Thursday 14 May 2020

21 Ramadan - 1441

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Volume 25 | Number 8257

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BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 06 SPORT | 11

England's Buttler

hopes enforced virus

break prolongs

cricket career

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

Qatar encourages

digital transformation

in commercial

transactions

Ramadan Timing

Today's Iftar:6:14pm

Tomorrow's Imsak:03:14am

Amir, German Chancellor discuss strategic ties, cooperation in combating COVID-19QNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held last evening a telephone conversation with H E Dr. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the friendly Federal Republic of Germany.

During the phone call, they discussed the strategic relations between the two friendly countries and the prospects for enhancing them, besides the efforts made by both coun-tries in combating the new coronavirus

(COVID-19 ) to curb its spread and prevent it. In this regard the German Chancellor

expressed her thanks and appreciation to H H the Amir for the Qatar Airways’ role in returning German nationals from different parts of the world to Germany during this crisis.

Discussions also dealt with the most important developments, regionally and inter-nationally, particularly the latest develop-ments in Libya and Afghanistan.

Qatar's Gaza Committee starts procedures to distribute grants for facilitating marriageQNA — DOHA

Chairman of Qatar Committee for the Recon-struction of Gaza H E Ambassador Mohammed Al Emadi said that the Committee, in coordi-nation with Qatar Fund For Development (QFFD), has started procedures to distribute a grant to facil-

itate marriage of impoverished youth in Gaza Strip.H E Ambassador Al Emadi said that the $2m

grant will benefit 500 youth chosen according to the criteria established in cooperation with the Min-istry of Youth and Sports in Gaza. Each person will get $4,000. �P3

Residents welcome reopening of money exchange housesSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Money exchange houses have resumed their operations smoothly maintaining social distancing following the State’s preventive and precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

People were spotted queuing in line wearing face-masks adhering to social dis-tancing waiting for their turn. The money exchange houses installed thermal screening to measure the temperature of customers and deployed security personnel to implement the preventive measures.

Residents have welcomed the restoration of money exchange services especially ahead of Eid Al Fitr when large number of people used to send money to their families to their home countries.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry had announced to reopen money exchange service under strict precau-tionary measures, from May 12, 2020.

T h e p r e c a u t i o n a r y measures include requiring visitors to wear facemasks, following social distancing guidelines, measuring tem-perature, and allowing a certain number of customers at the same time, among others.

The Peninsula visited a number of money exchange houses which found following the preventive measures and procedures set by the Ministry.

The visitors were wearing facemasks and gloves, fol-lowing social distancing guidelines.

Also their body temper-ature was being checked by staff of money exchanges. There were also security staff to allow only a certain number of customers at the same time.

� �P3

QA tickets to remain valid for 2 yearsSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Qatar Airways announced yesterday that its tickets will remain valid for two years, giving much needed flexibility to travellers to hold on to their tickets for two years. This move will instil greater confidence among travellers as they will be able to plan their travel dates as per evolving situation.

“As we look forward, we are offering you more choices and greater flexibility so you can have the confidence to plan now and travel when you are ready. Whether you have booked or are planning to book for travel up to 30 September 2020, you can rely on us for the best travel solutions,” said Qatar Airways in a statement posted on its website, yesterday.

“Keep your ticket and use it when you are ready with our

extended ticket validity, now valid for 2 years from the date of ticket issuance for greater flexibility,” it added.

Travellers can extend validity of their ticket by calling Qatar Airways offices or contact centres. The airline said that travellers can make unlimited changes to the dates.

“You can change your travel date or destination free of charge, as often as you need. You can change your origin to another city within the same country or any other destination we fly to within a 5,000 mile radius of your original desti-nation,” said the airline.

The travellers can swap their ticket for Qmiles and redeem them towards reward flights, extra baggage or cabin upgrades when the time is right. For every $1, travellers will earn 100 Qmiles that are valid for at

least three years, so that they can have the flexibility to choose how, when and for whom to redeem them.

Qatar Airways new initiative has come at the apt time as the airline has recently announced decision to expand its network. Last week, the airline said that it would begin a phased approach to expanding its network in line with passenger

demand evolution and the expected relaxation of entry restrictions around the world.

By the end of June, the airline aims to have 80 desti-nations in its schedule including 23 in Europe, four in the Americas, 20 in Middle East/Africa and 33 in Asia-Pacific. Many cities will be served with a strong schedule with daily or more frequencies.

The gradual expansion will focus initially on strengthening connections between the air-line’s hub in Doha with the global hubs of its partner air-lines around the world including London, Chicago, Dallas and Hong Kong along with reopening many major business and leisure destina-tions such as Madrid and Mumbai.

Travellers can extend validity of their ticket by calling Qatar Airways offices or contact centres.

Travellers can make unlimited changes to the date or destination free of charge.

Option for swapping the ticket for Qmiles and redeem them towards reward flights, extra baggage or cabin upgrades when the time is right.

More choices and greater flexibility

Qatar opens 504-bed field hospital to treat COVID-19 patientsFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Qatar has opened a new over 500-bed-capacity field hospital to treat COVID-19 patients. The Libsear field hospital located near Al Shahaniya-Dukhan Road has already started receiving patients.

The hospital consists of three blocks; the first dedicated for administration while other two have a total of 504 single rooms with attached bath-rooms. The field hospital is a joint collaboration between Ministry of Public Health and Ministry of Defense, said Dr. Abdula Rasheed Al Naimi, Clinical Lead of the hospital during a media tour of the medical facility yesterday.

The hospital has the capacity to triage 60 patients at a time and is manned by 70 staff members out of which 20 are doctors. It has all basic required facilities of a field hos-pital including a separate area to collect samples for swab

tests.“The Libsear field hospital’s

main aim is to reduce pressure and complement other hos-pitals treating COVID-19 patients in the country. If a patient is in stable condition but still needs hospitalization, they will be transferred here. They will be still COVID-19 positive but recovering or having virus in a mild way,” said Dr. Al Naimi.

“Here every patient will be accommodated in a separate room and kept for a minimum of 14 days. They will be dis-charged only when swab test results are negative,” he added.

Libsear field hospital will mainly receive patients trans-ferred from the Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital, Mesaieed Hospital, and Ras Laffan Hospital.The hospital will treat expatriates men. It has started to receive patients last week and already have around 100 patients who are recovering from COVID-19 and are in stable condition. �P3

The Libsear field hospital has over 500 single rooms with attached bathrooms. PIC: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA

QNA — DOHA

To contain COVID-19 pandemic, the Cabinet yesterday made wearing facemasks compulsory for all citizens and residents upon leaving house for any reason.

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani chaired the Cabinet regular meeting, held yes-terday evening via video conference.

After the meeting, Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi stated the following: At the beginning of the meeting, the Cabinet listened to the explanation presented by HE the Minister of Public Health on the latest developments to reduce the spread of the coro-navirus (COVID-19), where the Cabinet affirmed the continuation of the precautionary measures taken to combat this pandemic, and decided the following:

1- To compel all citizens and residents upon leaving house for any reason to wear masks, except in the case when a person is alone while driving a vehicle, and the Min-istry of Interior takes the necessary measures in this regard.

2- In case of non-compliance with this decision, the penalties stipulated in Decree Law No. (17) of 1990 regarding the prevention of infectious diseases shall be applied to violator by imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years and a fine not exceeding QR

(200,000) two hundred thousand , or one of these two penalties.

3- This decision is effective from Sunday (May 17, 2020), until further notice.

After that, the Cabinet considered the topics on the agenda as follows: First - Approval of the following draft decrees: A draft decree approving the guarantee agreement of the gov-ernment of the State of Qatar for Al Kharsaah solar power plant project. A draft decree approving the agreement to grant rights to Al Kharsaah solar power plant project. A draft decree approving the priority right agreement for Al Kharsaah solar power plant.

Second - Approving a draft law amending some provisions of Law No. (12) of 2006 regarding the canceled Mesaieed municipality, and referring it to the Shura Council. Third - Approving a draft cabinet decision to issue the executive regulations for the law regulating medical treatment abroad.

Fourth - Approving a draft memorandum of understanding (MoU0 between the dip-lomatic institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the State of Qatar and the Uni-versity of Houston-Clearlake in the United States.

Fifth - The Cabinet reviewed a report on the activities of the Regulatory Authority of the Qatar Financial Center, during the period from 1/4/2019 to 31/3/2020 and took the related appropriate decision.

Cabinet makes wearing facemasks compulsory upon leaving house

OFFICIAL NEWS

02 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020HOME

Al Muraikhi receives call from UK Minister of StateDOHA: Minister of State for For-eign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, received yesterday a phone call from British Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa, H E James Cleverly.During the phone call, they reviewed cooperation and rela-tions between the two countries, and coordinated efforts to limit the spread of the COVID-19, in addition to issues of common con-cern. - QNA

MoPH: More than 3,100 recover; 1,390 new casesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday announced 1,390 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 124 recovered cases bringing the total number of recovered cases in Qatar to 3,143.

The total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar to date stands at 26,539. There are 23,382 active cases under treatment.

So far, 14 people have died from the coronavirus in Qatar.

The Ministry conducted 3,833 tests yesterday taking the total tests done so far to 139,127 tests.

The Ministry in a statement said that the new cases are due to expatriate workers who were infected with the virus as a result of contact with indi-viduals who were previously infected, in addition to recording new cases of infection among groups of workers in dif-ferent regions. The new cases have been identified after con-ducting investigations by the research and investigation teams of the Ministry of Public Health.

Cases of infection have also increased among citizens and residents, as a result of contact with infected family members, who had been infected in the

workplace or through visits and family gatherings. In this context, the Ministry affirmed that the high number of infec-tions among citizens and resi-dents is due to the lack of com-pliance by some with precau-tionary measures, the most important of which is physical distancing and reducing the need to leaving home. All the new infected cases have been quarantined where they are receiving the necessary medical care.

The Ministry noted that the number of daily tests it conducts depends primarily on the number of contacts with indi-viduals confirmed to be infected

with the virus, as it conducts random checks in different places of the country as a proactive measure. The number

of tests performed daily is not linked to the number of cases detected in terms of any rise or fall.

HMC's Rheumatology Division starts providing virtual consultationFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

As part of measures taken to curb the spread of COVID-19, the Rheumatology Division at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has started to provide virtual consultation for patients.

The division which cares for more than 2,000 patients with arthritis and rheumatic diseases monthly, runs clinics with full staff capacity including physi-cians and nurses, said Dr. Samar Al Emadi (pictured), Head of Rheumatology Division, Med-icine Department at HMC.

“We are calling our patients daily and reviewing their files and their blood results, but we are avoiding bringing the patients to the clinics for their own benefit,” she said.

“The doctor will call to check on patients and will discuss about any health problems related to the condition and will update regarding test results and will give proper advice. Only if condition requires, a patient is asked t come to the clinic,” she added. The doctor will order medication, and patients can

take it from the pharmacy or through the new service by Qatar Post.

“According to American College of Rheumatology and European League against Rheu-matological Diseases, patient should not stop or change doses of these medications including biological medications unless there are symptoms like fever or cough or any symptoms sug-gestive getting the infection,” said Dr. Al Emadi.

She also said that if the patient has symptoms like cough or fever, they should advice of a rheumatologist and contact the COVID-19 hotline.

Dr. Al Emadi advised all

patients to maintain good hygiene and wash hands with water and soap for 20 seconds at least, avoid touching eyes or face especially if outside home, avoid going outside home unless necessary, avoid sick people, do regular exercises and maintain good healthy diet.

Rheumatic diseases are commonly classified as inflam-matory and non-inflammatory, with rheumatoid arthritis, reactive arthritis, and con-nective tissue diseases such as lupus, being among the most common inflammatory rheu-matic diseases.

Rheumatoid diseases can affect almost any part of the body. Most of these conditions happen when the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues. Sometimes, it is in an affected person’s genes or is caused by other risk factors such as cigarette smoke, pollution, or an unhealthy and unbalanced diet. The most common signs and symptoms of rheumatic dis-eases include joint swelling, pain, prolonged early morning stiffness, and painful and decreased range of motion.

4,308,055

294,155

1,518,424

TOTAL POSITIVE

TOTAL DEATHS

TOTAL RECOVERED

GLOBALLY

COVID-19 QATAR UPDATES ON 13 MAY 2020

1,390

12423382

3,14314

NEW CASES

ANNOUNCED

NEW

RECOVERIES

ACTIVE

CASES

TOTAL

RECOVERIES

TOTAL

DEATHS

Qatar sends medical aid to Albania, Congo and AngolaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The State of Qatar represented by Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) has sent urgent medical aid to several friendly countries through Qatar Airways.

Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) has shipped several shipments of urgent medical aid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Albania and the Republic of Angola to support their efforts

to counter and contain the out-break of the coronavirus pan-demic (COVID-19), said a statement.

These 25-tonnes shipments, which Qatar Airways delivered, included medical equipment and supplies such as masks and personal protective equipment for medical staff.

Khalifa bin Jassim Al Kuwari, Director General of the Qatar Fund for Development said: “This medical assistance reflects

the great efforts made by the State of Qatar to combat the spread of this pandemic glo-bally, which comes as a matter of joint global responsibility to try to contain the spread of this pandemic.”

It is worth noting that QFFD provided urgent medical aids to several brotherly and friendly countries including Iran, Italy, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Nepal and Rwanda, total weight reached to more than 85 tonnes.

03THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 HOME

Chief of Staff meets Commander of US Air Forces Central CommandChief of Staff of the Qatari Armed Forces, H E Lieutenant-General (Pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanem, has met with Commander of the US Air Forces Central Command, H E General Joseph Guastella. During the meeting, they reviewed cooperation and ties between the two sides, and ways of developing and enhancing them with the US side and the allies at Al Udeid Air Base where forces from 18 ally countries are participating to maintain the security and stability of the region. The meeting was attended by a number of officers of the Qatari Armed Forces.

Education City Golf Club gets Service Excellence AwardTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Education City Golf Club completed its first year of operations with the 2020 European Tour event; The Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, and subsequently has now announced a Silver Flag Award in Service Excel-lence Award by 59Club.

The Silver Flag Award for Service Excellence is a recognised award that recognises facilities that deliver the most consistent golf experiences throughout the year. The criteria was based on mystery service audits data, which was captured and bench-marked across 18 golf venues that 59club MEA supports in the region during 2019.

The awards recognise the most successful venues across the region in sales performance, staff attitude, internal processes and facility standards. 59club was established in 2007, and is now a market leader in providing bespoke mystery shopper

performance measurement pro-grammes for the golf, leisure, spa, events, F&B and hotel industries.

Education City Golf Club within its first year achieved an impressive 78.26% in overall rating just shy of the gold award. Considering all of the team members were newly employed, orientated and trained in 2019, the service achievement far surpasses the quality of the golf course, which in itself achieved a superb 92.9% for golf course presentation.

The golf clubs practice facilities went one step further in achieving 100% for the year, showcasing the quality and depth of facilities available at Education City Golf Club.

Rhys Beecher, Director of Golf, Education City Golf Club, said, “We are passionate about providing the best guest and member experience and continuous review is a critical aspect of improvement. As such, prior to opening our facility, partnering with the right mystery shopper programme

was an important decision. What we liked about 59Club, was not only the experience and expertise in offering independent performance meas-urement, but being able to select our own competitors as an indicator.

"This is exceptionally useful for training, where our team not only

understand the requirements of their roles, but can be measurement against specific criteria and compare against facilities with similar products and mindset.”

Mark Bull, Director 59club Middle East and Africa, commented: “The Service Excellence Awards recognises the delivery of consistently high levels of customer service and facility standards throughout a venue. Our non-subjective criteria assists clubs to constantly review and evolve their customer journey experience. It is a pleasure to have supported Rhys and his team towards attaining a Silver flag service excellence award, in only their 1st full year of working with us.”

“This reflects the dedication and passion to not only the mystery shopping process but how the team have implemented the best practice criteria in their day to day operation to enhance the member and guest journey at every touch point. Congratulations to all at Education City Golf Club!”

A photo of Silver Flag Award for Service Excellence.

HMC Tobacco Control Center warns against medwakh useTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Officials from Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Tobacco Control Center have cautioned against the dangers of smoking dokha with a medwakh pipe, saying it is more hazardous than smoking cigarettes.

Dr. Ahmad Al Mulla, Head of the HMC’s Tobacco Control Center said medwakh has much higher nicotine and tar levels than cigarettes.

“Research has revealed that medwakh has much higher nic-otine and tar levels than ciga-rettes, despite the widespread belief among many teenagers that medwakh and shisha are safer than cigarettes. Medwakh can cause many of the same diseases as cigarettes, including lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and

coronary artery disease. One medwakh session can be the equivalent of smoking five to ten cigarettes in terms of nic-otine intake,” said Dr. Al Mulla.

Medwakh is the pipe used to smoke dokha, a tobacco that is usually mixed with herbs and spices. Its name is Arabic for ‘dizziness’ and a leading cause of the misconception that it is less harmful than cigarettes is because it is considered by some to be natural and without additives. Dr. Al Mulla said because medwakh does not leave the odour that smoking cigarettes do, it can cause people to falsely believe it is not dangerous.

In 2016, Qatar introduced the Tobacco Control Law as part of a campaign designed to urge people to stop consuming tobacco and encourage them to

adopt healthy lifestyles. The law also prohibits

advertising or promotion of tobacco products, bans the use of electronic cigarettes, sweika, and other chewing tobacco products, prevents the sale of tobacco products to people under the age of 18, and has seen warning pictures placed

on tobacco packages. Dr. Jamal Abdullah, a

Smoking Cessation Specialist at HMC, said patients who seek treatment from the Tobacco Control Center receive one-on-one counselling and a p p r o p r i a t e n i c o t i n e replacement or pharmaceu-tical support. He says all patients undergo a full assessment, including a com-plete medical history and related evaluations, such as lung function tests.

He said that psychological support is also a core part of treatment, as smoking is far more addictive than many drugs, and he notes that some of the treatments provided are not suitable for those under the age of 17 years, and therefore, the treatment provided for this age group is mostly based on

behavioural therapy and nic-otine replacement therapy.

Dr. Ashour Ibrahim, Clinical Psychologist at HMC’s Tobacco Control Center, said peer pressure is one of the most widespread causes cited by young people when asked why they started smoking.

Dr. Ibrahim concluded that smoking is one of the most dan-gerous widespread phenomena threatening the health of young people in Qatar and it can affect their learning productivity and even lead to behavioural and psychological issues, including stress, anxiety, introversion and depression.

For appointments or more information on the Tobacco Control Center, people can call at 4025 4981 or 5080 0959, or contact the Center’s hotline at 5573 6025.

HMC Ambulance Service sees 30% increase in daily activityTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Ambulance Service has been central to the imple-mentation of measures put in place by Qatar’s healthcare sector to protect the popu-lation from COVID-19.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, ambulance service has seen a 30 percent increase in daily activity.

“The COVID-19 pandemic presents many challenges that we have not had to manage before, yet it is some-thing that we have planned and prepared for in recent years,” said Dr. Robert Owen, Chief Executive Officer of the Ambulance Service.

“Throughout the past decade, we have not only expanded capacity across our Ambulance Service but also advanced the quality of care we are able to provide to Qatar’s population. Part of this transformation has been to ensure we have the equipment and expertise to manage a pandemic like COVID-19. Our planning and preparation have meant we have been able to fully deliver services including the safe transportation of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients, and medical services within the Industrial Area,” added Dr Owen.

