Moscow on Monday imposed a lockdown in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus as Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin asked regional authorities to make similar preparations.

The enforcement of the tough new rules, which were suddenly announced by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin late Sunday, coincide with the beginning of a “non-working” week declared by President Vladimir Putin last week.

The order came days after Sobyanin, a close Putin ally, urged Muscovites to avoid public places, non-essential travel and walks due to the coronavirus epidemic – a recommendation many ignored amid a spell of unusually warm weather over the weekend.

“It is obvious that not everyone heard us,” Sobyanin wrote on his website as he announced the tighter quarantine measures, warning the authorities would steadily tighten control over compliance with the new rules.

Empty streets, strict measures

On Monday, the streets of Moscow were deserted following the closure of all non-essential shops, including restaurants and cafes, but traffic was still seen on the roads in the city centre.

“I ask regional heads to work on the introduction of quarantines similar to the one introduced in Moscow,” Prime Minister Mishustin said at a government meeting.

The new restrictions apply to all of the city’s residents, regardless of age.

Muscovites will only be allowed to leave their homes in cases of a medical emergency, to travel to jobs judged essential, and to shop for food or medicines.

People will be allowed to take out trash and walk their dogs within a 100-metre (330-foot) radius of their homes.

The new isolation rules, which will be policed by a vast system of facial-recognition cameras in Moscow, come into force as Russia closes its borders as part of increasingly stringent measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Scepticism about official data

Russia has so far got off more lightly than many European countries with nine deaths and 1,534 cases, more than 1,000 of which are in Moscow. Russia recorded 270 new coronavirus infections in the past day.

But some doctors have voiced scepticism about the accuracy of the figures given what they say has been the patchy nature and quality of testing, allegations that the authorities deny.

According to a survey by the Levada Center, only 16 percent of Russians fully trust official information about the coronavirus, while 24 percent said they did not trust it at all.

Russia has halted international flights, closed its borders, announced a non-working week from this weekend, and shuttered shops and entertainment venues in Moscow and some other regions.

The head of Russia’s Orthodox Church on Sunday exhorted believers to pray at home, urging people to adhere strictly to authorities’ instructions “before someone dies in our families”.

“Refrain from visiting churches,” Patriarch Kirill said, even though Orthodox services went ahead, including one led by him. Mosques in Muslim majority Chechnya cancelled Friday prayers, Russian news agencies reported.

About 60 percent of Russia’s 144 million people consider themselves Orthodox Christians. But fewer than usual went to church on Sunday and some were wearing masks, according to media reports.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

France staged its largest evacuation of coronavirus patients to date from hospitals in the hard-hit east on Sunday, increasing efforts to free up intensive care units as officials warned of an influx of serious cases in the coming days.

Two specially equipped high-speed trains carried 36 patients from Mulhouse and Nancy to hospitals along France’s western coast, where the outbreak has been limited so far.

Dozens of hospital workers, flanked by police and soldiers standing guard, spent hours installing four patients in each wagon in an operation that began before dawn.

“We have to free up beds, it’s absolutely crucial…. We’re still seeing an increase in patient numbers,” said Francois Brun, head of emergency services at the regional hospital in nearby Metz.

The evacuations came as Germany sent a military plane for the first time to Strasbourg to transport two patients to a hospital in Ulm.

Around 80 French patients have been hospitalised in Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg, European Affairs Minister Amelie de Montchalin told France Inter radio.

France has been evacuating dozens from the east over the past week, hoping to stay ahead of a crisis that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has warned will only worsen over the next fortnight.

Overall, more than 4,600 coronavirus patients are in intensive care in France, many with severe respiratory problems requiring ventilators that officials worry could soon be in short supply.

Philippe said at the weekend the government was racing to have 14,000 intensive care beds available soon, compared with just 5,000 before the outbreak began in January.

On Sunday the national health service reported 292 new coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,606.

The daily toll was below the 319 deaths reported on Saturday, but the figures include only deaths reported in hospitals, and not at retirement homes or assisted-living facilities.

Also Sunday the housing ministry announced it would commandeer 5,000 hotel beds to house homeless people during the crisis.

