown.

In a first phase, new infections would be further reduced until effective contact tracing was possible. In the second phase, testing and tracing capabilities would be ramped up, hygiene rules maintained and restrictions adapted as necessary.

Such restrictions could be adapted with the roll-out of a contact tracing app, which the government is hoping for in the coming weeks, or with drugs to treat the virus, or a vaccine, the scientists added.

Germany charges

neo-Nazi with

politician's murderAFP — FRANKFURT AM MAIN

German prosecutors said yesterday they had formally charged a known neo-Nazi with the June 2019 murder of a pro-refugee politician, the first in a string of recent far-right killings.

Federal investigators said 45-year-old Stephan Ernst drove to Walter Luebcke’s house in Wolfhagen, central Germany, on the evening of June 1, 2019.

He crept up under cover of darkness to the terrace where Luebcke sat before shooting him in the head with a revolver.

Ernst’s “racism and xeno-phobia founded on an ethnic-nationalist attitude were decisive in the act”, prose-cutors said in a statement.

The suspect and his fellow accused, identified only as Markus H., had attended a political meeting in October 2015 where Luebcke argued in favour of accommodating refugees in the town of Lohfelden.

Some 26,097 people died across the United Kingdom after testing positive for COVID-19 as of April 28 at 1600 GMT, Public Health England (PHE) said, citing daily figures that included deaths outside of hospital settings for the first time.

Germany began easing its lockdown last week, when some shops were allowed to open provided they practised strict social distancing, but Chancellor Angela Merkel and government advisers are worried about the coronavirus infection rate rising.

13THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 EUROPE

EU launches judicial freedom case against PolandAFP — BRUSSELS

The EU yesterday launched a new legal challenge against reforms in Poland that Brussels says threaten judicial inde-pendence.

The move is the latest round in a long-running tussle between the European Com-mission — the bloc’s executive — and right-wing governments in Eastern Europe it accuses of undermining fundamental EU values. Yesterday’s case is the fourth lodged by commission against Warsaw since the con-servative government there began seeking new oversight over judges’ work and careers.

Some of the reforms have been already been softened or

rolled back, but the Polish gov-ernment is pushing ahead with new disciplinary rules opposed by Brussels.

A commission statement said the latest “infringement procedure” was “designed to safeguard the independence of judges in Poland” against “political control”.

It was announced by Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, who travelled to Poland in January to raise concerns with Prime Minister Mateusz Moraw-iecki’s government.

“Member states can reform their judiciary, but they have to do it without breaching the EU treaties,” she told reporters during a Brussels video briefing.

“There are clear risks that

the provisions regarding the disciplinary regime against judges can be used for political control of the content of judicial decisions, among others.

“This is a European issue, because Polish courts apply European law. Judges from other countries must trust that P o l i s h j u d g e s a c t independently.

“This mutual trust is the foundation of our single market,” she warned, giving Warsaw two months to respond to an action that “can not have come as a surprise”.

According to the com-mission, the law “increases the number of cases in which the content of judicial decisions can be qualified as a disciplinary

offence.“As a result, the disciplinary

regime can be used as a system of political control of the content of judicial decisions.” In a sign of unease, a German court in February refused to extradite a suspect to Poland, citing fears that the judicial reforms might deprive him of a fair trial.

Three infringement proce-dures have already been launched against Poland since 2017. The first two, concerning retirement conditions for judges of the ordinary courts and the Supreme Court, were upheld by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

In the third case, concerning the new rules for judges, the

court ordered Poland on April 8 to suspend the new disci-plinary chamber of the Supreme Court, pending a final ruling.

The head of the Polish Supreme Court, Malgorzata Gersdorf, ordered the suspension, but the decision was challenged and the matter referred to the Constitutional Court. The European Commission has also initiated a procedure under Article 7 of the EU Treaty against Poland in 2017, which in theory can lead to political sanctions.

This mechanism, provided for in the event of a “serious breach” of the rule of law in an EU member, has also been acti-vated, this time by the European Parliament, against Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

Coronavirus case tally nears 100,000 in RussiaREUTERS — MOSCOW

Russia’s nationwide tally of confirmed coro-navirus cases neared the 100,000 mark yesterday after 5,841 new cases of the virus were registered overnight along with a record daily rise in the death toll.

Russia, the world’s largest country by territory, has been on lockdown since Pres-ident Vladimir Putin announced the closure of most public spaces in late March.

It this week overtook China and Iran in the number of confirmed cases. The figures mean Russia now ranks eighth worldwide for the number of confirmed cases, though it has so far recorded far fewer deaths than many of the most hard-hit countries.

The nationwide case tally now stands at 99,399, the country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said yesterday. It said 108 people diagnosed with the novel corona-virus had died in the last 24 hours, a record daily rise. That means the official overall death toll now stands at 972 people.

Authorities began recording a sharp rise in cases this month.

Russia is now in its fifth week of a lockdown that, together with the collapse of oil prices, has put the economy on course

for a 4-6% contraction, according to the central bank.

A person boards a metro train at an empty station with its platform marked with stickers helping commuters to keep distance in Moscow, Russia, yesterday.

Russia flies nuclear-capable bombers over Baltic SeaREUTERS — MOSCOW

Russia has flown two nuclear-capable Tu-160 strategic bombers over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea, the Russian Ministry of Defence said yesterday, a move that prompted Finland, Denmark, Poland and Sweden to scramble jets to escort them.

The ministry said the flight was routine in nature and strictly adhered to international airspace regulations.

Russia carries out similar

training flights over the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as over the Black and Baltic Seas on a regular basis, a policy some NATO members regard as unhelpful sabre-rattling.

