Tuesday 31 March 2020

7 Sha'aban - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8213

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BUSINESS | 12PENMAG | 05SPORT | 02

Ezdan Holding

Group posts

net profit of

QR309m

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

E-football star Al

Meghessib making

the most of

social distancing

QNA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has announced the designation of Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital as a facility for t r e a t i n g c o r o n a v i r u s (COVID-19) patients as of yesterday, with the aim of enabling HMC to provide high-quality care for these patients in an integrated facility.

Minister of Public Health H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari has stated that this rapid transformation of Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital into a facility for treating COVID-19 patients is an example of the proactive approach in the health care sector in the face of this epidemic.

H E Dr. Al Kuwari added that the Ministry started to move

quickly from the beginning and worked to set standards through decisions without any delay, and this is exactly what we need to address the rapidly spreading COVID-19.

H E also expressed pride at the efforts made by everyone to equip Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital to act as a facility to provide high-quality care to COVID-19 patients.

Patients with coronaviruses with moderate to severe symptoms will be admitted to

Hazm Mebaireek General Hos-pital , where they will receive the necessary treatment while they are under constant surveillance.

For his part, the Head of the Health System Committee for Accident Control to confront COVID-19, Dr. Saad Al Kaabi, said that this decision is part of the pre-emptive plan that the health care sector is running to ensure that any possible increase in the number of patients who develop Corona-virus disease is managed.

He pointed out that Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital was specifically chosen to treat patients (COVID-19) because the hospital will provide a modern and advanced environment that provides treatment for Corona-virus patients, men and women of all nationalities.

Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital will provide 147 beds, including 42 intensive care beds and 105 inpatient beds.

The hospital will also be available to increase the

number of beds in it to 471 beds (221 beds for intensive care and 250 beds for inpatients), while it will also provide a Covid-19 emergency department with a capacity of 150 beds when needed in the future.

All daily services at Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital have been temporarily sus-pended until further notice, while the emergency department remains open as usual to provide treatment for emergency medical cases.

Hazm Mebaireek Hospital to treat COVID-19 patients Three more people recover as 59 new COVID-19 cases reportedTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has announced the registration of 59 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, in addition to three more patients recovering from the disease in the country, yesterday.

Some of the new cases of infection are related to people who have recently returned to Qatar from overseas, particularly from the UK, and others who had contact with people infected with the virus, either from family members who live in the same house or from rel-atives who live in different homes. All new cases have been put into quarantine where they are receiving the necessary medical care.

The MoPH has also announced that the three new cases of recovery brings the total number of people to have now recovered from COVID-19 to 51 in Qatar.

In another development, MoPH has commissioned new laboratory techniques for testing COVID-19 with which it is possible to conduct a greater number of tests each day than before which has led to an increase in the number of cases that are being dis-covered each day — which is helping in the early detection of infected cases and thus helping to reduce the spread of the virus.

As of yesterday, more than 20,000 people have been tested for COVID-19 in Qatar, while 693 people receive treatment for the disease.

While, MoPH is continuing to undertake all necessary checks for all citizens arriving from abroad, as well as all individuals who have been in contact with the affected cases.

The Ministry of Public Health also requested that all members of society cooperate fully and adhere to all guide-lines and advice regarding limiting the spread of the virus.

Ashghal implements precautionary measures at project sitesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

In the context of efforts taken by the Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ in limiting the spread of COVID-19, Ashghal’s Road Projects Department has worked with its contractors and consultants to develop and implement an emergency plan that includes preventive measures to protect workers, employees and residents of the areas within the department projects.

Eng. Saoud Al Tamimi, Road Projects Department Manager in Ashghal, said that the procedures applied in the projects department currently include a medical exami-nation for all project workers to early detect symptoms of the disease and the application of a policy to prevent visits to offices, sites and residential facilities.

Moreover, Ashghal contractors in accordance with the authority instructions, take necessary measures to monitor and follow up workers and employees for any disease symptoms, and to measure the temperature for each individual, and follow up on any other indications of infection and

immediately present them to the direct supervisors and health and safety officials to take the necessary measures.

The Authority also instructed its contractors to assign a unified contact number at the labourers’ residence to report internally on any disease and take the necessary action to familiarise all workers and employees with this number and report any suspected cases to the Ministry of Public Health dedicated to cases of coronavirus.

Al Tamimi also stated to facilitate monitoring and follow-up, the department directed contractors to divide workers in all housing and res-idence facilities into groups of up to 100 individuals, which helps in early detection of symptoms associated with COVID-19).

In addition to providing and man-aging isolation units inside the facil-ities and ensuring that the isolated do not come into contact with workers or other residents until they are trans-ferred to the Communicable Disease Center.

In the same context, the Road Projects Department undertakes a number of necessary awareness

measures to familiarise workers and employees with the disease, its symptoms and effects, while pro-viding a list of “necessary and pro-hibited practices” to prevent its spread among workers through illus-trated publications in several languages.

In addition to educating workers about the need to take care of the cleanliness of hands, the health of the respiratory system and the emphasis on etiquette to be followed when sneezing or coughing. Ashghal has also sent voice instructions through “WhatsApp” application to all medical personnel in the projects, to introduce the required and prohibited practices to deal with the disease and the necessity for the medical staff to educate those in sites or the workers housing for coronavirus disease.

The Road Projects Department has also worked with its contractors to provide all the necessary tools to maintain personal hygiene in workers’ housing, workplaces, health and care areas, and dining halls at work sites, including hand washing facilities with all the cleaning and san-itising supplies provided. �P2

Qatar Airways resumes scheduled belly-hold cargo operations to ChinaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways Cargo, one of the world’s leading air cargo carriers, yesterday announced that it would resume scheduled belly-hold cargo operations to China with the utilisation of wide-body and passenger-configurated aircraft effective from yesterday. The additional cargo capacity is being added to the carrier’s existing freighter service amid increased demand for the shipment of immediate goods in and out of the region.

The decision to reinstate belly-hold service to six of its passenger destinations in the country is in line with airline’s initiative to continue supporting worldwide connectivity, re-establishing the global supply

chain, and meeting the market’s strong demand for freight exports and imports. This includes the transportation of urgent medical relief aid that is pivotal to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, H E Akbar Al Baker, said: “We are pleased to resume belly-hold cargo operations to China where the COVID-19 pan-demic has been significantly contained and industrial pro-duction is restoring nationwide.”

“In addition to our dedi-cated freighter service, the extra belly-hold availability leveraging the flexibility and reliability of our fleet will greatly enhance our cargo han-dling capacity in China to support market’s soaring

demand for imports and exports, including the urgent outbound shipment of essential commodities, fresh produce, food products, and large pro-portion of medical supplies to other parts of the world that are currently facing the public health crisis,” said H E Al Baker.

The belly-hold cargo flights will be operated on a turnaround basis assuming the routes’ pre-viously assigned flight numbers and frequencies, without any cabin crew members or pas-sengers on-board. Supple-menting the already-robust cargo payload offered on Qatar Airways’ existing four freighter routes to China, the recom-mencement of belly-hold service will add significant cargo capacity to six cities.�P2

Staff at the Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital engaged in preparations to receive COVID-19 patients.

Banks hike purchase limit for contactless cardsSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Banks in Qatar have increased the purchase limit of contactless debit and credit cards by 200 percent. Earlier, customers were allowed to do purchases up to QR100, but now this limit has been increased to QR300. Commercial Bank and QNB have already hiked this limit while other banks are also expected to follow suit. This initiative by banks will play an important role in limiting the spread of COVID-19 as customers are not required to enter the Personal Identifi-cation Number (PIN) while doing a transaction with these cards.

“Commercial Bank has just

increased the Tap N Pay limit to QR300 instead of QR100, which means that you can pay now for purchases up to QR300 without the need to enter your PIN nor hand the card to the merchant on all Commercial Bank point of sales,” said Com-mercial Bank in a tweet.

QNB also made similar announcement on its twitter account. “For your safety and to speed up your payments you can now use your Tap & Pay card with increased limit up to QR300 per transaction,” said QNB in a tweet.

Many banks and other financial institutions have urged their customers to opt for cashless payment and these contact less cards are an important option to go for cashless transactions. �P2

The hospital will provide a modern and advanced environment that provides treatment for COVID-19 patients, men and women of all nationalities.

OFFICIAL NEWS

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim

bin Hamad Al Thani yesterday

held via telephone a conversa-

tion with the President of the

Republic of Indonesia, H E Joko

Widodo, during which His High-

ness offered condolences to him

on the death of his mother, pray-

ing to the Almighty Allah to have

mercy on her soul and to grant

her paradise, and to inspire them

with patience and solace. During

the call, they reviewed bilateral

relations and means of supporting

and developing them, in addition

to discussing the efforts made by

the two countries in combating

the novel coronavirus to limit and

prevent its spread. QNA

Amir holds telephone conversation with Indonesian President

02 TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020HOME

WIZA takes measures to fight COVID-19 THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Qatar Manpower Solutions Co. (WIZA) organised practical workshops, which come as part of its measures to prevent and limit the spread of COVID-19.

The training workshops were held in coordination with the Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS). This step came within a number of measures taken by

the company that focused on awareness, practical preventive measures as well as site visits inspections to domestic workers in work places.

The awareness pro-grammes include daily briefings and publications, and educa-tional content targeting, both workers and clients. The company is also implementing a series of preventive practical

measures represented in internal sterilisation and per-sonal hygiene in addition to periodic medical check and social distancing.

WIZA has also cancelled the fingerprint system and acti-vated the facial recognition application, in addition to acti-vating the remote work mech-anism for a number of employees.

Domestic workers during a training session organised by WIZA on the possible measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Smoking reduces ability to fight bacterial and viral infectionsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

All forms of smoking can reduce the respiratory system’s ability to fight viral and bacterial infections, according to experts at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

Dr. Ahmad Al Mulla, Head of HMC’s Tobacco Control Center, has advised smokers to quit the harmful habit, on the official Facebook page of HMC.

Dr. Al Mulla has also said that the Tobacco Control Center will continue to offer support to those who are wanting to quit smoking by

providing telephone-based consultations and treatment.

He has explained that res-idents seeking support to quit smoking can call 4025 4981 or 5080 0959 to book an appointment. He said patients will be called by one of the Center’s doctors who will conduct an assessment to determine the patient’s level of nicotine dependence. From there the doctor will develop a treatment plan and may pre-scribe medication that can be collected from one of HMC’s pharmacies using the auto-mated medication dispensing system.

Expatriate shares COVID-19 recovery experienceANISHA BIJUKUMAR THE PENINSULA

Having an optimistic attitude even under stress is tough, yet that’s exactly what helped Qatar resident Abdul Muneer Manath-anath (pictured) recover from coronavirus. That along with excellent healthcare facilities provided to him enabled his speedy recovery.

The 44-year-old driver is now in a large quarantine centre in Umm Salal Ali and says that all his needs have been taken care of by the authorities. He is housed in a room with all necessary facilities including television and WiFi.

“Every day morning, a medical staff does a routine checkup of each patient. We are given delicious food according to our preference and as per the dietary chart, if there is any,

prepared by doctors for specific patients,” says Muneer.

Arrangements are made for separate blankets, clothing, bathing towels and everything else that a person might need. He added that irrespective of nationality or profession, excellent medical care is given to all patients. “I am deeply indebted to the Qatar leadership

and the government for giving such excellent facilities. I am also thankful to the Qatar health services and medical profes-sionals for my speedy recovery,” Muneer adds.

Muneer first experienced extreme tiredness on March 13 and visited the health centre where they checked his tem-perature. As he didn’t have any fever, he was given medicines and asked to take rest. When his condition worsened the next day, an ambulance took him to emergency. The doctors informed him that his respi-ratory organs and kidney have some infections for which they started the treatment.

“Those days were terrible as I had trouble even while breathing and due to con-tinuous coughing spell, I felt my entire body was under pain,” said the expat from Kerala,

India. But the physical dis-comfort that he experienced was somewhat relieved by the care that was provided to him by the doctors and nurses.

After two days, his corona-virus test came positive and he was shifted to a specialised hos-pital in Industrial Area.

“Except for being alone, we were not in need of anything. After few days of treatment another test was done which showed negative and I was shifted to a quarantine room with four others. Once more test was done and that also was negative. Two of my roommates decided to quarantine them-selves at home and since we were living in bachelor housing, we were moved to special accommodation in Umm Salal Ali.”

Under quarantine with many others from different

nationalities, Muneer says that though he felt physical dis-comfort due to his illness, he never allowed himself to be upset about it. “I had excellent caretakers and I believed in their ability to cure me. Also I was in constant touch with my family back home and con-vinced them that I would be back healthy soon,” he adds.

All his contacts, including those living with him and his relatives in the country whom he met a day before being hos-pitalised are all placed under quarantine but none of them have shown any symptoms and he is thankful for the same. “It is a big relief that I didn’t pass on my infection to any of my relatives or my friends,” says Muneer. Muneer is unsure when he will be discharged and in the meanwhile he plans to rest and better his health.

Aman3 begins today at Shamal region THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) said yesterday that Aman3 — a joint exercise between Qatari Armed Forces, MoI and Lekhwiya Force — will be held

in Shamal region from 10am to 2pm today. “This drill comes within the framework of the joint coordination to ensure the readiness of all units and departments as specified for the exercise,” said the Ministry.

Construction workers receive health safety kits THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Local companies and charity organisations have stepped up efforts in coordination with the authorities concerned for protecting workers from COVID-19 infection by providing them with preventive kits, personal hygiene materials and awareness pamphlets.

The Director of Labor Inspection Department at the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs, Fahad Al Dosari, par-ticipated in a drive yesterday launched by Qatar Charity to protect construction workers from coronavirus.

“We distributed personal hygiene materials, healthy safety kits and pamphlets to construction workers in their languages educating them how to prevent themselves and others from the infection of coronavirus,” said Al Dosari in a video footage posted on the Twitter account of Qatar Charity.

Under a campaign launched by Qatar Charity to support state efforts to curb COVID-19, a team of volunteers

distributed preventive kits, bro-chures in a number of lan-guages to the workers in con-struction sites within quick response initiative to curb the coronavirus, Qatar Charity tweeted yesterday.

The charity said that the campaign received over-whelming response from the community to support the state efforts to protect citizens and expatriates from the infection. The campaign is also receiving pretty good supports from the Ministry of Administrative Development Labor and Social Affairs, Ministry of Public Health and other agencies, said Qatar Charity.

The Qatar General Elec-tricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) has disinfected its official facilities and other buildings following the precau-tionary and preventive measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The inspection operation was conducted to provide a healthy and safe work envi-ronment for its employees and customers Kahramaa is also conducting an awareness cam-paign through its social media.

Kahramaa’s smart services record 18,000 transactions

Grocery delivery

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

About 18,000 transactions were made through the Smart Services of Qatar General Elec-tricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) in less than two weeks, witnessing a remarkable increase in the number of users.

Kahramaa received from March 17 to 28, as much as 17,820 requests through its digital platforms including 14,200 electronic payment transactions; 1,122 requests to move from a residence; 386 requests to move to a resi-dence; 2,033 requests to issue a certificate; 32 requests to register as a Qatari eligible for exemption, said Kahramaa in a press release issued yesterday.

The transactions were made through Kahramaa website and smart phone application in addition to requests to remove a meter for the purpose of demolition, counter complaints, property category update and new owner registration

The statistics during the period of study (March 17 to 28) show a significant increase in the rate of turnout to benefit from Kahramaa smart services compared to the same period in February.

The number of online reg-istration increased by 93 percent, logging to electronic accounts by about 300 percent and downloading Kahramaa application about 240 percent.

The huge increase in the number of transactions reflects the customers’ confidence in Kahramaa’s smart services and their response to its call to use online service as an easy and

safe way to submit requests and complete transactions at any time and from any location in a way that ensures adherence to the instructions to stay at home without the need to visit the service centers.

Kahramaa witnessed a qualitative shift in the level of services it provides to the cus-tomers, in the framework of the Foundation’s efforts towards upgrading its services and providing high-quality services that meet the aspira-tions of customers in light of its transformation into a smart institution.

Kahramaa succeeded in completing the links and inte-gration of its systems with a number of different entities in the country following Qatar National Vision 2030 and national development strat-egies to ensure the ease of receiving information efficiently.

Kahramaa called its cus-tomers to follow the instruc-tions issued by the authorities concerned in the country to prevent the spread of corona-virus, one of the most important is to stay at home, while submitting and com-pleting transactions and requests electronically without the need to visit service centers.

Kahramaa also called clients to register online through the Kahramaa website and the smart phone appli-cation to avail the services. The customers can also commu-nicate with Kahramaa round-the-clock through the 999 call center and WhatsApp service on the number 1993-30330 or email customercare@km.qa.

An employee of a grocery shop getting ready for a home delivery at Al Nasr area in Doha, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Ashghal implements precautionary measures

FROM PAGE 1

The department has also instructed contractors to maintain sterilisation and cleaning of all areas, including housing, eating spaces and site offices, in addition to workers’ leisure facilities at work sites such as the dining hall, toilets, buses, and transportation vehicles. In addition to periodic cleaning of all sur-faces that are frequently touched in work sites and accommodation facilities.

Moreover, Ashghal has taken several measures to stop the virus from spreading among workers in project sites, including reducing the number of workers using the buses in half and sanitising it regu-larly, and leaving sufficient distances between them on the bus, in dining halls and while on work sites. In addition, Ashghal regularly checks the availability of gloves, masks, and sanitising supplies at work sites and offices.

