New Coronavirus News from 24 Apr 2022

COVID-19: Germany, France, South Korea report highest cases globally; check full list here [Free Press Journal, 24 Apr 2022]

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 80,971,925 and 991,231, respectively, according to the CSSE.

The global coronavirus caseload has topped 509.1 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 6.21 million and vaccinations to over 11.23 billion, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Sunday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and the death toll stood at 509,166,036 and 6,216,725, respectively, while the total number of vaccine doses administered increased to 11,233,194,944.

Meanwhile, according to COVID-19 tracker Worldometer, there are several countries that are still reporting a huge amount of cases. Germany, France, South Korea and Italy have reported the maximum cases on Saturday, April 24.

Check out the list below:
Germany - 89,665
France - 80,571
South Korea - 75,414
Italy - 70,520
Japan - 42,808
Australia - 41,754

Check the full list here.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 80,971,925 and 991,231, respectively, according to the CSSE.

India accounts for the second highest caseload at 43,052,425.

The other countries with over 10 million cases are Brazil (30,345,808) France (28,435,100), Germany (24,180,512), the UK (22,106,306), Russia (17,864,332), South Korea (16,895,194), Italy (16,079,209), Turkey (15,016,210), Spain (11,736,893) and Vietnam (10,554,689).

The nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are Brazil (662,855), India (522,116), Russia (367,203), Mexico (324,033), Peru (212,724), the UK (173,985), Italy (162,609), Indonesia (156,040), France (146,057), Iran (140,952), Colombia (139,771), Germany (134,179), Argentina (128,344), Poland (115,948), Spain (103,721) and South Africa (100,298).

China Covid death toll rises as Beijing warns of 'grim' situation [FRANCE 24 English, 24 Apr 2022]

Shanghai (AFP) – Shanghai reported 39 Covid deaths Sunday, official data showed, its highest daily toll since a weeks-long lockdown started, while China's capital Beijing warned of a "grim" situation with rising infections.

The world's second-largest economy has been struggling to stamp out its worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years with a playbook of harsh lockdowns and mass testing as it sticks to a strict zero-Covid policy, taking a heavy toll on businesses and public morale.

The cosmopolitan business hub of Shanghai has been almost entirely locked down since the start of the month, snarling supply chains, with many residents confined to their homes for even longer as it became the epicentre of the outbreak.

China's biggest city only announced its first fatalities on April 18, despite reporting thousands of cases each day in recent weeks.

It reported 39 more deaths on Sunday, National Health Commission data showed, bringing its total toll to 87, while the country logged nearly 22,000 new local virus cases.

Shanghai's previous highest daily toll since lockdown was 12, reported a day earlier.

The city of 25 million has struggled to provide fresh food to those confined at home, while patients have reported trouble accessing regular medical care as thousands of health staff were deployed for Covid testing and treatment.

Censors have battled to scrub the online backlash against the prolonged lockdown.
Meanwhile 22 new infections were reported in the capital Beijing, after warnings from an official on Saturday that the city must take urgent action.

Health official Pang Xinghuo said preliminary observations suggested Covid had been "spreading invisibly" within the capital for a week now, affecting "schools, tour groups and many families".

"The risk of continued and hidden transmission is high, and the situation is grim," Tian Wei of Beijing's Municipal Party Committee told a press briefing.

"The whole city of Beijing must act immediately."

North Korea: COVAX scraps the reclusive country's vaccine allocations [The Washington Post, 24 Apr 2022]

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Min Joo Kim

SEOUL — As mask mandates and social distancing requirements lift around the world, North Korea remains one of two countries that have not administered any coronavirus vaccines, with no sign of how it can ever begin to reopen despite a brewing humanitarian crisis for its people.

The vaccines that were allocated for North Korea through a United Nations-backed global vaccination effort are no longer available, officials said this month, after Pyongyang repeatedly rejected the initiative’s offers of millions of doses.

North Korea, already one of the most closed societies in the world, remains in a strict pandemic lockdown and has shuttered its borders except to a minimal level of trade with China, with grave implications for the health and food security of its population.

The pandemic closure has exacerbated the food crisis, said Tomás Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on North Korean human rights. In a recent report, Quintana said the country’s “covid restrictions, including border closures, appear to have prevented an outbreak inside the country, though likely at considerable cost to the wider health situation and further exacerbating economic deprivation.”

No one is clear on the exact situation inside the country, however, because North Korea’s retreat inward in the pandemic has restricted remaining channels of information — with diplomats, humanitarian aid groups and tourists no longer able to enter.

In light of the impending crisis, Quintana urged the international community to find some way to get the needed 60 million doses into the country to immunize its population of 25 million.