The two Tupolev T-160 air-craft, which can carry up to 12 short-range nuclear missiles, were in the air for eight hours, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

“At specific stages of the route, the aircraft were escorted by the Finnish Air Force’s F-18s, Royal Danish and Polish Air

Force F-16s, as well as by the Swedish Air Force’s Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets,” it said.

Russia made a similar statement on Tuesday, saying two Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bombers had flown a routine four-hour flight over the neutral waters of the Barents and Norwegian seas, prompting Norway to scramble its jets to escort them.

Also on Tuesday, it said advanced jets had rehearsed striking naval targets in the Baltic Sea.

100-year-old Belgian recovers from COVID-19Medical workers clap as a 100-year-old Belgian patient Julia Dewilde leaves the Bois de l’Abbaye hospital (CHBA) in Seraing, after being successfully treated of COVID-19, yesterday.

Poland PM insists on Mayvote, even if delayed slightlyAP — WARSAW, POLAND

Poland’s Prime Minister said yesterday that the presidential election must be held in May despite the coronavirus pandemic to meet the require-ments of the constitution.

Mateusz Morawiecki said, however, that the May 10 election date may be pushed back by a week or two.

“Constitutional experts say that the election is also pos-sible on successive dates: May 17 or May 23,” Morawiecki said.

“We will be taking the decision in the nearest future,” he said.

The ruling conservative Law and Justice party is pushing for the May vote by postal ballot only, driven by the fact that its candidate, President Andrzej Duda, is leading in opinion polls. It argues that voting by mail is safe.

But it has also empowered the parliamentary speaker to alter the May 10 date. Duda’s term expires August 6.

The opposition, instead, wants the vote postponed by a year or two. Opposition pol-iticians argue that it is not safe to hold any vote during a pandemic.

They also argue that oppo-sition candidates are unable to properly campaign and

meet with voters due to the restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic.

All opposition candidates are trailing in opinion polls behind Duda, who frequently appears on state media.

With less than two weeks to the election, the bill for-mally regulating procedures for the vote still hasn’t been adopted in parliament, raising questions about whether the balloting can be held as planned.

The European Union and pro-democracy organizations have voiced concerns about whether Poland’s first-ever postal election held under anti-coronavirus restrictions will be fully democratic, free and transparent.

European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said yesterday that it was up to authorities in Warsaw and the Polish public to decide the best way to hold a free and fair election.

But, she added: “If I were a Polish citizen I would have many questions, because I would really like to have fair access to the voting.”

“I would like to see the candidates campaigning in a fair campaign time. I think that these are the questions especially which should be asked on Polish territory,” Jourova said.

Bosnia sees sharp rise in virus cases after relaxing lockdownREUTERS — SARAJEVO

Bosnia reported yesterday its sharpest daily rise in new coro-navirus infections this month after its two autonomous regions had gradually begun to ease lockdowns.

There were 93 new infec-tions and two deaths in the pre-vious 24 hours, compared with 20 new infections a day earlier and 49 the day before that, offi-cials said.

The total number of infected people rose to 1,677 with 65 deaths, while 29,130 have been tested.

Both the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic imposed lockdowns last month after the outbreak

of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

Their measures included barring people aged over 65 and children up to 18 from leaving home at all.

The Serb Republic, which started on Monday to let senior citizens leave home for three hours each workday and some businesses to reopen, reported 59 new cases. Its officials urged citizens to continue to avoid gatherings and to wear masks at all times.

"The percentage of positive cases in relation to those tested is revealing a lowering of indi-vidual discipline in obeying the prescribed measures," Serb Republic Health Minister Alen

Seranic said, adding that 8% of those tested in the past 24 hours were found to be pos-itive, up from 5% previously.

"The whole community is behaving in a more relaxed manner than before, when we had a different number of cases from now," said Seranic, who is a trained epidemiologist.

In the northern town of Banja Luka, which has recorded the highest number

of coronavirus cases in Bosnia, Pedja Kovacevic, head of the intensive care department at the main hospital, said health workers had been able to cope with the pandemic so far.

"What is terrifying is that we have the largest number of sick and hospitalised patients in the hospital in the ninth week, and I call on the public and every citizen to think twice (before leaving home)," Kovacevic said.

The Bosniak-Croat Feder-ation lifted its night curfew last Friday and abolished a measure of obligatory quar-antine. It also allowed senior citizens and children to leave home every second day for several hours.

These measures will be reinstated during the three-day Labour Day holidays, officials said, adding that people there too were behaving in a more relaxed manner.

"We are aware that we'll see new peaks and trends of the disease, but we have to go back to normal life," said Goran Cerkez, the federation assistant health minister.

"We shall see how that pro-ceeds, and whether we have to reinstate restrictions will depend on the citizens."

Bosnia's economy has been hit hard by the lockdowns and the closure of many businesses. The International Monetary Fund has forecast growth to shrink 5% this year.

Russia extends entry ban for foreigners over pandemic

AFP — MOSCOW

Russia yesterday extended an entry ban for foreigners to slow the coronavirus as the country registers a steep rise in the number of new infec-tions.

The decree barring for-eigners from entering the country, which was intro-duced in mid-March and set to expire today, was extended until Russia has the virus under control, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said.

“I have signed a gov-ernment resolution on extending it until the fight against the infection is over and the epidemic situation has improved,” he told offi-cials meeting to discuss Rus-sia’s response to the pandemic.

Mishustin said the entry ban would carry exemptions for specialists who do main-tenance on imported equipment.

This would “reduce the negative impact” on com-panies that manufacture equipment to combat coro-navirus infection, he explained.

President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that Russia had not yet reached the peak of coronavirus infections and extended lockdown measures in the country for two weeks.

In a video-conference with regional governors, Putin said Russia had managed to slow the spread of the pan-demic, but cautioned that “this should not reassure us”.