As part of the precau-tionary measures taken by the department, Eng. Al-Tamimi indicated that he directed the local road project contractors to cancel all activities that include direct interaction with the public, whether individually or in groups, in addition to the cancellation of periodic visits to homes, that is to ensure the safety of resi-dents in Qatar. Therefore, it is advised to reduce / stop direct interactions, physical contact with residents and all workers at work sites, to replace that by using phone cal ls and e-mail to communicate.

Banks hike

purchase limit for

contactless cards

FROM PAGE 1

Bank officials say that advancement in technology has made it very simple to make digital payments. These contactless cards have removed the need of pressing the PIN at the retail outlets. Contactless cards allow customers to pay by simply tapping the card on the Point of Sale (PoS) machines or ATMs.

Contactless transactions are as safe as traditional card payment transactions. Each transaction uses state-of-the-art security to gen-erate a random verification code that cannot be coun-terfeited. It also provides more control, since the card does not leave customer’s hand to be swiped by the merchant.

Every time a customer performs a contactless transaction he gets informed immediately via SMS alerts. This way, he knows all the time the transactions that were performed using cards. The ease of using these cards is prompting residents to go for cashless transactions.

QA resumes

scheduled

belly-hold cargo

operations to China

FROM PAGE 1

The cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing and Hangzhou, with an additional 600 tonnes of weekly capacity added, bringing the combined weekly capacity out of the country to more than 1,300 tonnes.

After PRC State Council’s announcement on March 24, to boost the nation’s international airfreight capabilities, stabilise supply chains and enhance cooperation with global airlines. Qatar Airways is the first Middle Eastern carrier to resume belly-hold operations to all of its des-tinations in China. With the upgraded capacity, more vital medical supplies and exports destined for the Middle East, Europe and the Americas will be flown by Qatar Airways’ efficient network via a seamless stopover at the cargo carrier’s world-class Doha hub.

03TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020 HOME

'Give best support to teens during stay at home'FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Since the World Health Organi-zation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic, many even those who have not been infected by the virus, are practicing social distancing and working or staying home.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the fear and anxiety about the disease can be overwhelming and cause strong emotions in adolescents, according to Dr. Alanoud Al Ansari (pictured), Division Chief of Adolescent Medicine at Sidra Medicine.

Everyone reacts differently to stressful situations. How someone will respond to the out-break or the fact that they have to stay at home depends on each individual.

“Children and teens react, on what they see from adults around them. When parents and car-egivers deal with the COVID-19 calmly and confidently, they can provide the best support for their children. Parents can be more reassuring to others around them, especially children, if they continue to be calm and are better prepared to answer their children’s questions,” Dr Al Ansari told The Peninsula.

“Take time to talk with your child or teen about the COVID-19

outbreak. Answer questions and share facts about COVID-19 in a way that they can understand. Reassure them that they are safe. Let them know it is okay if they feel upset. Share with them how you deal with your own stress so that they can learn how to cope from you,” she added.

Dr Al-Ansari, also said that teens can experience anxiety when their daily routine is inter-rupted and sometimes they aren’t sure how to express themselves.

“While they are at home and in isolation, encourage teens to stay connected with friends and family electronically. These are extraordinary times, and we need to be more patient with them and make concessions regarding screen time. While it helps them cope, this should not

interrupt important things like eating balanced meals, getting enough sleep and spending quality time with the family,” she said.

Dr Al Ansari insisted that keeping healthy habits and maintaining regular routine is very important for supporting teens’ mental health during their stay at home.

“Try to keep up with regular routines. As schools are closed, create a schedule for learning activities and relaxing or fun activities. Take breaks, get plenty of sleep, exercise, and eat well. Cook meals, watch movies or documentaries and eat at least one meal together as a family. And always check in on each other. Be a role model,” she added.

“Also when teens ask for time on their own, parents should not take it personally. It is a natural part of growing up. ‘me-time’ is good for everyone,” she con-tinued. Dr. Al Ansari also advised parents to observe adolescents who already have conditions like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). “Observe teens if they show any symptoms like lack of sleep, considerable changes in appetite or if they try to isolate themselves too much. In such cases, it is advisable to seek pro-fessional help,” she added.

MoCI warns

against selling

goods without

clear information

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) yesterday warned retailers against selling goods without clearly outlining the components and product’s expiry date as it is a violation of the Industrial Regulation Law.

“The production and dis-tribution of goods in local markets without clearly out-lining the components and the product’s expiry date is a vio-lation of the Industrial Regu-lation Law. The Ministry cau-tions local factories against violating the law,” said the Ministry in a tweet yesterday.

The Ministry also warned factories against producing goods without obtaining its approval.

“The production of some goods without obtaining the approval of the Ministry rep-resents a violation of the Industrial Regulation Law. The Ministry cautions local fac-tories against violating the law,” said the Ministry in a tweet.

Ministry considers situation of students for preparing questionsSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Fawzia Al Khater, said the Ministry will take into account the current situation of level-12 students while preparing questions and setting time duration for their examinations.

“The current circumstances of the students will be taken into account in terms of the timing of the tests and ques-tions. All secondary schools were directed to provide the students with adequate support, give them review questions, and prepare exper-imental tests for them,” Al Khater said.

Speaking in a video circu-lated on twitter, she pointed

out that parents should not make their children fear about their exams. They should also follow lessons with their children, as this will make it easier for students to study and perform well in the exam. We are in a special circumstance that requires us to reassure stu-dents. Assistant Undersecretary has urged students to follow-up video lessons, adding that the Ministry is working with an

educational institution to prepare good lessons for stu-dents of level 12 and students can benefit from it.

She also noted that students are currently spending most of their time at home and they should take advantage of this time. Therefore, the Ministry of Education and Higher Edu-cation is working with a number of institutions, including the Doha Film

Institute to create a compe-tition for all students to urge them to produce films.

“The goal is that the student utilise their time in doing good things. Education is not neces-sarily through lessons, but through other enriching activ-ities,” she said.

Al khater has called on all students to take part in these competitions so that they learn to rely on themselves.

MIA offers online resources amid COVID-19

RAYNALD C RIVERATHE PENINSULA

Through engaging storytelling and instructional videos uploaded on social media, the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) promotes learning while it brings its collection closer to the public as it temporarily closed its doors amid COVID-19 outbreak.

“Although MIA is closed, you can still enjoy lots of activities with us. Stay tuned for new classes, storytelling and inspiration every day,” reads a recent post on MIA’s official Facebook page.

Yesterday, a video of Adil Mohamed from MIA Library reading the story titled “Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns” was uploaded on MIA’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The big book read by Mohamed is part of MIA

library’s children’s collection and teaches young children colours through an illustrated story.

An instructional video on how to make an astrolabe is also among the latest videos uploaded on MIA’s social media sites. MIA has a fasci-nating collection of astro-labes. which were once the most used, sophisticated medieval astronomical instrument.

Another video on how to create mosaic artwork based on one of the objects which will be on show at MIA’s upcoming exhibition has also been posted on MIA’s social media sites. The activity is aimed at developing chil-dren’s creativity, imagination and fine motor skills while promoting collaborative work between parents and their children. The mosaic grid, which is available in two sizes, can be downloaded from the MIA website.

The Museum of Islamic Art’s website has a dedicated learning resources page where visitors can access for free a rich collection of fun and educational activities for children, families and adults. Through these activities people can learn more about MIA and its collections in a fun and engaging way.

The activities, which are inspired by MIA’s collection and exhibitions, range from

printable colouring, puzzle, and spot the differences worksheets to art activities such as creating a ka’aba and a prayer rug. There are also activities targeting specific lit-eracy skills such as reading comprehension and writing a book review as well as math-ematical and science skills.

Links to online learning resources in other museums can also be found at MIA’s learning resources webpage.

The Museum of Islamic Art has a strong online following reaching out to more than 2.2 mi l l ion fo l lowers on Facebook, in addition to over 117,000 Twitter followers and tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

More than 400 objects from MIA’s collection have been digitised and can be viewed in its website and via Google Arts and Culture online platform.

A screenshot from the video of Adil Mohamed from MIA Library reading the story titled “Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns” which was uploaded on MIA’s social media sites yesterday.

Outpatient care at NCCCR shiftedTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has relocated the Outpa-tient Department at the National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR) to the Ambulatory Care Center (ACC), within the Hamad Medical City.

HMC has assured that patients will receive the same level of care by the same clinical staff at NCCCR.

“Your care will be provided at ACC by the same medical and nursing team that you are used to seeing in NCCCR,” HMC said on its official facebook page.

“On arrival at the ACC, you will need to go to the Pre-Admission Clinic Area - turning left from the entrance, you will

take the first right, then the next right, then right turn again and this will bring you to the area,” it added.

Click here for directions to ACC https://goo.gl/maps/njyRhPrWvMgKsqHNA

While, HMC has imple-mented a number of changes to the delivery of healthcare services across HMC hospitals, said thatas a result of the evolving COVID-19 situation,

As part of the changes, the Heart Hospital’s Emergency Department is no longer be open to public access. However, the Heart Hospital will continue to provide care to patients with emergency cardiac conditions, but will not accept walk-in patients.

MoCI issues circular on ratified contractsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Within the framework of the preventive and precautionary measures implemented by the State to limit the spread of COVID-19 and taking into account the interests of suppliers and consumers, Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) has issued a circular on ratified contracts to hold concerts, festivals, events and special gatherings.

The Ministry of Com-merce and Industry issued a circular on holding concerts, festivals, events and special gatherings that compels con-tractors and providers of these services to seek con-sensual agreements with clients following the direc-tives to ban concerts, fes-tivals, events and special gatherings.

The circular falls in line with the Ministry’s efforts to ensure stability in business transactions between sup-pliers and consumers while taking into account the interests of both parties and avoiding material damages that may be caused to any party due to the preventive and precautionary measures implemented by the State to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Given that COVID-19 is

considered a global pandemic and a force majeure that cannot be avoided or antici-pated, which makes it dif-ficult for some suppliers to fulfil their obligations towards consumers at the present time, and in line with this circular, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has called on service providers to ratify new contracts that outline other dates to fulfil their obligations or to seek consensual agreements that take into account the interests of both parties with regard to the down payments and financial installments made to suppliers in return for assuming their obligations as agreed with consumers.

The Ministry has urged all suppliers to adhere to the provisions of the circular and to embrace this initiative in line with their social respon-sibility in support of the pre-ventive and precautionary measures taken by the state to protect the health of all members of society.

The Ministry of Com-merce and Industry will intensify its inspection cam-paigns to ensure the com-pliance of concerned parties with their obligations as stip-ulated in the circular and to crack down on any violations in this regard.

“Although MIA is closed, you can still enjoy lots of activities with us. Stay tuned for new classes, storytelling and inspiration every day,” reads a recent post on MIA’s official Facebook page.

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Book gives context and cross discipline insight into thought of Muslim scholar

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

In her new book, “Law and Politics under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni” (Cambridge 2019), Sohaira Siddiqui Associate Professor at Qatar Foundation partner university Georgetown University in Qatar, illuminates the thought of the 11th century scholar, Abu Ma’ali al-Juwayni, whose work has not been suffi-ciently been explored in Western academia.

In part, this gap is due to the prominence of his more famous student Imam al-Ghazali. In her book, Professor Siddiqui navi-gates several of al-Juwayni’s texts to locate the key theo-logical, legal and practical ques-tions that animated his thought.

By engaging with multiple works, she presents a cross-dis-ciplinary analysis that weaves

numerous disciplines in Islamic intellectual thought together, including theology, political thought, and law.

For Siddiqui, inspiration for studying al-Juwayni arose out of a more fundamental curiosity about the place of Islamic law in the practice and imagination of Muslims today. What drew her to al-Juwayni was his political treatise, “Ghiyath al-Umam,” in which he conceptualizes the

absence of the Calipha and the continuity of society. His reflec-tions on the absence of the Calipha comes at the end of a longer engagement with political contingencies in which he dis-cusses both the ideal political ruler, and what communities should do when an ideal leader is not found.

In the absence of the Calipha, al-Juwayni reimagines what role the Shari’a plays in

communities. On the basis of al-Juwayni’s arguments, Siddiqui reconceptualizes how to think about the Shari’a and notes that, “his [al-Juwayni’s] conversation about the death of Shari’a lets us think in a new way about the life of the sharia today.”

Beyond the specific argu-ments of the book, Siddiqui seeks to make contributions to the discipline of Islamic Studies more broadly. She argues that scholars within Islamic Studies should move beyond their dis-ciplinary silos in Islamic law, Islamic political thought, Islamic theology, to see how ideas within these fields are interrelated.

She notes that classical Muslim scholars, much like al-Juwayni, wrote in multiple dis-ciplines, therefore their works should be addressed in a multi-disciplinary manner. This,

indeed, is one of Siddiqui’s greatest hopes for the outcomes of her book. “I want scholars to start thinking about how epis-temology, law, and political thought are intertwined,” she explained, noting that she hopes readers apply lessons learned about the intellectual project of al-Juwayni to their own disci-pline. “I hope that from reading this book scholars start to think about ways in which they can move beyond the text and time period in which they work to really think horizontally about how these issues are emerging and how they are constructed.”

A recent interview with Sid-diqui on the book is freely available online. In the interview, SherAli Tareen, Asso-ciate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, calls Siddiqui’s book

“intimidatingly brilliant,” her analysis “masterful,” “pro-found” and “astonishingly lucid” and recommends it for teaching across a range of disciplines. Siddiqui is also the author of “Locating the Shari’a: Legal Flu-idity in Theory, History and Practice” (Brill, 2019), and numerous articles in top tier academic journals.

Sohaira Siddiqui

Qatar Digital Library reveals forgotten battle that helped win World War IITHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Locust plagues have been around from time immemorial; the Holy Quran and the Bible tell us they were one of the five plagues inflicted on ancient Egypt. They were thought to have been rele-gated to history, but this year they reappeared, this time wreaking havoc in the Horn of Africa.

Billions of locusts have been causing turmoil in Kenya and Uganda for several months, bringing devas-tation to crops and livelihoods in what is believed to be the worst infestation since 1942. Locusts also teem through the Gulf region annually between January and April, and there was understandable concern when spo-radic sightings were made in Qatar over the winter months. Thankfully, the Gulf region was unaffected.

But, as historical documents available on the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) reveal, this was not the case in 1942, when World War II was into its third year and Allied forces were fighting a losing battle against the Axis powers in North Africa.

These records, from the British Library, tell how, early that year, the Gulf region experienced a locust plague on such an immense scale that the Allies feared a catastrophic food shortage that could lose them the war in the Middle East.

In response, Britain established the

Middle East Anti-Locust Unit (MEALU) to eradicate the locusts. The documents on the QDL tells of the accomplish-ments of MEALU during the war and after, including the considerable degree of international cooperation that was required to defeat these creatures in a battle the Allies could not afford to lose.

Dr. James Onley, Director of His-torical Research and Partnerships at Qatar National Library, explained how “The Allies considered their anti-locust campaign in the Middle East to be second only in importance to their campaign against the enemy. MEALU organised a series of annual military

operations to find and exterminate the locusts’ breading grounds in Arabia. These operations were hugely suc-cessful and made an important con-tribution towards winning the war in the Middle East. It’s a fascinating story of man versus nature.”

MEALU staff numbered in the hun-dreds, comprised of British Army per-sonnel and British and Arab civilians. They wore traditional Arab headdress: the officers wearing a white ghutrah with a gold ‘agal, the others wearing a red-and-white shemagh and black ‘agal. They were divided into vehicle detachments, which patrolled vast

stretches of territory throughout the Arabian Peninsula, covering 40 miles a day, searching for and poisoning the locusts’ countless breeding grounds. These vehicle detachments were com-parable in organization to the Allies’ famous Long Range Desert Patrol Group that operated behind enemy lines in North Africa. They were sup-ported by transport and spotter air-craft from the Royal Air Force and US Army Air Force, as well as by a vast intelligence network that gathered reports of locust sightings.

But not all members of the MEALU patrolled by vehicle. The unit’s most

famous member, the English explorer and travel writer, Wilfred Thesiger, who worked as a MEALU locust research officer, trekked across the Empty Quarter in 1946 by camel with a small Bedouin party to gather intel-ligence about locust breading grounds. The journey was long and arduous, a triumph of man over nature. He later published an account of his mission in Arabian Sands (1959), a celebrated classic of travel literature, and one of the greatest stories of man versus the desert ever written.

As a result of the MEALU’s remarkable efforts, there were no major outbreaks of locust swarms for the remainder of the war, and the vital supplies of food remained unaffected, helping the Allies defeat the Axis powers in the Middle East. This incredible, but largely unknown, story is just one example of thousands that await discovery on the QDL: www.q d l . q a / e n / a r c h i v e / 8 1 0 5 5 /vdc_100000000193.0x0000d3.

Dr. Onley added that “The QDL is changing the way scholars and students research the history of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf region. It has become their first port of call, enabling them to find in seconds what used to take them weeks, months, or even years. It is making the past more acces-sible than ever, leading to a sharp increase in the number of exciting new historical studies on the Gulf––the least-studied region in the Middle East.”

Schistocerca gregaria, the desert locust, taken from James Augustus St John’s account of his travels in Egypt and Nubia, published in 1845. LEFT: Correspondence, reports and other papers relating to efforts, undertaken by representatives of the Middle East Anti-Locust Unit (MEALU) in 1942.