As early as the end of January, with COVID-19 cases in China and only a small number of other countries, Qatar put in place screening at Hamad International Airport for every passenger arriving to Doha.

“With many thousands of passengers arriving into Qatar via the airport every day, the screening procedures enabled us to identify any passenger with a fever, one of the key symptoms of COVID-19. Any passenger with fever and a travel history to affected countries was either transferred to a medical facility or taken to a quarantine centre,” said Ali Darwish, Assistant Executive Director of the Ambulance Service.

“Our Ambulance Service continues to provide safe transportation of people with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. We have assigned ambulances exclusively to transport these patients and our paramedics are fitted with full personal protective

equipment to keep them safe from potential infection. All ambulances carrying sus-pected or conf irmed COVID-19 cases undergo a full deep clean in order to eliminate any risk of the virus being transferred to other passengers and I can assure the public that all our response vehicles are safe to travel in,” added Darwish.

In addition to its frontline role in COVID-19 measures, the Ambulance Service con-tinues to respond to hundreds of non-COVID-19 emergency calls every day.

“The emergence of COVID-19 in Qatar has tested our ability to respond to an increased number of emer-gency calls. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a 30 percent increase in dai ly act ivi ty . Before COVID-19, we would typically receive around 700 calls a day – this figure has risen to around 1,000 a day in recent months,” said Brendon Morris, Executive Director of the Ambulance Service.

Crackdown on trucks parked in residential areasTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Al Khor and Al Zakhira Munic-ipality in cooperation with the General Directorate of Traffic has launched a joint inspection campaign against trucks parked in the residential areas in the municipality.

The traffic inspectors recorded a number of violations during the campaign, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment in a statement.

The inspection campaign will continue to put an end to the phenomenon of parking trucks inside the residential areas.

The Ministry urged people to call the unified call center at 184 for further information or remarks in this regards.

Meanwhile, Health Moni-toring Section of Doha Munic-ipality has closed an unloading point of the commercial complex for leaving food items

for long in the sun out of the store and stockpiling at the store.

The violation was recorded for storing food items in unhealthy condition in violation of the law for regulating food items.

The municipal inspectors recorded the violation, destroyed the seized food items and closed the unloading point until the commercial complex would rectify the situation.

As early as the end of January, with COVID-19 cases in China and only a small number of other countries, Qatar put in place screening at Hamad International Airport for every passenger arriving in Doha.

Residents

welcome

reopening of

money exchangesFROM PAGE 1

Moreover, there was police patrols monitoring the places to protect people and to see how they are committed to the procedures.

Money exchange houses witnessed a great turnout during the past two days. Offi-cials at money exchange service offices and clients have expressed their commitment to the precautionary measures against COVID-19.

On its Twitter account, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry yesterday clarified that the news about over-crowding and lack of com-mitment of social distancing at money exchange houses is incorrect. “These photos which were circulated on social sites are old and have been circu-lated after the decision to reopen money exchange shops,” the Ministry tweeted.

The Ministry also called people to take the information only from its official sources and to avoid spreading rumours. “The decision is good as it mainly serves the workers. They used to send their money through these money exchange houses to their families back home,” said an expatriate working with a restaurant in Bin Mahmoud.

He also said that but this reopening came at an appro-priate time, ten days before Eid Al Fitr, so everyone will be able to send money without creating crowds at the money changes.

504-bed field hospital opened

FROM PAGE 1

“We have the capacity to receive and triage at least 60 patients at a time. Once they arrive here, will be directed to their designated rooms and then a doctor will assess them. Required doctors and nurses will be available 24x7 to receive patients transferred from other hospitals,” said Dr. Abdula Rasheed Al Naimi, Clinical Lead of the hospital.

“We provide patients with all required care. In case if they have any other conditions they will be treated for that as well. Most importantly, we have mental health service for all patients here. We have volunteers coming and speak to patients. Because COVID-19 can have a huge effect on a person’s mental health and it is important to address it,” he added.

The field hospital has been constructed within three weeks in the Libsear military camp and has all modern facilities.

Libsear is the second field hospital Qatar has opened recently. A 200-bed field hospital with a dedicated area for COVID-19 care opened for the workers in Industrial Area, early this week.

Dr. Abdula Rasheed Al Naimi, Clinical Lead, Libsear Field Hospital. RIGHT: The staff at the field hospital. It has around 70 staff including 20 doctors. PICS: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA

Qatar’s Gaza Committee

starts procedures to

distribute grantsFROM PAGE 1

He noted that this project comes within the package of projects announced during his recent visit to Gaza Strip in February, and it will be implemented in cooperation with the competent authorities in Gaza, headed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

He also announced that the Committee, in coordination with Qatar Fund For Devel-opment, has started procedures to dis-tribute a grant for clearance of pending certificates for needy university graduates in Gaza Strip.

Al Emadi noted that the $1m will benefit 6,512 graduates distributed over 20 educa-tional institutions in Gaza Strip.

He added that the project comes within the package of projects announced during his recent visit to Gaza Strip in February, and it will be implemented in cooperation with the competent authorities in Gaza, headed by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

The Msheireb Live Series running during the holy Ramadan takes place every weekend focusing on the social and cultural changes in Qatar and reviving memories of the past Qatari life.

04 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020HOME

Talabat introduces pre-ordering during Ramadan enabling smoother preparation for Iftar and Suhoor

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Talabat, the region’s leading food, and grocery delivery app, has launched ‘schedule,’ its new feature allowing customers to pre-order food delivery. Launched specifically for Ramadan, customers and restaurants now have a smoother preparation for Iftar and Suhoor thanks to this feature.

Customers can select this new option upon checkout, by tapping ‘schedule,’ which is located beside ‘order now’. Customers can then select the time from the available options listed. To use the schedule feature, cus-tomers need to have the latest version of the Talabat app.

The pre-order option also benefits restaurant partners, allowing the opportunity for optimisation in kitchen processing times around peak ordering

times around Iftar and Suhoor. Francisco De Sousa, Managing

Director of Talabat Qatar, says that Talabat, with a proud heritage as a regional success story, continues to put the local needs of customers and res-taurants at the forefront of new product features.

‘We understand that after a long day of fasting during the Holy Month, breaking the fast at the exact Iftar time, and also having suhoor at the right time, is of the utmost importance. We’re here to make that happen for our customers.

‘With our new schedule feature, we want to allow our customers to order whatever they want at the time they want. This isn’t just limited to Iftar and Suhoor, but can also be used to order food during other times, as well as groceries!’

Msheireb Properties launches live social media interview series

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Msheireb Properties, the leading sustainable real estate developer in Qatar, has launched a new social media series that features live inter-views with prominent Qatari figures from media, sports and culture to enhance social inter-action with people in Qatar.

The Msheireb Live Series running during the holy Ramadan takes place every weekend focusing on the social and cultural changes in Qatar and reviving memories of the past Qatari life. Additionally, it includes a competition that allows followers to participate and win valuable prizes.

Speaking about the series, Ali Al Kuwari, Acting CEO of Msheireb Properties, said: “In this exceptional situation, Msheireb Peoperties is using new and modern ways to reach out to our community utilising technology that reaches con-sumers at home where they are safe while providing a new gen-eration with important infor-mation and memories of the past. We hope Msheireb Live Series will not only help our community to stay connected but also deepen their appreci-ation of the expertise provided by the participating guests.”

The third Msheireb Live session next Saturday will host Sheikh Dr. Mohammad bin Hamad Al Thani, Director of Public Health at the Ministry of Public Health, and Associate Professor of Clinical Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medical College and Qatar University. Dr. Mohamed will talk about the progress achieved in the medical and health sector, and the first Public Health Strategy 2017-

2022 in Qatar.The second Msheireb Live

session hosted Dr. Ilham Bader in a comprehensive conver-sation moderated by Dr. Hafez Ali, Director of Msheireb Museums. Dr. Ilham Bader talked about her own profes-sional life experience’s, the changes in the cultural and social landscape in Qatar, and the role of Qatari women these days. The first Msheireb Live session was moderated by Khaled Jassim and featured Saeed Al Misnad, a Technical Advisor for the National Teams Committee at the Qatar Football Association, and one of the most influential figures in the history of Qatar football.

Msheireb Properties aims to enhance social interaction and revive Qatari heritage for the current generation. Through its flagship project, Msheireb Downtown Doha, the sus-tainable developer presents a benchmark project which truly represents Qatari architecture and identity in the smartest city district in the world. Msheireb Properties offers people a new way to live, work, and entertain. Msheireb Live sessions can be watched by following Msheireb properties Instagram account @msheirebproperties.

Prominent personalities during the live session.

GAC launches its new websiteTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The General Authority of Customs (GAC) has launched its new website, as part of its efforts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its elec-tronic services and bring it closer to the public.

The new website includes the establishment of three main portals, which are business, individuals, travellers, and clearance companies, with the aim of ensuring easy access to the information and procedures required for each category in addition to developing the search engine to include all the contents of the site as well as listing all Customs and legal procedures, legislations and Customs tariffs, and the services of the commission (services provided to the public, statistics, electronic purchases, employee self-services) and others.

Chairman of the General Authority of Customs, Ahmed bin Abdullah Al Jamal, said that the work to renew the Authority’s website came in the framework of the con-tinuous endeavour to develop the technical aspects adopted

by the Authority, and in line with its strategic plan 2018-2022, in line with the require-ments of a complete digital transformation, which aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the services of the authority and bring it closer to the public.

Al Jamal explained that this new website also comes within the direction of the wise gov-ernment and Qatar e-gov-ernment standards, and in implementation of the

recommendations of the World Bank related to developing the website as a window to Qatar’s Customs to the world.

He pointed to the Author-ity’s interest in developing the new website, to be more smooth in researching and dis-playing information, and enhancing the Authority’s tools in disseminating Customs culture in a modern way that matches the development of the State of Qatar.

He also stressed that the

Authority attaches great importance to the society and its awareness of the important role that Customs play in facilitating the movement of trade and supporting the national economy, in addition to its role in promoting the maintenance of community security and safety by securing and inspecting ship-ments and verifying their integrity and ensuring that they are free of anything harmful to society.

GAC Chairman, Ahmed bin Abdullah Al Jamal, during the launch of website. RIGHT: Home page of the new website of General Authority of Customs.

Mental health at crossroads in COVID-19 world, say experts at QF’s Education City Speaker SeriesFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

As the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of communities around the world, experts discuss fears and solutions surrounding mental wellbeing during lockdown — and beyond, in a special online edition of Qatar Foundation’s Education City Speaker Series in collaboration with the World Innovation Summit for Health, yesterday.

The online event, “Global Perspectives: Mental Health in a COVID-19 World”, saw speakers from Qatar, the US, Europe, and Africa and they cautioned that COVID-19 has left mental health services at a crossroads that could either lead to greater awareness and more community-based care, or see them being overlooked with serious long-term consequences.

The panel featured Dr. Dévora Kestel, Director of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organisation; Dr. Sharifa Al Emadi, Executive Director at Doha International Family Institute, Qatar; Paola Bar-barino, Chief Executive Officer of Alzheimer’s Disease

International; Paul Farmer, Chief Executive Officer of Mind, United Kingdom; Yasmin Mogahed, Author and Interna-tional Public Speaker; Dr. Janice Cooper, Senior Project Advisor – Global Mental Health, The Carter Center, Liberia/US.

The session was moderated by Mishal Husain, global news presenter, journalist, and documentary-maker.

The discussion shed light on stress that the pandemic and the lockdown of nations that it has led to placing on people’s mental wellbeing, the risks and the support that needs to be provided to those struggling to cope.

“We have to take this opportunity to build back better, making sure mental

health services are available for those who need them, and moving from institutionalized care to community care,” Dr. Kestel told the webinar.

“We need to increase the volume of advocacy for the inclusion of mental health in any COVID-19 recovery plan, building mental health systems and avenues of care for people even in places where they were previously not available. There are more conversations gen-erally about the impact that COVID-19 is having on people’s mental health, but it is not enough — we need to make changes that ensure support is sustainable,” said Dr Kestel.

According to Dr. Al Emadi, the crisis may reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and

seeking help, and also reinforce the importance of the family unit. “People are working from home at the same time as caring for their family, so parents have to understand their children, talk with them, and explain the reality of this situation to them,” she said.

“But, at the same time as giving time for their children, parents have to make time for themselves. And we must rec-

ognise that while we may be physically apart from each other, we can still communicate with and protect each other,” she added.

Paul Farmer of UK-based mental health charity ‘Mind’ said: “Leaving aside the psy-chological consequences of this crisis will store up financial and health consequences, potentially for years to come. This is a real crossroads moment in understanding how the progress made in recent years about raising mental health awareness will be con-verted by governments and populations, as we enter an extremely risky phase for the mental health of our communities.”

FROM LEFT: Dr. Sharifa Al Emadi, Dr. Devora Kestel and Paul Farmer

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QYH intensifies its

remote activities

QNA — DOHA

Qatar Youth Hostels (QYH) are intensifying activities that they offer remotely through social media as they continue their efforts in their belief of the necessity of community partic-ipation under the current circumstances.

QYH launched various activities during Ramadan, in addition to presenting a set of interactive ones through social media platforms, as it developed a new plan that is entirely dependent on electronic remote communication.

Head of activities at QYH Abdullah Saeed said that QYH were keen to prepare a schedule of activities and a time plan during the current period. He added that among the most prominent events that it cur-rently offers is a training program in tourist guidance, which is a set of short episodes that QYH began broadcasting via its Instagram platform, through which a set of rules and basics that must be available in the tourist guide are presented.

The events also include a program that shows travellers in the time of the coronavirus, which depends on recording a series of episodes with Qatari travellers who tell their experi-ences in travel in order to promote tourism and encourage people to enter this world.

05THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 HOME

QNL provides knowledge that is accessible to everyone: Dr. Al KuwariTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

H E Dr. Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari, who has been appointed Pres-ident of the Qatar National Library (QNL), has emphasised the place that reading holds in Qatar’s culture, and why libraries — and what they provide — are more important than ever in a COVID-19 world.

“This appointment is a honour for two reasons: it brings me pride, and it also brings me responsibility. I am fully aware of the responsibility that comes with this role, of the trust that has been placed in me, and of the expectations,” he said.

According to Dr. Al Kuwari, libraries act as a collective memory — the memory of human heritage, including our Arab and Islamic her-itage — and, for such a long time, they have been a source of knowledge for the entire world. “The value of science and culture, and the power of books, is rooted within our culture in Qatar.”

“Our country’s founder, Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, was a poet who interacted with scholars and had a passion for knowledge and its dissemination. And the Father Amir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the pioneer of Qatar’s modern-day renaissance, has been the driving force behind many achievements and initiatives in the sphere of culture, an approach now being taken forward by the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,” he said.

“As a member of QNL’s board of directors, I have been a member of its family for some time, and have been involved in transforming the vision for this library — the vision of H H Sheikha

Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation — into reality. Her Highness envisioned QNL to be one of the world’s pre-eminent centers of learning, research, and culture; a guardian of our nation’s heritage; and an institution that promotes the impor-tance of imagination, discovery, and the nourishment of the human spirit,” he added.

He also said that in the role as Ambassador of the State of Qatar to several countries and institutions — including France, the US, Lebanon, Syria, the United Nations, and Unesco, as well as several European countries — and being a non-resident ambas-sador to Latin American countries has allowed him to explore many cultures

as well as to contribute to sharing Qatar’s culture with the world.

“It brought home to me the impor-tance of cultural diversity. During my time as Qatar’s Minister of Culture, Arts, and Heritage, as well as being a can-didate for Unesco General Secretary, I also had the opportunity to visit many cultural and heritage institutions, and meet experts from universities and academic institutions in more than 70 countries,” said Dr. Al Kuwari.

“I feel this has given me cultural insight and knowledge that I can invest in helping QNL to reach its goals. I also believe I can use cultural diplomacy to support QNL’s vision and mission, as this is an area I am well-versed in, and I understand how education and culture are pivotal in strengthening relations between countries.

“QNL — existing, as it does, in such a diverse educational environment as Education City — reflects cultural diplomacy. I hope my experience in the diplomatic and cultural field will help to enhance QNL’s role in radiating knowledge and research, and strengthen its relationships with local and international universities, and other institutions,” he said.

Speaking about the important aspect of QNL’s role, its greatest achievement to date, and its future prospects, he said that, it’s important to recognize that libraries are not just a storage space for books. “They carry a message that supports culture,

knowledge, and interaction between civilizations. The vision that would become QNL was present long before the library was established, and while it may be a ‘young’ library that embraces modernity, its content and resources reflect our Arab and Islamic heritage and the continuous efforts of our leadership to enable access to the richness of this heritage.”

QNL is characterized by many fea-tures, including its unique design by the renowned architect Rem Koolhaas. The library is also characterized by its use of innovative technologies, to an extent not seen in many international libraries.

Its Children’s and Young Adults’ Library has more than 150,000 books in its collections, in languages including Arabic, English, French, Spanish, German, Urdu, and Italian, as well as many electronic resources. This reflects our commitment to building the future — because the future is built through our children.

“And one of the most distinctive elements of QNL is its focus on digiti-zation. In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, where education, work, and communication have become remote, this is even more relevant. QNL was a forerunner in providing such a wealth of digital resources long before the pandemic, and the current situation that the world faces demonstrates how important this commitment to digiti-zation was. QNL now offers access to

190 databases, more than 16,000 journals, and more than 465,000 reports, theses, dissertations, and other documents,” said Dr. Al Kuwari.

Since QNL opened in 2017, it has welcomed more than 1.2 million vis-itors. In 2019 alone, it welcomed 500,000 visitors. And since its inau-guration, its programs and its impact have flourished.

“Despite the fact that the library building itself is currently closed due to COVID-19, we have added more than 170,000 new members since it closed, and this reflects QNL’s important role as a modern destination that enables permanent access to knowledge, including during times when people seek such knowledge to help them deal with crises,” said Dr. Al Kuwari.

“We aim to strengthen our inter-national partnerships through our commitment to providing lifelong learning opportunities. QNL has developed partnerships and collabo-rations with key institutions around the world, including the British Library, the Ottoman State Archives, Bibliotheque National de France, the National Archives and the National Library of the Netherlands, the National Libraries of China, Turkey, and Azerbaijan, the Russian Presi-dential Library, New York University, and Unesco. We are currently working on further collaborations with India and Russia, as well as many different organizations, and we are an active member of the Digital Library Feder-ation, the World Digital Library — a Unesco initiative — and the Library of Congress, a digital portal for material from the world’s leading libraries and institutions,” said Dr. Al Kuwari.

“Through all our partnerships and collaborations, we will strive to serve knowledge and research, whether through digitisation initiatives, direct communication, or through our pro-grams and activities. We want the world to benefit from our resources,” he added.

In Qatar and across the Arab world, our culture has always drawn us toward reading and seeking knowledge — this is illustrated by the first word in the Qur’an, which translates as “read”.

“Our great scholars who have helped to build civilization did not gain their knowledge from universities, but from books,” said Dr. Al Kuwari.

This appointment is an honour for two

reasons: It brings me pride, and it also

brings me responsibility. I am fully aware

of the responsibility that comes with this

role, of the trust that has been placed in

me, and of the expectations.