The total number of infected people rose to 1,677 with 65 deaths, while 29,130 have been tested.

Ukrainian businessmen demand easing of lockdownREUTERS — KIEV

Several hundred busi-nessmen, many of them wearing protective face masks, called for an easing of Ukraine’s coronavirus lockdown in a protest near the government bui ld ing yesterday.

The protesters, most of whom kept a safe distance from each other as police and the National Guard looked on, demanded more government support for small businesses and equal working conditions for all companies.

Ukraine has closed cafes, restaurants, markets, hair-dressers, gyms and enter-tainment centres during the lockdown imposed last month, forcing many com-panies to shut their doors and leaving many people without work.

The government, which has reported nearly 10,000 coronavirus cases including 250 deaths, did not respond directly to the protesters. But Prime Minister Denys Shmygal told a televised gov-ernment meeting that the lockdown would be lifted gradually when the time was right.

“The fact that we have fewer cases than other coun-tries is thanks to the lockdown. We entered quar-antine in a timely way and will quit it in a timely way,” he said.

“Those irresponsible calls to end the lockdown ahead of schedule put all Ukrainians at risk. We understand what steps we need to take and when.”

He urged “political forces” not to urge Ukrainians to stage protests, warning that easing restrictions too soon could result in a new increase in the number of coronavirus cases.

The government, which last week extended the lockdown until May 11, has said it expects the epidemic to peak early next month. Though it has said it is too soon to end the lockdown, it has allowed supermarkets, some hardware stores, car services and pharmacies to operate. Shmygal said food markets would also be opened.

COVID-19 cases

rise above 20,000

in Sweden

REUTERS — STOCKHOLM

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Sweden rose past the 20,000 mark yesterday as the Nordic country reported 107 new deaths to put the tally at 2,462 since the outbreak began.

Statistics compiled and reported daily by Sweden’s Public Health Agency showed 681 new cases, bringing the accumulated number to 20,302.

Sweden has taken a less strict approach to curbing the spread of the disease than most European countries.

14 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020AMERICAS

UN members say EU sanctions have no effect on Venezuela aidAFP — UNITED NATIONS

Four European members of the UN Security Council said on Tuesday that sanctions on Venezuela have had no impact on medical aid to the Latin American country, following a closed-door videoconference.

“EU sanctions in Venezuela are targeted against individuals responsible for grave human rights violations and explicitly designed not to affect the pop-ulation,” Belgium, Germany, France and Estonia said in a statement. Britain was not part of their joint declaration.

“Therefore the sanctions do not impede humanitarian or medical assistance in any way,” the statement said.

The text also expressed their “deep concern about the con-sequences of the COVID-19

pandemic.” “The pandemic risks having a devastating human impact in a country grappling with an already grave economic, social and humani-tarian situation,” the four Council members said.

“The EU members of the Security Council call for the depoliticization of humanitarian assistance and for safe and unhindered humanitarian access throughout the country,” the statement said, adding that the European Union is Vene-zuela’s biggest donor in battling

its humanitarian crisis.The four countries are

behind the convening of this rare Security Council meeting on Venezuela. They took initi-ative after Russia refused to include the humanitarian aspect in a session last week, which was requested by Moscow regarding a US military deployment off the Venezuelan coast.

On April 1, Washington announced the deployment as part of a massive anti-drug operation. Caracas, backed by

Moscow, denounced the move shortly thereafter in a letter to the UN. The Security Council’s last open meeting on Venezuela was in April 2019 when US

Vice-President Mike Pence went to New York to call for the recognition of opposition figure Juan Guaido as the country’s leader, instead of President

Nicolas Maduro.A closed-door meeting was

organized in May 2019, but that was the Council’s last meeting on Venezuela until last week.

Venezuelan migrants wearing face masks participate in a protest against the blockade of buses that they hired to reach the Colombian-Venezuelan border, in Bogota, Colombia, yesterday.

Brazil records more virus deaths than China AFP — BRASÍLIA

Brazil, the South American country worst-hit by the coro-navirus pandemic, has regis-tered more than 5,000 deaths from COVID-19, the health ministry announced on Tuesday, pushing the toll above that of China.

A record 474 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, with the number of infections rising to 71,886, the ministry said.

China, where the virus first emerged before spreading across the world, has recorded about 4,600 deaths.

The ministry said Brazil’s toll could be higher than Tues-day’s official figure of 5,107, as the cause of 1,156 further deaths are under investigation.

Experts believe the overall number of COVID-19 cases could be 12 to 15 times higher, due to a large number of unde-tected cases given the lack of testing availability across the country’s 210 million population.

Deaths among vulnerable indigenous communities rose by 15 on Monday, a jump of 50

percent in the past five days, according to the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil.

President Jair Bolsonaro regularly expresses his impa-tience with restrictions imposed by the state governors to slow the disease’s spread and has pushed hard for economic activity to restart.

Asked about the rising death count, Bolsonaro responded, “And what? I am sorry about it. What do you want me to do?” “I am Messias,” he said, referring to his middle name, which means Messiah, “but I don’t do miracles.”

Health Minister Nelson Teich, who took office earlier this month after the contro-versial firing of his predecessor, said last week as the death toll hit 3,000 that it was premature to attribute the rise in fatalities to a surge in COVID-19 infections.

He suggested it could instead be the result of an increase in testing.

Sao Paulo, the hardest-hit state with a third of the coun-try’s cases, plans to gradually resume economic activity — sector by sector — from May 11.

Brazilian troops to protect Amazon against deforestation

REUTERS — SAO PAULO/BRASILIA

Brazil plans to deploy its armed forces to fight deforestation and fires in the Amazon jungle, Vice-President Hamilton Mourão said yesterday, in an effort to protect the world’s largest rainforest where destruction has surged since last year.