– ‘Battle is only starting’ –

Officials fear the virus may spread quickly at the country’s roughly 7,000 retirement homes, and several have already announced dozens of deaths.

Those figures will start to be reported this week, the prime minister said on Sunday, warning that “the battle is only starting.”

“This war will probably be won on the basis of intensive care beds, and our ability to strategically use all our intensive care resources on the national level,” said Marie-Odile Saillard, director of the Metz regional hospital.

National health service chief Jerome Salomon said 359 more people were placed in intensive care on Sunday.

“This is the most important number to keep track of because it reflects the strength of the epidemic,” he said at his daily briefing.

The government has ordered a billion face masks, mainly from China, but warned that surging worldwide demand for protective equipment means they might not arrive soon enough for medical workers currently facing shortages.

A plane from China carrying 5.5 million masks and other equipment arrived in Paris on Sunday, though the government has admitted it needs 40 million masks each week for health workers alone as the outbreak rages.

“Our first Boeing 777 Cargo has just landed at #ParisCDG with close to 100 tonnes of medical equipment on board, including more than 5 million masks,” Air France tweeted.

France has been on lockdown since March 17 in a bid to limit the contagion, a situation it has extended until at least April 15.

Source: AFP

French health authorities reported 292 new deaths from the coronavirus on Sunday, up 13% on the previous day and taking the total to 2,606 since March 1, as the government raced to relieve pressure on overwhelmed hospitals in the east.

The number of known cases of coronavirus infection rose to 40,174 on Sunday from 37,575 a day earlier, France’s director general of health Jérôme Salomon told a press conference on Sunday.

Among the nearly 19,000 patients now hospitalised, 4,632 are in intensive care, Salomon said.

The toll over the past 24 hours was below the 319 deaths reported on Saturday, but the figures include only deaths reported in hospitals, and not at retirement homes or assisted-living facilities.

Authorities say they will be able to compile data on deaths in retirement homes from next week, which is likely to result in a big increase in registered fatalities.

France has been under virtual lockdown since March 17 and Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said on Friday that the unprecedented peacetime restrictions on public life would remain in place until at least April 15.

Public gatherings are banned, schools and universities are closed and all non-essential businesses have shut down, with people allowed out of their homes only to buy groceries, carry out essential work, exercise or seek medical care.

France’s Health Minister Olivier Véran announced on Saturday that the government has ordered more than a billion face masks – the overwhelming majority of them sourced from China – as the government scrambles to build up its supplies.

Véran noted that France has been using 40 million face masks weekly as it battles the pandemic and currently has three weeks worth of supplies.

Doctors, nursing home carers, the police and other frontline staff have decried a shortage of masks.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has surged by 889 to top 10,000, the Civil Protection Agency said on Saturday, the second highest daily tally since the epidemic emerged on February 21.

The toll in Italy, which has suffered more deaths than any other country, now stands at 10,023. An additional 5,974 infections brought to 92,472 the number of people who have officially tested positive for COVID-19 in Italy since the crisis began last month.

The first Western country to introduce severe restrictions on movement after uncovering the outbreak five weeks ago, Italy has since increasingly tightened them. It has banned all non-essential activities until April 3.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has urged the European Union to launch a “recovery bond” to help fund the response to the coronavirus outbreak, saying failure to tackle the emergency would be a “tragic mistake” for the bloc.

In an interview with Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Saturday, Conte said a common debt instrument was needed to spearhead a European recovery and reinvestment plan to support the economy of the whole area.

Education Minister Lucia Azzolina has already said the closure of schools and universities, which began on March 5, would have to be extended past April 3.

That’s while Italy’s minister for the country’s economically disadvantaged southern regions expressed concerns about potential social tensions and civil unrest in poorer areas if, as expected, the epidemic moves south.

“I am afraid that the worries that are affecting large sections of the population over health, income and the future, with the continuation of the crisis, will turn into anger and hatred,” Minister Giuseppe Provenzano told La Repubblica newspaper on Saturday.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced on Friday a two-week extension of a nationwide lockdown in an effort to stem a surge in coronavirus cases across France.