Last year, North Korea rejected nearly 3 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine, saying shipments should go to other countries that need them more. North Korea also rejected 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine out of apparent concerns about potential side effects.

North Korean officials have privately indicated that they would prefer mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer or Moderna, according to a report by a panel of experts convened by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The panel concluded that North Korea probably would be interested in a high-volume offer of an mRNA vaccine.

With no vaccines at all, North Korea risks becoming the epicenter of new variants as a result of the population’s low immunity to the virus, the panel found.

“It is inevitable that they will have to reopen the border, and when they do, the best way to protect their population — which is what they’re already interested in — is to vaccinate the population as much as possible, which they are capable of doing,” said Kee Park, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School who has worked on health-care projects in North Korea.

“They have to take a different strategy at this point. Zero covid strategy is starting to crumble,” Park said.

Officials at the North Korean Mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on whether the country intends to accept vaccines or what it hopes to see before moving forward on an immunization program.

North Korea and Eritrea are now the only two countries in the world that have not administered vaccines.

The Gavi Alliance, part of the Covax initiative that aims to deliver vaccines to the world’s most vulnerable people, said this month that it no longer has vaccine doses allocated for North Korea but that they could be made available again if the country changes its mind and starts an immunization program and meets technical requirements.

North Korea had completed some of the requirements for accepting Covax deliveries, but there were ongoing negotiations on whether North Korea is willing to indemnify the vaccine manufacturer against unexpected side effects.

Two years since North Korea’s declaration of a “national emergency response” to the coronavirus, the lockdown shows no signs of letting up, with state media this week urging the public to “strengthen the anti-epidemic work in preparation for the prolonged emergency.” A piece published in the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun warned against “sloppiness and idleness” in anti-epidemic work.

Still, at the year-end party plenum in December, North Korea announced it will shift from a “control-based anti-epidemic work” to an “advanced and people-oriented” measure that seeks to “strengthen the anti-epidemic stronghold while overcoming circumstances that ignore convenience for our people,” according to state media.

“Such a change in the basis of their anti-virus approach is a confession that there are limitations to fundamentally solving the problem with control and restriction alone, and that the long-term restrictions caused fatigue and discontent among the people,” said Kim Ho-hong, a researcher at Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy, in a report.

Ahn Kyung-su of the Seoul-based research center dprkhealth.org said Pyongyang’s “people-oriented” slogan was probably an effort to alleviate pandemic fatigue, and he noted that the restrictions remain in place partly because of the virus resurgence in China, which is being closely tracked in state media.

“North Korea showed signs of reopening earlier this year in January, when trains briefly ran across the Chinese border, but the virus spike in mainland China led North Korea back into a strict isolation,” he said.

Anti-viral drugs could be a potential route for North Korea to reopen without needing to accept outside monitoring of its technical capabilities, the CSIS panel suggested. While the mRNA vaccine requires a sophisticated cold-chain and other logistics, anti-viral pills can be distributed more easily.

In light of what could possibly be an unfolding humanitarian crisis, the international community needs to find some way to persuade Pyongyang to reopen, U.N. special rapporteur Quintana asserted.

“A new way of thinking needs to take hold. This will require vision and initiative, driven by the needs of the North Korean people rather than any other agenda,” he said in his report.

Shanghai authorities fence off COVID-hit areas, sparking outrage [Al Jazeera English, 25 Apr 2022]

China’s most populous city, Shanghai, is battling the country’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak.
Shanghai authorities have erected fences outside residential buildings in the city to contain a COVID-19 outbreak, sparking renewed outrage over a lockdown that has forced many of the Chinese city’s 25 million residents to remain indoors.

China’s most populous city and most important economic hub is battling the country’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak by closing off areas of the city and forcing all those who test positive into quarantine centres.

The lockdown in Shanghai, which for many residents has lasted more than three weeks, has fuelled frustration among the public over lost wages, family separations, poor conditions in quarantine, and lack of access to medical care and food.

China reported 21,796 new community-transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday, with the vast majority being asymptomatic cases in Shanghai. Across the country, many cities and provinces have enforced some version of a lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The latest outbreak in Shanghai, driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, has seen hundreds of thousands of cases detected in the city but fewer than 100 deaths since the outbreak began nearly two months ago.

On social media, images of government workers wearing hazmat suits have gone viral as they sealed off entrances to housing blocks in the city and closed off entire streets with green fencing, prompting questions and complaints from residents.

“This is so disrespectful of the rights of the people inside, using metal barriers to enclose them like domestic animals,” a user of the social media platform Weibo said.

One video showed residents shouting from balconies at workers who tried to set up fencing before relenting and taking the barricade away. Other videos showed people trying to pull the fences down.

