The Nation Newspaper

Category: Foreign

  • African churches swap holy water for hand sanitiser

    African churches swap holy water for hand sanitiser

    Our Reporter

     

    HAND sanitiser replaced holy water at Nairobi’s Holy Family Basilica Catholic Church, and attendance was far lower than usual, but Sunday Mass went ahead.

    “God’s intention is that we worship him in the church,” preached Father David Kamumue to about 300 people, instead of his usual congregation of some 5,000.

    “Let us pray. May God keep us safe.”

    In Kenya, where there have been seven confirmed cases of coronavirus, the government has imposed restrictions, including closing schools and has urged people to practice social distancing as it tries to prevent the disease from spreading.

    Globally, measures by authorities have included closing or limiting worship, disrupting Sunday services just before Easter.

    So far, the confirmed incidence of the disease in Africa has been relatively small – almost 1,200 cases and more than 30 deaths, compared with a worldwide total that has reached more than 305,000 cases, with more than 13,000 deaths.

    But part of Africa’s battle to stop the virus from taking hold could be fought in its churches. It has the highest number of Christians of any continent, 631 million people as of 2018, or 45% of the continent’s population, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.

    As worshippers trickled into services across the continent yesterday morning, temperatures were taken, hands were sanitised and people sat apart.

    In some places, measures were more extreme.

    In Sierra Leone, which has included religious services in a list of banned gatherings, churches in the capital Freetown stood empty yesterday. Some parishes found ways to broadcast their services so people could worship from home.

    Behind the locked doors of Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown Freetown, the country’s oldest Catholic Church, a priest and his deputy delivered a sermon to an empty room.

    A camera broadcast the sermon live over Facebook, while a microphone relayed the audio to Radio Maria — a church sponsored station broadcasting across the city.

    Read Also: Churches shut down, ask members to go home

    “People need to hear the word of God now more than ever,” said Father John Peter Bebeley who manages the radio station. “If we can play our part in keeping this virus at bay while also providing consolation to people in these trying times, we have every responsibility to do that.”

    Similar scenes have played out across the continent.

    Churches in Ghana, South Africa, Liberia and other countries are moving to radio, television and the internet.

    “If I go out there and I am infected, I won’t have the opportunity to worship God next,” said Chika Paul-Oboh, a finance manager in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

    “If I can stay alive to worship God, any medium is fine.”

    Some worshippers disagreed with that stance.

    “Nothing can stop me from not being in church,” said Anna Ohere, a salon manager, who attends and works at another church in Abuja.

    “I must be in church to serve my God, I can’t be at home because of any one disease.”

    Also yesterday, thousands of people in Abuja flocked to the 100,000-capacity Dunamis Glory Dome, a squat, sprawling monolith.

    The service, which was live-streamed on YouTube, was in open defiance of a government ban on gatherings of 50 people or more.

    People stood side by side for hours, singing hymns and listening to the pastor, Paul Enenche, sermonise on the dangers of plagues. He acknowledged the ban on gatherings and the effects of coronavirus on Christianity everywhere.

    However, the church will move towards home services for small groups and online worship, he said.

    He also announced a possible solution to skirt the ban on large gatherings: erecting canopies that would each hold 50 people.

  • Fear as COVID-19 hits 340,408 cases, 14,573 deaths worldwide

    Fear as COVID-19 hits 340,408 cases, 14,573 deaths worldwide

    Our Reporter

     

    FROM Italy to India to the United States (U.S.), governments rolled out tougher measures to halt the rapid spread of the coronavirus pandemic as global cases surged past 340,408 yesterday and Asia braced for a possible second wave of infections.

    Nearly one billion people are already confined to their homes around the world as countries race to contain the ballooning outbreak by imposing unprecedented lockdown measures, shutting shops and businesses and sealing borders.

    The pandemic has sparked fears of a global recession, prompting governments to unleash gigantic emergency measures to avoid an economic meltdown.

    About 14,573 people have died from the virus worldwide, with the situation increasingly grim in Italy, the new epicentre of the disease which first emerged in central China late last year before marching across the globe.

    Countries in Asia now worry infections could once again mount on their shores as travellers return from badly-hit parts of Europe, a continent under siege by the pandemic, with more than 150,000 declared cases.

    The death toll from the outbreak in Italy has risen by 651 to 5,476, officials said yesterday, an increase of 13.5% but down on Saturday’s figure when some 793 people died.