The French PM said in a speech that the government had decided to extend the country’s coronavirus lockdown, until April 15.

“After these first 10 days of confinement, it is clear that we are just at the beginning of this epidemic wave. It has submerged eastern France and now it is arriving in the Paris region and northern France,” said Philippe.

For this reason, he said, the confinement period would be extended by two weeks from Tuesday next week, and added that the same rules would apply.

Philippe said that this period would only be extended again if the health situation required it.

The prime minister has warned that the number of cases is expected to rise in the Paris region and northern France, after heavily hitting eastern France.

France has reported nearly 1,700 deaths of people with the virus in hospitals, the fifth-highest number of any country worldwide. The nation’s numbers have continued to mount since the confinement began on March 17.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AFP)

French health authorities reported 365 new deaths from coronavirus on Thursday, taking the total to 1,696.

The rise in the number of deaths represents a daily rise of 27 percent, a marked increase from the previous day with France now in its second week of lockdown.

This daily government tally only accounts for those dying in hospital, but authorities said they would soon be able to compile data on deaths in retirement homes, which is likely to result in a big increase in registered fatalities.

During a press conference, health agency director Jérôme Salomon added that the number of cases had risen to 29,155, a rise of 16 percent in 24 hours.

Salomon said 3,375 people were in a serious condition needing life support, up 19 percent compared to Wednesday and meaning that close to half of France’s 8,000 beds equipped with ventilation gear are occupied.

French economy operating at 65 percent

The rise in coronavirus tolls came as the official INSEE statistical agency said French economic activity and household spending are running at about 65 percent of normal levels due to the coronavirus outbreak.

INSEE gave the first picture of the impact of the nationwide lockdown as it published its monthly business confidence index, which saw its biggest single drop since records began in 1980.

The index fell to 95 points from 105 points in February with even steeper declines seen in the services and retail sectors, INSEE said.

The French government has prepared a €45 billion package – 2 percent of GDP – of crisis measures made up mainly of deferred taxes and payroll charges for companies, and payments to companies who put workers on reduced schedules.

Additionally, the government is guaranteeing up to €300 billion euros – 15 percent of GDP – of corporate borrowing from commercial banks to keep credit flowing to the economy.

INSEE said it was too early to try to forecast how deep the downturn would be, but it estimated that each month of confinement would reduce economic activity by 12 percentage points on a quarterly basis and 3 percentage points on an annual basis.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

The French military will support public services strained by the coronavirus epidemic, President Emmanuel Macron has said, as the country’s death toll topped 1,300.

France like other nations has already imposed a nationwide ban on non-essential movement and closed schools and restaurants in a bid to stop the spread of the pandemic.

The military operation, named “Resilience”, will focus on “aiding and supporting the population, as well as helping public services face the epidemic in mainland France and overseas”, Macron said on Wednesday.

“Unity and courage will allow us to overcome this, we are only at the beginning, but we will hold out,” Macron added, declaring that France was “at war”.

The comments came after the president visited a military field hospital set up by the army in the eastern Mulhouse region which has been badly hit by the coronavirus.

“The whole nation has been mobilised” in the fight against the disease, said a masked Macron, who also promised more investment for hospitals.

Officials said on Wednesday Paris will also cut metro and train services to a minimum in the capital and its suburbs and close two of its airports as the country expands the lockdown measures.

Operators said the goal was to keep just enough trains running for health workers and others who need to get to work during the coronavirus crisis.

Police are carrying out checks at stations to prevent unnecessary travel, not least by people hoping to escape confinement in large cities.

Also Wednesday, Paris airports operator ADP said it would temporarily shut Orly airport, the main domestic hub, to commercial flights because of the “significant and sudden” drop-off in passenger traffic because of coronavirus travel restrictions.

“Yesterday passenger traffic at Orly was down 92 percent and down 89 percent at Charles de Gaulle,” the main Paris international hub, ADP’s managing director Edward Arkwright told journalists.

The group had already shut several terminals at both airports as airlines slashed flights.

France has reported 1,331 official coronavirus deaths since the first case was reported in January. More than 11,500 people have tested positive for the virus.