“Isn’t this a fire hazard?” asked another Weibo user of the policy to fence people into homes.
Many of the fences have been erected around locations designated as “sealed areas”, which are residential buildings where at least one person has tested positive for COVID-19, meaning those inside are forbidden from leaving their front doors.

A notice on Saturday, reportedly from a local authority and shared online, said “hard quarantine” was being imposed in some areas.

The Shanghai government did not respond to a request for comment.

Beijing braces for rise in Covid cases amid outcry over Shanghai blockade [The Guardian, 24 Apr 2022]

by Vincent Ni

Official says Covid ‘spreading invisibly’ within capital as Shanghai residents complain about barriers at residential buildings

Authorities in Beijing are on high alert for a surge in coronavirus cases amid a fresh outcry in Shanghai over buildings blockaded under China’s zero Covid policy.

The number of new cases in the capital rose by 22 on Sunday – all locally transmitted – compared with six the day before, according to official reports. Beijing authorities have so far not taken steps to lock down the capital, but they have ordered a number of gyms and after-school activity providers to suspend in-person classes.

Residents rushed to stockpile food amid rumours of tougher measures in the coming days. Inhabitants of Chaoyang district – the city’s largest area with 3.45 million people – will also have to undergo three coronavirus tests this coming week.

Food hoarding is somewhat underway in #beijing, these pics are shared in my Wechat moments. Slim pickings for fresh veggies at my neighborhood Walmart as well. Of course gov't is assuring the public today theres a healthy supply of necessities https://t.co/wrktetdaWY pic.twitter.com/VzoRbl5m3E— Yang Liu (@yangliuxh) April 24, 2022

Health official Pang Xinghuo said preliminary observations suggested Covid had been “spreading invisibly” within the capital for a week, affecting “schools, tour groups and many families”.

“The risk of continued and hidden transmission is high, and the situation is grim,” Tian Wei of Beijing’s municipal party committee told a press briefing. “The whole city of Beijing must act immediately.”

The outbreak in Beijing came as Mainland China’s most crucial financial hub, Shanghai, enters its fourth week of city-wide lockdown. Thirty-nine new deaths were reported on Sunday, compared with 12 the previous day and by far the most during the current outbreak.
‘Hard isolation’

As the situation did not seem to have improved following three weeks of stringent lockdown in Shanghai, desperate officials erected mesh barriers outside some residential buildings on Saturday. This move – described in the official directive “hard isolation” – sparked a fresh public outcry over a lockdown that has forced many of the city’s 25 million people to stay home.

Images of white hazmat suit-clad workers sealing entrances of housing blocks and even closing off entire streets with 2-metre-tall green fencing went viral on social media on Saturday, prompting questions and complaints from residents.

“Isn’t this a fire hazard?” said one user on the social media platform Weibo. “This is so disrespectful of the rights of the people inside, using metal barriers to enclose them like domestic animals,” said another.

Most of the barriers appeared to have been erected around compounds designated as “sealed areas”, which are buildings where at least one person has tested positive for Covid and so its residents are forbidden from leaving their front doors.

The move from the local government, as some Shanghai residents pointed out, appeared to have contradicted an earlier advisory from China’s top legislative body that was issued during the first round of Covid outbreak in March 2020.

In that advisory, as was reported by state news agency, Xinhua, a spokesperson at the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress said that measures to enforce “hard isolation” were “illegal” and “unreasonable”.

The Shanghai government did not respond to a request for comment.

Shanghai Covid Stories: Barriers are being installed all over the city. Meanwhile their purpose hasn't been fully explained.

A thread. pic.twitter.com/Vhnojz2cOR
— chris pc (@chris__pc) April 24, 2022

Fast, precise, too tough? Lockdowns risk stalling China’s economy
Read more

In the past three weeks, the lockdown in Shanghai has fuelled frustration over difficulties accessing food and medical care as well as over lost wages, family separation, conditions at quarantine centres and censorship of efforts to vent online.

It has also exacted a toll on the world’s second-largest economy, with factory efforts to resume production disrupted by snarled supply chains and difficulties faced by locked-down residents returning to work.

Authorities did not report any deaths from Covid during the first few weeks of its latest case surge, fuelling doubt among residents about the figures. It has since reported 87 fatalities from the virus, all in the past seven days.

New case numbers fell slightly for Saturday, but remained in the tens of thousands. Shanghai recorded 19,657 new local asymptomatic cases, down from 20,634 a day earlier, and 1,401 symptomatic cases, down from 2,736.

Nationwide, China reported 20,285 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases for Saturday, down from 21,423 a day earlier, with 1,580 symptomatic cases, down from 2,988.