Mourão said the country would invoke the same measure that deployed troops to fight forest fires last year, a so-called Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) decree to be signed by President Jair Bolsonaro.

Amazon deforestation soared to an 11-year high last year, as fires tore through the rainforest, provoking interna-tional outcry that Brazil was not doing enough to protect the biome.

Destruction has continued to climb this year. From January to March, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 51% from a year ago, according to preliminary satellite data.

Mourão sa id the

government would establish permanent bases in the Amazon this year for both military per-sonnel, federal and state police, environmental agencies and other security forces.

“We already have a plan practically finished for an ini-tiative against deforestation and to prevent fires that start in July and August,” Mourão said.

Mourão did not give details on the timing of the decree.

Earlier yesterday, Defense Minister Fernando Azevedo said that a GLO order was in Mourão’s hands.

“If a new GLO is necessary, the armed forces are ready to go again,” Azevedo said.

The plans to deploy the mil-itary come amid signs that the government is rolling back routine environmental enforcement due to the new coronavirus outbreak.

An official at environ-mental agency Ibama, the gov-ernment’s main enforcer of environmental laws, told Reuters in March that it would not be able to send as many agents into the field to stop environmental crimes because of health risks.

Environmental advocates worry that will lead destruction to spike further in the rain-forest, although Ibama said the cutbacks would be in areas other than the Amazon.

A September 10, 2019 photo shows smoke billowing from a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil.

Brazil court blocks Bolsonaro’s pick for police chiefAFP — BRASÍLIA

A Brazilian Supreme Court judge blocked President Jair Bolsonaro’s pick for federal police chief yesterday, amid accusations the far-right leader made the appointment to stave off investigations targeting him and his family.

After days of uproar over Bolsonaro’s decision to replace the head of the federal police, the judge ruled that accusations of a conflict of interest were strong enough to issue a temporary injunction blocking the pres-ident’s appointment of a family friend, Alexandre

Ramagem, to the post.Judge Alexandre de Moraes

issued the ruling hours before Ramagem, previously the head of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, was to be sworn in.

There is plausible evidence that Bolsonaro “failed to observe the constitutional principles of impartiality, morality and public interest” in making the appointment, he wrote in his ruling.

The full court must now rule whether Ramagem’s appointment should go ahead.

Bolsonaro sacked the pre-vious head of the federal police, Mauricio Valeixo, last week. The controversial

decision led popular justice minister Sergio Moro to resign in protest.

In a scathing last press conference, Moro accused Bol-sonaro of “political inter-ference” in the police’s work.

Moro, a former judge, is an anti-corruption hero to many Brazilians. He shot to fame for presiding over “Operation Car Wash,” a huge graft investi-gation that took down some of the biggest names in Bra-zilian politics and business, including ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Following Moro’s accusa-tions, another Supreme Court judge ordered an investigation

into whether Bolsonaro com-mitted crimes including obstruction of justice.

The federal police are reportedly investigating mul-tiple cases involving Bol-sonaro’s inner circle, including allegations his son Carlos, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor, oversaw a fake-news cam-paign to benefit his father.

Bolsonaro defended his pick for federal police chief on Sunday with a defiant “So what?” He sarcastically asked if Ramagem should be “banned” just because he is a family friend.

“Whose friend am I sup-posed to pick?” he said.

Social distancing People wearing face masks and stand on special marks as a practice of social distancing as preventive measures against the spread of the novel coronavirus in the metro in Medellin, Colombia, on Tuesday.

Bolivia, Chile strike deal to return stranded migrants homeREUTERS — SANTIAGO

Chile and Bolivia agreed on Tuesday to allow several hundred Bolivians stranded in a makeshift tent camp in Santiago to quarantine for 14 days and then return home, Chile’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Large groups of Bolivians, toting bulging suitcases, had pitched tents near their coun-try’s consulate in a leafy, upscale suburb of the Chilean capital, flouting a nighttime curfew and social-distancing rules.

The foreign ministers of both countries agreed the migrants should be trans-ported to Iquique, a coastal desert city nearer to Bolivia in northern Chile, and then allowed to return home fol-lowing isolation.

“For us, it is important that people who have come to work in Chile... can return to their countries as quickly as possible, and in good con-dition,” said Chile’s foreign minister, Teodoro Ribera. “Coronavirus doesn’t rec-ognize borders.” Bolivian migrants have been gathering in Chile for several weeks after Bolivia tightened its border shortly after the outbreak hit the region.

Some Bolivians, out of work as Chile’s economy has sputtered, had already returned home after com-pleting quarantine following an earlier deal between the two countries.

Chilean officials worried that growing numbers of Bolivians gathered in the Prov-idencia neighborhood of San-tiago would soon pose a health risk. Though Providencia is not under quarantine, other parts of Santiago are under lockdown, with rules in place prevent gatherings of more than 50 people.

Nicaragua to

enact preventive

measures

against COVID-19

AFP — MANAGUA

Nicaragua announced on Tuesday that it would encourage citizens to practice preventative measures against the coronavirus, including hygiene and social distancing, a major shift for a country that had previously refused to enact such measures.

“We are going to strengthen all the information on hand-washing, social dis-tancing, the use of masks,” in line with the campaign in other parts of the world to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Vice-President Rosario Murillo said during a press conference.

“We are drawing up posters and explaining the measures” that will be imple-mented in the country.

In addition to the new measures, the country will also begin disinfecting modes of public transportation, bus stops, markets, study and work centers, as well as in homes and neighborhoods, Murillo said.

Nicaragua is the only Central American country that has not implemented lockdown measures, closed borders or suspended school in response to the pandemic.

Instead, it has promoted attending sports activities, fairs, trips to the beach and visiting tourist sites, all while keeping a safe distance. The ministry of health (MINSA) has recorded 13 cases of the virus, including three deaths, since the first infection was reported on March 18.