    The total number of cases in Italy rose to 59,138 from a previous 53,578, an increase of 10.4%, the Civil Protection Agency said — the lowest rise in percentage terms since the contagion came to light on Feb. 21.

    Of those originally infected nationwide, 7,024 had fully recovered on Sunday compared to 6,072 the day before. There were 3,009 people in intensive care against a previous 2,857.

    Read Also: Coronavirus: Concerted efforts required

    The hardest-hit northern region of Lombardy remained in a critical situation, with 3,456 deaths and 27,206 cases against a previously given 3,095 and 25,515 respectively.

    Italy has announced the closure of all non-essential businesses as it faced what its Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte called the country’s gravest moment since the Second World War.

    “The decision taken by the government is to close down all productive activity throughout the territory that is not strictly necessary, crucial, and indispensable, to guarantee us essential goods and services,” Conte said.

    The rate at which Covid-19 is spreading around the world continued to accelerate, growing by more 100,000 in the past four days. Yesterday, Afghanistan announced its first death from the virus, Gaza announced its first two cases and Canadian infections grew by 50%.

    The death toll in Spain climbed past 1,700 people, exceeding the official figures of more than 1,600 killed in Iran. Australia started curbing commercial activity and more than one billion Indians were asked to observe a one-day curfew.

    “Unfortunately, the worst is to come,” the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said. “We have yet to feel the impact of the hardest, most damaging wave, one that will test the limits of our moral and material capacity, as well as our spirit as a society.”

    A makeshift hospital has been set up in a conference centre in the capital Madrid, a city that is bearing some of the highest infection rates.

    The hospital will be fitted with 5,500 beds, making it the biggest facility of its kind in Europe. Its director, Antonio Zapatero, told El Mundo newspaper that 300 people will be move there this weekend.

    But the centre of the crisis was Italy, where health officials were stony-faced as they read out the latest update that more than 6,500 people were being confirmed to have the virus each day.

    The average age of Italians dying is 78.5 and the country’s top medical expert, Silvio Brusaferro, urged older people to stay indoors and others to observe strict social distancing guidelines.

    “If you do not follow all the (government) measures, you make everything more difficult,” the National health institute (ISS) chief said. “If you do, we can make this outbreak slow down.”

    Police squads in Rome were checking documents and fining those outside without a valid excuse. Those who were out shopping were forced to wait in line at the entrance to make sure the store was filled with only a handful of people at a time. Joggers were asked to limit their runs to laps around the block.

    People out for a walk were fined if they broke the rules and wandered into a park or stopped to take pictures of historic scenes of a city without any people.

    India’s confirmed coronavirus cases grew to 341 yesterday and the government ordered lockdowns in 75 districts across the country to contain the spread. Delhi was among several cities to ban all gatherings in the capital and close all but non-essential businesses.

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the curfew observed yesterday – marked with a raucous applause and banging of pots at 5pm to thank emergency service workers – was important but a long fight lay ahead.

    The Australian government ordered the closure of restaurants, cinemas and pubs – the latter sparking a run on liquor stores – but said schools would remain open for now, though some states have already ordered students not to go to class. South Australia and Western Australia said they would close their borders to other states this week.

    China, which recorded its first new domestic case for four days, still has the most cases with 81,346, according to Johns Hopkins University but the United States has the third-highest number of cases.

    China reported 46 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, while the city of Wuhan, the pandemic’s ground zero, announced it would be loosening a two-month lockdown by gradually resuming public transportation and allowing healthy people to resume work.

    It was the fourth day in a row with an increase in Chinese cases, all but one of which was imported from overseas.

    But in a sign of easing lockdown measures, residents living in and outside Wuhan will be allowed to travel into the city to resume work if they have a green health code issued by the government and normal body temperature, state-media CCTV News reported on Sunday. It cited the city’s epidemic prevention and control command center.

    The U.S. has 85 million people subject to stay-at-home orders after New Jersey on Saturday joined New York, Connecticut, Illinois and California in ordering people to stay inside. The US saw cases jump sharply again on Saturday and it now has a total of 26,747 and 340 deaths.

    With concerns mounting about the impact of the outbreak on the world’s number one economy, Congressional leaders and White House officials were in talks about launching a $1tn stimulus package.

    In Pakistan, the entire province of Sindh, which includes the country’s largest city Karachi, is going into lockdown from midnight for two weeks in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

     

     

  • UK PM: we must act together to slow spread

    UK PM: we must act together to slow spread

    IN a warning to coincide with Mothering Sunday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for Britons not to visit their mothers in person this year.