For Siddiqui, inspiration for studying al-Juwayni arose out of a more fundamental curiosity about the place of Islamic law in the practice and imagination of Muslims today. What drew her to al-Juwayni was his political treatise, “Ghiyath al-Umam,” in which he conceptualizes the absence of the Calipha and the continuity of society.

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), in cooperation with Al Fardan Auto-mobiles, dealer of BMW in Qatar, announced the recall of BMW M6 models from 2013 to 2017, due to loose high-mounted third brake light.

The recall campaign comes within the framework of the Ministry’s continuous efforts to protect consumers and ensure

that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs. The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

The Ministry urged all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Pro-tection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, which processes complaints, inquires and suggestions.

BMW M6 models from 2013 to 2017 recalled ACS International School Doha shares distance learning tips for parentsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

ACS International School Doha has compiled its best practical advice for parents who are adapting to their new role of both parent and educator, as Qatar-based schools continue to educate their students through distance learning.

ACS’s tips aim to help families make the best of new and unfa-miliar learning environments, and equip parents for the more prac-tical aspects of learning from home.

Robert Harrison, Education Strategy Director, ACS Interna-tional School Doha, said: “Distance learning presents us all with for-midable challenges, and we are all learning how to do things differ-ently. While no one is sure yet how long distance learning will con-tinue, we know that it won’t last forever, and it’s important that we offer the best support we can in this time.”

ACS’s top distance learning tips for parents.

Help students ‘own’ their learning: No one expects parents to be full-time teachers or to be experts in every subject, the best thing to do is to provide support and encouragement, and expect your children to do their part. Try not to help too much - becoming independent takes lots of practice and this is a good opportunity to put those skills to the test!

Begin and end the day by checking in: Establishing a routine is important and ensuring you make a habit of checking in with your child at the beginning and end of each day will help keep them grounded, will allow them to process instructions they’ve received from their teachers, and will help them to organise them-selves and set priorities. In the morning, you might ask: What classes/subjects do you have today? How will you spend your

time? or What can I do to help? And at the end of the day you might ask: How far did you get in your learning tasks today? What did you discover? What was hard? and What could we do to make tomorrow better?

Encourage physical activity: When living and working at home, we will all need to allocate time to let off steam. Physical activity is vital to health, wellbeing, and readiness for learning. During this time, take the opportunity to practice exercising ‘alone together’ with digital workouts and online instructors. Plan hands-on, life-ready activities that keep hands busy, feet moving, and minds engaged!

Connect safely with friends: It

is likely that young people across Qatar will already be missing their friends, classmates and teachers, and where it is fantastic that you can help your child maintain contact with friends through social media and other online technologies, it is also very important to monitor their social media use and ensure they stay safe online.

Make the most of an unusual and stressful situation: We are going through a time of major upheaval to our normal routines and ways of life and there’s a great deal of anxiety in the world right now. Children benefit when they get age-appropriate factual infor-mation and ongoing reassurance from adults.

Robert Harrison, Education Strategy Director, ACS International School Doha.

Robert Harrison, Education Strategy Director, ACS International School Doha, said: “Distance learning presents us all with formidable challenges, and we are all learning how to do things differently. While no one is sure yet how long distance learning will continue, we know that it won’t last forever, and it’s important that we offer the best support we can in this time.”

07TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020 GULF / MIDDLE EAST

Fearing virus spread, Gaza prepares for mass quarantinesAP — GAZA

When Nima Amraa returned to the Gaza Strip from neigh-bouring Egypt earlier this month, she was surprised to learn she was being placed in a makeshift quarantine center set up by the ruling Hamas group.

But her initial jitters turned to fear when two fellow travelers in another facility tested positive for the coronavirus - the first cases to be confirmed in Gaza.

“Once there were cases of the virus spreading, we started to feel afraid and disappointed,” Amraa, a 30-year-old journalist, said by phone from quarantine, where she has spent a week and a half sleeping in a room with five other women and sharing a bathroom.

The virus found a way into Gaza, even though the Mediter-ranean enclave has been largely cut off from the world by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas militants seized it 13 years ago.

Yet the terrifying possibility of an outbreak in one of the world’s most crowded terri-tories - 2 million people squeezed into an area twice the size of Washington, D.C. -does not seem to have registered fully. Many in Gaza seem to accept Hamas assurances that

the threat is contained.In the meantime, Hamas is

racing to build two massive quarantine facilities —hoping to prevent the disease from spreading and overwhelming Gaza’s already shattered health system.

The construction was ordered after photos surfaced from makeshift centers— mostly schools —showing people cele-brating birthday parties with vis-iting relatives, food being delivered by volunteers and groups of people smoking water pipes together.

Amraa said it was immedi-ately clear that the school where she was placed was not pre-pared to house so many people. “I was worried after seeing that we will sleep on mattresses on the floor and we will be six in one room,” she explained. “We eat together and there is no isolation.”

She said she and her room-mates take precautions, such as avoiding direct contact and keeping their beds two meters apart from each other. But that might not be enough to keep the virus from spreading. Last week, seven Hamas security guards who were in the facility housing the first two cases became infected themselves.

“We have been very clear on

how the quarantine facilities should look like and offer in terms of facilities and services and support,” said Dr. Gerald Rockenschaub, the World Health Organization’s director in the Palestinian territories. “But this is obviously easier said than done in Gaza, where there is substantial shortage in almost everything.”

Although movement in and out of Gaza has been heavily restricted since 2007, it is not cut off altogether. The first two virus cases were men who had returned from a religious con-ference in Pakistan, part of a wave of hundreds of returnees who were placed into quar-antine. No one knows how much farther the virus has spread. Only 20% of the roughly 1,700 people in quarantine have been tested. Gaza’s people live mainly in densely populated cities and refugee camps. The health care system is in shambles - a result of the blockade, three wars between Hamas and Israel and chronic under-funding due to infighting between Hamas and the rival Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Gaza has only 60 breathing machines - and all but 15 are already in use, according to the WHO. The agency has been

assisting local health officials and has been working with Israeli authorities, who have no direct contact with Hamas, to import desperately needed equipment and supplies from international donors.

Most people infected by the virus experience only mild symptoms, such as fever and cough, and recover within a few weeks. But the virus can cause severe illness and death, partic-ularly in older patients or those with underlying health problems. High rates of obesity, smoking and stress-related

disorders appear to make Gaza’s populat ion especia l ly vulnerable.

Hamas has sought to beef up its quarantine efforts in recent days, opening 18 additional facil-ities in clinics and hotels and declaring them off-limits. It also has banned weekly street markets and shut down wedding halls, cafes and mosques and extended quarantine periods by a week.

After seeing images of the makeshift facilities, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yehiyeh Sinwar, ordered the group’s military

wing to build two new quar-antine centers.

Situated on the territory’s northern and southern borders, they will be able to hold 1,000 people. The group expects them to be ready within a week.

The public seems to have been calmed by Health Ministry claims that all virus patients are held in quarantine centers. Despite the shutdown orders, people still walk the streets and congregate around small coffee kiosks and noodle shops.

That could change if cases begin to spread.

Palestinian workers manufacturing protective coverall suits and masks at a workshop in Gaza City, amid coronavirus pandemic.

Kuwait reports 11 new casesQNA — KUWAIT CITY

The Kuwaiti Ministry of Health announced yesterday that 11 people tested positive for novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the past 24 hours.

This brings the country’s tally of confirmed virus cases up to 266, the ministry’s spokesman Dr. Abdullah Al Sanad said in a daily news briefing.

Earlier in the day, Kuwaiti Minister of Health Sheikh Dr. Basel Al Sabah announced the recovery of five additional people from the novel coro-navirus, brining total recovered cases in the country to 72.

The spokesman; once again, urged citizens and res-idents alike to follow the guidelines and instructions of Kuwaiti health authorities and World Health Organization, primarily maintaining social distancing and home quar-antine in order to curb the spread of the virus.

Dr. Basel Al-Sabah also announced the recovery of five additional people from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), raising the country’s total recoveries to 72.

The fresh recoveries include three Kuwaiti women and two female residents, the minister said, adding that nec-essary lab tests and analyses had shown the recovery of the five new infections with COVID-19.

The already treated patients will be admitted to a rehabilitation ward before dis-charging them from hospital within a couple of days’ time, the minister added.

Kuwait took drastic measures early on to contain the new pandemic, halting air travel, imposing curfews, and quarantining and testing thou-sands of people.

Deaths, cases rise in six Arab statesANATOLIA — ANKARA

Health authorities in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirmed new deaths from the novel corona-virus yesterday.

An 81-year-old woman died of the disease in northern Jordan, Muhammad Al Ghazou, the director of King Abdullah University Hospital, said in a statement cited by the official Petra news agency.

The new fatality brought Jordan’s death toll from the virus to four and more than 250 infections have been confirmed.In Lebanon, the Health Ministry said a patient in her 80s lost her life to the disease, taking the country’s death toll to 11.

A ministry statement said eight new infections were detected on Monday, taking the total coronavirus cases in Lebanon to 446.

In Iraq, the virus killed two people in the southern

provinces of Najaf and Wasit, bringing the overall death toll to 43.

Iraqi health authorities have so far reported 555 coronavirus cases and 143 recoveries.

In Saudi Arabia, the Health Ministry said the total number of coronavirus cases has reached 1,453 with 154 new cases confirmed. The ministry also said 22 people have recovered, rising the number of recoveries to 49.

No deaths have been

confirmed in Saudi Arabia, according to the ministry.

Oman’s Health Ministry confirmed 12 cases, putting the total at 179, including 29 recovered.

Two deaths were reported in the UAE, raising the death toll to five, according to the Health Ministry.

Forty-one fresh cases were confirmed as well, taking the total to 611. Also, three people recovered, bringing the number of recoveries to 61.

Iran plans tougher restrictions ascoronavirus toll rises to 2,757

REUTERS — DUBAI

Iran had 117 new coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,757, a health ministry spokesman said yesterday, prompting the Middle East’s worst hit country to consider tougher curbs on movement.

The total number of infec-tions climbed to 41,495.

“In the past 24 hours we had 117 new deaths and 3,186 new confirmed cases of people infected with the coronavirus,” Kianush Jahanpur told state TV, calling on Iranians to stay at home.

Iran has had an intercity travel ban since Thursday and the government has extended the closure of universities and

schools and the suspension of all cultural, religious and sports events.

“If necessary, we might impose tougher measures as our priority is the nation’s safety and health,” said Iran’s first Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri, according to state TV.

Iran last week warned of a surge of cases as many Ira-nians ignored calls to avoid travelling for Persian New Year holidays that started on March 20.

To stem the spread of the virus in crowded jails, Iran’s judiciary on Sunday extended furloughs for 100,000 prisoners.

On March 17, Iran said it had freed about 85,000 people from jail temporarily, including

political prisoners. Iranian media, citing the

governor of Fars province, Enayatollah Rahimi, reported that prisoners at one prison

“broke cameras and caused other damage in two sections of the prison where violent criminals are kept”.

The state news agency

IRNA said similar riots had erupted in other prisons since March 20. Families have called for the release of all prisoners.

A view of the fairground of Iran Mall, Tehran’s largest shopping mall, after it was converted into a hospital for COVID-19 patients, in Tehran yesterday.

Turkey reports 37 new deathsANATOLIA — ANKARA

As many as 37 more people died of the novel coronavirus in Turkey in the past 24 hours, according to figures released by the country’s Health Ministry yesterday, bringing the death toll to 168.

The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases surged to 10,827 as 1,610 more people tested positive for the virus, according to the min-istry. A total of 162 patients have recovered and were discharged from hospitals since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the data, which said 725 patients were being treated under intensive care.

Also, 11,535 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours and the number of total tests carried out so far stood at 76,981.

Meanwhile, Turkish police charged four people, including the organ-isers and a DJ, after a weekend coronavirus house party in Istanbul where some guests dressed up as doctors, local officials said.

The party, thrown at a villa in the Buyukcekmece district on Sat-urday night, was shared live on social media but received criticism for ignoring social distancing pleas.

Police watched the social media broadcast then initally detained 11 people, including the organisers and DJ.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Turks to stay at home and adapt themselves to "voluntary quarantine" conditions.

The surroundings of Ataturk Statue is seen nearly empty after authorities urged people to stay home as a part of COVID-19 precautions, in Ankara yesterday.

Gazans mark Land Day amid anti-coronavirus measures

ANATOLIA — GAZA CITY

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip marked the 44th anniversary of Land Day yesterday amid precautionary measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“We call for ending the inter-Palestinian rift and sup-porting our national project,” Khaled Al Batsh, a leading member of Islamic Jihad group, told a press conference held in Gaza City.

He underlined the need “to rally efforts to stem the spread of coronavirus”.

During the event, partici-pants stood at distance from each other as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of the virus.

Waving Palestinian flag, participants also held banners calling for lifting the years-long Israeli blockade on the seaside territory.

For his part, Maher Mezher, a member of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) group, called for supplying the nec-essary medical equipment to help in the fight against coronavirus.

“In the past 24 hours we had 117 new deaths and 3,186 new confirmed cases of people infected with the coronavirus,” the health ministry spokesman told state TV, calling on Iranians to stay at home.

The broad US restrictions on Iran’s banking system and the embargo on its oil exports have limited Tehran’s ability to finance and purchase essential items from abroad, including drugs as well as the raw materials and equipment needed to manufacture medicines domestically.

08 TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANSHEIKH DR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

QATAR has taken a series of timely and effective measures to limit possible economic damage that would emerge from the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to support the economic and financial sector within the framework of the precautionary measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus, the Prime Min-ister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, directed to allocate guarantees to local banks at an amount of QR3bn.

Qatar Central Bank said that the amount comes within the support package for granting soft loans and without commissions or fees for the affected companies to support salaries and rents through guarantees issued by Qatar Development Bank to banks operating in the State. The QCB in cooperation with QDB, will set standards and mechanisms for implementation. The allocation of guarantees to local banks affirms the wise leadership’s keenness to support the economy. The measures will have positive effect on the stability of the economy, particularly the private and banking sectors.

Two weeks back, the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management (to combat COVID-19), presided by H H the Amir, had decided to provide a whopping QR75bn stimulus package to the private sector. The Supreme Committee directed Qatar Development Bank to postpone the installments of all borrowers for a period of six months. The Committee also exempted the food industry from customs duties for a period of six months in a major relief to the food industry. Medical goods will also be exempted from customs duties for a period of six months.

The Committee decided to exempt hospitality and tourism sector, retail sector, commercial complexes and logistics areas from electricity and water bills for a period of six months. Even Qatar’s emerging logistics zones and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) were exempted from rents for a period of six months. All these measures work as a big support for private companies.

The QR75bn stimulus package, in addition to injecting QR10bn into the stock market, will support the financing needs of the private sector to continue its work efficiently and maximise its role in sustainable development projects. It will also reduce the pressure and financial burden on small and medium-sized com-panies. The measures will also help the small and medium enterprises and regain the confidence of busi-nesses and investors on the Qatari economy. The incen-tives, benefits and support extended by the government will boost the growth of the economy.

Timely boost

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Quote of the day

The relaxation of the euro zone’s fiscal rules and

support from the European Central Bank and the

European Stability Mechanism is critical to a strong

regional response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Poul Thomsen, IMF European Department Director

Sweeping US sanctions are hampering Iranian efforts to import medicine and other medical supplies to confront one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world, health workers and sanctions experts say.

The broad US restrictions on Iran’s banking system and the embargo on its oil exports have limited Tehran’s ability to finance and purchase essential items from abroad, including drugs as well as the raw materials and equipment needed to manufacture medi-cines domestically.

The Trump administration has also reduced the number of licenses it grants to com-panies for certain medical exports to Iran, according to quarterly reports from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, the enforcement agency of the US Treasury Department. The list of items requiring special authorization includes oxygen generators, full-face mask respirators and thermal imaging equipment, all of which are needed to treat patients and keep medical workers safe, doctors say.

The tough measures are part of a US “maximum pressure campaign” against

Iran, adopted by the Trump administration after it unilat-erally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal Iran had signed with world powers.

Iranian medical workers and global public health experts say it is not possible to determine exactly how much US sanctions have impacted Iran’s capacity to fight the virus - which has infected more than 35,000 Iranians, killed at least 2,500 and spawned outbreaks in other countries. But they say it is clear that the Iranian health care system is being deprived of equipment necessary to save lives and prevent wider infection.

“There are a lot of shortages now. ... (Hospitals) do not have enough diagnostic kits or good quality scanners, and there is also a shortage of masks,” said Nouradin Pirmoazen, a tho-racic surgeon and former law-maker in Iran. Pirmoazen, who now lives in Los Angeles, said that he is in regular contact with former colleagues and students at the Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran, which is part of Iran’s National Research Institute of Tubercu-losis and Lung Diseases.

“Medical staff who want a specific type of medicine or equipment are having diffi-culty transferring money outside of Iran due to the sanctions,” he said, adding that doctors and nurses at Masih Daneshvari have been overwhelmed by the crisis.

An employee of a major pharmaceutical company in Iran who spoke on the con-dition of anonymity said that “the sanctions have definitely made the import and pro-duction processes longer and more expensive.”

“Some suppliers are afraid and not willing to work with us anymore,” she said. “The sanctions have reduced Iran’s capacity to control the outbreak.”

According to the World Health Organization, the toll from the novel coronavirus in Iran is likely five times higher than official figures show. Earlier this month, The Wash-ington Post obtained reporting data from a network of hospitals in Tehran, including Masih Daneshvari, that suggested the epidemic was far more widespread than the government had acknowledged.