Colombia to offer legal benefits to those who leave gangs

REUTERS — BOGOTA

Colombia will offer individuals who leave crime gangs and rebel dissident groups legal benefits including reduced sentences in an effort to weaken illegal armed groups, the Andean country’s high peace commissioner said yesterday.

Until now the benefits applied only to people who demobilized from the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group. The expanded policy will include people leaving dis-sident groups of former Revo-lutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighters and the Clan del Golfo, Los Pelusos and Los Caparros crime gangs.

“In this case we’re not in a collective surrender scenario, but an individual one, one by one,” commissioner Miguel Ceballos said during a virtual

press conference.“The success of armed

operations creates circum-stances of pressure that mean this route could be taken up by various people.”

Those who voluntarily sur-render will get legal benefits like reductions in jail sentences and access to an up to six-year reintegration process that includes economic support.

There will not be pardons or amnesties for those respon-sible for war crimes or crimes against humanity like the use of landmines, Ceballos said.

The measure is not a nego-tiation between the gov-ernment and armed groups, Ceballos said.

“Until now individual sur-render applied only to the ELN, today what we’ve done is expand that route to other illegal armed groups through a decree,” Ceballos said.

“EU sanctions in Venezuela are targeted against individuals responsible for grave human rights violations and explicitly designed not to affect the population,” Belgium, Germany, France and Estonia said in a statement.

15THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020 AMERICAS

Trump says he won’t extend social distancing guidelinesAP — WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump said yesterday the federal govern-ment’s coronavirus social distancing guidelines will be “fading out” when they expire today, counting on states taking charge as they pivot to reopening.

The administration says its cautionary guidance issued 45 days ago has been incorporated into recommendations given to the states on how they can begin gradually easing restric-tions and reopening their economies.

“They’ll be fading out because now the governors are doing it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office yesterday as he met with John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor of Louisiana.

Edwards told Trump that his state has turned the corner in its fight against the virus.

While Trump spoke confi-dently of the governors steering recovery in their states, tran-sition is not going smoothly eve-rywhere. “I just wanted to con-gratulate you,” Trump said to

Edwards, commending him on the job he’s done after New Orleans became one of the nation’s coronavirus hot spots.

However, Edwards is cur-rently under fire from Repub-lican lawmakers in his state after he extended Louisiana’s stay-at-home order through May 15. As he was in Wash-ington, some GOP legislators were trying to rally support to take the extraordinary step of trying to override the governor’s emergency decision-making about the state’s outbreak.

During the meeting, Trump, who has both threatened to force states to reopen and said decisions will be left to them, confirmed the White House will not be extending its “30 Days to Slow the Spread” guidelines when they expire today.

Those guidelines — which

were originally supposed to last 15 days and were then extended to an additional 30 — encouraged Americans to work from home and avoid restau-rants and discretionary travel and advised older Americans and those with serious under-lying health conditions to isolate themselves.

Vice-President Mike Pence said the guidelines have been incorporated into the new guidance issued by the White House earlier this month that lays out how states can grad-ually begin to reopen as the rate of new cases slows.

The US has now recorded more than 58,000 deaths from the virus, surpassing the total number of Americans who were killed in the Vietnam War. More than one million people have now tested positive.

Trump said that number has risen so high in large part because of increased US testing.

“That’s a tremendous amount and the reason is because of testing,” he said.

The US has dramatically increased its testing after a slow and rocky start, but many health experts say the country still must do more — as many as 5 million a day — to safely reopen

the economy. Otherwise, they warn, cases will skyrocket as Americans return to work, cre-ating another deadly spike.

Trump has dismissed that recommended number, calling it unnecessary and a “media trap.” Separately yesterday, Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and senior adviser, told “Fox and Friends” that the administration is preparing the

country to “get as close back to normal as possible as quickly as possible.”

“I think what you’ll see in May, as the states are reopening now, is May will be a transition month,” he said. “And I think you’ll see by June, a lot of the country should be back to normal and the hope is that... by July the country is really rocking again.”

US President Donald Trump speaks as he meets with Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, yesterday.

The US has now recorded more than 58,000 deaths from the virus, surpassing the total number of Americans who were killed in the Vietnam War. More than one million people have now tested positive.

US says remdesivir shows ‘clear-cut’ effect in treating coronavirusAFP — WASHINGTON

COVID-19 patients on the anti-viral remdesivir recovered more than 30 percent faster than those on a placebo, the results of a major clinical trial showed yesterday as a top US scientist hailed the drug’s “clear-cut” benefit.

It represents the first time any medication has been shown to improve outcomes against the COVID-19 illness, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives globally and brought the world economy to a grinding halt.

Anthony Fauci, who oversaw the investigation, told reporters at the White House: “The data shows that remde-sivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”

He added that the trial was proof “that a drug can block this virus,” and compared the finding to the arrival of the first antiretrovirals that worked against HIV in the 1980s, albeit with modest success at first.

A statement by the National Institute of Allergy and Infec-tious Diseases that Fauci heads said that patients on the drug had a 31 percent faster time to recovery than those on a placebo.

“Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo,” it said.

The results also suggested that people who were on the drug were less likely to die, although the difference was not huge: The mortality rate was 8.0 percent for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6 percent for the placebo group.

The trial began on February 21 and involved 1,063 people across 68 locations in the US, Europe and Asia.

The first patient to be enrolled was an American who was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and was treated at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Neither the patients nor their physicians were aware of which group they belonged to, in order to eliminate uncon-scious bias.

Peter Horby, an epidemiol-ogist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, said: “We need to see the full results, but if confirmed this would be a fantastic result and great news for the fight against COVID-19.”

Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), wrote on Twitter: “There’s now enough data to support consid-eration of access under an emergency use authorization.” This would allow doctors to prescribe the drug outside of the context of clinical trials.

Remdesivir, which previ-ously failed in trials against

Ebola, belongs to a class of drugs that act on the virus directly — as opposed to con-trolling the abnormal and often lethal autoimmune response it causes. It mimics one of the four building blocks of RNA and DNA and gets absorbed into the virus’s genome, which in turn stops the pathogen from replicating.

In his remarks to the press, Fauci indicated that since this had yielded some success, it could pave the way for better drugs using the same approach.

There had been mixed news about the intravenous antiviral in recent weeks.

A summary of results posted on the website of the World Health Organization last week showed it failed in a smaller Chinese trial. The Lancet yes-terday published the formal paper describing that experiment.

In this study of 237 patients in Wuhan, China, doctors found

no positive effects of adminis-tering the drug compared with a control group of adults, except for those patients who required ventilators.

But the Chinese test had to be halted early because it could not recruit enough people to meet its initial goals, and was considered by many experts to be too small to draw reliable conclusions from.

Fauci said it was “not an adequate study.” Apart from remdesivir, the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are also being widely used against COVID-19 on a so-called “compassionate basis” pending results from large trials.

Other therapies that are being studied include collecting antibodies from COVID-19 sur-vivors and injecting them in patients, or harvesting anti-bodies from genetically-engi-neered mice that were deliber-ately infected.

Virus outbreak in Canada slows, cases top 50,000REUTERS — TORONTO

Canadian hospitals had beds to spare as the country hit 50,373 confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday, and several provinces were relaxing public health measures, but health experts were already worrying about a future wave of infections.

While it is too soon to say whether Canada’s epidemic has peaked, it has slowed, thanks to swift workplace closures and other physical distancing measures. New cases doubled every three days early in the epi-demic, and now double every 16 days, the government said on Tuesday.

Since the first death on March 9, the virus has killed 2,904 in total. In the United States, an average of 2,000 died each day in April, a Reuters tally found. “I really thought we were on track for something similar to what we were watching unfold in Italy and subsequently in New York (a month ago),” said epidemiologist Ashleigh Tuite of the University of Toronto. “I think big picture, across the

country, we’ve done OK.” Hospitals fared well

although the virus flared in long-term care homes and several prisons. Like the United States and European countries, Canada has struggled to contain the out-break among seniors, and approximately 79% of deaths are linked to long-term care and seniors’ homes. In British Columbia, where cases spiked early on, partly due to its prox-imity to the first US epicenter of Washington state, the number of coronavirus patients in hos-pital is falling. The province had a total of 94 COVID-19 patients in hospital on Tuesday, including 37 in intensive care, down from a peak of 149 on April 4, according to provincial data compiled by Reuters.

In Ontario and Quebec, the number in ICU has plateaued.

Non-ICU hospitalizations are still climbing in Ontario and Quebec, a consequence of transfers from overwhelmed long-term care homes, officials said. Ontario had 742 non-ICU patients as of Wednesday, up 17% from a week earlier,

according to a Reuters tally. In hard-hit Quebec, the figure rose 38% on Tuesday from a week earlier, to 1,408 as more seniors were shifted to hospitals.

But the data suggests that the vast majority of Canadians have not been ill. Some may not know anyone who has been ill. And as the weeks stretch on, officials

have started to acknowledge that people are getting impatient.

“The measures we’ve taken so far are working. In fact, in many parts of the country, the curve has flattened, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday. “We’re in

the middle of the most serious public health emergency Canada has ever seen and if we lift measures too quickly, we might lose the progress we’ve made.”

The problem with success-fully controlling the first wave of an epidemic is that it can set up a large second wave, said Gerald Evans, a Queen’s Uni-versity researcher and medical director of infection control at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, a hospital. Few have been exposed, so many are still sus-ceptible to the virus.

“We’ve been able to provide care for people without over-whelming the system. The drawback is, we have to be pre-pared for that to happen again during a second wave,” he said.

Jason Kindrachuk, a virol-ogist at the University of Manitoba, is worried about the possibility of a second wave that could overlap with flu season, especially given how few people seem to have been exposed the first time around. “We are doing well, but we certainly are nowhere near the end yet,” he said. “This is a long game.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends a meeting of the special committee on the COVID-19 pandemic in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, yesterday.

Laboratory technicians load filled vials of investigational coronavirus disease treatment drug remdesivir at a Gilead Sciences facility in La Verne, California, US, on March 18, 2020.

NY intensifies

testing while

deaths increase

more slowly

BLOOMBERG — NEW YORK

New York is ramping up testing as it moves toward reopening parts of the state less hit by the new corona-virus, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

A week ago, the state was testing an average 20,000 people a day. It is now testing 30,000 daily and is working with the federal government to reach 40,000. New York still isn’t where it needs to be, but it’s a “dramatic increase,” Cuomo said yesterday.

“We have been very aggressive in testing and we have made great progress,” he said.

New York added 330 deaths on April 28, “still dis-gustingly high” according to Cuomo, but the fourth-straight day of decline. Hos-pitalizations and intubations are down slightly, but nearly 1,000 people are admitted to hospitals with COVID-19 each day.

Cuomo said the state will allow hospitals to start doing elective surgeries again in counties that have few cases. This includes several hospitals upstate, but not those in New York City. Elective surgeries bring in revenue to hospitals reeling from the impact of the disease.

New York needs to heed caution signs from other areas that opened too fast, Cuomo said.

US hints attesting air travellersAP — WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump said his administration is consid-ering requiring travelers on certain incoming international flights to undergo temperature and virus checks to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

“We’re looking at doing it on the international flights coming out of areas that are heavily infected,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House. “We will be looking into that in the very near future.” Trump said it has not been deter-mined yet whether the federal government or the airlines would conduct the testing. “Maybe it’s a combination of both,” he said.