I feel this has given me cultural insight and knowledge that I can invest in helping QNL to reach its goals. I also believe I can use cultural diplomacy to support QNL’s vision and mission, as this is an area I am well-versed in, and I understand how education and culture are pivotal in strengthening relations between countries.

H E Dr. Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari

QNL’s children’s and young adults’ library has more than 150,000 books in its collections, in languages including Arabic, English, French, Spanish, German, Urdu, and Italian, as well as many electronic resources.

06 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020HOME

Green Tent calls for developing early warning systems to predict future disastersQNA — DOHA

Participants in a symposium held by the Green Tent of the “A Flower Each Spring” program have called for the establishment of research centers in the Arab countries to help decision makers in managing crises and developing early warning systems to predict future disasters.

The participants in the symposium affirmed that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic uncovered the necessity of max-imizing the role of science and scientists and developing the capabilities of scien-tific research to address crises.

They said that experts, academics and specialists from different Arab countries agree that tribulations that have afflicted humans will continue to exist in contem-porary and subsequent nations, referring to earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, climate change, volcanoes and landslides, floods and famines, storms and other epi-demics and viral and bacterial diseases.

The participants methods of managing crises and avoiding their occurrence or severity, including forming a crisis man-agement team, establishing early warning systems, training workers in crisis man-agement and analysis, and following up the implementation of the plans set up to face them, along with transparency and credibility in presenting the facts to the public opinion.

They stressed the importance of the academic and research side in facing epi-demics and crises and how to manage them, in addition to maximizing the role of minds and scholars to solve problems and meet the needs of society, calling for the formulation of policies, setting prior-ities and focusing on what post-pandemic societies need and self-reliance in crisis management.

The participants called for legis-lation and laws appropriate to the current stage and need that these laws work to organize cities and achieve sus-tainability to avoid the negative effects of disasters or crises that may occur in the future, noting that handling risks and crises and managing them are one of the developments in the Arab national security system.

Studying and predicting these risks before they occur require a unified Arab or Gulf strategy for crisis management with a proactive approach to cope with dis-asters, they noted.

They pointed out that disasters and crises come suddenly and in an unexpected way, adding this why governments must prepare and draw policies, form permanent committees and design plans and strat-egies to face future disasters, calling on countries to have a mechanism to predict, diagnose and prepare for potential dis-asters while studying their economic and environmental risks and the extent of their threat to human life.

CCQ launches Bachelor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management program THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Community College of Qatar (CCQ) announced, during an online press conference held yesterday, the expansion of Logistics and Supply Chain Management program by offering students holding CCQ’s Asso-ciate of Applied Science Diploma in Logistics and Supply Chain Management the opportunity to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in the discipline through an additional two years of study, with classes beginning in the fall of the coming academic year 2020 – 2021.

The Bachelor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management program is expected to help supply the labor market with a plethora of national cadres that are extensively trained for management positions in trans-portation, warehousing, distribution, inventory control, purchasing, and international logistics. Previously, the program was only available as a two-year Associate degree and to date has attracted many members of various public and private institutions.

Commenting on these develop-ments, Dr. Khalid Al Abdulqader, Vice -President, Community College of Qatar said: “The decision to expand the Logistics and Supply Chain Man-agement program was made after a comprehensive study of Qatar’s labor market and most sought-after skills, as well as the country’s strategic needs and objectives. The economy is becoming increasingly more competitive with each passing day and companies are

demanding ever-increasing standards of specialized knowledge and expertise. With this in mind, CCQ is committed to providing its students with everything required to empower them and thrive in this competitive environment.”

Dr. Al Abdulqader stressed the importance of offering Logistics and Supply Chain Management program in providing a more qualified work-force, who have significant expe-rience in logistics and supply man-agement, and who are able to absorb steady developments in this field, thus effectively contributing to achieving the goals of food security, which is a strategic priority for the State of Qatar that requires the expansion of warehouses and other storage facilities.

CCQ’s decision to expand the program comes in line with Qatar’s national strategy to become a regional logistics hub. Driven by preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar has invested heavily in infrastructure projects, creating an increasing need for specialised national competencies in logistics management. Over the past years, the country has seen significant development in this regard with the opening of investment-friendly free zones, such as Ras Bufontas and Umm AlHoul, Hamad Port, and the Doha Metro railway network, marking major milestones for Qatar. Fur-thermore, the bustling Hamad International Airport, home to the world-class airline Qatar Airways,

underscores the country’s unri-valled position as a global aviation hub reinforcing the need for qual-ified cadres, who can manage these mega projects.

CCQ aims to support the coun-try’s economic and human capital development by equipping graduates with the knowledge and tools nec-essary to operate and expand Qatar’s ever-growing logistics and supply chain infrastructure and effectively manage its transport and storage services. The program will also enable the country and its institutions to provide products and services of the highest caliber.

The Logistics and Supply Chain Management program is based on international best-practices in the field. It was reviewed by a team of international academic experts, who provided positive reviews about the program that will be taught in Arabic. As part of the program, students will also have to complete 180 hours of practical training courses at elite organizations in Qatar, putting what they learn in the classroom at CCQ into practice. There are a limited number of Arab and non-Arab uni-versities, whose educational pro-grams include logistics, making CCQ’s offering an attractive one.

Across its campuses, CCQ pro-vides a unique and flexible 2+2 learning model enabling students to graduate with an Associate degree in two years, after which they can choose to enter the labor market, or continue studying for two more years towards earning their bachelor degree.

Indonesian officials praise QC’s Ramadan projectsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Indonesian local officials and under-privileged beneficiaries praised Qatar Charity (QC) for distributing food baskets, thorough its office in Jakarta, as part of its Ramadan campaign.

The beneficiaries extended thanks to benefactors in Qatar for their support that contributed to meeting their food needs in the blessed month of Ramadan, espe-cially at a time when the coronavirus (COVID-19) has brought further dif-ficulties to the vulnerable.

The mayor of Banda Aceh, Aminullah Usman, said: “On behalf of the local authorities in the city of Banda Aceh, and in the name of its residents, I thank the benefactors in Qatar for their generous donations, and Qatar Charity for distributing food baskets in Ramadan, which have benefited 4,500 families of orphans and needy families in the city.

The mayor noted that the coro-navirus pandemic has contributed to increasing the suffering of these

weaker sections of society, and they are need of more assistance to lighten their hardship.

Haji Sami Weil, another local official in Indonesia, has praised Qatar Charity for distributing 6,500 Ramadan baskets in his area to those affected by the coronavirus pandemic, noting that this aid from Qatar reflects the deep brotherly ties between the Indonesian and Qatari people

For his part, the president of the Cleaners Association Eddy in South Jakarta expressed his thanks and appreciation to the philanthropists in the State of Qatar for the food baskets, adding that this assistance will support the cleaners to meeting their families’ food needs in Ramadan.

Qatar Charity has distributed 12,750 food baskets in many Indo-nesian provinces and regions during the holy month of Ramadan, bene-fiting nearly 70,000 people, and is expected to distribute Zakat Al Fitr and the Eid clothing to its sponsored children soon.

A Qatar Charity official providing aid to a beneficiary in Jakarta as part of its Ramadan campaign.

CCQ’s decision to expand the program comes in line with Qatar’s national strategy to become a regional logistics hub. Driven by preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar has invested heavily in infrastructure projects, creating an increasing need for specialised national competencies in logistics management.

Dr. Khalid Al Abdulqader, Vice- President, Community College of Qatar

QFBA-NU hosts interactive webinar to guide students’ academic careersTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Finance and Business Academy in partnership with North-umbria University (QFBA-NU) hosted its latest interactive webinar to guide high school students in choosing their academic majors. The webinar which was run under QFBA-NU’s latest ‘Ramadan Show’ achieved this by engaging students across Qatar in insightful discussion on selecting the right major.

QFBA-NU held the webinar as part of its social respon-sibility efforts during the holy month of Ramadan to support stu-dents. The webinar, led by Khalifa Al Yafei, Director of Student Affairs at the university, offered advice and guidance along with a compre-hensive view of all the higher edu-cation opportunities that are available in Qatar. The webinar aimed to inspire today’s youth to pursue their academic journey in spite of the current situation.

On this occasion, Khalifa Al Yafei, Director of Student Affairs at QFBA-Northumbria University said: “Choosing a university major is a critical step for Qatar’s youth as it impacts their future professional careers. We chose to hold the webinar as a channel to offer Qatar’s youth guidance and coun-selling so they can make an

informed decision when it comes to their future pathway.”

In addition, he commented: “We believe that raising awareness on the importance of higher education is a key step towards the devel-opment of our nation. We wish to empower Qatar’s talented youth to choose the university path that will ultimately lead them to success. In turn, we are investing in our nation’s human capital in line with achieving the 2030 Qatar National vision.”

QFBA-Northumbria’s webinar witnessed around 45 participants from the public under its latest Ramadan show premiering every week on its social media platforms. The show aims to empower stu-dents to continue learning during the Holy month of Ramadan and overcome the current challenging situation.

A screenshot of the webinar.

Galfar Al Misnad wins 2 International Safety AwardsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Galfar Al Misnad has won the Interna-tional Safety Award for 2020, with Distinction, from the British Safety Council for the Design and Build of Site Works and Infrastructure for Al Wakrah Logistics Park Phase 1 (WLP-A & WLP-B), an important nation building project the contractor is executing for Manateq.

The company has already achieved 11.5 million safe man hours without LTI at this ongoing project.

The leading construction company in Qatar also won the International Safety Award 2020 for its overall oper-ations, for “demonstrating their strong commitment towards good health and safety management in 2019.” This is the sixth year Galfar Al Misnad is receiving this prestigious award in the Distinction/Merit categories.

“These awards are a recognition of Galfar Al Misnad’s consistent efforts in enhancing HSE culture in the organ-ization, reinforced by a staunch com-mitment from the leadership team,” explained Galfar’s HSE Manager, Venkatesan Kulandaivelu.

The International Safety Awards are health and safety’s most coveted awards. They recognise organisations that have demonstrated commitment to occupational health, safety and wellbeing.

The awards are a celebration of health and safety excellence across all industries in more than 50 countries worldwide. Both of Galfar’s awards are now candidates on the shortlist for British Safety Council’s ‘Best in The Country’ Award that will be announced at the end of this month.

“We are very proud of our exem-plary performance at the Interna-tional Safety Awards and it highlights Galfar Al Misnad’s commitment towards our motto: Safety First, Quality Plus, Reliability Ever,’’ said

Satish G Pillai, Executive Director of Galfar Al Misnad.

Galfar Al Misnad, which com-pletes 25 years of operations in Qatar this year, attributes its consistent performance at the International Safety Awards to the diligent imple-mentation of its comprehensive Health and Safety Management System which includes: a Health & Safety plan and strategy; man-agement programs to achieve HSE goals; compliance to all applicable

legal requirements; welfare com-pliance programs; behavior safety programs; Health and Safety awareness campaigns and training programs; regular inspection and audits; and an active Health and Safety review program.

To encourage and motivate employees to imbibe optimal health and safety practices at the workplace, rewards and recognition are regularly presented to those who uphold HSE values at the organization.

The leading construction company in Qatar also won the International Safety Award 2020 for its overall operations, for “demonstrating their strong commitment towards good health and safety management in 2019”. This is the sixth year Galfar Al Misnad is receiving this prestigious award in the Distinction/Merit categories.

07THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 MIDDLE EAST

Lebanon to reinstate total lockdown amid spike in infectionsAP — BEIRUT

Lebanese rushed to food stores to stock up on vegetables and basic items, hours before the government was to reinstate a four-day nationwide lockdown, following a spike in reported coronavirus cases.

The government called on the public to stay home, starting yesterday evening and until dawn on Monday, reversing measures earlier this month that phased out restrictions imposed since mid-March.

The new shutdown is a rare reversal and comes as many countries, seeking to balance economic and health care needs, have started easing restrictions despite grave con-cerns of a setback.

Restaurants will close down after they partially opened 10 days ago, and food deliveries will be halted altogether. The country’s top Sunni Muslim cleric announced that Friday prayers in mosques will also be halted, only a week after they were allowed to resume at limited capacity.

The public health crisis comes at a particularly tur-bulent period for Lebanon. The country is facing an unprece-dented economic and financial

crisis, putting pressure on a population that is seeing its savings erode. The currency, pegged at a fixed rate to the dollar since 1997, has lost 60 percent of its value in a few weeks.

Unemployment had been rising even before the corona-virus restrictions as economic growth and investment dropped. Officials say 45 percent of the population now lives in poverty. The gov-ernment has asked the Interna-tional Monetary Fund for financial assistance, and talks over the rescue plan are due to begin with the IMF soon.

Lebanon began a phased-out plan to relax a national lockdown late last month that allowed small businesses to reopen, and shortened a night-time curfew.

But after a few days of single-digit cases detected, there was a spike in reported infections this week, including among Lebanese returning home during repatriation pro-grams who did not observe quarantine measures.

Lebanon, a country of just over five million, has so far been able to contain the virus, recording only 870 infections, including 117 repatriated Leb-anese, and 26 deaths after imposing early lockdown measures and strictly imple-menting restriction on movement.

But over the last few days, government and health officials criticised carelessness and lax implementation of social dis-tancing and other restrictions among the public, warning that the relaxation of restrictions would be reconsidered.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said yesterday it will go into a full lockdown during Eid Al Fitr.

The Interior Ministry said the lockdown would be in effect from May 23 through May 27

- days marking the Eid Al Fitr holiday that comes at the end of Ramadan. That holiday typ-ically sees families inviting loved ones over for meals or go out to eat during the day.

And the United Arab Emirates said it will offer free coronavirus testing for all cit-izens, beginning next week. Foreigners in the country with coronavirus symptoms, pregnant women, those over 50 and those in contact with those who fell ill with COVID-19 also will be among those able to be tested for free.

Private beaches at hotels also are beginning to reopen in Dubai, even as the number of confirmed cases and deaths

continue to rise in the country.In Tehran, mosques tempo-

rarily reopened on Tuesday night after about two months closure, for a special night of prayers in Ramadan.

A mosque at Tehran Uni-versity campus in central Tehran hosted worshippers for the “Laylatul Qadr”, or ‘‘Night of Destiny”, a special night of prayers during Ramadan.

Officials in Iran had closed down all mosques and holy sites across the country in mid-March, at the height of the coronavirus outbreak, to lower the risk of the contagion. The virus has killed more than 6,700 people and infected more than 110,000 people in

Iran so far.“Obviously, everyone is

feeling great tonight. It has been a tough time especially for mosque-goers and those who love praying, ” said Reza Abbasi, a worshipper who was praying along with his family on the campus of Tehran university.

Upon entering the campus, a group of medical students dis-infected hands and shoes of worshippers and gave away face masks. Worshippers also had their body temperatures t a k e n b y i n f r a r e d thermometers.

Spots were marked on the mosque floor for worshippers to sit down while practicing proper physical distancing.

A view of traffic on the Zalka Jal El Dib highway an hour before the start of a four-day nationwide lockdown, north of Beirut in Lebanon, yesterday.

Turkey quarantines expatriates from Iraq and UzbekistanANATOLIA — TURKEY

Turkey yesterday evacuated at least 90 Turkish nationals from Iraq and others from Uzbekistan, and placed all expats under a 14-day quarantine to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus.

All 90 expats from Iraq, brought back to Turkey via buses, were sent to the southeastern Batman province for a 14-day quarantine in dormitories after health checks.

Provincial Director of Youth and Sports Safi Ozperk said they are currently hosting 162 expats from Kazakhstan and Iraq at the dormitory.

Ozperk added the country continues to bring back its citizens who wish to return home.

In a separate operation, Turkey brought back its citizens from Uzbekistan on Wednesday. Expats, brought back to Turkey via a charter plane, arrived in Istanbul and were sent to northwestern Yalova and Duzce prov-inces for a 14-day quarantine in dormitories following routine health examinations.

The Turkish government has repatriated nearly 70,000 of its nationals from various countries since the start of the outbreak.

As of Tuesday, the country reported a total of 141,475 coronavirus cases, 98,889 of which have fully recovered. The death toll stands at 3,894. After originating in China last December, COVID-19, the disease caused by the corona-virus, has spread to 187 countries and regions across the world.

The pandemic has killed almost 292,000 people, with total infections more than 4.26 million, while over 1.49 million people have recovered from the disease, according to figures compiled by the US-based Johns Hopkins University.

Children let out to play brieflyas Turkey eases restrictionsAP — ANKARA

Parks filled with the sound of children yesterday as Turkey allowed kids ages 14 and under to leave homes for the first time in 40 days.

The country’s youngest pop-ulation were allowed to venture out for four hours between 11am and 3pm as Turkey eased some restrictions in place to fight the coronavirus outbreak. Young-sters between the ages of 15 and 20 will be able to leave homes for a few hours on Friday, while senior citizens were briefly allowed out for the first time in seven weeks on May 10.

In the capital Ankara’s main park, Kugulu Park, young children wearing masks took turns going down slides and on swings. An adjacent street teemed with people and police called on the public to abide by social distancing practices.

“The weather is beautiful.

This was a great opportunity because we were so bored at home,” said Zeyda Ozdemir, who brought her 8-year-old daughter, Zeynep, to the park.

She added, however, that she felt “a little uneasy” because the park was more crowded than she had hoped it would be.

In the city’s Birlik Mahallesi neighbourhood, two children were seen riding their scooters up and down a street while a voice from a loudspeaker on the top of the minaret of a nearby mosque called on the public not to be “fooled by the arrival of spring and good weather.” “The danger of infection is not over yet,” the announcement said.

The government set forth a “normalisation plan” as the number of confirmed corona-virus cases have dropped, but warned of tougher measures if infections go up again. Malls, hairdressers, barber shops and hair salons were allowed to

open on Monday.Meanwhile, a lawyer said

that he has filed a lawsuit against China on behalf of a private company that is seeking com-pensation from the country for financial losses suffered because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Lawyer Melih Akkurt said the company was forced to suspend operations during lock-downs. It is the first commercial lawsuit in Turkey against China, where the coronavirus pan-demic began, Akkurt said.

The lawyer wouldn’t name the company, saying it wanted to remain anonymous.

The lawsuit holds China responsible for economic losses, accusing it of among other things, failing to provide timely and accurate data to the World Health Organization, of concealing information on the virus’ infectiousness, of silencing doctors and not pre-venting its spread.

Iftar amid war ruins

Men and children are seen seated together in the midst of ruins before Iftar as part of efforts by the humanitarian non-governmental organisation Caravanes Solidaires, in the village of Kafr Nuran in the western countryside of Syria’s northern Aleppo province, on Tuesday.

Despite virus, Pompeo in Israel to talk West Bank annexationAP — JERUSALEM

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for talks that addressed Israel’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank, as a Palestinian teen was killed by Israeli troops in a clash in the occupied territory. Pompeo landed in Tel Aviv early yesterday and proceeded directly to Jeru-salem, receiving an exemption from Israel’s mandatory two-week quarantine for arrivals due to the corona-virus outbreak.

His visit is the first to Israel by any foreign official since January, before the

country largely shut its borders to halt the spread of the pandemic.

Standing a longside Pompeo in front of a row of American and Israeli flags, Netanyahu called the six-hour visit a “testament to the strength of our alliance”.