    “This time, the best thing is to ring her, video call her, Skype her, but to avoid any unnecessary physical contact or proximity,” the PM said.

    Johnson added that the numbers of coronavirus cases in the UK “are very stark, and they are accelerating”.

    He compared the country’s situation to Italy.

    “The Italians have a superb health care system. And yet their doctors and nurses have been completely overwhelmed by the demand,” he said.

    “The Italian death toll is already in the thousands and climbing. Unless we act together, unless we make the heroic and collective national effort to slow the spread – then it is all too likely that our own NHS will be similarly overwhelmed.”

  • Iran refuses U.S. offer of aid

    Iran refuses U.S. offer of aid

    IRAN’S Supreme Leader has rejected America’s offer of aid to help the country with its battle against coronavirus.

    In a televised speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the US was Iran’s “most evil enemy” and hinted at a conspiracy theory, also voiced by some Chinese officials, that America was responsible for the pandemic.

    “I do not know how real this accusation is but when it exists, who in their right mind would trust you to bring them medication?” Khamenei said. “Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more.”

    Without offering any evidence, he also alleged that the virus “is specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians, which they have obtained through different means”.

    Other Iranian officials have also accused America of hypocrisy for offering aid while refusing to lift heavy sanctions.

  • New York mayor: greatest crisis since great depression

    New York mayor: greatest crisis since great depression

    OFFICIALS in the United States’ hardest hit areas are warning of major shortages of critical medical supplies as the virus continues to spread through all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

    Total confirmed cases in the US have risen to 24,747 with at least 340 deaths.

    Speaking on CNN yesterday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said his city is 10 days away from seeing “widespread shortages” of supplies.

    “If we don’t get more ventilators… people will die who don’t have to die,” de Blasio said. “This is going to be the greatest crisis, domestically, since the great depression.”

    New York state has been ravaged by the virus in recent days, home to more than 10,000 confirmed cases – almost half the country’s total.

    U.S. lawmakers will meet today to discuss a massive emergency aid package to help soften the economic impact of the outbreak – expected to top $1 trillion.

  • South Korean churches defy restrictions

    South Korean churches defy restrictions

    HUNDREDS of churches across South Korea appeared to go ahead with religious services on Sunday, despite a government request to cancel them.

    Church leaders asked worshippers to stand metres apart and to wear face masks, the state news agency Yonhap said.

    The country’s culture minister met church officials at a large Protestant church in the capital Seoul, and repeated an earlier call for religious leaders to move church services online.

    South Korea’s leaders have warned several times that they will have to impose stricter quarantine orders if South Koreans ignore government advice to avoid large gatherings.

    Seoul has recorded 98 new cases of the virus over the past 24 hours. This is down from a high of 909 new infections which were confirmed in one day in late February.

  • German coronavirus cases rise by 2,705 to 16,662

    German coronavirus cases rise by 2,705 to 16,662

    The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has risen by 2,705 within a day to reach 16,662, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Saturday.

    READ ALSO: Coronavirus cases exceed 10,000 in Germany, says agency

    It said a total of 47 people had died after testing positive, an increase of 16 from a tally of 31 published on Friday.

    (Reuters/NAN)

  • Rich nations pump aid to fight infection

    Rich nations pump aid to fight infection

    Our Reporter

    The virus, thought to have originated from wildlife in mainland China late last year, has jumped to 172 other nations and territories with more than 20,000 new cases reported in the past 24 hours – a new daily record.

    The world’s wealthiest nations poured unprecedented aid into the traumatised global economy yesterday as coronavirus cases ballooned in the current epicentre Europe even as they warned at the pandemic’s point of origin, China.

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned yesterday that a global recession “is a near certainty” and current national responses to the coronavirus pandemic “will not address the global scale and complexity of the crisis.”

    “This is a moment that demands coordinated, decisive, and innovative policy action from the world’s leading economies,” Guterres told reporters via a video conference. “We are in an unprecedented situation and the normal rules no longer apply.”

    “A global recession – perhaps of record dimensions – is a near certainty,” he said.

    “Our world faces a common enemy. We are at war with a virus,” Guterres said. “I call on world leaders to come together and offer an urgent and coordinated response to this global crisis.”

    Guterres, who was prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, called on countries to scale up health spending and to help less-prepared nations tackle the crisis, including by supporting the efforts of the World Health Organisation.