Trump’s comments came during an event showcasing a loan program designed to help small businesses weather the coronavirus pandemic, the Paycheck Protection Program. He said the Small Business Administration has processed more loans in 14 days than it has in the previous 14 years.

Earlier, the President defended his administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Canadian Air

Force aerobatics

team to salute

health workers

AFP — OTTAWA

Canada’s Snowbirds, an elite air force aerobatics team, will perform aerial salutes across the country to recognize efforts to stem the coronavirus pandemic, the prime minister announced yesterday, as social distancing rules start to be lifted.

The Snowbirds, formally the 431 Air Demonstration Squadron, had suspended all shows and special events through March and April due to the COVID-19 outbreak, to keep pilots safe.

“Starting this weekend in Nova Scotia, the Canadian Forces Snowbirds will head across Canada to salute Cana-dians doing their part to stop the spread of COVID-19,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a daily COVID-19 briefing.

“As we watch the Snow-birds fly over our homes, let’s remember that we are all in this together,” he said.

The team’s signature nine-jet formation, with trailing white smoke, will perform aerial displays over cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, at elevations as low as 500 feet. Times and locations throughout next week are to be announced on social media platforms each day.

16 THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020MORNING BREAK

From a loft studio on a farm, professor teaches paintingAP — WASHINGTON

Fred Haag, an associate professor of visual arts at Penn State York, normally teaches his Art 50: Introduction to Painting course in a large studio at a state-of-the art performing arts center. But because of the COVID-19 outbreak, classes are now being held remotely from a loft studio at his small farm in south-central Pennsylvania.

The farm is in a hilly, agrarian area in Hellam, about 11 miles from campus. Haag lives there with his wife of almost 30 years, Marcy Nicholas, who also teaches at Penn State York. They currently raise just cats and chickens, but the old farm has hosted cattle, goats and ducks.

The spring class of 20

undergraduate students has been meeting remotely three days a week since March 16, when the whole Penn State system moved to remote and online classes in response to the global pandemic. On a rainy Friday morning, the class began on Zoom with an artist presen-tation, with Haag later checking in on students’ progress on their projects - and a crowing rooster outside the window making an occasional interruption.

For Haag, who’s been teaching for more than three decades, this is his first expe-rience with remote instruction. He’s encountered a few growing pains with technology and streaming video. “Our area has limited wifi, and visual courses consume lots of band-width,” said Haag, 58. The

university has provided him with a smartphone to act as an internet hotspot.

“There is a significant learning curve for both faculty and students,” he added. “This term is really an emergency stopgap measure. And to do things correctly, I would want a lot more time to assemble materials and work out the details of class-time activities.”

Haag said he thinks remote painting classes could continue after the pandemic, but he has some reservations. “There are a bunch of folks who teach art courses remotely,” he said.

“But I find myself missing the studio dynamic and the active learning that occurs for me in the face-to-face environment.”

Madagascar’s prehistoric ‘crazy beast’ sheds light on mammalian evolutionREUTERS — WASHINGTON

A prehistoric opossum-sized critter dubbed the “crazy beast” that inhabited Madagascar at the end of the age of dinosaurs is providing scientists insight into early mammalian evolution even as they scratch their heads over its bewildering anatomy.

Researchers yesterday described an exquisitely pre-served fossil of the plant-eating mammal named Adalatherium hui, which lived 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period and superficially resembled a badger with its long torso and stubby tail.

Scientists had known pre-cious little about southern hem-isphere mammals during the Mesozoic Era, the age of dino-saurs, with the fossil record from the northern hemisphere

much more extensive.Adalatherium offers by far

the most complete skeleton of a Mesozoic mammal from Gondwana, which was Earth’s southern supercontinent encompassing Africa, South America, India, Australia and Antarctica. It also is the fullest fossil representing an enigmatic mammal group called gondwa-natherians that thrived for tens of millions of years but died out about 45 million years ago leaving no living relatives.

Its name means “crazy beast,” with good reason.

“Its many uniquely bizarre features defied explanation in terms of relationships to other mammals. In this sense, it was a ‘crazy beast,’” said Denver Museum of Nature and Science paleontologist David Krause, lead author of the study pub-lished in the journal Nature.

“We suspect some of this bizarreness might be due to evolution in isolation on an island,” added New York

Institute of Technology paleon-tologist and study co-author Simone Hoffmann.

Life on islands develops dif-ferently than on the mainland, isolated with idiosyncratic food sources, competitors and pred-ators. Madagascar at the time boasted other oddballs including a huge 16-inch (40-cm) frog named Beelzebufo that may have eaten baby dino-saurs and a pug-nosed plant-eating crocodile named Simosuchus.

Mammals first appeared during the Triassic Period more than 200 million years ago and remained bit players until an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, eradicating the dino-saurs and paving the way for mammals to dominate.

The fossil represented an individual not fully grown, at

about 20 inches (52 cm) long and 6.8 pounds (3.1 kg). Most Mesozoic mammals were mouse-sized, about 100 times smaller than Adalatherium.

“Adalatherium was a giant in its time,” Krause said.

Adalatherium would have moved differently from today’s mammals, with it back legs in a more sprawling posture — extending away from the body like reptiles — while its front legs where placed underneath the body like most other mammals. When Adalatherium walked, its spine would have bent side to side in a reptile-like manner.

Its body was elongated with more back vertebrae than any other Mesozoic mammal. Its strong back and hind limb muscles and its long claws on its back feet indicated

Adalatherium was an adept digger that possibly excavated burrows.