Iranian leaders have come under fire for what critics say was a botched response to the

outbreak, including initially refusing to quarantine affected areas or close religious shrines, measures that likely allowed the deadly pathogen to spread. On Thursday, the Interior Min-istry announced new restric-tions on travel between prov-inces and ordered all nones-sential shops to close.

“The reality is that the gov-ernment refused to admit that it had a problem,” said Amir Afkhami, an associate pro-fessor and global health expert at George Washington Uni-versity. “There was a lack of transparency and officials took what were clearly inadequate precautionary measures.”

This month, countries such as Britain, France, Germany and China, as well as the European Union, donated cash and emergency aid to Iran, including lab equipment, protective suits, face masks and gloves. But economic analysts warn that emergency aid is not sus-tainable during a pandemic, especially as donor countries begin to face their own crises.

“In the medium-term, relying on political channels to arrange aid is going to be cumbersome,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and publisher of Bourse & Bazaar, a media company supporting business diplomacy between Europe and Iran.

The United Nations Human Rights Commissioner also called this past week for the “urgent” re-evaluation of sanctions against countries grappling with the global pandemic. In a statement, Michelle Bachelet highlighted the impact of the Iran sanctions “on access to essential medicines and medical equipment - including respi-rators and protective equipment for health-care workers.”

There should be “prompt, flexible authorization for essential medical equipment and supplies,” she said.

The United States reim-posed sanctions on Iran after President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal, citing concerns with the agreement as well as Iran’s ballistic missile development and continued support for proxy forces in the region. The agreement had curbed Iran’s atomic energy activities in exchange for widespread sanctions relief, including opening the country up to foreign investment, allowing sales of oil on the global market, removing restrictions on its banking, insurance and

shipbuilding sectors, and expanding permitted exports.

The Trump adminis-tration, like its predecessors, has technically maintained an exemption from sanctions on the sale of humanitarian items to Iran. The Treasury Department recently approved a Swiss-sponsored mechanism allowing for the trade of food, medicine and other supplies with Tehran, without triggering US sanc-tions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touted the move at a March 20 news conference.

“The whole world should know that humanitarian assistance to Iran is wide open. It’s not sanctioned,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to facilitate both the humani-tarian assistance moving in and to make sure the financial trans-actions connected to that can take place as well.”

In practice, however, the US restrictions - including penalties for conducting business with a range of Iranian banks and companies, including the Central Bank of Iran - have discouraged Western counterparts from trading with Tehran.

To use the Swiss humani-tarian channel, for example, companies must provide extensive information to the Treasury Department every month about the Iranian ben-eficiaries of the goods. The documents must include, among other things, the Iranian companies’ business relationships, financial details and a written commitment from distributors that they will not allow the goods to be sold or resold to sanctioned individuals or entities in Iran.

European officials have likened the reporting require-ments “to a ‘fishing expe-dition’ for information about the commercial relationships with European and Iranian firms,” Batmanghelidj said.

According to Mohsen Zarkesh, an OFAC sanctions attorney at the Price Benowitz law firm in Washington, the sanctions exemptions don’t guarantee an unimpeded flow of humanitarian goods to Iran. He said that the United States has created “a legal and business environment equiv-alent to walking through a compliance mine field.”

Erin Cunningham is an Istanbul-based corre-spondent for The Washington Post, covering conflict and political turmoil across the Middle East.

As coronavirus cases explode in Iran, US sanctions hinder its access to drugs and medical equipment

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09TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Activists say IS prisoner riots break out again in Syria

AP — BEIRUT

Imprisoned Islamic State (IS) militants broke out into riots again yesterday at a jail in northeastern Syria, hours after the Kurdish-led forces running the site said it had restored order, activists said.

Gunfire could be heard in the area as ambulances rushed the wounded from inside the prison to hospitals and clinics in the nearby city of Hassakeh, activists on the ground said. US-led forces flew overhead dropping light bombs illuminate the area for the Kurdish forces while drones hovered over the facility, they added.

The prison riots first broke out on Sunday night when former Islamic State members held there began knocking down doors and digging holes in walls between cells. It was one of the most serious uprisings by the prisoners since the IS defeat a year ago.

Earlier yesterday, Kino Gabriel, a

spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said the situation in the prison in Hassakeh was “fully under control.” He said their anti-ter-rorism force “ended the riots and secured the facility and all prisoners inside.”

It was not immediately clear if the riots were triggered by concerns over the spread of the new coronavirus.

Mustafa Bali, another spokesman for the forces, said late Sunday that so far there is no connection between the riot and fears of the fast-spreading virus. So far there are no official reports of infection in Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria or in any detention facilities there.

Gabriel did not say earlier whether there were casualties in the operation to re-secure the prison adding that none of the prisoners were able to escape.

Kurdish authorities run more than two dozen detention facilities, scat-tered around northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 IS fighters. Among the detainees are some 2,000 foreigners, including about 800 Europeans.

The Kurdish-led forces, backed by the U.S-led coalition, declared a mil-itary victory against IS in March last year, after seizing control of the last sliver of land the militants had con-trolled in southeast Syria.

Adnan Hassan, a citizen journalist near the camp, told The Associated Press that gunfire could be heard inside the prison adding that ambulances are evacuating the wounded from both sides. He added that a huge SDF force arrived in the area before sunset and cordoned the area around the prison.

The Rojava Information Center, an activist collective in the Kurdish-held areas, also reported gunfire and ambu-lances entering the prison. It added that SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi arrived at the scene.

Earlier yesterday, a third spokesman for the forces, told the AP that IS militants were still rioting on one of the floors of the prison. Mervan Qamishlo said in a voice message from

the area that IS “members are still out of control on one of the floors.”

Hassan said IS members are rioting on the ground floor while the first and second floors are controlled by Kurdish fighters.

North Press Agency, a media platform operating in the Kurdish-administered areas, and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said Monday that the local police force, known as Asayesh, had detained four IS members who were able to flee the night before.

The prison is believed to house foreign IS militants. It is not clear what nationalities were held there.

A video posted by activists said to be taken during Sunday’s riots, showed two inmates carrying a banner with writing in Arabic that reads: “We call upon the coalition and international organizations that human rights be respected.”

The U.S-led coalition said it was assisting the SDF with aerial surveil-lance as they quell the riot. The coa-lition said in a tweet that the facility holds low level IS members. The coa-lition said its forces don’t staff any detention facilities in Syria.

The Rojava Information Center said the prison in Hassakeh’s southern neighborhood of Ghoeiran houses some 1,000 low-level foreign IS members. It added that the upper levels of the prison hold mostly Syrian IS members.

Bali said late Sunday that the rioters were in full control of the ground floor of the prison and have smashed and removed the prison’s internal doors.

The Kurdish authorities have asked countries to repatriate their nationals, saying keeping thousands of detainees in crammed facilities is putting a strain on their forces.

“These incidents confirm that Syrian Democratic Forces are able to secure Daesh terrorists,” Gabriel said using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. He added that the incidents also show that the international community should help the SDF to “fully secure” detention facilities and camps hosting families of IS militants.

The families of IS militants and supporters who came out of the last territory controlled by the group are also holed in camps around the Kurdish-controlled areas - the largest one housing nearly 70,000 women and children, many of them foreigners.

Police patrol Zimbabwe streets as coronavirus lockdown beginsAFP — HARARE

Zimbabwe yesterday began enforcing a three-week lockdown in its fight against coronavirus after the disease left one person dead and infected six others.

President Emmerson Mnan-gagwa declared a 21-day “total” l o c k d o w n , c u r t a i l i n g movement, shutting most shops and suspending flights in and out of the impoverished southern African country.

“This 21-day lockdown is not a punishment. It’s an oppor-tunity to save lives by acting responsibly,” he said.

“This was not an easy decision to make but it was the right decision. Nothing is more sacrosanct than the lives of the people of Zimbabwe.”

Police mounted check-points on routes leading to Harare’s central business dis-trict, stopping cars and turning away pedestrians who had no authorisation to be in the area.

Elsewhere truckloads of metropolitan and national

police armed with batons were on patrol, ordering people back to their homes.

“We don’t want to see people here on the streets. We don’t want to see people who have no business in town just loitering,” a policewoman said through a loudhailer. “Everyone to their homes.”

Her colleagues, in riot gear, dispersed people standing in small groups at the Copacabana minibus terminus, which is usually abuzz with people including foreign currency dealers.

In the township of Mbare, a usually bustling terminus for long-distance buses was deserted, with only municipal street cleaners sweeping the empty bus ranks.

A traditionally busy downtown area of Harare referred to as “The Third World” resembled a ghost town with few people on the streets. Most shops had their shutters down.

For many of the country’s 16 million people, who are already suffering a grim

economic recession, the lockdown means even tougher hardship.

With unemployment rate estimated at around 90 percent, most Zimbabweans have informal jobs to eke out a living and few have substantial savings.

“All these children you see here are my grandchildren,” Mbare vegetable vendor Irene Ruwisi said, turning to point at four children standing close by.

“They need to be fed, but there is nothing to eat and we have been barred from vending. How do they expect us to survive?” said the grandmother who appeared to be aged in her 80s. Standing idly outside her house, she was yet to be con-vinced that coronavirus is real, suspecting it to be a government ploy. “Who brought that disease which they are lying about in order to get money to splurge while we suffer? What’s the money they are getting being used for? Where is it going? They should give us the food they were given to feed us,” she

said. Some in Harare were trying to leave the city for rural villages.

“We would rather spend the 21 days at our rural home, where we don’t have to buy everything. I can’t afford to feed my family here when I am not working,” said Most Jawure.

“We have been waiting here for more than two hours but

there are no buses,” Jawure said while standing with his wife and daughter beside a bulging suitcase.

In Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo, located in the southwest, police on horseback and others on bicycles were dis-p e r s i n g p e o p l e a t marketplaces.

Shoppers at a TM-PicknPay,

a leading supermarket chain, were subjected to temperature checks before entering and those with high readings were denied entry.

Kelvin Moyo, 28 an informal trader from Bulawayo’s Entumbane township com-plained about the short notice given to prepare for the lockdown.

An aerial photo showing people queueing for liquified natural gas at a filing station in the Nkulumane township, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, yesterday.

Libya frees over 450 inmates due to virus fearsAFP — TIPOLI

Libya’s justice ministry announced that over 450 pris-oners were being freed in a bid to protect against the spread of coronavirus in the wake of the war-torn country’s first declared infections.

Judicial officials decided to “free 466 detainees from cor-rectional facilities” in Tripoli, according to a statement by the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord’s justice min-istry. The detainees were in pre-trial detention or had qualified for conditional release, the statement added.

Authorities announced five new coronavirus cases in the western city of Misrata on Sunday, bringing the tally of infections confirmed in Libya to eight. The country’s first case had been confirmed on Tuesday. Other measures “aimed at reducing the over-population of prisons” will follow, including amnesty for elderly or ill prisoners and those who have served over half their sentences, according to the ministry statement.

Human Rights Watch applauded the justice

ministry’s move as a “positive first step”, but said “authorities should do more to mitigate the risks of a major COVID-19 outbreak”.

Libyan authorities “need to be prepared to limit the spread of the virus in over-crowded detention facilities and shelters for displaced people,” HRW said in a statement. Libya has been plagued by conflict since the 2011 overthrow of former dic-tator Muammar Gaddafi.

Since April 2019, forces loyal to eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar have been fighting to seize the capital in an offensive that has killed hundreds and displaced 150,000 people.“If the COVID-19 pandemic spreads in Libya, the country’s health care system won’t be able to cope with large numbers of patients,” said HRW's Hanan Salah. Both the UN-recognised GNA and a rival eastern-based government under the control of Haftar have taken prevent-ative measures against the spread of the virus, including closing schools, some busi-nesses, markets and even private clinics.

Morocco confirms 37 new COVID-19 cases, bringing total to 516QNA — RABAT

Thirty-seven new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) were reported in Morocco, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 516, the Moroccan Ministry of Health said. The 37 new cases were confirmed after laboratory tests for 1,920 persons, said the Ministry. It pointed out that the number of cured persons stands at 13, while one more death was reported, bringing the total to 27. The Health Ministry urged citizens to respect the rules of hygiene and health safety as well as the preventive measures taken by the Moroccan authorities.

A traffic gridlock is seen as people attempt to rush out of Abuja, following efforts of the authorities trying to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday.

African leaders hold teleconferenceANATOLIA — KAMPALA

An eight-nation African trade bloc yesterday met remotely to talk ways to tackle the coro-navirus pandemic, which to date has infected over 755,00 people worldwide.

They discussed it in a live tel-econference of the special summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) heads of states and gov-ernments on the pandemic.

Attendees included Dji-bouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh, Ethiopian Prime Min-ister Abiy Ahmed Ali, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, and South Sudan’s Vice-President Riek Machar.

According to a statement released by Uganda’s state

house, discussions focused on IGAD’s regional response strategy to the pandemic, establishment of an IGAD emergency fund, mobilizing support from the international community, and mobilizing support from IGAD medical professionals in the diaspora.

The statement said: “The leaders expressed grave con-cerns on the pandemic, which has constituted an unprece-dented global health crisis affecting the health and econ-omies of the world.

“They collectively agreed to formulate a comprehensive regional response strategy and an accompanying implemen-tation plan to address the pan-demic in the region. The members agreed to strengthen the IGAD response mechanism through increased utilization of regional disease surveillance and early warning response system. “They further agreed

to the establishment of an IGAD emergency for the control and prevention of control of pan-demics to which they called upon the international com-munity to render support to.

“On the matter of mobi-lizing support from the inter-national community, the leaders called upon interna-tional financial institutions, bilateral and regional and inter-national partners especially the World Bank, International Mon-etary Fund, African Devel-opment Bank to accelerate debt relief processes and provide access to financial assistance, concessionary loans and essential support to the member states and secretariat.”

The meeting also hailed the efforts and initiative of Sudan’s Hamdok, the IGAD chair, for mobilizing support from the international com-munity to combat the pan-demic in the IGAD region.

Turkish President launches National Solidarity Campaign

ANATOLIA — ANKARA

Turkey’s President yesterday launched a National Solidarity Campaign to aid fight against the novel coronavirus, donating seven months of his own salary to the initiative.

“I am launching the cam-paign personally by donating my seven-month salary,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his address to the nation.

Cabinet members in the government and lawmakers have donated 5.2m Turkish liras ($791,000) to the cam-paign, he added.

He also stressed that Turkey enjoys better medical facilities compared to other countries fighting the virus, saying: “Turkey is rapidly opening new hospitals while also strengthening the existing ones.”

“We are determined to use all means to curb the spread of the virus”, he added.

Netanyahu under precautionary quarantineAFP — JERUSALEM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went into precautionary quarantine yesterday after one of his staff tested positive for coronavirus, as the veteran premier seeks a unity government to combat the pandemic.

Netanyahu’s office stressed the quarantine was strictly a precaution as the veteran right-winger had not been in recent proximity to the unwell member of staff.

The prison riots first broke out on Sunday night when former Islamic State (IS) members held there began knocking down doors and digging holes in walls between cells. It was one of the most serious uprisings by the prisoners since the IS defeat a year ago.

10 TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020ASIA

Japan ‘not planning emergency’, but entry bans loomREUTERS — TOKYO

Japan has no plan to declare a state of emergency from April, its top government spokesman said yesterday, seeking to dispel mounting fears a recent spike in coronavirus cases could lead to a first-ever lockdown of the capital, Tokyo.

As the number of infections grows globally, however, Japan will raise its defences against imported cases by banning the entry of foreigners travelling from the United States, China, South Korea and most of Europe, the Asahi newspaper reported yesterday.

Non-Japanese citizens who have been in any of those places in the previous two weeks will be barred, the newspaper said. The government may also ban travel to and from some coun-tries in Southeast Asia and Africa, it said, citing unidentified government sources.

A foreign ministry spokesman said the government had not made any decision on bans.

“It’s not true that the gov-ernment is planning on declaring a state of emergency from April

1,” Yoshihide Suga, the govern-ment’s top spokesman, told a news conference.

Suga also said an expected telephone call between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organi-zation (WHO), yesterday had nothing to do with any decision on whether to call a state of emergency.

Any lockdown in Japan would look different to man-datory measures imposed in some parts of Europe and the United States. By law, local authorities are only permitted to issue requests for people to stay at home, which are not legally binding.

But analysts said such a lockdown would inflict huge damage on an economy already on the cusp of recession due to the widening fallout from the pandemic, which has derailed Tokyo’s plans to stage Olympic Games this summer, disrupted supply chains and cooled con-sumption as events are cancelled and shops shut.

“I think the possibility of a lockdown of the Tokyo metro-politan area is rising,” said Hideo

Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

Sunday’s daily tally of 68 new cases in the capital was a record. Bringing the tension home to many was the news that comedian Ken Shimura, a household name in Japan, had become its first celebrity to die of the virus.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike yesterday called on residents to avoid outings in the evenings and at weekends as the coronavirus crisis deepened, but said it was up to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare a state of emergency to tackle it.

As much of the rest of the world has gone into strict lock-downs to fight the coronavirus, Japan has so far managed to avoid the kind of outbreaks that have ravaged parts of Europe and the United States and restrictions are only requests.

However, a spike in cases in Tokyo, along with the death of a beloved comedian yes-terday, appeared to be driving home the potential risk. A top doctor called on Abe to act now.

“If we wait until an explosive increase in infections

before declaring an emergency, it will be too late,” Satoshi Kamayachi, an executive board member of the Japan Medical Association, told a news con-ference, in comments carried by broadcaster Nippon Television.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike (centre) speaks during a meeting on novel coronavirus at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office, in Tokyo yesterday.