Netanyahu and his new coalition partner, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz, postponed the swearing-in of their gov-ernment until today to accom-modate Pompeo’s visit. Pompeo was scheduled later to meet with Gantz and with his fellow retired military chief Gabi Ashkenazi, the new government’s incoming foreign minister.

Yemen reports first COVID-19 case in Marib provinceREUTERS — DUBAI

Yemen’s Saudi-backed government reported the first corona-virus case in Marib province and four other infections elsewhere, taking the tally of cases in areas under its control to 70, including 12 deaths. The Aden-based government’s coronavirus committee said two cases including one death were reported in Aden, and two in Lahej, including one death.

Yemen is divided between the internationally recognised gov-ernment based in the south and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement headquartered in the north. The Houthis ousted the government from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014.

Restaurants will close down after they partially opened 10 days ago, and food deliveries will be halted altogether. The country’s top Sunni Muslim cleric announced that Friday prayers in mosques will also be halted.

08 THURSDAY 14 MAY 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 Airways Cargo is playing a crucial role in ensuring continuity of global business and trade. The airline has introduced additional flights to and from Scandinavian cities Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, offering freight capacity for local exports amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Five additional Airbus A350 freight only passenger aircraft have been introduced each week to the car-rier’s existing thrice-weekly belly-hold passenger flights in Copenhagen, Denmark, bringing the total weekly cargo capacity to more than 500 tonnes each way.

On Sunday, the cargo carrier announced to introduce an air bridge between Vietnam and France. Through this arrangement, eleven Boeing 777 freighters will operate from Hanoi in the month of May and four weekly freight-only Boeing 777 passenger aircraft will operate from Ho Chi Minh City until June for its customer, Bollore Logistics. In April, Qatar Airways Cargo had introduced freighter flights to Australia that brought the combined weekly capacity in and out of Australia to more than 550 tonnes.

Qatar Airways Cargo, in April, also partnered with the Australian Government to restore critical global supply chains through the International Freight Assistance Mechanism (IFAM). The IFAM is an initiative by the Australian Government that has been launched to help restore critical global supply chains for high-value Australian agricultural and fisheries producers, who have been heavily impacted by COVID-19 con-tainment measures around the world.

Through this initiative, the Australian Government is partially offsetting the cost of airfreight – reducing air-freight and freight forwarding costs for exporters and ensuring businesses and exporters in the country can swiftly transport their produce on flights and to inter-national customers.

With global air freight capacity declining, Qatar Airways Cargo has increased operations to ensure the continuity of global trade and movement of essential medical and aid supplies. The airline continues to operate a significant cargo schedule with almost 175 flights per day. Freight charters are being operated to multiple coun-tries including China, India, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

To ensure the safety of its crew and cargo, the carrier has implemented special procedures for ground han-dling including adherence to social distancing guide-lines to ensure there is minimum contact between staff. All of its freighters and passenger aircraft are equipped with face masks, gloves and hand sanitisers for crew and all the crew and staff are screened regularly. Qatar Airways Cargo utilises its full freighter fleet as per schedule and operates belly-hold cargo flights to des-tinations where possible.

Helping in global trade growth

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Quote of the day

Any Israeli decision to annex settlements, the Jordan Valley and north of the Dead Sea in occupied Palestine will be catastrophic and will kill any possibility to achieve just peace.

Ayman Safadi, Jordanian Foreign Minister

Health workers, wearing personal protective equipment, collecting swab samples from a man at a drive-thru testing service in Doha.

BLOOMBERG

So many ordinary activities have been put on hold in the time of coronavirus, but one stands out as an especially punishing loss: People have sharply curtailed their non-COVID health care - not just easily postponed checkups, but also tumor removals, diabetes tests, prenatal visits, kidney transplants, vaccines, even emergency care after heart attacks. Since early March, in-person doctor visits have fallen about 60% in the US Cancer screenings have dropped 86% to 94%. And until recently many hospitals were turning away all patients except those with COVID-19, often by order of state officials.

Epidemiologists assume that the pause in non-COVID health care accounts for an as-yet-unmeasured share of the tens of thousands

of “excess deaths” that have happened in the past couple of months in the US This is a danger in any epidemic; during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16, increased deaths from measles, malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis ultimately exceeded deaths from Ebola.

In the current situation, it’s unlikely that indirect mortality will ever outpace deaths from COVID-19 itself. But the pause in medicine is an urgent public health challenge in its own right. Telehealth has helped fill the gap for many patients who need advice, evaluations and prescriptions more than hands-on care, but it can do only so much. Meeting the need will require combined efforts by doctors, health insurers, hos-pitals, and state and federal governments. Their goal must be to recommence health care carefully and gradually enough

to avoid making the COVID-19 outbreak itself any worse, or exposing people with existing conditions to a virus that’s especially threatening to them.

The medical profession has every incentive to move as quickly as possible, as doctors and hospitals are taking an enormous financial hit. With income from day-to-day health care and non-emer-gency surgery on hold, many independent doctor offices face a stark choice between closing and selling out to a larger medical enterprise. From mid-February to mid-March, some 43,000 US health-care workers were laid off. Even the biggest, most secure hospitals are suffering. Stanford Hospital is temporarily cutting all employees’ pay by 20%. The Mayo Clinic, anticipating a $3 billion loss in revenue this year, is also imposing pay cuts.

For already struggling

rural hospitals, the loss of income from elective surgery and non-COVID care stands to be disastrous. Yet the pan-demic has demonstrated how essential it is to keep rural hospitals in business. As COVID-19 case numbers rise in more rural states, the need will grow ever more obvious.

The trouble is, medical offices and hospitals are among the most difficult busi-nesses to reopen in a pan-demic environment in which testing and contact tracing are still not up to speed. Hospitals shouldn’t even begin to con-sider treating non-COVID patients, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has warned, until they ensure they have the capacity to respond to any new coronavirus surge, and until they are able to fully isolate COVID and non-COVID patients from each other.

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COVID-19 is causing more than one health crisis

Established in 1996

Over 135,000 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Qatar so far and intense contact tracing and case finding has allowed for the identification of a large number of cases. Approximately 25% of those tested by contact tracing are positive, most of which have no signs or symptoms.

QNA — DOHA

Qatar’s strategy to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic relies heavily on contact tracking and tracing, which enables the early identification of cases, including those who do not show symptoms. Contact tracing aims to reach positive cases as early as possible to help break the chains of transmission and reduce the spread of the infection in the community.

Over 135,000 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Qatar so far and intense contact tracing and case finding has allowed for the identification of a large number of cases. Approximately 25% of those tested by contact tracing are positive, most of which have no signs or symptoms. This high percentage reflects the effectiveness of the contact tracing process and that the right people are being tested.

The early detection of pos-itive cases plays a key role in slowing the spread of the virus. It also allows for early treatment, when needed, to prevent potential complications, which some patients may suffer from if they are identified at later stages, especially if they suffer from existing medical conditions.

This has helped Qatar maintain one of the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world. To date, the country has recorded 14 deaths, with the majority of these patients suf-fering from co-morbidities and sought medical care at a late stage.

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has a dedicated team for contact tracking and tracing. The

team has expanded from 20 to 240 members over the past weeks to meet the requirements for extensive contact tracing.

The team includes represent-atives from the MoPH, Hamad Medical Corporation, and Primary Health Care Corpo-ration, as well as a number vol-unteers. If someone tests positive for the virus, a representative will speak to them to gather information on places they visited and people they have been in contact with.

This information is used to build up a detailed picture of the people who could have been infected, such as colleagues or family members. Contacts are then tested and advised to home isolate for 14 days, even if the test results turn out to be negative. People under home isolation are then advised to call 16000 if they develop any signs and symptoms.

“It is of utmost importance that the public cooperate with us. Pro-viding accurate information when contacted and agreeing to get tested as soon as possible mini-mises the risk on both the contact themselves and their families and colleagues,” said the Head of Vac-cination at MoPH and COVID-19 Contact Track and Trace Lead, Dr. Soha Shawqi Albayat.

“Even if a person seems healthy, he may still be carrying the virus and may cause for one their family members who may be at a higher risk than them, due to being older, pregnant, or suffer from a chronic condition, to get infected and possibly suffer com-plications,” she added.

In addition to tracking and tracing contacts of existing

positive COVID-19 cases, the contact tracing team implements random testing in numerous loca-tions in Qatar. So far, they have conducted random testing in supermarkets, private hospitals and clinics, residential complexes, the airport, in addition to a number of other locations.

When a large number of pos-itive cases in close proximity are identified, for example in a household or workplace, this gen-erates further investigation and expansion of the contact tracing efforts in that community.

The MoPH contact tracing efforts are now strongly sup-ported by the Ehteraz Appli-cation, which was launched recently by the Ministry of Interior. The application per-forms various services, including the profiling of users as healthy, suspected, under quarantine, or positive. The application also uses a GPS feature and Bluetooth to help identify individuals who have been in close proximity with positive cases.

In addition to contact tracing and random testing, COVID-19 testing in Qatar is also conducted on people who come to a healthcare setting and display COVID-19 symptoms as well as people returning from abroad.

The MoPH has advised all residents of Qatar to adhere to all infection control measures, including physical distancing, regular cleaning of hands using soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer for at least 20 seconds, avoiding the touching of nose, eyes, or mouth, and wearing a mask when entering a crowded place.

Effective contact tracking and tracingkey to COVID-19 response in Qatar

09THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 OPINION

Pompeo also described the stalled peace effort, which planned for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin on March 10, as “a critical opportunity for Afghans to ... build a united front against the menace of terrorism”. Talks have yet to start.

As health officials issued warnings on Tuesday against reopening economies too quickly, the coronavirus struck inside some of the world’s superpowers, with a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin diagnosed just days after US Vice-President Mike Pence’s press secretary also tested positive.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was hospi-talized with the coronavirus, the latest in a series of set-backs for the Russian leader as the country struggles to contain the growing outbreak. The announcement of Peskov’s hospitalization came a day after Putin announced Monday that Russia was easing some of its nationwide lockdown restrictions.

Peskov is not the only top Russian government official to come down with the

coronavirus. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin revealed April 30 that he had tested positive for the virus, as have two other government min-isters. Last month, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson landed in the hospital and has since recovered, underscoring the reach and spread of the virus.

There have been more than 4.2 million confirmed cases of the virus worldwide and more than 287,000 deaths. Russia has reported more than 232,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 2,100 virus-related deaths as of Tuesday, figures experts say are likely signif-icant under counts.

The climbing death tolls come as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease expert, issued a warning that “the consequences could be really serious” if American cities and states reopen the US economy too quickly. More than 80,000 people have died of the virus in the US

More COVID-19 infections are inevitable as people again start gathering, but how pre-pared communities are to

stamp out those sparks will determine how bad the rebound is, Fauci told a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

If there is a rush to reopen without following guidelines, “my concern is we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks,” Fauci said.

Dr. Michael Ryan, the emergencies chief for the World Health Organization, said Germany and South Korea have good contact tracing that hopefully can detect and stop virus clusters before they get out of control. But he said other nations, which he did not name, have not effectively used investi-gators to contact people who test positive, track down their contacts and get them into quarantine before they can spread the virus.

“Shutting your eyes and trying to drive through this blind is about as silly an equation as I’ve seen,” Ryan said. “Certain countries are setting themselves up for some seriously blind driving over the next few months.”

Here is a look at COVID-19 developments around the world.

As US states begin to loosen stay-at-home restric-tions and businesses get up and running, an Associated Press analysis shows thou-sands of people are getting sick from COVID-19 on the job.

Recent figures show a surge of infections in meat-packing and poultry-processing plants. There’s been a spike of new cases among construction workers in Austin, Texas. Of the 15 US counties with the highest per-capita infection rates between April 28 and May 5, all have meatpacking and poultry-processing plants or state prisons, according to data compiled by the AP.

Earlier in the pandemic, many health workers were testing positive and they con-tinue to be infected in large numbers.

Gerard Brogan, director of nursing practice for the Cali-fornia Nurses Association, says as many as 200 nurses a day tested positive in Cali-fornia recently. Nationwide, he says the National Nurses United had tallied more than 28,000 positive tests and more than 230 deaths among health workers.

The developments provide a cautionary note to commu-nities around the United States as they gradually loosen restrictions on business.

A big jump in confirmed COVID-19 cases in Italy’s hardest-hit region, Lombardy, contributed to the country’s highest day-to-day increase in several days.

According to Health Min-istry data, 1,033 cases were confirmed in Lombardy since Monday evening, accounting for the majority of Italy’s 1,402 new cases. In contrast, the last few days had seen Lombardy’s daily new caseload running in the few hundreds.

Overall, Italy counts 221,216 confirmed corona-virus infections. Experts say the true number is doubtlessly much higher, pointing out that many people with mild symptoms often don’t get tested.

Authorities registered 172 deaths in infected patients in the 24-hour period ending Tuesday evening, raising to 30,911 the confirmed death toll. Nearly half of those

deaths have occurred in Lom-bardy, where the country’s outbreak began in late February.

Health officials are anx-iously awaiting daily case numbers later in the week to determine if a partial lifting of lockdown restrictions on May 4 caused any rise in contagion rates.

Counterfeit COVID-19 test kits. Fake treatments. Fraud-ulent masks or cleaning products. False promises of being able to deliver pro-tective equipment.

Law enforcement officials say the virus has served as an invitation to people seeking to perpetrate money-making schemes by pedaling fake or non-existent goods.

Homeland Security Inves-tigations, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, has opened over 370 cases and so far arrested 11 people, as part of “Operation Stolen Promise,” according to Matthew Albence, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It’s incredibly rampant and it’s growing by the day,” Albence said. “We’re just scratching the surface of this criminal activity. ”

Coronavirus hits world superpowers as some look to reopen

OROOJ HAKIMI, ABDUL QADIR SEDIQI & HAMID SHALIZI REUTERS

After struggling to get pregnant for years, Zainab, 27, gave birth to a baby boy on Tuesday morning at a small hospital in the southwestern corner of Kabul. She was overjoyed and named the boy Omid, meaning ‘hope’ in Dari.

At around 10am (0530 GMT), an hour before she and her family were set to return home to neighbouring Bamiyan province a three-hour drive away, three gunmen disguised as police burst into the hospital’s maternity ward and started shooting.

Zainab, who rushed back from the washroom after hearing the commotion, col-lapsed as she took in the scene. She spent seven years trying to have a child, waited nine months to meet her son and had just four hours with him before he was killed.

“I brought my daughter-in-law to Kabul so that she would not lose her baby,” said Zahra Muhammadi, Zainab’s mother-in-law, unable to contain her grief. “Today we’ll take his dead body to Bamiyan.” No group has claimed responsibility for the massacre of 24 people, including 16 women and two newborns. At least six babies lost their mothers in an attack that has shaken even the war-torn nation numbed by years of militant violence.

“In my more than 20-year career I have not witnessed such a horrific, brutal act,” said Dr. Hassan Kamel,

director of Ataturk Children’s Hospital in Kabul.

The raid, on the same day that at least 32 people died in a suicide bomb attack on a funeral in the eastern province of Nangarhar, threatens to derail progress towards US-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attacks and ordered the military to switch to offensive mode rather than the defensive tactics it adopted while US troops withdraw from the country after a long, inconclusive war.

The Taliban, the main mil-itant group, has denied involvement in both attacks, although trust among officials and the broader public has worn thin. An offshoot of Islamic State is also among the suspects: it admitted it was behind the Nangarhar bloodshed.

Muhammadi, the mother-in-law, said she saw one of the attackers firing at pregnant women and new mothers, even as they cowered under hospital beds.

“We gave him the name Omid. Hope for a better future, hope for a better Afghanistan and hope for a mother who has been strug-gling to have a child for years,” she told Reuters by telephone in Kabul.

The gunmen then turned to target the cradle where Omid had been asleep. As the sound of bullets reverberated through the ward, Muhammadi said she fainted in fear.

“When I opened my eyes, I

saw that my grandson’s body had fallen to the ground, covered in blood,” she recalled, as she wailed with grief.

The Kabul attack began in the morning when gunmen entered the Dasht-e-Barchi hospital, throwing grenades and shooting, government officials said. Security forces had killed the attackers by the afternoon.

The 100-bed, gov-ernment-run hospital hosted a maternity clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Just hours before the attack, MSF had tweeted a photo of a newborn in his mother’s arms at the clinic after being delivered safely by emergency caesarean section.

On Wednesday, the group condemned the attack, calling it “sickening” and “cowardly”.

“Whilst fighting was ongoing, one woman gave birth to her baby and both are doing well,” MSF said in a statement.

“More than ever, MSF stands in solidarity with the Afghan people.” Deborah Lyons, head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, condemned the hospital assault in a tweet. “Who attacks newborn babies and new mothers? Who does this?

The most innocent of innocents, a baby! Why?” In a statement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday condemned the two attacks, noted the Taliban had denied responsibility and said the lack of a peace deal left

the country vulnerable to such violence.

Pompeo also described the stalled peace effort, which planned for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin on March 10, as “a critical opportunity for Afghans to ... build a united front against the menace of ter-rorism”. Talks have yet to start.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Ghani’s stated intent to restart offensive operations, saying only that the US military continued to reserve the right to defend Afghan security forces if they are attacked by the Taliban.

Relations between the government in Kabul and the Taliban movement, which was ousted from power in 2001 by a US-backed assault in response to the September 11 attacks, are already frayed, and Tuesday’s events will make any rapprochement harder.

“There seems little point in continuing to engage Taliban in ‘peace talks’,” Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib said in a tweet.

For Afghanistan, the hos-pital attack also risks further disrupting a healthcare network that is creaking amid the challenges of dealing with the new coronavirus pandemic.

More than a third of the coronavirus cases in Kabul have been among doctors and healthcare staff, Reuters reported in early May.

The high rate of infection among healthcare workers has already sparked alarm among medics and some doctors have closed their

clinics. At least 5,226 people have been infected by the coronavirus and 132 have died, according to the health ministry.

The attack has shaken the small medical community in Kabul to its core.

Nurses and doctors who survived the hospital attack said they were in shock, and resuming duties would be an emotional challenge on top of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

“Last night I could not sleep, as scary scenes of the attack kept crossing my mind,” said Masouma Qur-banzada, a midwife who saw the killings.

“Since yesterday my family has been telling me to stop working in the hospital, nothing is worth my life. But I told them ‘No, I will not stop working as a health worker’.” Officials at MSF said they were working to try to normalise operations and had received support from other hospitals to treat dozens of infants and adults wounded in the attack.

Some medics at the hos-pital, however, said it would be hard to move on.

“The gunmen blew up a water tank and then started shooting women. I saw a pool of water and blood from the small gap of a safe room where some of us managed to lock ourselves,” said a nurse with MSF, who spoke on con-dition of anonymity.

“I saw patients being killed even as they begged and pleaded for their life in the holy month of Ramadan. It is very hard for me to work now.”

Maternity ward massacre shakes Afghanistan and its peace process

LISA MARIE PANE AP

More COVID-19 infections are inevitable as people again start gathering, but how prepared communities are to stamp out those sparks will determine how bad the rebound is, Fauci told a Senate hearing on Tuesday. If there is a rush to reopen without following guidelines, “my concern is we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks,” Fauci said.

MoveOn.org stages a protest against the handling of the coronavirus pandemic by US President Donald Trump with signs and white roses to remember the people who died from the disease, near the US Capitol in Washington, DC, yesterday.