    With almost 228,000 infections and more than 9,200 deaths so far, the epidemic has stunned the world and drawn comparisons with painful periods such as World War Two, the 2008 financial crisis and the 1918 Spanish flu.

    “This is like an Egyptian plague,” said Argentinian hotelier Patricia Duran, who has seen bookings dry up for her two establishments near the famous Iguazu Falls.

    Tourism and airlines have been particularly battered, as the world’s citizens hunker down to minimise contact and curb the spread of the flu-like COVID-19. But few sectors have been spared by a crisis threatening lengthy global recession.

    Markets have suffered routs unseen since the 2008 debacle, with investors rushing to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven, but European and U.S. stocks made a tentative recovery yesterday and oil prices rebounded though the reprieve may be brief.

    Policymakers in the United States, Europe and Asia have slashed interest rates and opened liquidity taps to try to stabilise economies hit by quarantined consumers, broken supply chains, disrupted transport and paralysed businesses.

    The virus, thought to have originated from wildlife in mainland China late last year, has jumped to 172 other nations and territories with more than 20,000 new cases reported in the past 24 hours – a new daily record.

    Cases in Germany, Iran and Spain rose to more than 12,000 each. An official in Tehran tweeted that the coronavirus was killing one person every 10 minutes.

    Britain, which has reported 128 deaths, was closing dozens of underground stations in London and ordering schools shut from today.

    Some 20,000 soldiers were on standby, Queen Elizabeth headed for sanctuary in the ancient castle of Windsor, and the Tower of London was to close along with other historic buildings.

    Italian soldiers transported corpses overnight from an overwhelmed cemetery in Europe’s worst-hit nation where nearly 3,000 people have died. Germany’s military was also readying to help despite national sensitivities over its deployment dating back to the Nazi era.

    Supermarkets in many countries were besieged with shoppers stocking up on food staples and hygiene products. Some rationed sales and fixed special hours for the elderly.

    Solidarity projects were springing up in some of the world’s poorest corners. In Kenya’s Kibera slum, for example, volunteers with plastic drums and boxes of soap on motorbikes set up handwashing stations for people without clean water.

    Russia reported its first coronavirus death on Thursday.

     

  • U.S .jails begin releasing prisoners as cases hit 10,491, 150 deaths

    U.S .jails begin releasing prisoners as cases hit 10,491, 150 deaths

    Our Reporter

    THE United States (U.S.) Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday reported 10,491 cases of coronavirus, an increase of 3,404 cases from its previous count, and said the death toll had risen by 53 to 150.

    The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness, COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET yesterday compared with its report on Wednesday.

    Coronavirus cases have been reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

    The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states

    The U.S. jails are to let out inmates as cases of coronavirus infections are being reported in prisons, media reports indicated yesterday.

    New York City is releasing “vulnerable” prisoners, the mayor said on Wednesday, days after Los Angeles and Cleveland freed hundreds of inmates.

    Prison reform advocates say those in jail are at higher risk of catching and passing on Covid-19.

    There have been more than 9,400 cases of Covid-19 and 152 deaths in the U.S. so far, according to estimates.

    Globally there are some 220,000 confirmed cases and over 8,800 deaths.

    New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said yesterday that city officials will this week identify individuals for release, including people who were arrested for minor crimes and those most vulnerable to infection due to underlying health problems.

    His announcement came hours after a guard and a prisoner tested positive for coronavirus at Rikers Island prison, where disgraced former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, 68, is a high-profile inmate.

    Several states from New York to California are now banning in-person visitors. A ban on visits led to a deadly prison riot in Italy last week.

  • Italy’s death toll surpasses China at 3,405

    Italy’s death toll surpasses China at 3,405

    Our Reporter

    ITALY’S death toll from the coronavirus outbreak has risen to 3,405, surpassing the 3,245 fatalities reported in China.

    The death toll rose by 14.3 per cent from Wednesday, the Italian Civil Protection Agency says in its daily bulletin, also reporting a 14.9-per-cent hike in the total number of contagions, to 41,035.

    Recoveries are up by 10.3 per cent to 4,440, while the number of intensive care patients – a closely watched figure given the shortage of hospital beds – has risen by 10.7 per cent, to 2,498.

    Lombardy, which surrounds Milan, remains the region worst hit by the outbreak, with nearly 20,000 cases and 2,168 deaths.

    Lazio, the region that includes Rome, reports 823 cases and 38 deaths.