However, a spike in cases in Tokyo, along with the death of a beloved comedian yesterday, appeared to be driving home the potential risk. A top doctor called on Japan Prime Minitser Abe to act.

Indian police fire tear gas at migrants defying virus lockdownREUTERS — NEW DELHI Police in India fired tear gas to disperse a stone-pelting crowd of migrant workers defying a three-week lockdown against the coronavirus that has left hundreds of thousands of poor without jobs and hungry, authorities said yesterday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered the country’s 1.3 billion people to remain indoors until April 15, declaring such self-isolation was the only hope to stop the viral pandemic.

But the vast shutdown has triggered a humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of poor migrant labourers employed in big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai seeking to head to their homes in the coun-tryside on foot after losing their jobs.

Many have been walking for days, some with families including small children, on deserted highways with little access to food or water.

On Sunday, about 500 workers clashed with police in the western city of Surat demanding they be allowed to go home to other parts of India because they had no jobs left.

“The police tried to convince them that it is not possible since buses or trains are not available...

However, the workers refused to budge, and started pelting stones at police,” Surat deputy commissioner of police Vidhi Chaudhari said.

She said the workers, most of them employed in the shut-tered textile industry in Surat, were driven indoors by tear gas volleys and on yesterday 93 of them were detained for violating lockdown orders.

India has registered 1,071 cases of the coronavirus, of whom 29 have died, the health ministry said yeserday. The number of known cases is small compared with the United States, Italy and China, but health officials say India is weeks away from a huge surge that could overwhelm its weak public health system.

Yesterday, hundreds of people from the Nizamuddin West area of New Delhi were taken away to be quarantined in the latest sign that the virus has begun to spread locally in India.

Officials said attendees of a training course at the Banglewali Mosque had transmitted the virus to several other regions in India, including Kashmir where a man connected with the event died on March 26.

“The (mosque) area has already been locked down and

it will be disinfected,” said Rajendra Prasad Meena, a senior police officer overseeing the quarantine operation.

Separately, officials in Maharashtra state said all victims of coronavirus would be cre-mated irrespective of religion, an order that could rile the state’s sizeable Muslim population, who typically bury their dead.

A health official said the large scale movement of people into the countryside risked spreading the coronavirus widely, compounding the chal-lenge of containing the outbreak in the world’s second most pop-ulous country.

“It’s an evolving situation with daily new challenges coming up, like having migratory populations moving from one place to another. Like non-affected states adjoining affected states,” said Dr SK Singh, director of the National Centre for Disease Control, which investigates and recommends control measures for outbreaks of illness.

In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, health workers dressed in protection suits sprayed dis-infectant on a group of migrant workers who were also trying to make the journey home to their villages, local television

showed. They were made to sit on a street corner in the Bareilly district and doused with hose pipes, prompting anger on social media. Nitish Kumar, the top government official in the dis-trict, later said health workers had been ordered to disinfect buses being used by the local authorities but in their zeal they had also turned their hoses onto migrant workers.

“I have asked for action to be taken against those respon-sible for this,” he said in a tweet.

The federal government said yesterday that it had no plans to extend the shutdown beyond the three-week period.

People maintaining the recommended distance while waiting to receive free grocery items distributed by police officials during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the novel coronavirus, in Amritsar, yesterday.

Virus casesrise steadily inSouth KoreaREUTERS — SEOUL

South Korea reported 78 new coronavirus cases yesterday, keeping the rate of infections fairly steady, as President Moon Jae-in held an emergency meeting with economic policy-makers to discuss financial support for the public.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said the national tally stood at 9,661, while the death toll rose by 6 to 158. It added that 195 more people had recovered from the virus for a total of 5,228. The daily number of new infections in South Korea has been hovering around 100 or less for the past three weeks, but authorities have tightened border checks as small out-breaks continued to emerge and the number of imported cases rose. At least 13 of the latest cases were overseas travellers, KCDC data showed.

South Korea announced on Sunday that all overseas arrivals will have to undergo two weeks of mandatory quarantine starting on April 1.

South Korea will make emergency cash payments to all but the richest families and draw up a second supplementary budget next month in a bid to ease the drawn-out economic impact of the coronavirus out-break, President Moon Jae-in said yesterday.

Indonesia to curb mobility as surge in virus deaths seenREUTERS — JAKARTA

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said yesterday he planned stricter rules on mobility and social distancing as a study presented to the government warned of a risk of more than 140,000 coronavirus deaths by May without tougher action.

Medical experts have said the world’s fourth most populous country must impose tighter movement restrictions as known cases of the highly infectious res-piratory illness have gone from zero in early March to 1,414, with 122 deaths.

Indonesia accounts for nearly half of the 250 deaths reported from across Southeast Asia, but fewer than a fifth of some 8,400 cases that have been confirmed in the region. Nearly one third of those cases are in Malaysia.

Most infections in Indonesia have been concentrated in and around the capital Jakarta. The city of 10 million people has declared a state of emergency which shut down schools and public entertainment, but so far there has been no full public lockdown which the president has been reluctant to impose.

“I’m (now) ordering large-scale social limits, physical dis-tancing needs to be done more sternly, more disciplined, and

effectively,” Widodo told a cabinet meeting, stressing that only the central government could decide on regional quarantines.

President Joko Widodo has encouraged social distancing but questioned whether Indonesians have the discipline for full lock-downs, in contrast with Southeast Asian nations such as the Philip-

pines, Malaysia and Thailand.But he appears to have

reconsidered this approach after public health experts presented a prediction model to Indonesia’s planning agency Bappenas on Friday underlining a need for stronger intervention to prevent a rapid rise in cases and deaths.

The model said Indonesia could instigate three stages of

intervention: mild, moderate, and high. The latter would include very significant levels of testing and making physical distancing mandatory.

With mild intervention, which includes optional physical distancing and limiting public crowds, the researchers from the University of Indonesia said the virus death toll could soar to over

140,000 among over 1.5 million cases by May.

“These are just conservative estimates,” Pandu Riono, one of the researchers, said.

“But we have to be ready even in these circumstances.” Riono characterised measures currently taken by Indonesia, from rapid testing and deploying regional labs to test samples, as only approaching mild intervention.

Health experts have said Indonesia faces a surge in coro-navirus cases after a slow gov-ernment response believed to have masked the scale of the out-break in a country with still very low levels of testing and with a significant deficit in hospital beds, medical staff and intensive-care facilities.

Bappenas officials said the model served as input for the government and to help them allocate budgets.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said last week that $3.82bn of spending in the 2020 budget could be redirected to tackling the coronavirus.

Riono said that the priority now must be to suppress the number of coronavirus cases. “The message (in our model) is that we don’t want people dying, we don’t want our siblings dying, our friends dying.”

People wearing protective face masks line up in front of a market amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Jakarta yesterday.

New Zealander killed in Papua rebel attackAFP — JAYAPURA

A New Zealander was shot dead and two Indonesians were seri-ously wounded in an attack by separatist rebels in Indonesia’s restive Papua province, police said yesterday.

The shooting took place at an office of US-based mining company Freeport.

Yesterday, rebels gunned down New Zealander Graeme Thomas Weal, 57, in an ambush that also seriously wounded two Indonesian colleagues at a Freeport office in Mimika regency, police said.

Papua police spokesman Ahmad Musthofa Kamal said the two Indonesians were shot in their back, stomach and legs.

“Joint police and military personnel are now chasing the armed group,” Kamal said yes-terday. The attack comes after Indonesia sent thousands more troops to Papua as the conflict heats up between rebels and government soldiers near the giant gold and copper mine.

This month a policemen and military officer were killed in fighting near the mine that forced about 1,500 local resi-dents to flee the area.

11TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020 ASIA

Drop in China’s new virus cases; none in Wuhan for sixth dayREUTERS — WUHAN

China reported a drop in new coronavirus infections for a fourth day as drastic curbs on international travellers reined in the number of imported cases, while policymakers turned their efforts to healing the world’s second-largest economy.

The city of Wuhan, at the centre of the outbreak, reported no new cases for a sixth day, as businesses reopened and resi-dents set about reclaiming a more normal life after a lockdown fo r almost two months.

Smartly turned out staff waited in masks and gloves to greet customers at entrances to the newly-reopened Wuhan International Plaza, home to bou-tiques of luxury brands such as Cartier and Louis Vuitton.

“The Wuhan International Plaza is very representative (of the city),” said Zhang Yu, 29.

“So its reopening really makes me feel this city is

coming back to life.” Sunday’s figure of 31 new

cases, including one locally trans-mitted infection, was down from 45 the previous day, the National Health Commission said.

While new infections have fallen sharply from February’s peak, authorities worry about a second wave triggered by returning Chinese, many of them students.

China cut international flights massively from Sunday for an indefinite period, after it began denying entry to almost all for-eigners a day earlier.

Average daily arrivals at air-ports this week are expected to be about 4,000, down from 25,000 last week, an official of the Civil Aviation Administration of China told a news conference in Beijing yesterday.

The return to work has also prompted concern about potential domestic infections as travel curbs are rolled back, espe-cially regarding carriers who exhibit no, or very mild, symptoms of the highly conta-gious virus.

Northwestern Gansu province reported a new case of

a traveller from the central province of Hubei, who drove back with a virus-free health code, national health authorities said.

Authorities in Zhejiang province said asymptomatic patients with pneumonia would face the same quarantine condi-tions as confirmed cases, including 14 days in isolation centres, the state news agency, Xinhua, reported.

Hubei authorities say 4.6

million people in the province returned to work by Saturday, with 2.8 million of them heading for other parts of China.

Most of the departing migrant workers went to the southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and northeast China.

In Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, more retail complexes and shopping streets reopened. Shoppers queued 1-1/2 metres

apart for temperature checks at Wuhan International Plaza, while flashing “green” mobile tele-phone codes attesting to a clean bill of health.

To be cleared to resume work, Wuhan residents must take nucleic acid tests twice.

“Being able to be healthy and leave the house, and meet other colleagues who are also healthy is a very happy thing,” said Wang Xueman, a cosmetics sales representative.

An elderly woman arrives in an ambulance to Wuhan Red Cross Hospital after being transferred from another hospital after recovering from new coronavirus, in Wuhan, China, yesterday.

Pakistan PM orders opening of all highways for supply of goodsINTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has ordered removing all hurdles in the way of transpor-tation of goods and opening all national highways to ensure smooth and adequate supply of food items from farms/factories to markets amid “panic buying” due to deadly coronavirus scare.

He reiterated his com-mitment to providing ration at the doorsteps of the poor and daily wage earners — who are

said to be the worst-affected seg-ments of population during the countrywide lockdown enforced to prevent the spread of COVID-19 —through a force of young volunteers he was going to formally form yesterday.

Khan issued the directives while presiding over a meeting of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) core committee at the Prime Minister House.

The meeting was informed that the government had started providing personal protection equipment (PPE) to all medical

practitioners, including doctors and paramedical staff currently performing their duty in different hospitals, and intensive care units (ICUs) and quarantines had been established across the country for coronavirus patients.

In case of death of any of the medical practitioners during duty, he/she would be given Shuhada [martyr] package, it was told.

“The core committee was apprised that although the prime minister had ordered res-toration of movement of goods

transport in the whole county a couple of days ago, almost 80 percent of goods transport was still off the road due to certain restrictions made by provincial governments, including blocking of national highways,” Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said at a post-meeting press conference.

She said the prime minister was quite concerned over reports about shortage of food items in many parts of the

country and ordered strict action against those involved in hoarding, black marketing and charging exorbitant prices.

She said the prime minister had held consultations with the provinces and would announce a road map to ensure smooth supply of essential items across the country.

Prime Minister Khan, she said, was informed that there was sufficient quantity of food items in the country, including agriculture products like wheat, rice, pulses and grains.

Pakistan SChalts release of prisonersANATOIIA — KARACHI

Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday halted the release of hundreds of prisoners who were supposed to be set free in an attempt to stem the spread of coronavirus in the country’s overcrowded jails, local media reported.

Several high courts, including the Islamabad High Court, last week, had ordered the release of over 500 under-trial prisoners and those already sentenced for their involvement in petty crimes, to reduce burden on the jails.

“Coronavirus is a serious issue but the decisions taken in haste and fear won’t work,” Chief Justice of Supreme Court Gulzar Ahmed remarked, according to local broadcaster Geo News.

The top court declared that the high courts did not take the complainants’ view into con-sideration while ordering the release of the prisoners.

The two-member bench also barred all the high courts, and the provincial govern-ments from passing any such order. It summoned the con-cerned government officials to hear their view on the matter, and adjourned the hearing until tomorrow.

Pakistan yesterday reported two other deaths from the virus, bringing the tally to 18 in the country, an official said. The new deaths were reported in the southern Sindh — one of the worst hit prov-inces — Dr Azra Pechuhu, the provincial health minister, confirmed.

There are 1,625 confirmed COVID-19 patients in the country with 99 new cases over the last 24 hours.

According to official numbers, 593 cases have been confirmed in the most pop-ulous province of Punjab, 508 in the Sindh province, 195 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 128 in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, 144 in Balochistan, and six in Paki-stani-administered Kashmir.

Australia limits public movement to capitalise on slowing virus ratesREUTERS — SYDNEY

Australian officials will use fines and the threat of jail to enforce a new rule limiting public gath-erings to two people, as the country’s coronavirus infection rate slowed but the death toll crept higher.

New South Wales and Vic-toria, the country’s two most populous states, were set to introduce the penalties from midnight yesterday to enforce national rules set by the federal government on Sunday.

Australia is strengthening limited contact rules for the public as it seeks to capitalise on a slowdown in the growth of new coronavirus cases.

Officials said the rate of new infections has halved in the past week under existing restrictions on movement to about 4,200 people nationally, while the death toll rose to 17.

“It is only in exceptional cir-cumstances that you should leave home,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in Sydney.

“We will get through this. We are in a position now which allows us to control the spread as much as possible.”

New South Wales and Vic-toria will fine people between A$1,000 and A$1,600 for

breaching the rules. In NSW, people could also face six months’ jail. Australia’s state and federal leaders have formed an emergency cabinet to hammer out the coronavirus response as many of the social containment measures require state-level enforcement. That has led to often contradictory messaging for the public on issues such as whether schools should remain open.

As well as imposing the two-person limit on public meetings, the small island state of Tas-mania became the country’s first

state to ban people from alter-nating between their main home and any second home.

“There will not be movement between your shack and your primary place of residence, allowing you to alternate and sleep nights in both,” Tasmania Premier Peter Gutwein said, using local slang for holiday homes.

The island state reported its first coronavirus death overnight.

Amid an extraordinary shutdown of businesses and resulting staff layoffs, Australia’s regulators and banks have taken

measures to pause loan repay-ments for six months, hoping to “hibernate” businesses until the crisis ends.

Prime Minister Scott Mor-rison announced a six-month moratorium on landlords evicting renters on Sunday and urged businesses to hold off on more job cuts.

Meanwhile, officials carried out new requirements that Aus-tralians returning home by plane be immediately taken into mon-itored quarantine in hotels or other facilities for 14 days, under police supervision. Australia’s borders are closed to all but

returning citizens and per-manent residents.

In Western Australia state, hundreds of people were due to be taken from the Vasco da Gama cruise ship to Rottnest Island, a tourist destination near Perth, or hotels near the state capital of Perth for quarantine, ship owner Cruise & Maritime Voyages said.

The danger posed by cruise ships has loomed large in Aus-tralia after passengers who were allowed to disembark the Ruby Princess liner in Sydney without any medical checks were later diagnosed with COVID-19.

A traveller (left) being escorted from an airport bus into an inner-city hotel in Melbourne, Australia, yesterday.

North Korea says Pompeo undercuts its interest in restarting talksREUTERS — SEOUL

North Korea said yesterday that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo undermined its will-ingness to restart stalled denu-clearisation talks, criticising his recent remarks on sanctions on Pyongyang.

Pompeo had said after a tel-econference with G7 foreign ministers last week that all nations must remain united in calling for North Korea to return to negotiations and applying

diplomatic and economic pressure over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

That comment highlighted the United States cannot reverse its hostile policy toward North Korea “no matter how excellent and firm the relationship” their two leaders have, state media KCNA said, citing an unnamed foreign ministry official respon-sible for the negotiations.

“Hearing Pompeo’s reckless remarks, we dropped the interest in dialogue with further

conviction, but have become more zealous for our important planned projects aimed to repay the US with actual horror and unrest for the sufferings it has inflicted upon our people,” the official was quoted as saying.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump have boasted of rapport they have built during three meetings and an exchange of multiple letters since 2018.

But little progress has been made on dismantling

Pyongyang’s weapons pro-grammes, with a last round of working-level talks in October falling apart.

North Korea has not con-firmed any case of the corona-virus, but KCNA said Trump had sent a letter to Kim carrying a “sincere aid plan” to help prevent an outbreak, only to be followed up soon by Pompeo’s “slander” against the country.

Pyongyang has touted the letter as a sign of “the special and very firm personal relations”

between the two leaders despite recent frictions.

“This makes us misjudge who is the real chief executive in the US,” the diplomat said.

In an earlier dipatch on yes-terday, KCNA said Sunday’s test of super-large multiple rocket launchers had been a success.

North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Sunday, the latest in a flurry of launches that South K o r e a d e c r i e d a s

“inappropriate” amid the coro-navirus pandemic.