There have been more than 4.2 million confirmed cases of the virus worldwide and more than 287,000 deaths. Russia has reported more than 232,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 2,100 virus-related deaths as of Tuesday, figures experts say are likely significant under counts.

10 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020AFRICA

Lesotho PM ready tostep down, but deniesrole in death of wifeAFP — JOHANNESBURG

On the cusp of stepping down, Lesotho’s embattled Prime Minister has denied in an interview any role in the murder of his estranged wife, a drama that has gripped the tiny kingdom for months.

The octogenarian Thomas Thabane has been under pressure even from his own party to resign over the accu-sations, and he has agreed to go — but only on the grounds of his old age.

In a telephone interview, Thabane vehemently denied he was involved in the 2017 killing of his 58-year-old wife Lipolelo, who he was in the process of divorcing.

Police have questioned but not charged Thabane in the case, which has triggered a pro-tracted political crisis in the mountainous southern African nation, although his current wife has been indicted.

“For me it is not the best subject to deal with because a woman who was my wife and who I loved was killed and I don’t kill people and I wouldn’t kill my wife. No, no!” he said.

The couple had been locked a bitter divorce at the time and her death sent shock waves through a country with a history of political instability.

Thabane admitted that they had “a bit of a disagreement” just before she was killed — two days before his inauguration.

“This matter is not only a matter of great pain to me and it came out as a huge embar-rassment. And it’s painful, very painful,” he said.

His political rivals say he has

been seeking immunity from prosecution as part of a “dig-nified” exit from office that has been mediated by South Africa.

Sounding relaxed and con-templative in the interview, the two-time prime minister said he did not want to serve out his term which is due to end in 2022.

“I have served enough in this... and other capacities and the time has come for me to retire,” said Thabane, who turns 81 in two weeks’ time.

“All I look forward to... is for me to be left alone,” he said.

“All the other things that are being said are just nonsense.

“I don’t want to worry my heart about that and I also don’t want to spoil my happiness by delving into things that just make me feel very sad.”

In January, he set himself a target to leave office by July 31 as the murder accusations swirled. But rivals in his own All Basotho Convention (ABC) party and outside have been pushing for his early departure.

Mediation talks led by South Africa, and legal and parlia-mentary processes, culminated in the disbanding of his

fractured coalition government on Monday.

Speaking in his first interview following the coa-lition collapse, Thabane sounded buoyant. “A new coa-lition is emerging and it is a good thing,” he said.

He refused to give the exact date that he plans to clear his desk and hand over the reins, saying there were still some loose ends to be to tied up — to make his retirement “as smooth as pos-sible”. But he said he intended to turn in his resignation letter to the king yesterday.

Parliament is due to meet on May 22 to appoint his suc-cessor and install a new government.

Finance Minister Moeketsi Majoro, 58, has been nominated to be the new premier.

The saga has also sucked in his new wife Maesaiah, 43, whom he married two months after the killing and who has been charged with murder.

“How they involve her in this, I don’t know, I don’t under-stand. All that rubbish they have been collecting to try and involve her, is not working,” Thabane said.

Thabane’s time in office had brought hopes of stability to Lesotho. While no premier has served out a full five-year term in Lesotho, Thabane boasted that he has set an example to fellow African leaders who have the propensity to cling to power.

“I’m trying to set a prec-edent that leaders in Africa must volunteer to leave when they think it’s time to leave or at the very worst they must leave when their term ends.”

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari presides over a Cabinet meeting and appoints Ibrahim Gambari as his new chief of staff, in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday.

Buhari appoints new chief of staffAFP — ABUJA

N i g e r i a n P r e s i d e n t Muhammadu Buhari yesterday named a former top UN diplomat as his new chief of staff, replacing powerful aide Abba Kyari after he died last month of COVID-19.

The presidency announced the appointment of Ibrahim Gambari, 75, on Twitter.

Gambari served as Buhari’s foreign minister when he was Nigeria’s military ruler in the 1980s and later went on to become a UN under-secretary general for Africa during Kofi Annan’s tenure.

Kyari’s death on April 17 has rocked Nigerian politics.

A loyal lieutenant and long-time confidant of the president, Kyari was often viewed as the second most powerful person in the country.

He played a vital role as gatekeeper to Buhari and had been accused of using his influence to control the presi-

dent’s decision-making.Political analyst Dapo

Thomas said the new chief of staff was seen as an “apolitical” veteran who would not “be swayed by partisan politics, ethnic and rel igious considerations”.

“Gambari is a seasoned and respected diplomat who has played significant roles in the international arena,” Thomas, an academic at the University of Lagos, said.

“He has very intimidating credentials. His coming to gov-ernment will give more credi-bility, recognition and respect ato the president.” Benjamin Auge, associate research fellow at the French Institute of Inter-national Relations shares a similar view of Gambari.

“He’ll play a more traditional role as chief of staff to a president — compared to Kyari — with the added bonus of international relations expertise thanks to his experience and extensive net-works abroad,” he said.

He said unlike his prede-cessor Gambari “has never been a businessman, having spent his entire career as a professor as well as a diplomat for his country and international organisations like the UN.” Auge said this quality “should probably allow President Buhari, who usually has very little focus on international issues, to develop a more effective foreign policy.” He said Gambari should be ready to face “strong pressure from the various usual lobbies in Nigeria”.

Nigeria, Africa’s most pop-ulous nation, is facing major economic and social challenges from the coronavirus pandemic.

The continent’s biggest oil producer has seen its revenues collapse with the drop in crude prices.

Nigeria has so far officially recorded 4,787 infections and 158 deaths from the virus, but testing has been limited.

South Africa amends arms export document after rowREUTERS — JOHANNESBURG

South Africa has made a subtle change to arms export rules that could unlock more than a billion dollars of weapons sales to countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

A notice published in the government gazette on May 11 alters the circumstances under which South African officials can perform inspections to verify that customers are not transferring weapons to third parties.

Some of the main buyers of South African arms, including

governments in the Gulf and North Africa, had refused to agree to the inspections because they considered them a vio-lation of their sovereignty.

A report in February said that the government was planning to change the inspection clause in an arms export document following months of lobbying by defence firms and trade unions who said thousands of jobs were at stake.

The clause will now read: “It is agreed that on-site verifi-cation of the controlled items may be performed, through diplomatic process,” according to the notice signed by Defence

M i n i s t e r N o s i v i w e Mapisa-Nqakula.

The previous wording of the clause had been: “It is agreed that on-site verification of the controlled items may be per-formed by an inspector desig-nated by the minister.” Defence sources have said that countries including the UAE are more comfortable with the new wording, which should unlock the stalled weapons exports.

That is a boost to state defence firm Denel, which said last week that the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s subsequent lockdown of the economy had brought its

operations to a standstill. Denel also has a local joint venture with Germany’s Rheinmetall, Rheinmetall Denel Munition, that stands to benefit from the new wording.

In the meantime, however, South Africa’s defence sector has been upended by pro-duction and export disruptions caused by the pandemic.

South Africa, whose arms industry traces its roots to the apartheid era, manufactures defence products from ammu-nition to missiles and armoured vehicles for its own military and countries around the world.

Sudan presses Ethiopia toresume talks over Nile dam

AP — CAIRO

Sudan is pushing Ethiopia to resume stalled US-brokered negotiations over its disputed $4.6bn dam on the Nile that officials say will start filling in July.

In a letter to his Ethiopian counterpart on Tuesday, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok stressed the need to reach agreement among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia before the mega-project’s completion, according to Sudan’s state-run news agency. Ethiopia has pledged to start filling the reservoir during the summer wet season.

The dispute over what will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam pits Ethiopia’s desire to pull millions out of poverty against Egypt’s concerns over its critical water supply.

Egyptian officials fear that the dam, if filled too quickly, will constrict its main source of freshwater, already under strain from climate change and rapid population growth. Ethiopia is banking on the Grand Renaissance Dam to provide much-needed elec-tricity and income for development.

B e l l i c o s e r h e t o r i c , including the Ethiopian prime minister’s warnings of possible military action last year, have turned the dam into an explosive issue.

Hamdok said on Tuesday that he would refuse to sign a “partial agreement” for the dam’s filling due to the absence of coordinated planning and outstanding “technical and legal issues” dealing with the dam’s “environmental and social impacts.” He urged the parties to resume talks imme-diately, even if via video con-ference because of the corona-virus pandemic. Sudan has long been caught between Egypt and Ethiopia, as each tries to per-suade the fledgling civilian gov-ernment to take its side.

Negotiations, deadlocked for years, received a jolt last fall when the US and World Bank intervened. The White House had pushed for an agreement by the end of February. While Egypt inked the draft agreement, Ethiopia skipped out on the last round of nego-tiations, stirring tension and throwing a settlement into doubt. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cautioned that months of hard work remain.

Last week, in Egypt’s latest bid to gain support from the international community, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said he sent a letter to the UN Security Council about the dam, raising alarm about Ethiopia’s unilateral moves. He asked that Ethiopia reconsider its rejection of the latest deal for the sake of “security and stability in the region.”

Lesotho becomes

last country in

Africa to record

COVID-19 case

REUTERS — JOHANNESBURG

Lesotho recorded its first case of COVID-19 yesterday, the health ministry said, becoming the last country in Africa to be afflicted by the virus.

The ministry said it had con-ducted 81 tests for COVID-19 from travellers from South Africa and Saudi Arabia, of which one was positive. It was awaiting for results from 301 other tests.

The remote, high-altitude kingdom, nestled in a South African mountain range, had previously been spared the coronavirus, although its bigger, more industrialised neighbour has recorded more than 10,000 cases.

As at 1245 GMT, Africa had 69,764 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 2,421 deaths and 23,857 recoveries, according to a tally based on government statements and World Health Organisation data.

The disease has struck at a time of political uncertainty in Lesotho, with Prime Min-ister Thomas Thabane due to step down by the end of next week after his coalition col-lapsed in parliament. His exit would clear the way for a solution to a political crisis that erupted late last year.

Lockdown measures in Cape Town

Soldiers and police officers check documents of commuters at a minibus taxi rank during a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Cape Town, South Africa, yesterday.

Niger says 75 Boko Haram ‘terrorists’ killedAFP — NIAMEY

The Sahel state of Niger, which has been battling a bloody jihadist insurgency, said yesterday around 75 Boko Haram combatants had been killed in the southeast and in neighbouring Nigeria.

Twenty-five “terrorists” were killed on Monday south of Diffa, the main city in southeast Niger, while “about 50... were neutralised” the same day on Nigerian soil in the Lake Chad

region, in two operations by a regional anti-militant force, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The figures could not be verified independently.

On Monday, troops from Niger’s contingent in the regional force carried out “aggressive reconnaissance” on the banks of the Komadougou river and clashed with Boko Haram fighters at a locality 74km south of Diffa, the ministry said.

“All the terrorist group,”

comprising 25 combatants, was killed, it said, adding that two soldiers were lightly injured.

A vehicle, four motorbikes, weapons, ammunitions and various material “for military use” were seized, the statement said.

The same day, around 50 “enemy elements” were “neu-tralised” in coalition air strikes and artillery bombardment of Tombon-Fulani, an island in the marshy Lake Chad region in northeastern Nigeria, the defence ministry added.

“Shelters and logistical dumps” were also destroyed, it said. Militants carried out a major attack against a Nigerien military camp outside Diffa on May 3, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, according to the government.

A propaganda video released by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram splinter group affiliated to the so-called Islamic State, purported to show heavily-armed insurgents storm

an army camp following sus-tained fighting and heavy weapons fire.

Boko Haram’s insurgency has claimed more than 36,000 lives since it began in north-eastern Nigeria in 2009 and dis-placed nearly two million from their homes.

The violence spilt over into neighbouring Sahel countries in 2015, especially in the Lake Chad region, where the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge.

“For me it is not the best subject to deal with because a woman who was my wife and who I loved was killed and I don’t kill people and I wouldn’t kill my wife. No, no!” Thabane said in an interview.

Sri Lanka ends lockdown

11THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 ASIA

New Zealand ends most restrictionsAP — BANGKOK

New Zealand has ended most of its coronavirus lockdown restrictions as it prepares itself for a new normal.

Malls, retail stores and res-taurants are reopening today in the South Pacific nation of 5 million, and many people are returning to their workplaces. But most gatherings will be limited to 10 people and social distancing guidelines will remain in place.

The reopening reflects the success New Zealand has had in its bold goal of eliminating the virus. The country reported no new cases of the virus on Tuesday and Wednesday. More than 1,400 of the nearly 1,500 people who contracted COVID-19 have recovered, while 21 have died. But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Southern Hemisphere nation faces the most chal-lenging economic conditions since the Great Depression because of the virus.

Migrant workers and their family members queue to board buses to reach their homes as they arrive at Allahabad railway station by a special train from the Gujarat state after the government eased the nationwide lockdown imposed as a preventive measure against the COVID-19, at the Madhya Pradesh-Uttar Pradesh border on the outskirts of Allahabad, yesterday.

Myanmar army admits prisoner abuse after beating video emergesAFP — YANGON

Myanmar’s military has conceded its troops abused prisoners in Rakhine State after a video of soldiers battering blindfolded detainees spread on social media—a rare admission of wrongdoing by a force often accused of acting with impunity.

The video, which emerged on Sunday, shows plain-clothed men punching and kicking the heads of hand-cuffed and blindfolded detainees.

The five detainees had been arrested on suspicion of being Arakan Army (AA) insurgents and were being transferred to Rakhine state capital Sittwe by boat on April 21 when the incident occurred, according to the army chief’s office website.

Myanmar’s armed forces are locked in an increasingly brutal war with the rebels, who are fighting for more autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

Some security force members interrogated the pris-oners in a way “not in accordance with the law” and action would be taken against those responsible, the statement said, without giving details on what punishments await.

The video, a rare window into the operations of an army routinely accused of abuses, was shared tens of thousands of times, splitting opinion between those outraged and people defending the soldiers. The fam-ilies of the arrested men deny they have any links to the AA.

“He just works in a rice shop. He doesn’t know any-thing about the AA,” Ni Ni, the mother of 24-year-old detainee Nyi Nyi Aung, said by phone.

The video shows Nyi Nyi Aung’s interrogator yanking his head back by the hair as he punches him in the face, before another guard kicks him in the head. Scores have been killed, hundreds wounded and some 150,000 people have fled their homes since fighting erupted in January last year.

UN rights expert Yanghee

Lee last month warned Myan-mar’s military should be inves-tigated for possible “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in the conflict.

Lee accused the military of disappearing, torturing and killing dozens of AA suspects, as well as blocking aid and stopping injured civilians from reaching hospitals.

Myanmar has denied the allegations, exchanging accu-sations of abuse with the AA.

It is impossible to verify the competing claims in northern Rakhine, which is under an internet blackout and off-limits to journalists.

The government has also officially branded the AA a “ter-rorist organisation”, meaning anyone who contacts them for comment could be charged under Myanmar’s terrorism laws. Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Rob-ertson called for the military’s “impunity” to be the focus of a UN Security Council discussion on Myanmar this week.

Myanmar faces charges of genocide at the UN’s top court, a case brought after some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh in a 2017 bloody military crackdown in Rakhine. The country denies the charges.

Seven soldiers sentenced for killing a group of Rohingya were freed from jail a year ago despite serving less time than two reporters imprisoned for exposing the massacre.

India offers $40bn loans to small businessesBLOOMBERG — NEW DELHI

India will provide collateral-free loans worth $40bn to boost liquidity for small businesses and help the economy tide over the coronavirus outbreak.

The loans will benefit up to 4.5 million small busi-nesses, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in New Delhi yesterday. The pro-gramme will be open until October 31.

“Essentially this is to spur growth and to build a very self-reliant India,” Sitharaman said. “It addresses ease of doing business, compliance and due diligence and the intention is also to build local brands.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said his gov-ernment will spend an amount equivalent to 10% of the nation’s gross domestic product to help the economy get back on its feet after weeks of stay-at-home restrictions to beat the pandemic.

The resultant halt to non-essential consumption set up Asia’s third-largest economy for its first annual con-traction in four decades as businesses collapsed and jobs were lost.

Modi’s spending plan totaling 20 trillion rupees ($265bn) includes measures already unveiled by the government and also by the central bank such as provision for cheap cash to banks and the reduction in its

cash reserve ratio.The details of the package

will be shared in tranches, Sith-araman said, adding that the announcement covers 15 dif-ferent measures, including six

pertaining to small businesses and more will be announced over the course of the next few days.

As part of the plan, small firms will be eligible to borrow

collateral-free automatic loans for a four-year tenor with 12-month freeze on principal repayments. The loans will be g u a r a n t e e d b y t h e government.

Facebook apologises for role in 2018 Sri Lanka unrestAFP — HONG KONG

Facebook has apologised for its role in the deadly communal unrest that shook Sri Lanka two years ago after an investigation found that hate speech and rumours spread on the platform may have led to violence against Muslims.

The riots in early 2018 erupted as anti-Muslim anger was whipped up on social media, forcing the Sri Lankan government to impose a state of emergency and block access to Facebook.

The tech giant commis-sioned a probe into the part it may have played, and investi-gators said incendiary content on Facebook may have led to violence against Muslims.

“We deplore the misuse of our platform,” Facebook said in a statement to Bloomberg

News after the findings were released on Tuesday. “We rec-ognize, and apologize for, the very real human rights impacts that resulted.”

At least three people were killed and 20 injured in the 2018 unrest, during which mosques and Muslim busi-nesses were burned, mainly in the central part of the Sinhalese Buddhist-majority nation.

The hate speech and rumours spread on Facebook “may have led to ‘offline’ vio-lence”, according to Article One, the human rights consul-tancy hired to conduct the investigation.

The consultants also sug-gested that before the unrest, Facebook had failed to take down such content, which “resulted in hate speech and other forms of harassment remaining and even spreading”

on the platform. Article One said one civil society organi-sation had tried to engage with the company on the misuse of Facebook as far back as 2009.

In 2018, officials had said mobs used Facebook to coor-dinate attacks, and that the platform had “only two resource persons” to review content in Sinhala, the lan-guage of Sri Lanka’s ethnic majority whose members were behind the violence.

Facebook has 4.4 million daily active users in Sri Lanka, according to the report by Article One. The firm said on Tuesday it had taken a number of steps in the last two years to better protect human rights.

“In Sri Lanka... we are reducing the distribution of fre-quently reshared messages, which are often associated with clickbait and misinformation,”

Facebook said in a statement accompanying reports, which also looked at Indonesia and Cambodia.

It said it had also hired more staff, including Sinhala speakers, and started using detection technology to protect vulnerable groups. Article One also investigated the impact of Facebook’s services —including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram — in Indonesia.

It found that in addition to political attacks and attempts to influence elections, vul-nerable groups across the sprawling archipelago faced increased risks.

The social media company said that, like in Sri Lanka, it is ramping up efforts to protect its users from harm, including more staff and improved tech-nology to identify hate speech in Indonesian.

A police personnel checks IDs of motorists after the government ended the lockdown which was imposed as a preventive measure against the COVID-19, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, yesterday.

Cambodian official says human rights ‘need to be put aside’ in drug warREUTERS — PHNOM PENH

A Cambodian official defended an anti-drug campaign that has been decried as rife with abuses, saying human rights “need to be put aside” to fight drugs that destroy families and fuel violent crime.

