Tag Archives: WorldNews

What’s the risk of getting coronavirus from touching surfaces?

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Airborne transmission of coronavirus has been front of mind for everyone recently but where is the science up to when it comes to surface transmission? Do we need to think twice when we receive an item from a hotspot area?

‘They need voters’: QAnon is finding a home in the Republican party

Believers of the conspiracy theory, labelled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI, are running for national office as Republican candidates

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Believers of the conspiracy theory, labelled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI, are running for national office as Republican candidates

According to one congressional candidate for America’s House of Representatives, Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement are a screen “for pedophilia and human trafficking”.

Another has claimed the US has a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out”, while several others running for national office have posted cryptic memes hinting at a powerful global elite that must be abolished.

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Coronavirus: Vietnam to test 1.1 million people in Danang

Vietnam will test all residents of Danang, the city at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak with 1.1 million people, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, as the risk of a widening spread increases.

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HANOI (BLOOMBERG) – Vietnam will test all residents of Danang, the city at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak with 1.1 million people, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, as the risk of a widening spread increases.

There were two more confirmed cases linked to the Danang outbreak, the health ministry said on Sunday (Aug 2), while another two were imported infections.

More than 800,000 people had travelled to the coastal city since July 1, and returned to their home provinces and cities, according to the government, while about 41,000 people had visited three hospitals there where most of the infections occurred.

The financial hub of Ho Chi Minh City recorded three cases after testing over 21,000 residents as of Sunday out of 32,000 who said they visited Danang in the past month, its centre of diseases control said.

Hanoi has quick-tested nearly 50,000 people who returned from Danang as of Saturday, according to the city’s government, which said an estimated 72,275 of its residents had been in the coastal city since July 8.

Vietnam has reported 174 new virus patients, mostly from Danang, since July 25 when the first locally-transmitted case was confirmed after more than three months.

The South-east Asian nation now has 590 virus cases, including 214 under treatment and three deaths.

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The painful truth about Covid and the economy – Trump is to blame | Robert Reich

Lies about the economy are as dangerous as lies about the virus. Thanks to the Republicans, millions are about to be hurt

“The recovery has been very strong,” Donald Trump said on Monday. Then the commerce department reported the US economy contracted between April and June at the fastest pace in nearly three-quarters of a century, which is as long as economists have been keeping track. The drop wiped out five years of economic growth.

But pesky facts have never stopped Trump. Having lied for five months about the coronavirus, he’s now filling social media and the airwaves with untruths about the economy so he can dupe his way to election day.

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Lies about the economy are as dangerous as lies about the virus. Thanks to the Republicans, millions are about to be hurt

“The recovery has been very strong,” Donald Trump said on Monday. Then the commerce department reported the US economy contracted between April and June at the fastest pace in nearly three-quarters of a century, which is as long as economists have been keeping track. The drop wiped out five years of economic growth.

But pesky facts have never stopped Trump. Having lied for five months about the coronavirus, he’s now filling social media and the airwaves with untruths about the economy so he can dupe his way to election day.

Continue reading…

Doctors and nurses want Manila back on lockdown

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Warning that the country’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse, dozens of Philippine doctors’ and nurses’ groups urged the government yesterday to put Metropolitan Manila and the surrounding towns back on lockdown for at least two weeks.

“The health sector cannot hold the line for much longer,” they said in a letter to President Rodrigo Duterte that was signed by the heads of some 40 medical societies.

“Our healthcare system has been overwhelmed. We are waging a losing battle against Covid-19 and we need to draw up a consolidated, definitive plan of action,” they said.

The groups called for a half-month “timeout” from Aug 1, so that the government and the health sector could draw up a better plan to deal with the coronavirus crisis.

Current plans are not working, they insisted, citing a surge of over 50,000 infections in the past month alone.

The Health Ministry reported 4,963 new cases yesterday, in what was the country’s largest single-day increase of new coronavirus cases on record.

Yesterday’s tally brought the country’s caseload to 98,232. Over 50,000 cases were recorded in July alone, when many of the sweeping shelter-at-home restrictions in place since May were eased to restart a stalled economy.

Despite the surge, Mr Duterte has decided to stay the course until the middle of this month.

Last Wednesday, a task force coordinating efforts to roll back the outbreak allowed gyms, Internet cafes, tutorial and review centres, pet clinics and drive-in cinemas to reopen. Movement restrictions for children and the elderly remain but business operations – from restaurants to gyms – can proceed, albeit in a more limited way.

The Ospital ng Maynila, one of the biggest public hospitals in the capital, told ABS-CBN News it had been seeing “four to six DOAs (dead on arrival cases)” each day, as the number of patients desperate to be admitted surged in the last two weeks of July.

Dr Karl Laqui, the hospital’s officer in charge, said that nearly a dozen of the hospital’s own staff, many of whom had no contact with infected patients, were now down with Covid-19.

The medical groups said in their letter to Mr Duterte that many health professionals are resigning “because of fear, fatigue and poor working conditions”.

They called for a “comprehensive, extensive plan” to contain the outbreak and for the Health Department to take the lead.

A task force overseeing efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19 is being led by a former military general.

They noted the poor implementation of case finding and isolation strategies, failure of the Health Department to conduct proper contact tracing, lack of transport and work safety procedures, and poor public compliance with health safety measures.

“Contact tracing is failing miserably,” they said, pointing out that while guidelines exist, “compliance (by local government officials) is optional”.

“The progressive lifting of quarantine has inadvertently fuelled public misconception that the pandemic is getting better. It is not,” they added.

Mr Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque said in response that “the strict lockdown in Metro Manila has served its purpose and we need to intensify other strategies”.

“Community quarantine alone, we repeat, is an insufficient response in controlling Covid-19,” he said, adding that the government is hiring more healthcare workers to scale up hospital capacity.

This call from health professionals came just a day after Mr Duterte promised a vaccine by December, saying he is confident the situation would be back to normal by then.

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