KCNA said the launch was aimed at examining the stra-tegic and technical features of the launchers, which has been tested multiple times since last August overseen by leader Kim Jong Un, ahead of deployment.

KCNA did not mention Kim’s attendance at the latest test, led by ruling party vice chairman Ri Pyong Chol and conducted at the Academy of National Defense Science.

Sunday’s figure of 31 new cases, including one locally transmitted infection, was down from 45 the previous day, the National Health Commission said. While new infections have fallen sharply from February’s peak, authorities worry about a second wave triggered by returning Chinese, many of them students.

Officials carried out new requirements that Australians returning home by plane be immediately taken into monitored quarantine in hotels or other facilities for 14 days, under police supervision. Australia’s borders are closed to all but returning citizens and permanent residents.

12 TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020EUROPE

Italy sees 812 more virus deaths; steep fall in new casesREUTERS – ROME

The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has risen by 812 in the last 24 hours, the Civil Protection Agency said yesterday, reversing two days of declines.

Italy, the world’s hardest hit country which accounts for more than a third of all global fatalities, saw its total death tally rise to 11,591 since the out-break emerged in northern regions on February 21. More positively, the number of new cases rose by just 4,050, the lowest amount since March 17, reaching a total of 101,739. However, the decline in new infections may be partly explained by a reduction in the number of tests, which were the fewest for six days.

Italians have been under nationwide lockdown for three weeks and officials said the restrictions, which were due to

end on Friday, look certain for at least two more weeks.

“We have to agree on this with other regions, but I think we are talking about (main-taining the block) until at least mid-April,” Attilio Fontana, head of the worst-affected Lombardy region, told reporters. The governor of the southern region of Puglia said on Saturday the restrictions should stay until May.

Underscoring the dangers of the disease, the national doctors’ association announced the deaths of 11 more doctors yes-terday, bringing the total to 61.

Not all of them had been tested for coronavirus before they died, it said, but it linked their deaths to the epidemic.

Lombardy, which is centred on Italy’s financial capital Milan, accounts for almost 60 percent of the total deaths in Italy and some 40 percent of cases.

Fontana said the unprece-dented curbs on movement, gatherings and business activity were preventing an exponential rise in cases, and needed to be kept in place.

“We’re on the right track, we’re maintaining a (chart) line that’s not uphill, but it’s not downhill either,” he said.

The head of the national health institute, Silvio Brusa-ferro, who is advising the gov-ernment on how to handle the crisis, also said that for restric-tions to be eased “the number of new cases has to fall significantly.”

Medical workers in protective suits push a patient on a stretcher in front of the Policlinico Tor Vergata, where patients suffering from coronavirus disease are hosted, in Rome, Italy, yesterday.

Spain tightenslockdown after moreinfections than ChinaAP — MADRID

Spain enforced even tighter stay-at-home rules yesterday for its 47 million people, as the country overtook China as the nation with the third-highest number of reported infections in the world, after the United States and Italy.

But the new measures, which confused many Spaniards, came under attack from leaders who say the government is hurting the economy beyond repair, and opposition parties who accuse it of improvising in its response to the outbreak.

Already stretched beyond breaking point in at least one third of the country, hospitals are seeing scores of medical workers falling ill and requiring quar-antine, while the arrival of pro-tective gear is suffering delays.

The government’s decision to impose a two-week halt effective from yeserday to all non-essential economic activity. came even as authorities claimed that the previous two weeks of confinement were starting to pay off with a slower pace of the pan-demic’s expansion.

Hundreds of thousands of

Spaniards have already applied for unemployment subsidies since the confinement measures began in mid-March.

Only workers in hospitals, pharmacies, the food supply chain and other essential indus-tries are required to work until the end of Easter, in mid-April. In a call for Spaniards to “hibernate,” as described by a Cabinet member of Spain’s left-wing coalition government, the rest were asked to scale back operations to weekend-level.

But the new measures sur-prised and confused many Span-iards, who woke up yesterday not knowing whether their jobs were part of the exceptions to the gov-ernment’s new emergency decree that wasn’t fully published until midnight on Sunday.

“Spaniards don’t deserve more lies, incompetence and internal fighting,” opposition conservative Popular Party leader Pablo Casado said yesterday.

In hard-hit Madrid, which has seen nearly half of the coun-try’s deaths, flags flew at half-staff for an official mourning period that began yesterday.

During a minute of silence observed for the dead, bells tolled across the Spanish capital’s empty Puerta del Sol central square. Speakers blasted US composer Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

With a population thirty times smaller than China’s 1. 4 billion, Spain’s official tally of infections was for the first time higher: more than 85,000, an 8 percent rise from the previous day but smaller than earlier increases that had rocketed up to 20 percent. The health min-istry also reported 812 new deaths, raising its overall con-

firmed death toll to 7,340.Crews of workers and sol-

diers were frantically building more field hospitals in the capital and surrounding towns. The region is among six of Spain’s 17 regions at their limit of ICU beds. Three more, according to offi-cials, are close to it.

Spanish health official Dr Maria José Sierra said there’s no end to the stay-at-home restric-tions yet in sight.

“Reducing the pressure on the ICUs will be important for considering de-escalation measures,” said Sierra, who took over yesterday as the health

emergency centre’s spokes-person after its director tested positive.

Nearly 15 percent of all those infected in Spain, almost 13,000 people, are among the country’s 646,000 health care profes-sionals. This hampers hospitals’ efforts to help the tsunami of people gasping for breath.

For most people, the corona-virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, the virus can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and can be fatal.

Medical staff from a hospital hold a banner reading “Thank you all” as neighbours applaud from their balconies in support for healthcare workers, in Madrid, Spain, yesterday.

Toll exceeds 3,000 in France; army ferries critical patientsREUTERS — STRASBOURG/PARIS

France recorded its worst daily coronavirus death toll yesterday, exceeding 3,000 for the first time, and army helicopters transported critical patients from the east to hospitals overseas as the country battled to free up space in life-support units.

The Grand Est region the first in France to be overwhelmed by a wave of infections that has rapidly moved west to engulf the greater Paris region, where hos-pitals are desperately adding intensive care beds to cope with the influx.

The number of coronavirus

deaths since March 1 climbed by 16 percent to 3,024, while the number of intensive care cases rose more than 10 percent to 5,107, rising after two days of falls.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has warned the coun-try’s 67 million people that the toughest weeks in the fight against epidemic are still to come and doctors in the capital said yesterday they were close to saturation point.

“Today in the pulmonology unit we are as full as full can be,” Jerome Pinot, a doctor at the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, said.

“To find a place in intensive

care is a never-ending headache. We ask ourselves whether we can move this patient to this unit to take another patient. It’s an incessant game.”

France has increased the number of beds in intensive care units from 5,000 to about 10,000 since the start of the crisis and it is scrambling to reach 14,500.

In the eastern city of Stras-bourg, paramedics in hazmat suits transferred six patients onto three Caiman NH90 med-icalised helicopters before they were moved to hospitals in Bern and Frankfurt.

Eighty have so far been moved from the region

to Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg. Transfers from Paris hospitals are expected in the coming days.

Health officials believe that the benefits of a national lockdown that has been in place since March 17 will begin to be felt by the end of the week.

They consider new daily hospital admissions and the number of those going into life-support as the key indicators to see if the tide is turning and if the health system can cope.

“We are not in a drop at the moment. We hope that this increase will be more modest in the coming days,” Jerome Salomon, head of the French

public health authority, told reporters.

To ease the stress on the system, officials want to send some patients to other countries and to less stricken regions to make space in the worst hit areas so that if the peak shifts, then the capital in particular could again take patients in two weeks’ time.

“The growth phase of the epidemic in the region will probably last two weeks,” said Pierre Delobel, head of the infec-tious and tropical diseases unit at the University Hospital in Toulouse, where the number of cases has jumped from 8 to 40 in a week.

UK’s Prince Harry and wife Meghan bid farewell to royal rolesREUTERS — LONDON

Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan posted their last message as working members of Britain’s royal family yestrday before officially embarking on new careers without their “Royal Highness” styles.

Harry and Meghan shocked Queen Elizabeth and the other Windsors in January by announcing plans step back from their royal roles. A later deal brokered by the 93-year-old monarch means they will go their own way from April.

So from Wednesday, the couple, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, will be free to pursue new careers, earn their own money and spend most of their time in North America.

But they will no longer be able to use the word “royal” in

their branding or carry out official duties and have agreed not to use the style of HRH - His or Her Royal Highness.

Harry, 35, the queen’s grandson and sixth in line to the throne, will remain a prince but relinquish his military appointments.

“While you may not see us here, the work continues,” the couple said in the last message to their more than 11 million followers on their sussexroyal Instagram page.

“We look forward to recon-necting with you soon. You’ve been great! Until then, please take good care of yourselves, and of one another.”

Harry, and Meghan, a former actress, married in a lavish ceremony in May 2018, a wedding which was heralded at the time as infusing a blast of Hollywood glamour and

modernity into the monarchy, and making them one of the world’s biggest celebrity couples.

Their son Archie was born a year later, but by then rela-tions with the media and with Harry’s elder brother Prince William were becoming strained, and in January they announced plans to step back from their royal roles.

It provoked a crisis, and in a subsequent deal thrashed out with the queen, her son and heir Prince Charles and William, it was agreed the couple would have to give up their royal jobs altogether.

As a result, the couple will no longer use their sussexroyal handle on Instagram nor update their SussexRoyal.com website. The Sussex Royal Foundation, which they were setting up, will be wound up.

A file photo of Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan attending the Mountbatten Festival of Music at the Royal Albert Hall, in London.

Britain names Ken McCallum as MI5 chief

REUTERS — LONDON

Britain yesterday named Ken McCallum, a career spy who led the response to the attempted murder of Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal, as the new head of its MI5 domestic intelligence agency.

McCallum, who has worked in MI5 for 25 years, rose through the ranks working across the agency’s main fronts from Northern Ireland to countering Islamist militants and ensuring the safety of the 2012 London Olympics.

Then, after former Russian double agent Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found poi-soned with a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as “Nov-ichok” in 2018, McCallum led the agency’s response to the attempted murder, MI5 said.

“Our people — with our partners — strive to keep the country safe, and they always want to go the extra mile,” McCallum said in a statement.

“Having devoted my working life to that team effort, it is a huge privilege now to be asked to lead it,” he added.

Britain blamed Russia for the attack in which a British citizen died. Russia denied any role, though Western powers expelled dozens of Russian spies working under diplomatic cover.

Skripal, a former officer in Russian military intelligence (GRU), betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence.

Andrew Parker, who retires at the end of April, has led MI5 since 2013.

He stayed on longer than is usual to ensure a stable tran-sition during Britain’s exit from the European Union which took place on Jan. 31.

During Parker’s watch, MI5 had to contend with a spate of deadly militant attacks in the United Kingdom including the 2017 Manchester suicide bombing which killed 22 people, and attacks on Westminster and London Bridge the same year.

The number of new cases rose by just 4,050, the lowest since March 17, reaching a total of 101,739.

13TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020 EUROPE

Moscow goes intolockdown to curbspread of virusAFP — MOSCOW

Moscow, with its more than 12 million people, went into lockdown yesterday while other parts of Russia moved to introduce similar steps to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday also urged res-idents of Moscow to respect the lockdown, saying it was a nec-essary measure to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

“I ask you to take these forced but absolutely necessary measures... very seriously and completely responsibly,” Putin said after regional authorities in Moscow and the surrounding region ordered a strict quarantine.

The order from the Moscow mayor came just a few hours before going into force early yesterday, with several regions quickly following suit.

In a televised conference with his representatives in Russian regions, Putin ordered them to inventory hospital beds and ventilators and threatened

consequences if national measures are not enforced.

“It’s not lack of discipline and common sense, it is criminal negligence,” he said of local authorities who neglect to close down entertainment venues.

The enforcement of the strict new rules, which Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin sud-denly announced late Sunday, coincided with the beginning of a “non-working” week declared by Putin.

“The situation is certainly serious and everyone should take this very seriously,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Moscow, which has become the epicentre of the contagion in Russia, announced the new

measures after many Musco-vites failed to heed recommen-dations to self-isolate and instead went to parks for bar-becues at the weekend.

Yesterday, Red Square in the heart of Moscow was eerily empty, while the streets of Europe’s most populous city were quiet even though traffic could still be seen on the roads.

Muscovites are now only allowed to leave their homes in cases of a medical emergency,

to travel to jobs judged essential, and to go to local grocery stores and pharmacies which need to enforce social distancing.

Over the past 24 hours Russia has recorded 302 new cases, taking the national tally to 1,835 cases of coronavirus and nine deaths.

But the real number of infected people is believed to be higher and critics have rounded on authorities for not

proposing tougher measures sooner. At a government meeting, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin asked regional authorities to prepare for Moscow-style lockdowns, saying it was important to pre-empt a major outbreak.

At least eight regions including the Western exclave region of Kaliningrad have already imposed or were pre-paring to impose strict quarantines.

Russian law enforcement officers wearing protective masks stand guard in a street, after the city authorities announced a partial lockdown, in central Moscow, Russia, yesterday.

Hungary PM gets sweeping powers in virus fightAFP — BUDAPEST

Hungary’s parliament endorsed a bill yesterday giving nation-alist Premier Viktor Orban sweeping new powers he says he needs to fight the new coro-navirus pandemic.

Critics at home and abroad have condemned the “anti-coronavirus defence law”, saying it gives Orban unnec-essary and unlimited power in a ruse to cement his leadership rather than battle the virus.

After declaring a state of emergency on March 11, the new bill will give Orban the power to largely rule by decree indefinitely until the gov-ernment decides the pandemic crisis is over.

The bill removes the current requirement for MPs to approve any extension to time limits on the decrees.

It also introduces jail terms of up to five years for anyone spreading “falsehoods” about the virus or the measures against it, stoking new worries for press freedom.

It was passed by 137 votes to 53 by parliament’s lower chamber, where Orban’s Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority.

Since taking power in 2010,

the self-styled “illiberal” nation-alist has transformed Hungary’s political, judicial and constitu-tional landscape.

The 56-year-old has fre-quently clashed with European institutions, NGOs and rights groups with Brussels suing Hungary for “breaching” EU values — charges fiercely denied by Budapest.

Orban has given criticism of the coronavirus law short shrift, accusing critics of alarmism and appealing to “European nit-pickers” to let Hungary defend itself against COVID-19.

“If they can’t help, then at least don’t stop the Hungarians from defending (against the virus),” he said on Friday.

His justice minister, Judit Varga, told foreign reporters on Friday that parliament could revoke the decrees at any time, and that the opposition were “fighting imaginary demons and not dealing with reality”.

She also said decrees could be sent to the constitutional court for review.

A government spokes-person Zoltan Kovacs insisted on Twitter yesterday that the

bill is time limited by the par-liament’s powers of revoke, and by the pandemic itself which “hopefully ends one day”.

He added that “72 per cent of Hungarians support this measure”, referring to a recent poll about the provision on spreading falsehoods.

Last week, opposition MPs said however they do not trust Orban not to abuse unlimited special powers and refused to back the bill in the absence of a time deadline on the decrees.

A government minister, Gergely Gulyas, said it would come into force at midnight yesterday if the house speaker and Hungarian President sign it immediately.

Akos Hadhazy, an inde-pendent MP, said Orban did not need any “extraordinary empowerment” as his party already controls parliament and had instead set up a “trap for the opposition”.

Pro-government media accuse the opposition of encouraging the virus by rejecting the bill.

Hungary has reported a total of 447 cases with 15 deaths. More than 13,300 tests have been carried out, the gov-ernment said yesterday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary arrives to attend the plenary session of the Parliament, in Budapest yesterday.

Ukraine Parliament in session Ukrainian lawmakers wearing protective face masks attending an extraordinary sitting of the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev, yesterday.

Virus toll in Belgium at 513as 11,899 cases detectedAFP — BRUSSELS

Belgium’s death toll from the novel coronavirus passed the 500 mark yesterday, with almost 12,000 cases detected since the start of the epidemic.

Health authorities in the country of 11.4 million said 513 COVID-19 deaths had been recorded and 11,899 cases con-firmed by laboratory tests.

But officials said the rise in admissions to hospital and to intensive care units had slowed slightly over the previous 24 hours.

“We’re not at the peak, but at what we call the inflection point — that means the force of the epidemic is beginning to

diminish thanks to the efforts we have all made over the last two weeks,” said Emmanuel Andre, spokesman for govern-ment’s epidemic team.

“It is extremely important to keep up these efforts — just because the curve is softening slightly today, it doesn’t mean it won’t get worse if we let up our efforts.”

On Friday, Belgium extended lockdown measures by two weeks to April 18 to slow the spread of the virus.

Schools, restaurants and most shops are closed, entry to supermarkets is restricted to allow room for social dis-tancing and people have been told to work from home.

Portugal arrests

three officials

after Ukrainian

killed at airport

REUTERS — LISBON

Portuguese police said yesterday they had detained three immigration officers on suspicion of killing a 40-year-old Ukrainian man who attempted to enter Portugal illegally through Lisbon’s airport earlier this month.

In a statement, Portugal’s criminal investigation police agency, the PJ, said the alleged crime was committed at a temporary detention centre at Lisbon’s airport run by the country’s immigration and border service SEF.

PJ said the victim arrived on March 10 and was killed on March 12 after he “allegedly caused some disturbances” at the centre. The three SEF workers were believed to be responsible for his death, the statement said.

SEF confirmed in a statement that three of its officers had been detained on suspicion of murder, adding the director and deputy director of SEF’s Lisbon Border Directorate had suspended their duties with immediate effect as result of the incident.