The comments came in response to rights group Amnesty International, which said in a report that the campaign that has seen 55,000 people arrested had led to torture and caused dan-gerous prison overcrowding while fuelling corruption.

Amnesty cited interviews with dozens of people who

described arbitrary arrests by police and torture in prison and drug treatment centres.

Khieu Sopheak, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, acknowledged that human rights may have been violated but defended the drug war. “When it is an anti-drug campaign, there is never a respect for human rights,” Khieu Sopheak said.

“During the anti-drug cam-paign, human rights need be put aside, so it is clean,” he said.

The spokesman denied, however, Amnesty’s assertion that police made arbitrary arrests and solicited bribes from detainees to keep them

out of prison. Cambodia’s prison popu-

lation has soared by 78 percent since 2017, and its largest prison, known as CC1, has 9,500 inmates - nearly five times its estimated capacity, Amnesty said, calling the overcrowding a dangerous breeding ground for disease such as COVID-19.

Nearly 60 percent of all inmates in Cambodian prisons are held on drug-related charges, the rights group said. Chin Malin, a spokesman at the Ministry of Justice, said the gov-ernment planned to announce measures to address prison overcrowding next week.

Some security force members interrogated the prisoners in a way “not in accordance with the law” and action would be taken against those responsible, Myanmar’s military said in a statement, without giving details on what punishments await.

Malaysian PM delays confidence vote, Mahathir cries foulREUTERS — KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will not face a confidence vote on May 18 as scheduled, the speaker of parliament said yesterday after the government said the battle against the coronavirus was a priority.

His predecessor, 94-year-old Mahathir Mohamad who resigned in February after his coalition collapsed due to political wrangling, denounced the decision as a possible sign of Muhyiddin lacking a parlia-mentary majority.

People close to the ruling coalition, however, said they had a majority among the 222 elected members of parliament.

Speaker Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof last week approved a motion brought by Mahathir seeking a vote of no confi-dence in Muhyiddin’s leadership.

But, in a statement, the speaker said Muhyiddin later told him the government had decided to list only a single order of parliamentary business for the one-day sitting, the opening address by the king, “as the COVID-19 pandemic has not been fully cleared”.

Malaysia has so far reported 6,779 coronavirus patients, with 111 dead.

The Southeast Asian country has not held any parliamentary session this year.

Pregnant woman walks 196km for 6 days to reach home

IANS — JAIPUR, INDIA

It was a tough trail for a 9-month pregnant woman who walked 196km on foot, from Ahmedabad with her husband, son (1-year-old) and daughter (2-year-old) for 6 days to reach her native place in Madhya Pradesh’s Ratlam.

Surprisingly, no one took pity on her condition throughout the way as she crossed district after district, checkpost after checkpost with an aim to reach her native place at the earliest. It was her luck to get a few good samaritans at Dungarpur checkpost, who seeing her plight, stopped her and offered her food and trans-portation to help her reach her hometown. Dungarpur SDM Rajeev Dwivedi said: “This woman, with her family, including husband and two kids, reached Dungapur checkpost on Monday evening. The staff at the location was stunned to see her feeble condition as she looked quite tired and lacked energy. When asked if she had food, she simply refused. It also seemed as if she was in pain.”

The officials at the check-point hence informed the SDM and other officials. Soon a team of doctors from nearby medical checkpost arrived at the location to review her medical condition.

Freeport Indonesia ramps up virus testing as cases near mine rise

REUTERS — JAKARTA

Freeport Indonesia, operator of the world’s second-biggest copper mine, is to conduct “extensive testing” among its employees after coronavirus cases in the area where the mine operates topped 100.

It said yesterday it had around 50,000 rapid and polymerase chain reaction test kits on site. COVID-19 infections in Mimika Regency, where Free-port’s gold and copper Grasberg mine is located on Papua island, reached 112 cases as of Sunday.“To help keep its over 25,000 employee and contractor workforce safe, PT Freeport Indonesia’s medical providers are doing extensive testing,” the company said in the statement.

12 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020ASIA

Ghani orders army to resume anti-Taliban operationsBLOOMBERG — KABUL

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered government forces to resume operations against the Taliban and other insurgent groups after 40 people, including newborn babies, were killed when armed militants opened fire inside a hospital and at a funeral ceremony.

The Taliban denied involvement in Tuesday’s attacks on the hospital in a Shia neighbourhod of capital Kabul and on a funeral ceremony in the eastern province of Nan-garhar. The violence cast further doubt on the longevity of the US-Taliban deal that was

meant to reduce bloodshed and pave the way for the with-drawal of US troops and end 18 years of war in Afghanistan.

“In order to ensure security for the public areas and to thwart attacks and threats from the Taliban and other terrorist groups, I am ordering Afghan

National Security Forces to switch from an active defense mode to an offensive one and to begin operations against the enemies,” Ghani said in a tele-vision address several hours after the attacks.

The Afghan military had stopped operations against the Taliban after the US signed a peace deal with the group on February 29. The deal was meant to lead the way for direct negotiations between the Afghan government and mil-itant group, who have repeatedly rebuffed Ghani’s peace calls. Since the signing of the accord violence has surged killing hundreds.

Armed militants in army uni-forms attacked the maternity ward of a Kabul hospital, killing 16, including women and infants, Waheedullah Mayar, a spokesman from the country’s health ministry, said over the phone. Another 16 were wounded in that attack, he said. The ward is run with the support of the international aid group Médecins Sans Frontières.

A separate attack on a funeral ceremony in eastern Nangarhar province killed at least 24 people and wounded about 70 others, provincial spokesman Attaullah Khogyani said over the phone on Tuesday. The death toll could rise as the

condition of some of the wounded was “quite critical,” he added.

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the two horrific terrorist attacks in Afghanistan today,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an e-mailed statement. “During the holy month of Ramadan and amidst the threat of COVID-19, these dual attacks are particularly appalling. We note the Taliban have denied any responsibility and condemned both attacks as heinous.”

On Tuesday, three assailants began shooting inside the maternity ward of the hospital, Tariq Arian, a spokesman from

the country’s interior ministry said by phone. All the gunmen were killed after a five-hour-long battle with Afghan forces, Arian added.

Pompeo called on the Taliban and the Afghan gov-ernment to cooperate to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“As long as there is no sus-tained reduction in violence and insufficient progress towards a negotiated political settlement, Afghanistan will remain vul-nerable to terrorism,” he said.

Afghan Vice-President Amrullah Saleh was less con-ciliatory, saying in a tweet that those who believed the Taliban were naive.

Taiwan’s exclusion from WHO caused virus deaths: US panelREUTERS — TAIPEI

Lives have been lost in the coro-navirus pandemic because of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) exclusion of Taiwan and refusal to allow it to share best practices and information, a top US government commission on China said.

The United States has repeatedly clashed with China over its refusal to allow non-WHO member Taiwan, claimed by China as one of its provinces, full access to the body, becoming another source of rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Self-ruled Taiwan says China and the WHO have con-spired for political purposes to lock it out of key meetings, that the WHO has not responded to its requests for coronavirus information and that the WHO has previously misreported Taiwan’s virus case numbers.

The WHO and China strongly dispute this, saying Taiwan has been given all the help it needs, but that only China has the right to represent the democratic island in the WHO.

In a report, the US Con-gress’ US-China Economic and Security Review Commission

said Taiwan’s exclusion con-tributed to “critical delays” in timely receipt and accurate guidance for WHO members in the early stages of the outbreak.

“Had the WHO allowed Tai-wan’s health experts to share information and best practices in early January, governments around the world could have had more complete infor-mation on which to base their public health policies,” it said.

One of Taiwan’s main com-plaints is that the WHO ignored its request for information in late December on the potential for human-to-human trans-mission. The WHO has said an email it received from Taiwan made no mention of human-to-human transmission.

“In this respect, the WHO’s suppression of information provided by Taiwan and the delayed issuance of its own guidance undermined the national security of the very member states trusting it for authoritative public health guidance,” the US commission said. “The lives lost as a result of these missteps offer a tragic reminder of how global health is compromised by the WHO’s politically-motivated exclusion of Taiwan”.

COVID-19 fuelsanti-Asian racism,xenophobia: ReportANATOLIA — ANKARA

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak emerged in China, Asians have become targets of hate speech, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, urging governments for immediate action.

“Asians and people of Asian descent have been targets of derogatory language in media reports and statements by pol-iticians as well as on social media platforms, where hate speech related to COVID-19 also appears to have spread exten-sively,” the US-based rights group said in a statement.

It said the governments —from the US to Europe, Africa and some Asian countries —have directly or indirectly encouraged hate crimes, racism, or xenophobia by using anti-Chinese rhetoric and advanced anti-immigration and white supremacist.

“Governments should act to expand public outreach,

promote tolerance, and counter hate speech while aggressively investigating and prosecuting hate crimes,” John Sifton, Asia advocacy director of the HRW, said.

According to the report, US President Donald Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus” may have encouraged the use of hate speech in the US, although he stepped back from using the term and later posted a tweet in support of Asian-American community, saying it is not their fault.

A coalition of Asian-American groups named Stop AAPI Hate, said it received almost 1,500 reports of racism incidents against Asians and Asian-Americans by late April.

The governor of the Veneto region of Italy, an early epi-center of the pandemic, told reporters in February that “unlike Italians, the Chinese did not have good standards of hygiene” and “eat mice live.” Luca Zaia later apologised for

his remarks.Italian civil society group

Lunaria has collected over 50 reports and media accounts of assaults, verbal harassment against people of Asian roots since February, the HRW noted.

Citing Sky News’ early May report, the HRW said the UK police forces showed at least 267 anti-Asian hate crimes recorded across the country.

The watchdog added it also received similar reports from France, Australia, Spain, Russia, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia, Muslim minorities have been the targets of hate speech and held respon-sible for the spread of the virus.

Spreading to at least 187 countries globally, the virus

infected more than 4.28 million people and killed over 292,300, while recoveries exceeded 1.5 million, according to the data compiled by the US-based Johns Hopkins University.

Last week, the UN voiced concern over “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia” unleashed by the pandemic and urged gov-ernments to act to strengthen the immunity of their societies against the virus of hate.

People wearing face masks amid concerns of the coronavirus disease commute through a subway station in Beijing, yesterday.

US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, called on the Taliban and the Afghan government to cooperate to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Thailand reports no new coronavirus casesREUTERS — BANGKOK

Thailand, the first country outside China to discover a case of the new coronavirus, reported no new daily cases for the first time in two months yesterday as the government considered easing more restric-tions on businesses.

“We all can be relieved but not complacent,” said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman for the government’s Centre for

COVID-19 Situation Adminis-tration. “We need to continue with the main measures ... wash hands, practice social dis-tancing and wear masks” .

Thailand detected its first coronavirus case, a tourist from China on January 13. Since then it has recorded a total of 3,017 infections and 56 deaths.

Taweesin said areas that were still most at risk included Bangkok and surrounding provinces, as well as southern

Thailand, where there has been a large number of cases in the past two weeks.

The last day Thailand recorded no new cases was March 9, but within two weeks the daily numbers jumped to double digits and then to more than 100 a day. That sharp escalation prompted the gov-ernment to order the closure of shopping malls, restaurants, gyms and other businesses and to impose a curfew.

Motorists pass a billboard reminding people to observe social distancing as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 in Thailand’s southern province of Narathiwat, yesterday.

Philippine govt to probe police chief over birthday bash amid lockdownREUTERS — MANILA

The Philippine government ordered a probe yesterday of the Manila police chief’s birthday celebrations after photographs posted online showed him and dozens of fellow officers flouting a ban on social gatherings to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

Debold Sinas, the chief of the National Capital Region’s police office, apologised for “causing anxiety to the public”, but the national police chief and justice minister ordered separate investigations into the incident.

Photographs posted on the force’s Facebook page on May 8 had shown Sinas along with dozens of people without masks sitting closely while band entertained them.

The photographs were taken down as the backlash mounted on social media, but by yesterday the police chief’s party had become the Philip-pines’ second most trending topic with more than 22,000 tweets.

“It was never my intention to disobey existing protocols relative to the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine,” Sinas said in a statement.

Interior Minister Eduardo Año, a retired military general, described the party as a “big no, no” in violation of the lockdown in the Philippines capital.

The Philippines has recorded 11,618 coronavirus cases, including 772 deaths.

Curbs on businesses and movement in Manila, home to 13 million people, were intro-duced in mid-March, and have since been extended up to the end of May, though restrictions in so-called low-risk areas have been eased to jumpstart the economy.

Pakistan reports 2,255 new cases in 24 hoursINTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan reported a record number of 2,255 coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours yesterday, as the spread of the infection through local trans-mission showed a dangerous upward trajectory in a recent report published by the World Health Organisation Pakistan chapter.

The report presented a dismal picture in terms of local transmission cases in Pakistan, province by province, on a weekly basis.

The report showed that Balochistan had the highest rate of local transmission at 93 percent, and only 7 percent were imported cases.

At second number was Sindh, where 92 percent were local transmissions and 8 percent imported cases.

In the worst-hit Punjab, 15 percent were foreign cases while 85 percent of the reported cases had emerged through local transmission.

Pakistan’s testing capacity has faced a downward tra-jectory after peaking at an

estimated 13,000 on May 9, according to the report.

On May 10 and 11, the number of tests dropped, fluctu-ating between 11,000 to 10,000.

The report said that Pakistan had 1,140 new cases of the coronavirus on May 11, 2020, which showed a reduction in number from 1,991 cases reported on May 9 around 42.71 percent.

The number of cases reported since the beginning of the outbreak was 32,081 with 706 deaths (as per the report’s filing time).

According to the breakdown, 6,661 were con-firmed cases of hospitalization, with 281 reportedly in a critical condition.

The report estimated that 16,159 were positive cases either at home or isolation facilities.

It also said that 26.66 per cent of the total cases, which stands at 8,555, were dis-charged after recovery.

As of May 13, Pakistan reported more than 34,000 cases of the virus with more than 700 deaths.

New infections

end Hong Kong’s

24-day virus

clean sheet

AFP — HONG KONG

Two people in Hong Kong tested positive for coronavirus, officials said yesterday, ending a 24-day run of no new local cases that saw the city begin to ease social distancing regu-lations.

The financial hub was on course for 28-days of no local transmissions — a yardstick often used by epidemiologists to judge if an outbreak has been defeated.

But yesterday, officials said a 66-year-old woman and her five-year-old granddaughter had tested positive for the virus.

Investigators described them as local transmission cases, saying they were still trying to work out how the older woman had become infected.

“She has no travel history. Her family has no travel history and they have no contact history with confirmed cases,” Dr. Chaung Shuk-kwan told reporters, adding officials were planning to test neighbours.

For the last three weeks the only new cases have been in 24 people arriving from overseas, who were placed in quarantine. The new infec-tions will raise fears that a new outbreak could still occur.

Despite its close proximity and links to mainland China, Hong Kong has kept infections to around 1,000 people with four deaths using intensive testing and contract tracing.

The city has avoided the kind of harsh lockdowns seen elsewhere.

On Friday, authorities began easing many social dis-tancing measures with the re-opening of clubs, gyms and cinemas after a three-week closure.

13THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 EUROPE

England tiptoes out of lockdownREUTERS — LONDON

England tentatively began easing its coronavirus lockdown yesterday, with some people who cannot do their jobs at home urged to return to work.

The worst-hit country in Europe with more than 40,000 deaths from COVID-19, including 275 health and care workers, according to official data, Britain has been in lockdown since March 23.

The government is loosening restrictions only gradually, for fear of triggering a second peak of infections. As of yesterday morning, people in manufac-turing and certain other sectors were being asked to return to work if they could not work from home.

Answering questions in par-liament, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was “very notable” that in some countries where relaxations had been introduced, there were signs that the rate of contagion was rising again.

“That is a very clear warning to us not to proceed too fast or too recklessly,” he said.

Johnson has described the process as a “supremely difficult” balancing act between public health and the economy.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which have semi-autonomous governments, are sticking with a “stay at home” message for now, leaving England, the most populous UK nation, to take the lead in sending some people back to work.

Johnson has been criticised for confusing the public about

what can and can’t be done safely. People have struggled to reconcile the advice to go to work with strong discouragement from using public transport, and with a lack of childcare while schools remain closed.

Many have also asked why people were not allowed to let friends and relatives into their homes, while they are now authorised to allow prospective home buyers in to view their properties.

“All those who talk about confusion or mixed messages are grossly overstating the position,” Johnson said.

“The common sense of the British people is shining through.”

During the morning rush hour in London, commuter trains appeared busier than in past weeks, though still far from pre-pandemic overcrowding. Many people wore face masks, and made noticeable efforts to observe distancing.

The capital’s transit operator, Transport for London, said the number of underground train journeys during the morning peak was about 7 percent higher

than last week, but overall use of the “Tube” network was still down 94 percent compared to last year.

It said it had run about 70 percent of its Tube services and 82 percent of buses. Road traffic into the city was steady, though also well below traditional rush hour levels. Digital information panels said: “Stay home, essential travel only, save lives”.

Asked about video footage showing commuters, not all wearing masks, squeezing on and off crowded buses, Johnson said: “I don’t want to see crowding on mass transit or public transport in our capital or anywhere else.”

Transport Minister Grant Shapps has warned that if trav-ellers stick to the 2-metres social distancing rule, the capacity of the public transport network would be reduced by about 90

percent compared with pre-coronavirus levels.

The government has been under increasing pressure over its handling of the outbreak, which opposition leaders have said was slower than in compa-rable European countries and had been marred by insufficient testing and supplies of protective kit.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer grilled Johnson about the situation in care homes for the elderly, where the outbreak has been particu-larly deadly.

Starmer said there had been 18,000 excess deaths in care homes in April of which only 8,000 were related to COVID-19, meaning there were 10,000 unexplained excess deaths.

Johnson, who has been accused by people working in

care homes of having neglected the sector, said the homes were experiencing an “appalling” epi-demic but made no comment on Starmer’s figures.

“I was disappointed that the prime minister doesn’t have an answer to the pretty obvious question, ‘what are those 10,000 unexplained deaths?’,” said Starmer.

The Labour leader also asked Johnson why the govern-ment’s official advice until March 12 was that “it remains unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected”.

Johnson said it was “not true” that the advice said that. Labour later circulated the advice with the relevant wording and Starmer wrote to Johnson demanding he return to par-liament to correct the record.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking in the House of Commons, in London, yesterday.

Gerry Adams wins appeal against 1970s jailbreak convictionsAFP — LONDON

Former Irish republican leader Gerry Adams (pictured) yesterday won an appeal at Brit-ain’s Supreme Court against two convictions dating back to the darkest days of the violence in Northern Ireland.

Adams, who as Sinn Fein leader was for decades the political figurehead of the anti-British movement in the province, received two jail terms in 1975 for trying to escape from prison.

But he argued that his original detention in 1973, under the British government’s

controversial “internment” pro-gramme of holding terror sus-pects without trial, was invalid.

The Supreme Court judges unanimously agreed, saying the

original interim custody order (ICO) should have been made personally by the British minister for Northern Ireland at the time.

Instead, it was made by a more junior minister.

“The making of the ICO in respect of the appellant (Adams) was invalid. It follows that he was not detained lawfully,” the judgement said.