Its rodent-like front teeth may have helped it gnaw on roots or other plant material while its molars were unlike any other mammal. Its cranium had more facial holes than any other mammal, serving as pas-sageways for nerves and blood vessels supplying a sensitive whisker-covered snout.

Madagascar was a dan-gerous place. Adalatherium may have been hunted by meat-eating dinosaurs, large croco-diles and a huge constrictor snake.

“Figuring out how Adalath-erium might have moved or eaten with basically no modern analogue is one of the most intriguing parts of this project,” Hoffmann said.

A slice of the moon for sale: Just $2.5mREUTERS — LONDON

One of the world’s largest lunar meteorites goes on private sale at Christie’s today, valued at $2.49m.

The moon rock, weighing over 13.5kg, was probably struck off the surface of the moon by a collision with an asteroid or comet and then showered down on the Sahara desert.

Known as NWA 12691, it is thought to be the fifth largest piece of the moon ever found on earth. There is just 650kg of moon rock known to be on earth.

“The experience of holding a piece of another world in your hands is something you never forget,” said James Hyslop, Christie’s head of science and natural history.

“It is an actual piece of the moon. It is about the size of a football, a bit more oblong than that, larger than your head.”

Like many meteorites that are discovered, it was found in the Sahara by an anonymous finder, then changed hands.

Scientists can be certain that

it is from the moon after com-paring it with rock samples brought back by the United States’ Apollo space missions to the moon.

“In the 1960s and 1970s the Apollo programme brought back about 400kg of moon rock with them and scientists have been able to analyse the chemical and isotopic compo-sitions of those rocks and they have determined that they match certain meteorites,” said Hyslop.

Meteorites are incredibly rare and only about one in a thousand comes from the moon, making this a very special object, he added.

“We are expecting huge international interest in it from natural history museums... it is a wonderful trophy for anyone who is interested in space history or lunar exploration.”

The moon has fascinated man since the dawn of human history as a symbol of power, love, time and prosperity, and is the earth’s only natural sat-ellite. It is thought to have been formed 4.5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized body col-

lided with earth.Christie’s will also offer for

private sale a group of 13

aesthetic iron meteorites. That collection is estimated to be worth 1.4 million pounds.

A photo of a moon rock, weighing over 13.5kg.

Covid, Corona and Lockdown: The newborns named after a pandemicAFP — MANILA

First there was Corona Kumar, then Covid Marie: parents have taken to naming newborns after the coronavirus, appar-ently unperturbed by the prospect of their children being forever associated with a deadly pandemic.

When Colline Tabesa gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the central Philippine city of Bacolod on April 13, she and the father John Tupas decided to mark the occasion with a show of gratitude.

“This COVID-19 has caused great suffering around the world,” said 23-year-old Tupas, expressing relief after the une-ventful delivery. “I wanted her name to remind us that COVID did not only bring us suffering. Despite all of this, a blessing came to us,” he added.

And so, Covid Marie it was.Weeks earlier, two mothers

in southeastern India had had similar ideas, apparently encouraged by a doctor in the hospital where their babies were delivered.

One was called Corona Kumar and the other Corona Kumari.

“I told them this would help create awareness about the disease and remove the stigma around it,” said S F Basha, the doctor. “To my surprise, they agreed.”

Not to be outdone, a migrant-worker couple in India’s northeast stranded thousands of kilometres from their home in the desert state of Rajasthan decided to name their child Lockdown.

“We named him Lockdown remembering all the problems we had to face during this tough time,” local media reports quoted the father Sanjay Bauri as saying.

Tupas, the father of baby Covid Marie, said that while he had fielded criticism on social media for his unorthodox choice, he would not be swayed.

“She might experience bul-lying, but I’ll just teach my daughter to be a good person,” he said. “We didn’t have second thoughts.”

Coronavirus: Streaming films eligible for Oscar this yearIANS — LOS ANGELES

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences to change rules and eligibility requirements for the 2021 Oscars, making movies of streaming services eligible to win the golden statuettes.

The Academy has tweaked its Oscar eligibility rules in the wake of the coronavirus

pandemic. The change is not permanent, and will apply to films released this year, reports variety.com.

During a meeting on Tuesday, the board of governors approved a temporary hold on the requirement that a film needs a seven-day theatrical run in a commercial theater in Los Angeles to qualify for the Oscars.

However, there’s a catch

and not all movies premiering on a streaming service will be eligible for Oscar. To get in Oscar contention, the streaming movie must have already had a planned theatrical release.

“The Academy firmly believes there is no greater way to experience the magic of movies than to see them in a theatre,” said Academy pres-ident David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson.

“Our commitment to that is unchanged and unwavering. Nonetheless, the historically tragic COVID-19 pandemic necessitates this temporary exception to our awards eligi-bility rules. The Academy sup-ports our members and col-leagues during this time of uncertainty. We recognise the importance of their work being seen and also celebrated, espe-cially now, when audiences

appreciate movies more than ever,” he added.

Once movie theaters are allowed to re-open, the seven-day window will once again be required for eligibility.

The Academy also shared that it will eliminate an Oscar category.

The sound mixing and sound editing categories will be com-bined into one award, reducing the total number of categories

presented on the show to 23.And in an effort to become

more carbon neutral, the Academy prohibited DVD screeners for the 94th Oscars gala. It also announced that for the first time all Academy members will be invited to par-ticipate in the preliminary round of voting for international feature films.

The 93rd Oscars will be held on February 28, 2021.

Its (Adalatherium) many uniquely bizarre features defied explanation in terms of relationships to other mammals. In this sense, it was a ‘crazy beast. We suspect some of this bizarreness might be due to evolution in isolation on an island: David Krause

Tribute to healthcare workersChildren’s dolls dressed as healthcare workers and a sign reading “Working on a Vaccine” stand in a window planter outside a home amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in Boston, Massachusetts, yesterday.

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