The government will announce over the coming days for how long the country’s lockdown measures would continue, spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said.

Source:  AFP

French health authorities reported 231 new deaths from coronavirus on Wednesday, taking the total to 1,331.

The rise in the number of deaths from coronavirus represents a daily increase in France of 21%, a slight slowing from the previous two days with the country now in its second week of lockdown.

This daily government tally only accounts for those dying in hospital but authorities said they would soon be able to compile data on deaths in retirement homes, which is likely to result in a big increase in registered fatalities.

During a press conference, health agency director Jerome Salomon added that the number of cases had risen to 25,233, a rise of about 13% in 24 hours.

Salomon said 2,827 people were in a serious condition, needing life support, up 12% compared to Tuesday and meaning that more than one third of France’s 8,000 beds equipped with ventilation gear are occupied.

(REUTERS)

The COVID 19 outbreak enters its fifth week in Italy amid fears that the pandemic will last longer than expected. The head of civil protection, Angelo Borrelli, announced on Friday that the peak in the infection spread is still two weeks away with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte hinting at the possibility of extending the draconian lockdown measures nationwide well beyond April 3.

This is while over 40,000 people have contracted the virus and over 3,400 have died of it so far in Italy, surpassing the number of coronavirus deaths in China. Disappointment is growing in the country over a perceived lack of support from Europe. Earlier in March, when Rome asked for urgent supplies of medical equipment under a special European crisis mechanism, not a single EU country responded.

The healthcare situation is worsening particularly in the Lombardy region, the heart of the Italian coronavirus outbreak. Italy’s already-strained national health system is struggling with the lack of space, resources and staff after hospitals were deluged by coronavirus patients over the past weeks. Beds in intensive care departments are running out in the worst-hit regions and shortage of doctors has forced the government to hire retired doctors.

Meanwhile, a third team of 300 Chinese medical experts and nurses with tons of medical supplies landed in Milan on Friday. Some 21 other medical staff had already landed in Rome in the past days with 30 pulmonary ventilators, 200,000 face masks and nine tons of other supplies to help the Italian effort against the coronavirus.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio has praised China for its support saying that Rome-Beijing solidarity has deepened amid the coronavirus crisis. Also 65 doctors and nurses from Cuba are slated to arrive in Lombardy on Saturday.

Source: Presstv

Europe’s cherished Schengen network of open internal borders is on the brink of collapse as more and more countries shut their doors in a frantic effort to stave off the coronavirus pandemic, even as experts warn such tactics will delay its spread – but not halt it.

At his daily briefing on the coronavirus emergency on Friday, Luca Zaia, the governor of Italy’s Veneto region, one of Europe’s worst-hit, told reporters that Europe’s borderless zone was “disappearing as we speak”.

“Schengen no longer exists, it will be remembered only in the history books,” Zaia said, pointing to the long lines of traffic stuck at Italy’s northeastern border, where Austrian officials have reintroduced stringent controls.

With Italy reporting the most virus cases and deaths anywhere in the world except China, the pandemic is increasingly wearing on the EU’s cherished core principle, which envisions a border-free Europe where citizens can freely live, work and travel.

Austria became the first country to impose drastic curbs on travel from Italy on Wednesday, urgently reinstalling border checkpoints in the exact spots where they had been dismantled back in 1997 when the country joined the Schengen Area.

All travellers seeking to cross the Brennero border from Italy are now required to present health certificates proving they have not contracted the COVID-19 virus – a measure that has slowed traffic on the busy Alpine crossing to a near standstill.

Since then, Slovenia and Switzerland, which also border Italy, have imposed similar curbs. But several other EU nations – including Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus – have announced restrictions that go far beyond travellers from Italy.

“Most of the cases that have been propagating the coronavirus epidemic in Poland are imported cases,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters as he announced the closure of his country’s borders with all its neighbours starting at midnight on Saturday.

“We don’t want the coronavirus to head our way in droves.”

‘Uncharted territory’

The successive border closures came as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday that Europe had become the pandemic’s current “epicenter” after reporting more cases and deaths than the rest of world combined, excluding China.