“It further follows that he was wrongfully convicted of the offences of attempting to escape from lawful custody and his con-victions for those offences must be quashed.” Adams was detained under an order issued on July 21, 1973, on suspicion of

involvement in spiralling unrest over Britain’s control of Northern Ireland, which became known as The Troubles.

He twice tried to escape, in December 1973 and July 1974, from the high-security Maze prison near Belfast, which housed pro-British loyalist and repub-lican paramilitaries.

But the escape plans, reportedly orchestrated by the Irish Republican Army, both failed and he was jailed in 1975 for a total of four and a half years.

After the ruling, Adams, now 71, urged the British gov-ernment to identify others whose internment may also

have been unlawful.“I have no regrets about my

imprisonment, except for the time I was separated from my family. However, we were not on our own,” he said in a statement.

“There is an onus on the British government to identify and inform other internees whose internment may also have been unlawful.”

Between 1971 and 1975 nearly 2,000 mainly republican pris-oners were held without trial, according to Ulster University.

The British government allowed detention without trial — internment — in Northern Ireland since 1922.

Italy’s daily virus death toll rises, new cases fallREUTERS — ROME

Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 195 yesterday, against 172 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, but the daily tally of new cases fell to 888 from 1,402 on Tuesday.

The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on February 21 now stands at 31,106 the agency said, the third highest in the world after those of the United States and Britain.

The number of confirmed cases amounts to 222,104, the fifth highest global tally behind those of the United States, Spain, Britain and Russia.

People registered as cur-rently carrying the illness fell to 78,457 from 81,266 the day before, the agency said.

There were 893 people in intensive care yesterday, down from 952 on Tuesday, main-taining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 112,541 were declared recovered against 109,039 a day earlier. The agency said 1.779 million people had been tested for the virus against 1.742 million on Tuesday, out of a population of around 60 million.

Germany to relax border controls with neighboursANATOLIA — BERLIN

G e r m a n y a n n o u n c e d yesterday that it will relax border checks with several neighbouring countries beginning from this weekend amid a decline in the number of new coronavirus infec-tions.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told a news con-ference in Berlin that relax-ation of border checks with neighbouring countries France, Austria and Swit-zerland will begin on Saturday.

“Our goal is to completely end border controls on June 15,” Seehofer said, but also underlined that lifting travel restrictions with these coun-tries would depend on the evolution of the epidemio-logical situation.

Controls on border with the tiny European country of Luxembourg will be lifted completely on Friday, he noted.

Talks were still underway with Danish authorities for setting a date to reopen the border with Denmark, See-hofer also added.

In March, the German government announced travel restrictions and intro-duced border checks with five neighboring countries — Austria, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Denmark — in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

Germany and all five neighbouring countries are in the Schengen area, Europe’s border-free travel zone. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government decided last week to ease strict coro-navirus lockdown measures in the country, amid decline in the number of infections in recent weeks.

Swim and jog, but no sunbathing: France reopens some beachesAFP — PARIS

Runners and swimmers redis-covered the sea air yesterday as France opened a selection of Atlantic coast beaches closed during the coronavirus lockdown, while the Lourdes sanctuary prepared to welcome back Catholic pilgrims this weekend.

But the cautious relaxation of restrictions stipulated that while beach-goers can swim or go fishing, no sunbathing is allowed. The Catholic shrine at Lourdes, meanwhile, will allow only a limited number of vis-itors and keep some areas off-limits.

Local officials have reo-pened a number of beaches on the west of France, banning any “static presence — seated or lying down”, including picnicking.

Walkers, swimmers, indi-vidual watersports practitioners and anglers are welcome, pro-vided they respect the social-distancing rule of one metre between individuals, said a tweet from the Loire-Atlantique department.

Other beaches remain off-limits, however, including Deauville in Normandy, a favourite with Parisians, for whom it is a 2.5-hour train ride away.

“If we say we will open the beaches, everyone will descend on them and it will be a terrible crowd,” Deauville mayor Philippe Augier told the France 3 broadcaster.

Beaches on the Mediter-ranean coast and the North Sea could reopen from this weekend for walks and sporting activities, say local officials.

France started emerging on

Monday from a two-month lockdown, which the gov-ernment credits with saving tens of thousands of lives by limiting the spread of the coro-navirus, but which has exacted a heavy economic toll.

The country remains on high alert, with heightened pre-cautions in so-called “red

zones” — including Paris and the wider Ile-de-France region —where the virus remains active.

Cafes, restaurants, many schools, parks and gardens remain shuttered in these areas, on top of a nationwide ban on gatherings of more than 10 people.

In lower-risk areas, local officials can apply for per-mission to reopen beaches and lakes.

In France’s southwest meanwhile, the Lourdes sanc-tuary, which receives millions of visitors every year, said it would start reopening from Saturday.

A customer deposits money in a box in front of a market stall in central Strasbourg, eastern France, yesterday, on the third day of easing of lockdown measures.

Spain reports 184 new deaths from virus, total rises to 27,104ANATOLIA — OVIEDO

For the third day in a row, Spain reported less than 450 new COVID-19 infections and under 200 daily deaths yesterday, confirming positive trends in the outbreak’s evolution.

With 184 more fatalities, Spain’s official death toll now sits at 27,104. The country has also counted a total of 228,691 infec-tions, for which nearly 124,000 people have been hospitalised.

Fernando Simon, Spain’s

chief epidemiologist, in a press conference yesterday said the current trends are likely to con-tinue unless things change due to “improper use of the new con-ditions of mobility that have been permitted.”

Around half of Spain, including big cities like Bar-celona, and the capital Madrid, remains under a stricter lockdown than other parts of the country where outdoor terraces and small shops have opened. Spain’s main epidemiological

body is now publishing the basic reproduction rate of coronavirus in the country. As of Monday, it was at 0.78, up slightly from a low of 0.67 on May 5.

Early March, before the lockdown was called in Spain, the rate was much higher - standing at 4.31 — and one person with COVID-19 infected an average of at least four others, according to the study.

On Tuesday, government officials said the temporary layoff measure that currently supports

3.3 million workers will be extended until June 30.

Spanish Labor Minister Yolanda Diaz admitted that some 300,000 people who have applied and qualify for these pay-ments have yet to receive any money, but added that they will be paid within the next week.

Figures released by a Madrid neighborhood association and the city council show more than 100,000 people are now relying on daily help from food banks in the Spanish capital.

For the last three nights, dozens of right-wing protestors have gathered in the wealthy Madrid district of Salamanca, calling for Sanchez’s resignation.

According to local media, the Spanish government is consid-ering making masks obligatory in all public spaces. For the moment, masks are only man-d a t o r y o n p u b l i c transportation.

“Now, masks are highly rec-ommended for anyone on the

street. Making it obligatory could be over-reacting a little bit, but it could be fine, yet they can gen-erate problems for people with breathing difficulties. The best mask is [keeping] two meters of distance,” said Simon on Tuesday.

After originating in China last December, COVID-19, the disease caused by the corona-virus, has spread to 187 coun-tries and regions across the world. Europe and the US are currently the worst-hit regions.

The worst-hit country in Europe with more than 40,000 deaths from COVID-19, including 275 health and care workers, according to official data, Britain has been in lockdown since March 23.

14 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020EUROPE / AMERICAS

Russia reports 10,028 virus cases in 24 hoursAFP — MOSCOW

Russia reported more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases yesterday, continuing a grim trend that has seen the country register the world’s second-highest number of infections.

Health officials reported 10,028 new cases over the last 24 hours, bringing Russia’s total number of infections to 242,271.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told parliament more than 100,000 patients are now hospitalised with confirmed or suspected coronavirus, a jump from the figure of 80,000 he gave on Friday.

Nearly 1,500 patients are currently on ventilators, the minister said.

An unofficial list of deaths among medics started by a group of Russian doctors listed 174 names as of yesterday, including some from neigh-bouring Belarus.

Some medical workers have complained of shortages of pro-tective gear and said medics are dying at a higher rate in Russia than elsewhere.

Murashko acknowledged ongoing “disruptions” in sup-plies of personal protective equipment for medics, while he said those working in “red zones” with infected patients now have enough.

Russia ’s healthcare

regulator yesterday ordered a halt to the use of ventilators believed to have caused two fires at coronavirus hospitals in Moscow and Saint Petersburg that left six people dead.

The blazes have been linked to domestically-produced Aventa-M breathing machines which were also part of a Russian shipment to the United States on April 1.

A spokesman for the US Federal Emergency Man-agement Agency said the equipment had been sent to hospitals in US states New York and New Jersey but had not been used.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the states are returning the ventilators to FEMA” and any future use will be decided after the Russian probe con-cludes, the spokesman added.

The Kremlin this week began easing a national lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, despite a steady rise in numbers that on Tuesday brought Russia to second place in a global tally of infections, behind only the United States.

A majority of Russia’s new cases were registered in the capital, a government virus tally said, where Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has extended a lockdown until the end of May.

Prominent lawmaker Oxana Pushkina said she tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the latest high-profile political figure to get infected.

She said she had no symptoms and added she hoped to get back to work soon.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin earlier tested positive and were hospitalised.

Peskov’s wife, Olympic ice dancer Tatiana Navka, who has also tested positive, wrote on Instagram that she was already recovering but “it’s a bit more complicated for my husband”.

Despite the steady rise in new cases, Russia’s reported mortality rate is significantly lower compared to other European countries hit hard by the pandemic, with 96 new deaths and a total of 2,212 dead

from the coronavirus as of yesterday.

Authorities say the low mortality rate is because Russia was able to learn lessons from the experiences of western Europe, moving quickly to isolate travellers and people at risk, convert hospitals for virus

patients and launch a vast cam-paign to test and quarantine those infected.

Health Minister Murashko said low fatalities were “thanks to our hero medics”.

Authorities on Monday said they had carried out nearly six million tests.

But critics have cast doubt on the figures, accusing the authorities of under-counting by blaming virus-related deaths on other causes.

Murashko said that Russia was working on developing vaccines and clinical tests are planned to start in June.

National Guard servicemen detain a man for disobedience towards them in front of a supermarket in Moscow, yesterday, amid the outbreak of COVID-19.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro denies blocking police probeAFP — BRASÍLIA

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro denied on Tuesday he had top police officials fired to shield his family from investi-gations, as potentially damning revelations continued to fly in a case that has hurt the far-right leader.

An obstruction of justice probe opened after Bolsonaro fired the federal police chief took an explosive turn as investi-gators viewed a video of a cabinet meeting at which the president allegedly indicated he wanted changes to the police top brass in order to muzzle ongoing

investigations.Bolsonaro acknowledged

talking about his family at the April 22 Cabinet meeting, but said he was referring to pro-tecting their physical safety. He said that had been a top concern since he himself was stabbed during his 2018 presidential campaign.

“I never said the word ‘investigation.’ My concern since the stabbing has always been for my family’s security,” he told journalists outside the presi-dential palace.

“The tape was supposed to be destroyed. I don’t know why it wasn’t,” he added.

He said on Twitter that he would have no problem publicly releasing any part of the video pertaining to the investigation.

The public saga goes back to April 24, when popular justice minister Sergio Moro resigned over the firing of federal police chief Mauricio Valeixo.

Moro, an anti-corruption crusader, accused Bolsonaro of improper “political interference” in the police’s work.

Following Moro’s scathing departure, a Supreme Court justice ordered an investigation into whether the president com-mitted obstruction of justice or other crimes.

As part of that probe, inves-tigators viewed the cabinet meeting video on Tuesday at federal police offices in Brasilia. They also questioned three Bol-sonaro cabinet ministers.

Moro says the president pressured him at the meeting to ensure the head of the federal police in Rio de Janeiro was replaced, in order to protect his family. Other parts of the video threaten to hurt Bolsonaro, as well.

According to a series of leaks to the Brazilian media, the pres-ident and his cabinet used off-color language and insults in talking about various politicians,

Supreme Court justices and Bra-zil’s biggest trading partner, China. Police are reportedly investigating multiple cases involving Bolsonaro and his inner circle, including allega-tions his son Carlos, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor, oversaw a fake-news campaign to benefit his father.

The scandal comes at a del-icate time for Bolsonaro, who is already facing criticism over his downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic. A new poll conducted by the MDA institute found his disapproval rating had risen more than eight points since January, to 55.4 percent.

Serbia protests

priests’ detention

in Montenegro

AP — PODGORICA

Serbia yesterday strongly protested the detention of eight Serbian Orthodox Church priests in Montenegro after thousands of people attended a religious procession despite a ban on gatherings because of the coronavirus.

Montenegrin prosecutors said that the priests are facing charges of violating health reg-ulations during the virus out-break by organising the pro-cession on Tuesday in the western town of Niksic.

Most people participating in the procession didn’t wear face masks or keep a safe dis-tance from each other.

Angry over the arrests, sup-porters of the Serbian Orthodox Church blocked a regional road in northern Montenegro yes-terday, according to the state Montenegrin RTCG television. The report said that a long line of blocked cars formed down the road.

The detentions heightened tensions between the small Adriatic state and Serbia and its church which earlier this year led weeks of protests against a religious law that it says would strip the church of its property. Montenegrin offi-cials have repeatedly denied the allegations.

Serbia’s president, Ale-ksandar Vucic, and Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Irinej said in a joint statement yesterday that they hope the arrests won’t spark any “unwanted unrest or clashes.”

The patriarch said the detentions “are only a proof that the Montenegrin state is conducting a purge of the Serbian Orthodox Church.” Vucic urged a peaceful reso-lution of the crisis and a quick release of the priests.

Montenegro, a country of 620,000 people, split from much larger Serbia in a refer-endum in 2006.

Hungary social media ‘scaremongering’ detentions spark alarmAFP — BUDAPEST

A spate of Hungarian police detentions over alleged scare-mongering on social media about the coronavirus pandemic has alarmed opposition politi-cians who accuse Prime Minister Viktor Orban of abusing the special powers granted to him in March.

According to police, some 86 criminal investigations into scaremongering have been launched since the definition of the offence was widened as part of anti-coronavirus emergency legislation adopted by par-liament on March 30.

That law enables Orban to rule by decree until his gov-ernment decides the virus crisis is over, while new rules set out jail terms of up to five years for spreading fake news about the pandemic or government measures taken to combat it.

A member of the Momentum opposition party was detained in southern Hungary yesterday after posting a message about a controversial government policy of clearing non-virus patients

out of hospitals to make beds available for COVID-19 sufferers.

“The silencing of critical voices has begun, namely by police action intimidating people who are writing or telling the truth,” said Akos Hadhazy, an independent opposition MP, in a Facebook message.

A 64-year-old man in north-eastern Hungary was held for hours on Tuesday for allegedly “publishing false facts on a social media site” last month, police said in a statement.

“Police are continuously monitoring the internet,” it said.

The man’s post criticised a government decision about its nationwide lockdown, and included the remark: “You are a merciless tyrant, but remember, until now dictators always fall”.

He was later released and told local news-site 444.hu that police, who published a video of the man being taken for ques-tioning, had asked him who he was referring to by the word “dictator”.

Prosecutors told local media yeserday that the case

had been dropped. “In the post the man just

expressed his opinion, he crit-icised the government, scare-mongering is not about opinions,” Julia Kaputa, a lawyer with the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union NGO, told the website.

Prior to the March amendment, “scaremongering” meant “stating or dissemi-nating before the public at

large an untrue fact or a fact distorted in such a way that may cause confusion or unrest in a larger group of people”.

Under the new rules it is now also considered scare-mongering if such statements “hinder or foil the effec-tiveness” of anti-virus measures.

Last week a 52-year-old woman was also detained after police said she wrote a social

media post that claimed several health care institutions will soon close in Hungary.

That could undermine con-fidence in the public health system, said the police statement. Hungary’s anti-coronavirus emergency law has drawn fire in Brussels as well as at home. The European Par-liament will debate the legis-lation and rule of law in Hungary today.

A nurse takes a sample from a man’s throat for the coronavirus test at one of the sampling points of the Pecs University, in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, yesterday.

Coronavirus cases spike in second Colombian prisonREUTERS — BOGOTA

Half the prisoners at a jail in the Colombian city Leticia, near the Amazonian borders of Brazil and Peru, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the latest example of the threats facing the region’s prisons as they confront the pandemic.

Eighty-nine of 180 inmates and one staff member at the jail, located in the capital of Colom-bia’s Amazonas province, have tested positive, the national prison agency INPEC said on Tuesday.

The outbreak in the prison

is counted among 743 cases reported in Amazonas, one of the country’s most sparsely populated provinces.

At least 25 people in the province have died from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, according to Colombia’s National Health Institute.

Amazonas has a population of around 66,000 people. Colombian capital Bogota, which is home to more than 8 million people, has reported 4,563 cases of the coronavirus.

President Ivan Duque said

special containment measures would be taken for the Leticia jail, though he did not give details. Colombia would further militarise its closed border, sending troops to crossing points to prevent imported cases in Amazonas, Duque added, as well as distribute additional medical supplies to the province.

Across the border, Brazil’s identically named Amazonas state said in April its health system was overwhelmed by the pandemic, with all available intensive care beds and venti-lators occupied.

State capital Manaus, a city of 2 million people located in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon, has been hit particularly hard by the virus, with mass burials needed to keep up with soaring deaths.

The outbreak at the Leticia jail is the second major one in a Colombian prison. The prison in the central city of Villavicencio, in Meta province, has also reported high infections, with some 838 inmates and staff struck by the illness.

Infection numbers in the two prisons are higher than many of the country’s medium-sized cities.

Poland to reopen restaurants and hairdressers on May 18REUTERS — WARSAW

Poland will reopen restaurants and hairdressers from next Monday as it eases corona-virus-linked restrictions, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said yesterday.

Poland, the largest economy of the European Union’s eastern members, started relaxing some of its curbs on public life in April. Earlier in May it allowed hotels, shopping centres and kinder-gartens to reopen.

“At least to some extent we have contained the epidemic, therefore we can gradually unfreeze the economy,” Morawiecki told a news con-ference, a day after Poland saw its largest rise in coronavirus cases in a single day.

Health Minister Lukasz Szu-mowski told reporters that the coronavirus reproduction rate had fallen below 1 in Poland, meaning that statistically speaking one infected person led to fewer than one new infections in other people.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told Parliament that more than 100,000 patients are now hospitalised with confirmed or suspected coronavirus, a jump from the figure of 80,000 he gave on Friday.

15THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020 AMERICAS

US governors seek Washington aid to fight ‘red, white and blue’ pandemic

REUTERS — NEW YORK

Governors of the 50 US states yesterday urged leaders in Washington to abandon parti-sanship and deliver relief to cities and states facing economic disaster in their efforts to battle what they called a “red, white and blue pandemic.”

The plea followed the unveiling on Tuesday of a $3 trillion-plus coronavirus relief package by Democrats in the US House of Representatives.The proposal would provide funding for states, businesses and families.

Without specifically mentioning

Tuesday’s bill, the bipartisan National Governors Association asked Congress to deliver “urgent state fiscal relief.”

“This is not a red state and blue state crisis... It does not attack Democrats or Repub-licans. It attacks Americans,” the association’s chair, Mary-land’s Larry Hogan, a Repub-lican, and its vice chair, New York’s Andrew Cuomo, a Dem-ocrat, wrote in a statement citing colours applied to their respective parties.