“SEF has been collabo-rating with the authorities involved in the investigation since the beginning and took the needed disciplinary measures,” it said.

Portugal’s internal affairs minister said the government had ordered an inquiry into what happened.

Police said the suspects would appear before a judge to answer questions, but did not provide details on when the appearance would take place.

EU urges nations

to open borders

to seasonal farm

workers

REUTERS — BRUSSELS

EU countries should allow the hundreds of thousands of seasonal migrant workers who plant or harvest crops to cross borders despite national measures to contain the coro-navirus, the European Commission said yesterday.

Countries across the 27-nation European Union have set up border controls to stem the spread of the virus, but with the side effect of delaying food and medical supplies, as well as cross-border workers.

The EU executive last week urged EU countries to limit to 15 minutes the time it takes for goods traffic to cross a border, reporting some success yes-terday, although some crossings into and out of Hungary had jams of up to 4km (2.5 miles).

The Commission said yes-terday countries should establish simple and fast pro-cedures to ensure smooth passage for essential workers with proportionate health screenings.

Some 1.5 million people live in one EU country and work in another.

Essential workers, the EU executive said, include healthcare professionals, police and transport workers.

In Luxembourg, for example, most people working in hospitals live in Belgium or France.

The Commission also high-lighted the issue of seasonal workers, particularly in farms, who it said should be catego-rised as essential and able to travel.

It encouraged EU countries to exchange information on their different needs.

France and Germany together take in around 500,000 seasonal farm migrant workers each year and have been considering how to get fruit and vegetables picked in changed times.

French Agriculture Min-ister Didier Guillaume last week issued a rallying cry to a “shadow army” of other workers laid off by the crisis to help.

However, Europe’s leading farming association has expressed doubt that such people would be willing or able to fill the gap.

On March 13, World Health Organization said Europe had become the epicenter of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

EU mobilises support for Western Balkan countriesAFP — BRUSSELS

The EU yesterday announced nearly ¤40m to help Western Balkan countries deal with the coronavirus, after Brussels came under fire for not doing enough for its neighbours.

A further ¤140m was announced for the European Union’s “eastern partner” coun-tries — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

The moves come as the EU seeks to fight back in a publicity

battle with China and Russia, who have made a great show of their gestures of support to countries struggling with the COVID-19 crisis.

In the Western Balkans, ¤38m will go to governments to cover the immediate healthcare needs: four million each for Albania and North Macedonia, seven million for Bosnia and Herzegovina, three million for Montenegro and five million for Kosovo.

The biggest tranche — ¤15m — will go to Serbia, the worst

affected country in the region, while some 374 million in existing funding packages will be reallocated to help cushion the economic impact of the epidemic.

“These are very difficult times not only for the EU, but for our partner countries as well. We are doing all we can to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on human lives and livelihoods,” the EU’s enlargement commis-sioner Oliver Varhelyi said in a statement.

Western Balkans countries will now also be allowed to take part in an EU joint procurement programme to buy protective medical equipment such as face masks for hospital workers.

The move follows anger over the EU’s earlier decision to restrict exports of protective gear to countries outside the bloc.

Poorer Balkan countries, most of whom are in talks to join the EU, are worried about being abandoned.

S e r b i a ’ s P r e s i d e n t

Aleksandar Vucic blasted the “fairytale” of European soli-darity and instead lavished praise on China.

The Chinese are “the only ones who can help us”, said the leader of Serbia, where state TV gave extensive coverage to the arrival of Chinese aid and equipment. Since then, EU offi-cials have raced to point out their already significant amount of investment in healthcare in Serbia — more than ¤450m in aid and loans over the past 20 years.

Georgia declares

curfew to halt

pandemic spread

REUTERS — TBILISI

Georgia will impose a curfew from 9:00pm until 6:00am, close the metro system and ban gatherings of more than three people from today in an effort to prevent spread of coronavirus, Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia said yesterday.

He told a briefing that tightened quarantine rules would come into force across the country at 8am today.

Traffic between cities and municipalities by public transport will be banned and gatherings of more than three people will be allowed only in groceries and pharmacies.

Russia recorded 302 new COVID-19 cases yesterday, taking the national tally to 1,835 cases of coronavirus and nine deaths.

14 TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020AMERICAS

Colombian rebels call temporary ceasefire over pandemicAFP — BOGOTA

Colombia’s last recognized leftist guerrilla group, the ELN, has announced a month-long ceasefire in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a statement released yesterday said.

The rebels said they would unilaterally suspend military action from April 1 to the end of the month “as a humanitarian gesture". The statement was disseminated by a group of Colombian senators who are seeking to establish a peace process with the group.

The National Liberation Army, the group’s formal name, noted a recent appeal by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a halt to conflicts worldwide as nations grapple with the pandemic, and said that Colombian organizations had made similar requests.

Ivan Cepeda, a leftist senator who was among those who made public the rebel statement, said the ELN

reserved the right to defend itself against attacks by gov-ernment forces.

He said it would also respond similarly to drug traf-ficking groups with whom it vies for control in various places around the country.

“We call on the government of (President Ivan) Duque to order its troops to remain in barracks,” the statement said, and urged him to reactivate contacts with its representatives in Havana to negotiate a bilateral truce.

The government’s High Commissioner for Peace, Miguel Ceballos, said the guerrillas’ announcement did not go far

enough. “We have just learned of the ELN’s decision to cease fire for a month. I believe that the country hopes for much more than that. We face a huge challenge, thousands of people can die,” Ceballos said in a radio interview. Colombia had 702

confirmed cases of the virus as of Sunday night, including 10 deaths.

The ELN, which is said to operate in about 10 percent of the country, has some 2,300 combatants and an extensive network of supporters in urban

centers. It is the last formal guerrilla group left in the country after the government reached a peace agreement with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in 2016. Some former FARC rebels have since taken

up arms again, however.Peace negotiations began

with the ELN the following year, first in the Ecuadoran capital Quito, and later in Havana.

But Duque, a conservative who succeeded Juan Manuel Santos — who delivered the FARC peace deal and opened discussions with the ELN — ended the talks after a January 2019 car bomb attack on a Bogota police academy that killed 21 recruits.

Duque has said he would only reopen talks if the ELN releases all its hostages and ceases its “criminal activity.” Bogota has repeatedly accused neighboring Venezuela’s leftist regime under Nicolas Maduro of harboring the guerrillas and condoning drug trafficking inside its border. Caracas denies the accusations.

In its statement, the ELN criticized the government’s handling of the health crisis and said the coronavirus had been artificially created and spread by the United States.

Firefighters, soldiers and workers from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees setting up a temporary hospital for coronavirus patients, in Cucuta, Colombia, on Saturday.

Argentina extends quarantine until mid AprilREUTERS — BUENOS AIRES

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez said on Sunday that the country would extend a mandatory nationwide quar-antine period until the middle of April in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus that has killed over 30,000 people worldwide.

The quarantine, which restricts non-essential workers from leaving their homes apart

from to buy groceries or med-icines, has seen the South American country’s streets vir-tually emptied, while its major grains industry has faced some disruption.

The tough measure was ini-tially until the end of March. It will now be in place until the end of the Easter Holy Week, Fernandez said, which would mean it would be lifted on April 12. “We are going to extend the quarantine until the end of

Easter. What do we aim to achieve? To keep the trans-mission of the virus under control,” he said in a televised message.

Fernández added that the initial results of the compulsory isolation since March 20 looked “good”. The country has recorded 820 coronavirus cases with 20 deaths, although the increase in cases has shown some signs of slowing in recent days.

An aerial view of empty highways in Buenos Aires, Argentina, yesterday.

Unwanted virus-stricken ship heads to US coastAFP — PANAMA CITY

Passengers on the coronavirus-stricken Zaandam cruise ship headed out into the Caribbean bound for the US yesterday after transiting the Panama Canal, their destination uncertain after the company said it was still searching for a port that will allow them to disembark.

The Holland America Line ship passed through the canal from the Pacific side overnight. It was followed a couple of hours later by its sister ship, the Rotterdam, which the company had dispatched from San Diego to take on the healthiest of the 1,800 passengers aboard the Zaandam.

“It’s been an extraordinary day” Ilya Maortta, deputy administrator of the Panama Canal wrote on Twitter after the authority had reversed an earlier decision to block the ship’s passage. The Zaandam had been stuck in the Pacific Ocean since March 14 after dozens of those on board reported flu-like symptoms — including four who subse-quently died — and several South American ports refused to let it dock.

Holland America Line Pres-ident Orlando Ashford admitted they were still searching for a port after the mayor of Fort Lauderdale — the ship’s intended destination — said the Florida city could not take the risk of accepting the passengers. Ashford said in a video message the company was still trying to “figure out” where to disembark passengers from the stricken cruise liner.

The situation was “difficult and unprecedented,” he said.

Fort Lauderdale mayor Dean Trantalis later said allowing the Zaandam to dock in his city was “completely unacceptable” as no special assurances had been given about the passengers’ onward travel arrangements.

“No assurances have been given that they will be escorted from the ship to either a treatment facility or placed in quarantine. This is completely unacceptable,” Trantalis said on Twitter. “We cannot add further risk to our community,” Tran-talis said. “There are many places on the eastern seaboard where this ship could dock and be dealt with in a much more controlled environment,” he said.

Twitter removes Bolsonaro tweets questioning quarantineAFP — SAO PAULO

Two tweets by Brazilian Pres-ident Jair Bolsonaro in which he questioned quarantine measures aimed at containing the novel coronavirus were removed on Sunday, on the grounds that they violated the social network’s rules.

The far-right leader had posted several videos in which he flouted his government’s social distancing guidelines by mixing with supporters on the streets of Brasilia and urging them to keep the economy going.

Two of the posts were removed and replaced with a notice explaining why they had

been taken down.Twitter explained in a

statement that it had recently expanded its global rules on managing content that contra-dicted public health infor-mation from official sources and could put people at greater risk of transmitting COVID-19.

In one of the deleted videos, Bolsonaro tells a street vendor, “What I have been hearing from people is that they want to work.” “What I have said from the beginning is that ‘we are going to be careful, the over-65s stay at home,’” he said.

“We just can’t stand still, there is fear because if you don’t die of the disease, you starve,” the vendor is seen telling

Bolsonaro, who responds: “You’re not going to die!”

In another video, the Pres-ident calls for a “return to nor-mality,” questioning quarantine measures imposed by gov-ernors and some mayors across the giant South American country as an effective con-tainment measure against the virus.

“If it continues like this, with the amount of unemployment what we will have later is a very serious problem that will take years to be resolved,” he said of the isolation measures.

“Brazil cannot stop or we’ll turn into Venezuela,” Bolsonaro later told reporters outside his official residence.

On Saturday, Health Min-ister Luiz Henrique Mandetta highlighted the importance of containment as a means of fighting the coronavirus, which has already infected 3,904 people in Brazil, leaving 114 dead, according to the latest official figures.

“Some people want me to shut up, follow the protocols,” said Bolsonaro. “How many times does the doctor not follow the protocol?” “Let’s face the virus with reality. It is life, we must all die one day.” In the four videos posted on his Twitter account, Bolsonaro is seen surrounded by small crowds as he walked about the capital.

Enforcing quarantineSoldiers stand at a checkpoint in San Salvador during a quarantine, taking place across El Salvador, as the government steadily undertakes stricter measures to prevent a possible spread of COVID-19, on Sunday.

Brazil court bars

cruise crew from

coming ashore

REUTERS — SAO PAULO

A Brazilian court has barred crew members from disem-barking from the Costa Fascinosa cruise ship anchored with no passengers at the port of Santos after some of their mates developed coronavirus symptoms, city authorities said yesterday.

All passengers on the ship, which has a capacity for 3,800 passengers and crew, were disembarked on March 17 at Santos and only the crew remained in quarantined.

Santos is Latin America’s largest port and where most of Brazil’s agriculture com-modities are exported.

Last week, seven crew m e m b e r s d e v e l o p e d symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and were taken ashore and sent to local hos-pitals, a spokesperson for the shipping company Costa Cro-ciere said. Judge Alexandre Saliba ruled yesterday that only crew members who need medical assistance will be allowed to disembark.

The judge ordered the Santos Port Authority to coor-dinate with Brazil’s health sur-veillance agency Anvisa and Sao Paulo state and local health departments in the case of more crew members needing to disembark to get medical attention.

The cruise operator said its ship was in “voluntary quar-antine” before the ruling and will remain so.

“All necessary health measures are being taken and the company is diligently fol-lowing guidelines from local health authorities,” the company said. It was unclear when the quarantine would end or how many persons remained onboard. Costa said there is doctor on the ship who is responsible for assessing the crew’s health. The Santos Port Authority said it is a priority to protect the health and safety of the port’s workers, its users and the surrounding population.

Peru unveils

region’s biggest

stimulus planBLOOMBERG — LIMA

Peru is moving to fend off economic catastrophe with a record fiscal stimulus and plans for a contingency line of up to $18bn from the Interna-tional Monetary Fund to contain the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

The government is putting together a package of eco-nomic measures totaling 90 billion soles ($26bn), including health-care spending, tax breaks and loan guarantees to revive an economy that’s ground to a virtual halt after the government implemented some of Latin America’s toughest lockdown rules.

The economic package equals to 12% of gross domestic product, more than any other country in the region has announced to date, and could be increased further, said Finance Minister Maria Antonieta Alva.

It includes short-term measures such as cash handouts, and longer term measures to “rebuild” some industries such as tourism that face devastation as a result of the pandemic, she told a TV channel on Sunday.

The arsenal also will include up to 30 billion soles in government-backed loans to small and medium-sized businesses. “The impact of what’s happening is unprece-dented, so we need to implement an unprecedented economic plan,” the finance minister said.

The rebels said they would unilaterally suspend military action from April 1 to the end of the month 'as a humanitarian gesture'.

Mexico President meets ElChapo’s mother during visit AP — MEXICO CITY

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says it pains him to not be able to embrace supporters during his tours due to the risks of the coronavirus, but he made a remarkable exception on a weekend trip, shaking hands with the elderly mother of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.

López Obrador was visiting a highway project in the western state of Sinaloa on Sunday on a road that passes the town of Badiraguato where María Con-suelo Loera Pérez lives. López Obrador said yesterday he was told she had come to the event and wanted to greet him. After

the event, he went to the pas-senger side door of her vehicle and she extended her hand through the window.

Asked about shaking her hand at the time the gov-ernment is urging citizens to practice social distancing, López Obrador said it would have been disrespectful not to.

“It’s very difficult humanly,” he said. “I’m not a robot.”

He said she asked about a letter she had sent him in Feb-ruary asking the government to intervene in her request to be allowed to travel to the United States and visit her son in prison.

López Obrador said she told him she didn’t want to die without seeing him. He said she is 92 years old.

15TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020 AMERICAS

US extends social distancing guidelines to April 30

AP — WASHINGTON

Siding with public health experts’ dire projections, Pres-ident Donald Trump yesterday defended his decision to extend restrictive social distancing guidelines through the end of April, while bracing the nation for a coronavirus death toll that could exceed 100,000 people.

“The worst that could happen is you do it too early and all of a sudden it comes back,” Trump said during a nearly hour-long call-in interview with “Fox & Friends” as members of his coronavirus task force fanned out across other media outlets to warn the virus’s spread was only just beginning.

The comments came a day after Trump made a dramatic course reversal and announced that he would not be moving to ease the guidelines and get the economy back up and running by Easter, as he said last week

he hoped to do.In the face of stark projec-

tions from his team and searing images of overwhelmed hos-pitals in his native New York City, Trump instead extended to April 30 the social distancing guidelines, which had been set to expire yesterday.

Many states and local gov-ernments already have stiffer

controls in place on mobility and gatherings.

Trump’s impulse to reopen the country, driven by pleas from business leaders, met a sober reality check from health experts, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, who on Sunday said the US could e x p e r i e n c e b e t w e e n

100,000-200,000 deaths and millions of infections from the pandemic.

That warning hardened a recognition in Washington that the struggle against the coro-navirus will not be resolved quickly even as Trump expressed a longing for normalcy.

“It would not have been a

good idea to pull back at a time when you really need to be pressing your foot on the pedal as opposed to on the brakes,” Fauci said on CNN yesterday, describing how he and Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus task force coordinator, had con-vinced Trump to reconsider.

“We showed him the data. He looked at the data. He got it right away,” Fauci said. “It was a pretty clear picture. Dr. Debbie Birx and I went in to the Oval Office and leaned over the desk and said, ‘Here are the data. Take a look.’ He just shook his head and said, ‘I guess we got to do it.’”

Americans are now being asked to prepare for at least another 30 days of severe eco-nomic and social disruption, with schools and businesses closed and public life upended. One in 3 Americans remain under state or local government orders to stay at home.

Trump also spoke with the nation’s governors yesterday, as did other members of his administration. Birx told the governors that it’s “several weeks away from the peak of the curve for the United States.”

Trump said that modeling projected substantially more deaths if the nation did not incorporate social distancing.

US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on Sunday.

Coronavirus cases in New York jump to 66,497REUTERS — NEW YORK

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called yesterday for healthcare workers elsewhere to help the state’s overwhelmed hospitals battle the coronavirus and made a plea for bipartisanship and “partnership” with US President Donald Trump.

Speaking at a makeshift hospital in Manhattan preparing to receive its first patients yesterday, Cuomo sought to divert attention from any tension with Trump, with whom he has tussled in recent days over the distribution of ventilators in storage.

