International COVID-19 Megathread

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Since this story is international, we might as well have a megathread for this crisis

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health/millions-on-virus-lockdown-in-china-as-who-weighs-response-idUSKBN1ZM087

China put millions of people on lock down on Thursday in two cities at the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak that has killed 17 people and infected more than 630, as authorities around the world worked to prevent a global pandemic.

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Most transport in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, was suspended on Thursday and people were told not to leave. Hours later, neighboring Huanggang, a city of about 7 million people, announced a similar lockdown.

“The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Beijing, said.

Other cities were also taking steps to restrict movement and contact.

There’s also been spread to Saudi Arabia

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Feel like this should be consolidated with the USGD thread on the same topic, though I agree it makes much more sense in the international board.

If anything, that thread should be consolidated onto this board. Very few of the new cases are expected to be from America and it is more pressing for the areas around China. I think half of the thread up on USGD is about the Chinese response to this crisis as well.

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I might as well post The Guardian live update

Basically the death toll has risen to 26 with 630 infected, and people are calling for a ban on wild animal markets.

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Death toll rises to 81 as the Trump Administration offers aide to the Chinese efforts at containing the impact

Here are some national responses that involve evacuating people out of China

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StateBoiler, it be best if you link that article

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200 dead in China as the US advises against travel

Outbreaks of xenophobia in west as coronavirus spreads

first human transmission in Thailand as Russia and UK confirm cases

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death toll passes Sars virus as dozens more die in Wuhan

Dozens more people have died in the city at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, where hospitals are severely undersupplied and understaffed and residents have described increasingly desperate conditions.

Chinese state media reported 57 new deaths on Monday, all but one in Wuhan, the capital of the central province of Hubei which has been under lockdown for almost two weeks as authorities try to contain the outbreak.

The foreign ministry issued an urgent appeal for protective medical equipment as the total number of casualties reached 361, surpassing deaths in mainland China caused by the 2002-03 Sars virus. The number of infections also jumped, passing 17,200.

With such a slow rate of infection out of China, I think the theory that there was attempts at suppression of the true extent of infected individuals.

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Link

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News of Kaletra being tested as a possible treatment for the disease sparks panic buying

A drug used to treat people with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is being trialled in patients in China as a possible therapy against the coronavirus.

News that HIV drugs are being deployed in hospitals, however, has led to panic buying on the black market by people who fear they are ill or are going to get sick. They have been obtaining the drug, Kaletra, from generics companies in India and even from people with HIV in China willing to sell or donate their own stocks.

Kaletra, a combination of two anti-HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir, has been used on patients in a trial in China since 18 January. The aim is to test it in about 200 patients, whose condition will be carefully monitored. Their outcomes will be compared with those of similar people with the same degree of illness who have not been given the drug.

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Well the virus is now in Iran, and things are really bad. The regime must have covered up the whole thing until now.

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So apparently there are people sick in Qom, raising the chances that the mullahs are apart of the sick.

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The holy sites in Qom aren’t closed at all even though the situation is really bad there. The Akhunda are deadset on endangering the rest of Iran.

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Khamenei might be dead fake news, some rando on his council

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1234395245573525506

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Khamenei might be dead fake news, some rando on his council

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1234395245573525506

Iran's response to this had been so bad, I'm starting to wonder if this might be their Chernobyl moment. It's one thing to kill dissidents through force. It's another to kill loyalists through weakness.

Though we had to wait another five years after that for the actual collapse of the USSR.

I think the regime will hold out at least a decade more. We’re going to need the boomers to thin out before any real change gets done. Anyway, the situation on the ground only gets worse— 77 officially dead, 23 parliamentarians infected, and 300,000 members of the military and paramilitary forces being mobilized

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Ukrainian doctors fly to Italy to help combat coronavirus. So now there’s two poorer nations helping a so called developed one.

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The fact that there has to be planes full of Romanian agricultural workers to pick British fruit is kind of sad. What exactly would the strategy be if that wasn’t an option?

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A breath of fresh air

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The situation in South Asia isn’t exactly turning out very well

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World Bank warns of collapse in money sent home by migrant workers

The amount of money migrant workers send back to their home countries is expected to decrease by almost $110bn this year as the Covid 19 pandemic increases unemployment across the world.

Remittances to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to fall by nearly 20% to $445bn (£360bn), “representing the loss of a crucial financial lifeline for many vulnerable households”, the World Bank said.

Describing the decrease as the worst in recent history, including the 2008 financial crisis, the Washington-based development bank said migrant workers were especially vulnerable to losing their jobs during coronavirus lockdowns which are still largely in place across the developed world.

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Cuba's ration book stages comeback due to coronavirus pandemic

The Communist-run island nation last month closed its borders to travelers, shuttered schools and ordered the use of face masks in a bid to contain the novel virus, sending doctors and medical students to monitor the population.

Yet hours-long queues outside Cuban supermarkets due to widespread shortages of basic goods risk undermining the country’s response to the spread of the virus, resulting in potential hotbeds of infection.

To combat that, authorities this month added more products to Cubans’ monthly ration book — known locally as the “libreta” — and started experimenting with online commerce and delivery options.

Well this is an odd turn of events.

Meanwhile in France

The queue for the food bank snaked for hundreds of metres, out of the shuttered marketplace bordered by tower blocks and down the side of a four-lane highway on the outskirts of one of Europe’s wealthiest cities.

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Well, Iran’s response has continued to be a disaster, from prematurely opening up Tehran to letting people pray in the mosque  in areas supposedly free of coronavirus.

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After aggressive mass testing, Vietnam says it contains coronavirus outbreak

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The government is officially reporting a relatively small 270 cases and zero deaths. That puts the country on course to revive its economy much sooner than most others, according to several public health experts interviewed by Reuters.

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These public health experts say Vietnam was successful because it made early, decisive moves to restrict travel into the country, put tens of thousands of people into quarantine and quickly scaled up the use of tests and a system to track down people who might have been exposed to the virus.

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Kidong Park, the World Health Organization’s representative in Vietnam, said there was no indication of any outbreaks beyond what had been reported by the government.

Vietnam has been helped, experts said, by the combination of its authoritarian leadership and its open market economy, and a population with a memory of previous epidemics ready to cooperate.

“It is organised, it can make country-wide policy decisions that get enacted quickly and efficiently and without too much controversy,” said Guy Thwaites, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City. Thwaites’s laboratory has been helping to process tests.

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Shopping Centers started reopening yesterday in Chile as daily new cases hit a new record of 888 new infections. Piñera wants to reopen schools at some point in May.

I guess Piñera wants his approval to become even lower?

I don’t think Piñera cares at all what the people think, he’ll do whatever his handlers say to do.

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states trying to steal coronavirus research, says UK agency

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The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said the proportion of such targeted cyber-attacks had increased, branding the criminal activity “reprehensible”.

It is understood that nations including Iran and Russia are behind the hacking attempts, while experts have said China is also a likely perpetrator.

A shame that nations aren’t working together during this crisis for their people, us. Instead, we’re all facing the brunt of this virus in a medical research scene divided by geopolitical squabbles.

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Global trade to fall by record 27% due to Covid-19, says UN

Global trade is forecast to fall by a record 27% in the second quarter of the year after a slump in the export of cars, machine parts and oil.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the supply and demand for products across the world leading to a severe decline in world trade, said Unctad, the United Nations organisation that tracks trade flows.

Almost every category of goods is expected to suffer a fall in trade over the coming months, adding to a 3% decline in the first quarter of the year.