“The nation’s governors are counting on our leaders in Washington to come together, put partisanship aside, and to get this done for the American

people,” they said.The proposed legislation,

more than doubling the congres-sional financial response to the crisis, includes nearly $1 trillion in long-sought assistance for state and local governments bearing the brunt of a pandemic that has infected nearly 1.4 million people in the United States and killed more than 82,000.

Republicans in Congress want to hold off on new coro-navirus relief to assess the impact of nearly $3 trillion in assistance that Congress has allocated since early March.

“It’s dead on arrival here,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said of the House bill.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell yesterday called the US response to date “par-ticularly swift and forceful,” but also called for additional fiscal spending.

“There is a sense, growing sense I think, that the recovery may come more slowly than we would like. But it will come, and that may mean that it’s necessary for us to do more,” Powell said in a webcast by the Peterson Institute for Interna-tional Economics.

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, the city hardest hit by the pandemic, appealed to US President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, to back the

additional funding.“The difference maker right

now... is obviously the pres-ident of the United States. And I’ll say it simply today. Mr Pres-ident, we’re looking to you. Your hometown is looking to you and cities and states all over the country,” de Blasio said at his daily briefing.

States and cities are exper-imenting with ways to safely reopen after the coronavirus outbreak shuttered businesses and forced tens of millions of Americans out of work.

But as the lockdowns have

eased, the University of Wash-ington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has steadily increased its pro-jections for US deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. On Tuesday, it revised its estimate to more than 147,000 deaths by early August, up nearly 10,000.

In Congress on Tuesday, the top US infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, urged states to wait for clear signs of improvement, such as a significant decline in new infections, and warned of a

potential new outbreak that would risk lives and set back economic recovery if they eased restrictions too soon.

Governors have defended their decisions to reopen and said they were meeting Fauci’s recommended metrics.

“I really believe in this slow and steady reopening,” Rhode Island Governor Gina Rai-m o n d o t o l d M S N B C yesterday.

“My goal of course is to reopen once.” Companies facing a precipitous loss in revenue are also anxious to re-open.

Frontline hospital workers react during a programme, in New York, yesterday.

Paul Manafort released from prison due to virus concernsAP — WASHINGTON

Paul Manafort (pictured), Donald Trump’s onetime pres-idential campaign chairman who was convicted as part of the special counsel’s Russia investigation, has been released from federal prison to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement due to concerns about the corona-virus, his lawyer said yesterday.

Manafort, 71, was let out yesterday morning from FCI Loretto, a low-security prison in Pennsylvania, according to his attorney, Todd Blanche. Manafort, jailed since June 2018, had been serving more than seven years in prison fol-lowing his conviction.

His release comes as prison advocates and congressional leaders have been pressing the Justice Department for weeks to release at-risk inmates before a potential outbreak in the system. His lawyers had asked the Bureau of Prisons to release him to home con-finement, arguing that he was at high risk for coronavirus because of his age and preex-isting medical conditionsI Loretto.

California cancels fall university classes as Fauci warns of reopening too soonREUTERS — LOS ANGELES

California’s state university system, the largest in the United States, canceled classes on Tuesday for the fall semester because of the coronavirus, while Los Angeles County said its stay-at-home order was likely to be extended by three months.

The announcements on the West Coast came after the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, told Congress that lifting the sweeping lockdowns could touch off new outbreaks of the illness, which has killed nearly 81,000 Americans and devas-tated the economy.

In one of the first indications the pandemic will continue to have a significant impact into autumn, the chancellor of Cal-ifornia State University said classes at its 23 campuses would be canceled for the semester that begins in Sep-tember, with instruction moved online.

“Our university, when open without restrictions and fully in person, as is the traditional norm of the past, is a place where over 500,000 people come together in close and vibrant proximity with each other on a daily basis,” the chancellor, Timothy White, said in a statement.

“That approach, sadly, just isn’t in the cards now.” Los Angeles County Health Director

Barbara Ferrer added her own grim forecast, saying stay-at-home curbs for 10 million res-idents, including the city of Los Angeles, would probably remain in place, in some form, through the summer.

“While the Safer at Home orders will remain in place over the next few months, restric-tions will be gradually relaxed,” under a planned reopening of the local economy as the out-break ebbs, she said.

Her remarks came after California Governor Gavin Newsom said restaurants in parts of the state could again begin allowing diners inside under modified conditions and outdoor shopping malls could be permitted to open for curbside pickup.

Offices in parts of California can also open with some limi-tations, Newsom told a daily news briefing. But his latest plan for restarting the world’s fifth-largest economy keeps nail salons, tattoo parlors and fitness clubs closed.

“It’s a mistake to over-promise what re-opening means,” said Newsom, a Dem-ocrat who was the first gov-ernor to issue statewide stay-at-home orders and has been more cautious in relaxing them than counterparts in other states.

Earlier, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a US Senate panel that

prematurely ending restrictions on commerce and social life c o u l d h a v e d i r e consequences.

“I think we’re going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have by any means total control of this outbreak,” Fauci said during the 3-1/2-hour hearing.

He urged states to follow health experts’ recommenda-tions to wait for clear signs of improvement, such as a signif-icant decline in new infections, before reopening.

“There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control and, in fact, paradoxi-cally, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and

death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery,” Fauci said.

The COVID-19 respiratory disease caused by the new virus has already infected more than 1.3 million Americans and killed at least 80,976, according to a Reuters tally.

That toll is projected to climb significantly in coming months. The latest forecast from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is for more than 147,000 deaths from COVID-19 by early August, up nearly 10,000 from the last pro-jection, as social distancing is i n c r e a s i n g l y r e l a x e d , researchers said.

Arizona was the latest state

to do away with restrictions. Republican Governor Doug Ducey said stay-at-home orders in place since March 31 will be allowed to expire on Friday.

“This is not a green light to speed,” Ducey told a news con-ference in Phoenix. “This is a green light to proceed, and we’re going to proceed with caution.”

In New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak, Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state needs $61bn in federal stimulus to help reopen its economy. He called on Congress and US Pres-ident Donald Trump to support legislation to plug funding gaps.

“This economy has been damaged through no fault of anyone,” said Cuomo, a Democrat.

A respiratory therapist prepares to attend to a patient suffering from the coronavirus disease in the intensive care unit at hospital in Chula Vista, California, on Tuesday.

Canada, US may extend travel curbs until June 21REUTERS — OTTAWA

Canada and the United States appear likely to extend a ban on non-essential travel until June 21 amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, sources in both nations said yesterday.

The two neighbours had agreed on April 18 to extend border restrictions until May 21 as cases of the disease continue to rise in both nations. Canada is now pressing for the measures to remain for another month.

“It’s too early to lift the restrictions, so we’re working toward an extension,” said one Canadian government source, describing the talks with Wash-ington as positive.

In Washington, a US official confirmed the two sides were set to agree on a 30-day extension. On Tuesday, the chief Canadian public health officer said the United States — where cases are increasing steadily— presented a risk.

The sources requested ano-nymity given the sensitivity of the situation. News of the request for a 30-day extension was first reported by the Globe and Mail newspaper.

The agreement allows the flow of goods across a border that stretches 8,891km and is a crossing point for one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships.

Mexican nurse who appealed for respect now has virusAP — MEXICO CITY

A Mexican nursing supervisor who touched the hearts of the nation when she made a tearful appeal for respect for health care professionals said on Tuesday she has tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Fabiana Zepeda is the head of nursing for the Mexican Social Security Institute. The institute republished a Tweet from her account, saying she was self-iso-lating after testing positive for COVID-19.

In late April, Zepeda appeared at the government’s daily coronavirus press briefing. She said that, at the time, fellow nurses had suffered 21 attacks or instances of abuse since the pan-demic began, apparently because of fears they would spread the virus.

Zepeda’s voice broke as she described how nurses have been told not to wear their uniforms on the street to avoid being the target of abuse or discrimination.

“These attacks have hit my

profession hard,” Zepeda said. “We are giving our lives in the hospitals.”

The institute wrote in its Twitter account on Tuesday that “we know that soon she will show that her greatest strength is never giving up, and we await her return to direct the army of nurses who form the heart of Social Security.”

The novel coronavirus has killed 111 medical personnel in Mexico and the virus has infected between 8,500 and 15,000 hos-pital staffers. Assistant Health

Secretary Hugo López-Gatell said the dead included 66 doctors, 16 nurses and 29 other hospital staff, including support personnel, dentists and lab techs.

There are 8,544 confirmed COVID-19 cases among health professionals in Mexico, and another 6,747 suspected cases, many of which are awaiting test results. The country’s total coro-navirus case load has increased to 38,324 cases, with 3,926 deaths, though officials have acknowledged the true number is probably much higher.

Washington extends virus stay-at-home order till June 8REUTERS — WASHINGTON

The District of Columbia, seat of the US federal government, extended its stay-at-home order through June 8, the mayor said yesterday.

The stay-at-home order, intended to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, had been scheduled to end on May 15.

Mayor Muriel Bowser left open the possibility that the US capital could reopen sooner, telling reporters that if it hit certain metrics including a declining number of cases over 14 days and sustained low transmission rate, she could move to open sooner.

Washington has reported 6,584 cases of the coronavirus and 350 deaths so far. Though Bowser said the data reflected some encouraging signs, she said, “We are not there yet.”

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has steadily increased its projections for US deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. On Tuesday, it revised its estimate to more than 147,000 deaths by early August, up nearly 10,000.

16 THURSDAY 14 MAY 2020MORNING BREAK

Europe promisesto reopen forsummer tourismAFP — BRUSSELS

The EU yesterday set out plans for a phased restart of travel this summer, hoping to save millions of tourism jobs threatened by the coronavirus pandemic across Europe, the world’s top holiday destination.

Travel restrictions to combat the virus have already had a devastating impact on the sector, with airlines around the continent forced to shed tens of thousands of jobs.

Under new guidelines from Brussels, holidaymakers could be asked to wear facemasks on planes, respect social distancing on the beach and even book slots to use hotel pools.

Tourism is vital to the EU as a whole, accounting for 10 percent of GDP and supporting 23 million jobs.

It is especially important to southern countries already struggling with debt and the impact of COVID-19 — notably Greece, Italy and Spain.

“Today’s guidance can be the chance of a better season

for the many Europeans whose livelihood depends on tourism and, of course, for those who would like to travel this summer,” the EU commission’s executive vice president Mar-grethe Vestager told reporters.

In a stark sign of the crisis facing the industry, the world’s biggest tourism group TUI said yesterday it planned to slash 8,000 jobs as it reported a net loss of over ¤750m for the first three months of the year.

While decisions about reo-pening borders fall to national governments, Brussels is urging the 27 EU states to take a coor-dinated approach to lifting restrictions — after a haphazard start to the crisis in which cap-itals closed frontiers with little or no consultation.

The EU is proposing a three-stage approach, starting with the current situation in which most non-essential travel across borders is banned.

In the next phase, the EU wants border restrictions lifted between countries and regions at a similar stage of the pan-

demic, and where the health sit-uation is improving.

In the final phase, all coro-navirus-related border controls would be lifted and travel per-mitted throughout Europe once again.

No timescale has been announced, with Brussels urging governments to consider economic and social factors as well as health when they weigh up reopening their borders.

Germany plans to end virus restrictions at its borders with Luxembourg , Austr ia ,

Switzerland and France on June 15, with family and business trips permitted as soon as Friday.

Aside from the economic impact, the annual summer holiday is an important ritual cherished by millions of Europeans.

“This is not going to be a normal summer... but when we all do our part we don’t have to face a summer stuck at home or completely lost for tourism industry,” Vestager said.

Holidays in the time of

coronavirus look set to be rather different than before, with measures in place to min-imise the risk of infection.

Travellers should wear facemasks while on shared transport such as planes, trains and buses — as well as at hubs such as airports and railway stations, under the EU recommendations.

Fewer passengers may be allowed on board to allow them to maintain safe distancing, and buffet trolleys and dining cars will be shuttered.

Travel agency workers demonstrating in front of the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin yesterday, in order to point to the economic plight of the tourism sector amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Netflix to adapt new, untranslated Elena Ferrante novelAFP — NEW YORK

Netflix announced on Tuesday it will adapt the new novel from Italian writer Elena Ferrante, “The Lying Life of Adults,” into a television series, even though the book won’t be translated into English until September.

“Netflix and Fandango are joining forces to develop a series based on ‘The Lying Life of Adults,’ the latest novel by the beloved Italian novelist Elena Ferrante,” the streaming giant said in a statement.

The series will be produced in partnership with Italian pro-duction company Fandango, whose founder Domenico Pro-cacci worked on the television adaptation of Ferrante’s series “My Brilliant Friend.”

The four-part saga “My Bril-liant Friend,” which sky-rocketed Ferrante to global fame, was also turned into a

series by HBO in collaboration with the Italian national broad-casting channel Rai.

At the end of April, HBO ordered a third season of “My Brilliant Friend.” The novel on which it is based has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.

“The Lying Life of Adults” (“La Vita bugiarda degli adulti”) follows the life of Giovanna from childhood to adolescence in the 90s, with — as in Fer-rante’s previous novels — the city of Naples as the backdrop.

Netflix’s statement implied that the series will be shot in Italy, in Italian — the book’s original language.

“The Lying Life of Adults” book was released in November 2019 in Italian, and will be pub-lished in 25 languages in Sep-tember, according to the statement. Despite the massive success of the “My Brilliant

Friend” novels, published between 2011 and 2014 in Italy, Ferrante has never made her identity public and continues to use a pen name.

The most likely candidate,

put forward by Italian journalist Claudio Gatti, is Roman trans-lator Anita Raja. The theory has neither been confirmed nor denied by Ferrante’s Italian publisher, Edizioni E/O.

A file photo shows books by Italian writer Elena Ferrante in a bookstore in Rome.

113-year-old Spanish womansurvives coronavirus diseaseAFP — MADRID

A 113-year-old woman, believed to be the oldest person living in Spain, has beaten the coronavirus at a retirement home where several other resi-dents died from the disease, the residence said on Tuesday.

Maria Branyas, who was born in the US, became infected in April at the Santa Maria del Tura care home in the eastern city of Olot, where she has lived for the past 20 years, and fought the respiratory illness off in isolation in her room.

“She survived the disease and is doing fine,” a spokes-woman for the residence told AFP, adding Branyas had only displayed mild symptoms.

“She feels good now, she took a test last week and the result was negative,” the spokeswoman said without giving further details.

Branyas, a mother of three, was isolated in her room for weeks, with only a single employee in protective gear allowed in to check on her, according to Catalan regional television TV3, which broadcast images of the centenarian.

In the video Branyas can be heard calling the staff at the residence “very kind, very attentive”.

When an employee asks her for the secret of her long life, Branyas replies simply that she is lucky to enjoy “good health”.

The care home has recorded “several” virus-related deaths during the pan-demic, the spokeswoman for the residence said.

Branyas’ daughter Rosa Moret told the station that her mother was “in shape, wanting to talk, to explain, to reflect, she has become herself again”.

Several articles have been published in Spanish media in recent years about Branyas, considered to be the oldest person in the country.

She was born on March 4, 1907 in San Francisco where her father, who was from northern Spain, worked as a journalist.

Branyas moved to Spain with her family on a boat during World War I and also lived through the Spanish flu pandemic that swept the world in 1918-19 as well as Spain’s 1936-39 civil war.

100-year-oldRussian beatsCOVID-19AFP — MOSCOW

Russia celebrated a rare bit of good news yesterday as a 100-year-old woman left a Moscow hospital after fully recovering from the corona-virus.

In the country’s first reported case of a survivor that old, the woman, Pelageya Poyarkova, was discharged on her 100th birthday, the Moscow clinic treating her said.

Russian television showed the elderly woman wearing a face mask and clutching a bouquet of red roses as she exited in a wheelchair, sur-rounded by doctors and journalists.

Poyarkova had contracted the virus from a fellow patient at another hospital where she had been receiving routine treatment.

After testing positive and developing several symptoms she was transferred to the Moscow Brain Centre, which normally specialises in stroke victims but has been repur-posed to treat coronavirus patients.

The hospital said Poyarkova was the first Russian cente-narian to have fully recovered from the virus.

“She turned out to be a tough old lady,” the hospital’s acting director Vsevolod Bel-ousov said on Russian tele-vision. She did not require intensive care and had standard treatment with blood-thinning drugs, he said. Born in Moscow,

the elderly woman now lives with her daughter and son-in-law. Her husband was killed in World War II, leaving her to care for her young child alone, the hospital said.

Russia has now reported 242,271 cases of coronavirus and is the world’s second worst-affected country after the United States in terms of number of infections.

Pelageya Poyarkova, 100, wears a protective mask while leaving the Brain Centre in Moscow, yesterday.

Buzz off: Italian

start-up offers

social distancing

bracelets

AFP — BARI, ITALY

As the world embraces a new post-pandemic reality, an Italian start-up has come up with a novel way to maintain social distancing: an electronic bracelet that informs users when they are too close to others.

The device also tells users if they have come into contact with someone who later tests positive — key to tracing cases that have allowed some coun-tries to keep their coronavirus cases under control.

The gadget has already been adopted by some busi-nesses hoping it may prove handy as Italy emerges from its months-long lockdown.

“We’ve already received orders from seaside resorts, hotel chains, schools and com-panies,” said Antonello Bar-racane, manager of MetaWellness, the firm behind the bracelet.

The Bari-based company came up with the “Labby Light” bracelet that vibrates when another person comes within a one metre (over three foot) range.

The device also tracks other bracelets around it, so if someone later tests positive for the virus it will alert those who came in close contact with that user. The bracelet sells for ¤25 ($27) and traces contact via a chip that can be removed and worn in a mask or an elec-tronic key.

A similar bracelet has been developed by the Belgian company Rombit, which said in mid-April that workers at the port of Antwerp would test it. Both companies say their devices guarantee privacy.

Giuseppe Di Bari, a dentist, has started using the device at his practice to ensure clients don’t get too close to each other. When patients arrive they are equipped with a mask, shoe coverings and an elec-tronic bracelet.

The device could also come in handy if a client falls ill later and suspects they may have caught the virus at the dentist. “I would be able to prove that he has not been in contact with any positive person,” the dentist said.

Broadway tostay closeduntil earlySeptemberAFP/REUTERS — NEW YORK

New York’s beloved Broadway theatres will not reopen until at least early September, its trade association announced on Tuesday.

While the Broadway League did not set a date for performances to resume, they said refunds and ticket exchanges now are offered for performances through Sep-tember 6.

The decision is not partic-ularly surprising given that New York remains the US epi-center of the coronavirus pan-demic, with COVID-19 con-tinuing to kill more than 150 people a day in the state.

Reopening the arts and entertainment sectors, a major feature of life in New York, is in the final phase of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s four-part plan to return economic and cultural activity to the state.

“While all Broadway shows would love to resume performances as soon as pos-sible, we need to ensure the health and well-being of eve-ryone who comes to the theater before shows can return,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the Broadway League’s president, in a statement.

Along with virtually all events in the city Broadway’s theaters shut in mid-March, when 31 productions were running and eight were in rehearsals with spring opening dates. The shuttering of the city’s most bankable tourist attraction is a major blow: in normal times, those theaters would be raking in $33m a week in ticket sales.

Producers are discussing staging shows with smaller casts rather than big musicals, and writers have been working on stories that allow for social distancing.

Broadway closed its the-atres on March 12. Thirty-one shows were playing at that time including hits such as "Hamilton,” "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and "To Kill a Mockingbird.”

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