“I am not engaging the President in pol-itics,” said Cuomo, who has emerged as a leading national voice on the coronavirus pandemic. “My only goal is to engage the President in partnership.” New York is at the epicenter of the crisis. Cuomo has called his state the “canary in the coal mine,” pre-dicting the virus would overwhelm other states in similar ways.

Cuomo said 66,497 people had tested positive in New York, up about 7,000 from Sunday, and that 1,218 New Yorkers had died from the virus, up from the previous day’s total of 965 deaths.

He called on healthcare professionals from across the United States to come and help New York’s hospitals cope with the crisis. He promised New York healthcare workers would return the favor to other parts of the country that might need help

later. “Please come help us in New York now,” Cuomo told a briefing at the tem-porary hospital erected at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. “We need relief.” The governor appealed for unity and bipartisan cooperation in the fight against the virus.

“In this situation, there are no red states and there are no blue states and there are no red casualties and there are no blue cas-ualties. It’s red, white and blue. This virus

doesn’t discriminate,” he said.He said he agreed with Trump that

dealing with the coronavirus was akin to a war, adding: “Then let’s act that way.” Cuomo said that he took Trump’s comment that he would make a better Democratic candidate than Joe Biden as a compliment but reiterated that he had no plans to run for president. “The president commented on a poll that said people were pleased with my leadership. I thank him for that.”

The US Navy's hospital ship USNS Comfort passes Manhattan as it enters New York Harbor in New York City, yesterday.

Amazon, Instacart workers demand safety AFP — NEW YORK

Amazon warehouse employees and Instacart delivery shoppers joined protests yesterday to press safety demands, highlighting the risks for workers on the front lines of supplying Americans largely sheltering at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An estimated 50 to 60 employees joined a walkout at an Amazon worker warehouse in the New York borough of Staten Island, demanding that the facility be shut down and cleaned

after a worker tested positive for the coronavirus.

"There are positive cases working in these buildings infecting thousands," warehouse worker Christian Smalls wrote on Twitter.

Amazon said Smalls made "misleading" statements about conditions and that he was sup-posed to be on quarantine.

"Like all businesses grappling with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we are working hard to keep employees safe while serving communities and the

most vulnerable," Amazon said in a statement.

"We have taken extreme measures to keep people safe."

Meanwhile a group calling itself the Gig Workers Collective said it was maintaining its call for Instacart's independent con-tractors to strike despite new safety measures announced late Sunday by the company.

"Workers aren't filling orders until our full demands are met," a spokesperson said. "This isn't just about us, we want to also protect our customers."

Partisan divide returns in USCongress on next virus stepsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

Fresh partisan divisions flared on Sunday on the next steps for the US Congress in dealing with the coronavirus crisis, with the top House of Representatives Republican casting doubt on the need for more economic stimulus legislation while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled she plans to move forward with it.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed into law a $2.2 trillion aid package — the largest on record — to address the economic downturn inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic after the Demo-cratic-led House and Repub-lican-led Senate put aside par-tisan differences to pass it nearly unanimously.

It was the third legislative package approved by law-makers to address the mounting crisis.

Trump on Sunday left open the possibility that he would support a fourth relief bill, telling reporters he was pre-pared to do “whatever’s nec-essary” to save lives and bring back the economy.

But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was more cau-tious in comments that aired earlier in the day.

“I’m not sure we need a fourth package,” McCarthy told the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures,” noting he wants to see the first three

packages take effect first.Pelosi, the top Democrat in

Congress, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the three bills already signed into law were merely a “down payment.” “We have to do more,” Pelosi said, adding that the existing bills do not provide enough because “every single day, the need grows.”

“We have to pass another bill that goes to meeting the need more substantially than we have. We have other issues that we have to deal with in the bill in terms of personal pro-tective equipment and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) rules that protect workers,” Pelosi said.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday he expects the stimulus package signed by Trump on Friday will provide economic relief overall for about 10 weeks. Mnuchin said his main focus now is on carrying out its provisions to get money to Americans as soon as possible.

“We also have the task force and the medical professionals making recommendations to the President about when they think the economy will be re-opened, and if for whatever reason this takes longer than we think, we will go back to Con-gress and get more support for the American economy,” Mnuchin said on CBS.

Virus cases in

Canada at 6,671

with 66 deaths

AGENCIES — TORONTO

Canada's coronavirus cases has risen to 6,671 with 66 deaths, country's chief public health officer said yesterday.

Canada also announced yesterday it is effectively nationalizing many private payrolls by offering businesses large and small a 75% wage subsidy for their employees amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Trudeau said businesses that have seen a 30% decrease in revenue are eligible.

"For people to get through this tough time and for the economy to rebound, people have to keep their job,” Trudeau said.

The Prime Minister said the government will cover up to 75% of salary on the first 58,700 Canadian dollars (US$41,474) that is earned. That means up to $847 Canadian (US$598) a week.

Trudeau did not put a price tag on it or say how long it would last but he called it a bridge to better times.

Trudeau previously announced the 75% wage subsidy for small businesses but announced yesterday the number of employees a company has will not determine whether or not it gets support. He also said non-profits and charities are also eligible.

The Canadian government reversed course after initially only offering a 10% wage subsidy earlier this month. The new offer is backdated to March 15.

"These are measures that will make a huge difference,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau warned of severe penalties if companies try abuse the subsidy program.

Meanwhile, Trudeau said on Sunday that he would remain in self-imposed iso-lation even though his wife, who had contracted the coro-navirus, has recovered.

"I have to continue in iso-lation in order to be sure that we're following all the pro-tocols and the recommenda-tions by Health Canada," Trudeau said.

Since doctors did not know exactly when Sophie Trudeau became virus-free, the prime minister said he would observe another 14 full days of confinement.

Trudeau has been in self-isolation since March 12.

The US President says modeling projected substantially more deaths if the nation did not incorporate social distancing.

Tom Hanks, wife

back in US after

contracting virus

AFP — LOS ANGELES

Hollywood megastar Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson are back home in Los Angeles after two weeks in hospital and self-isolation in Australia where they contracted the coronavirus.

“Hey, Folks... We’re home now and, like the rest of America, we carry on with sheltering in place and social distancing,” the multiple Oscar-winning actor tweeted at the weekend.

“Many, many thanks to everyone in Australia who looked after us,” he added. “Their care and guidance made possible our return to the USA. And many thanks to all of you who reached out with well wishes. Rita and I so appreciate it.”

Hanks was on Australia’s Gold Coast to film an Elvis Presley biopic when he and Wilson, both 63, came down with the disease.

The pair were admitted to hospital, where they were treated before being released into self-isolation.

Wilson took to Instagram on Sunday to celebrate being a “Covid-19 survivor,” saying she was taking time to reflect on her good fortune and her continued good health after suffering from cancer and kicking the disease five years ago.

“I am celebrating the beauty of this life, the blessings God has given, and my con-tinued good health, even now as a COVID 19 survivor,” she wrote. “Please take a moment today to acknowledge the amazing creation your bodies are and to thank it for doing so much.”

US Navy docks aircraft carrierBLOOMBERG — WASHINGTON

The Pentagon is struggling to stay ahead of the expanding coronavirus pandemic as the Navy is forced to sideline an aircraft carrier.

The USS Theodore Roo-sevelt, a 5,000-person aircraft carrier meant to be patrolling the Pacific and South China Sea, is instead sitting dockside in Guam indefinitely as the number of infected sailors rises daily. Infections started cropping up after an early March port call in Vietnam, which Pentagon leaders say had about 16 known virus cases at the time.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he left key decisions about how to address the out-break to local commanders.

Checks at US-Mexico borderPolice personnel give leaflets with information about coronavirus disease to people entering Mexico from the United States, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Sunday.

16 TUESDAY 31 MARCH 2020MORNING BREAK

Coronavirus lockdowns give Europe’s cities cleaner airREUTERS — BRUSSELS

Air pollution has decreased in urban areas across Europe during lockdowns to combat the coronavirus, new satellite images showed on Monday, but campaigners warned city-dwellers were still more vulnerable to the epidemic.

Cities including Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt showed a reduction in average levels of noxious nitrogen dioxide over March 5-25, compared with the same period last year, according to the Sentinel-5 satellite images.

That coincides with lock-downs in many European coun-tries which have curbed road transport — the largest source of nitrogen oxides — and slowed output at gas-emitting factories.

The new images, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and analysed by the

non-profit European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), show the changing density of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause res-piratory problems and cancer, like heat maps.

Daily weather events can inf luence atmospheric

pollution, so the satellite pic-tures took a 20-day average and excluded readings where cloud cover reduced the quality of the data.

Data from the European Environment Agency (EEA) showed a similar trend over

March 16 to 22. In Madrid, average nitrogen dioxide levels decreased by 56 percent week-on-week after the Spanish gov-ernment banned non-essential travel on March 14.

The EPHA said people living in polluted cities may be more

at risk from COVID-19, because prolonged exposure to bad air can weaken the immune system, making it harder to fight infection.

“That connection is very likely,” Zoltan Massay-Kosubek, policy manager for clean air at

EPHA, said. “But because the disease is new, it still has to be demonstrated.”

Air pollution can cause or exacerbate lung cancer, pul-monary disease and strokes.

China also recorded a drop in nitrogen dioxide pollution in cities during February, when the government imposed draconian lockdown measures to contain the raging epidemic.

In some regions of Poland, however, nitrogen dioxide levels remained relatively high during the period despite its lockdown, perhaps due to the prevalence of coal-based heating.

Countries that went into lockdown later — such as Britain, which did so on March 23 — look set for a pollution reprieve in coming weeks, EPHA said.

Air pollution causes around 400,000 premature deaths each year in Europe, EEA data show.

A combination image shows NO2 emission readings for Milan, Italy, from March 5 to 25 last year versus the same period in 2020, based on European Space Agency Sentinel-5 satellite data.

From sofas and kitchens,top musicians holdconcert fundraiserREUTERS — LOS ANGELES

Billie Eilish sang on her sofa, Elton John played a keyboard belonging to his children, and the Backstreet Boys sang in harmony from five locations as dozens of musicians put on a fundraiser for the warriors against a coronavirus.

Those who performed from their homes for the “IHeart Living Room Concert for America” also included Mariah Carey, Camila Cabello, Alicia Keys, Shawn Mendes and Sam Smith.

The one-hour show, broadcast on Fox television without commercials, was the biggest joint effort in the pan-demic to lift spirits, raise money for those in the frontlines, and remind Americans to wash their hands and keep their distance.

“There’s doctors, nurses and scientists on the frontlines. They’re living proof that most superheroes don’t wear capes,” said John, who hosted the show from his kitchen.

“We hope this bit of enter-tainment can feed and fuel your souls.”

All the performances and appearances by celebrities ranging from comedian Ellen DeGeneres to R&B artist Lizzo and country singer Tim McGraw were filmed on phones, home cameras or online platforms.

The songs were inter-spersed with short personal stories from nurses, doctors, truckers, grocery staff, and other essential workers as

millions of Americans entered a third week subjected to orders to stay home.

Dr. Elvis Francois, a surgeon from Rochester, Min-nesota, stole hearts on social media with an emotional ren-dition of “Imagine” performed in medical scrubs.

“Did this doctor just out sing every artist that’s per-formed?” one viewer, Ender Wiggins, asked on Twitter.

The concert, also broadcast on iHeart radio stations nationwide, urged listeners to donate to charities Feeding America, and First Responders Children’s Foundation.

The amount raised was not immediately known, but more than $1m was donated in the first 10 minutes, courtesy of $500,000 from household goods giant Procter & Gamble and a matching sum from Fox Television.

“My heart goes out to people who have lost loved ones and also those who are losing their jobs,” said Lady Gaga, clad in pink sweatpants and a hoodie.

Alicia Keys, singing “Rise Up,” Dave Grohl performing “My Hero,” and Billie Joe Armstrong’s acoustic version of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” spoke to the hard-ships of millions of those working or laid off as stores, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters have shut down.

“After we come out of this horrible thing, I hope we are nicer to each other, and fairer to one another,” John said.

Vincent van Gogh

painting stolen from

Dutch museumAP — THE HAGUE

A painting by Dutch master Vincent van Gogh was stolen in an overnight smash-and-grab raid on a museum that was closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, police and the museum said yesterday.

The Singer Laren museum east of Amsterdam said that “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884” by the Dutch master was taken in the early hours of Monday. By early afternoon, all that could be seen from the outside of the museum was a large white panel covering a door in the building’s glass facade.

Museum General Director Evert van Os said the institution that houses the collection of American couple William and Anna Singer is “angry, shocked, sad” at the theft.

The value of the work, which was on loan from the Groninger Museum in the northern Dutch city of Groningen, was not immediately known. Van Gogh’s paintings, when they rarely come up for sale, fetch millions at auction.

Police are investigating the theft.“I’m shocked and unbelievably annoyed

that this has happened,” said Singer Laren museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm.

“This beautiful and moving painting by one of our greatest artists stolen — removed from the community,” he added. “It is very bad for the Groninger Museum, it is very bad for the Singer, but it is terrible for us all because art exists to be seen and shared by us, the community, to enjoy to draw inspiration from and to draw comfort from,

especially in these difficult times.”The 10-by-22-inch oil on paper painting

shows a person standing in a garden sur-rounded by trees with a church tower in the background.

It dates to a time when the artist had moved back to his family in a rural area of the Netherlands and painted the life he saw there, including his famous work “The Potato Eaters,” in mostly somber tones.

Country singer Joe Diffie dies of coronavirus complicationsAP — NEW YORK

Country singer Joe Diffie (pictured), who had a string of hits in the 1990s with chart-topping ballads and singles like “Home” and “Pickup Man,” has died after testing positive for COVID-19. He was 61.

Diffie on Friday announced that he had contracted the coronavirus, becoming the first country star to go public with such a diagnosis. Diffie’s publicist Scott Adkins said the singer died on Sunday in Nashville, Ten-nessee, due to complications from the virus.

Diffie, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a member of the Grand Ole Opry for more than 25 years.

“Country music lost one of the good guys today,” Naomi Judd said in a statement.

Diffie’s mid-90s albums “Honky Tonk Attitude” and “Third Rock From the Sun” went platinum. Eighteen of Diffie’s singles landed in the top 10 on the country charts, with five going No. 1.

In his 2013 single “1994,” Jason Aldean name-checked the ‘90s country mainstay.

Diffie shared in a Grammy award for best country collaboration for the song “Same Old Train,” with Merle Haggard, Marty Stuart and others. His last solo album was 2010’s “The Blue-grass Album: Homecoming.”

“Joe Diffie, one of our best singers and my buddy, is gone,” Tanya Tucker said in a statement. “We are the same age, so it’s very scary. I will miss his voice, his laughter, his songs.”

“Joe was a real true honky tonk hero to every country artist alive

today,” singer John Rich said in a statement.

“No one sang our music better than he did, and to see his life and artistry cut short is beyond tragic. He was loved, cherished and respected by all of country music and beyond.”

Toby Keith extended his condo-lences to Diffie’s family, saying in a statement, “A great traditional voice will live on cuz I’m putting his music on now. Here’s a beer to ya, Joe. Go get you thatr reward.”

Deanna Carter said she was “shell shocked” by the news and had hoped to perform again with Diffie this year. “He was a powerhouse that stopped people in their tracks, both on and off stage,” she said in a statement.

Diffie is survived by his wife, Tara Terpening Diffie, and seven children from four marriages.

IANS — NEW DELHI

If you are struggling to get into the working mode as you stay at home due to the lockdown, some simple tips like main-taining a routine and dressing up in a way as if you were in office may help you increase productivity, suggests a new report.

“Maintain daily routines as when working regularly — get up at the same time, take a shower, dress-up, get breakfast and than start working at the same time you normally do at

the office,” according to the “Work From Home Best Prac-tices” shared by Bain & Company, one of the world’s leading strategy and man-agement consultancies.

Another key point to keep in mind is that you should leave private life outside the room where you work.

If you want to check private messages, take a break and do it in your private space.

Taking break, in fact, is quite important to make your work from home effective, according to Bain & Company.

“Reward yourself and give yourself breaks - breaks are critical to recharge batteries, they can be small (eg, five minutes of checking social media) or longer (eg, full 45 minutes lunch break),” it said.

At the same time, it is important not to engage in any household tasks/chores while on work time.

To get the maximum out of you time, structure your day along key tasks/objectives to achieve and keep track of what has to be done during the day (and week and month) and

clearly decide when to do.Instead of using the whole

apartment for work, use one particular room and avoid having meals in front of the workstation.

“If you have a partner also working from home find clear rules for who can use the work-place at which time and where calls can be made from without ‘distracting’ each other,” the company said, adding that getting the right infrastructure and having good connectivity are key to having fruitful working hours at home.

How to get into ‘working mode’ while at home

A person holding a cellphone displaying “Spring Garden”, the work of art by Vincent van Gogh that was stolen, outside the Singer Laren Museum, in Laren, the Netherlands, yesterday.

FAJR SUNRISE 04.10 am 05.27 am

W A L R U WA I S : 19o↗ 23o W A L K H O R : 16o↗ 28o W D U K H A N : 16o↗ 26o W WA K R A H : 15o↗ 29o W M E S A I E E D 15o↗ 29o W A B U S A M R A 17o↗ 29o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 07:09– 22:29 LOW TIDE 03:57 – 15:00

Moderate temperature daytime with some clouds and slight

dust at times.

Minimum Maximum19oC 29oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.37 am05.52 pm

ASR ISHA

03.07 pm07.22 pm