More than 22,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed across Europe, and nearly 1,500 people with the virus have died on the continent – most of them in Italy.

While the virus is spreading across the continent, the rushed actions taken by individual states are highlighting the lack of a coordinated approach to fighting the coronavirus – not least among the European Union’s 27 member states.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has recommended coordinated health screenings at the borders as a way to address infections, rather than border closures.

“We’ve seen travel bans and controls being put in place in a number of member states,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters on Friday. “Certain controls may be justified, but general travel bans are not seen as being the most effective by the World Health Organization. Moreover, they have a strong social and economic impact. They disrupt people’s lives and business across the borders.”

To avoid a patchwork of national policies that are ineffective and cause economic harm, “any measure that is taken must be proportionate” and coordinated with Brussels, she said, suggesting that preliminary checks for signs of infection could be done at the Schengen Area’s borders, both internal and external.

“Member states, especially neighbouring ones, need to work very closely together,” Von der Leyen said. “In this way, and it’s the only way, we can make sure that our citizens receive the healthcare that they need immediately, wherever they are.”

But Von der Leyen’s commission, along with other EU institutions, has a very limited role to play in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. It polices the Schengen Area’s rules, but individual countries are responsible for their own health and public safety policies.

In a sign of the EU’s limited power, the Danish government also announced late Friday that it was closing all of its borders – land, sea and air – to travellers. Denmark consulted with neighbouring countries prior to the announcement but not with EU officials.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a news conference as he announced the travel ban. “I know that the overall list of measures is very extreme and will be seen as very extreme, but I am convinced that it’s worth it.”

‘Foreign disease’

In many ways, the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated divisions that first came to the fore in 2015, when eastern and central European states closed their borders to migrants and thwarted EU efforts to implement migrant quotas across the bloc.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country has also banned travel from Italy, has made an explicit link between the two crises.

“We are fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus – there is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement,” Orban told Hungarian media on Friday.

“Our experience is that foreigners brought in the disease, and that it is spreading among foreigners,” he added, in remarks that mirrored US President Donald Trump’s description of the coronavirus as a “foreign disease”.

Trump’s decision on Wednesday to slap a 30-day travel ban on people coming from the Schengen Area has stunned and angered EU officials, who were not consulted prior to the move.

“Instead of tending to the problems of his country, and to a virus that knows no borders, he thinks that he can fight it like people that have a different citizenship than American,” said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

Though it has stepped up monitoring travellers for signs of infection, Germany has so far refused to close its borders. Spain and Italy have also opted to keep borders open, even as they place their own populations under lockdown.

“This virus cares not for borders, be they internal or external,” said Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday as he said his country planned to declare a nationwide state of emergency.

‘Turn off the source’

French President Emmanuel Macron has also been critical of EU members that have unilaterally closed their borders, calling such moves counter-productive and pleading instead for coordination across the bloc. He has stressed the importance of scientific evidence, rather than ideology or political expediency, in guiding the world’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

But just as governments are divided over how to tackle the novel virus, so is the scientific community.

In justifying Trump’s travel ban, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top official on infectious diseases at the US National Institute of Health, noted that 70 percent of new infections could be traced to Europe.

“It was pretty compelling that we needed to turn off the source from that region,” he told a congressional panel on Thursday.

Internal blockades have proved their effectiveness in China, where the virus first originated, said Sterghios Moschos, a virologist at Northumbria University in the UK. Appearing on the FRANCE 24 Debate show, Moschos noted that the blockade of Hubei province “stopped in its tracks the transmission intensity”, thereby sparing other parts of the country.

Other medical experts are doubtful that the Chinese model would prove useful now that the disease has spread across the globe and is being passed through so-called community transmission – among people who haven’t travelled overseas.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led a World Health Organization team in China as the COVID-19 disease was surging last month, said countries might gain in the short term by limiting travel, but that overall “it doesn’t help to restrict movement”.

Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson and medical doctor currently involved in the virus response, echoed the concerns about the false comfort of closing borders as a delaying tactic.

“You divert a lot of resources when you are focused on closing borders, rather than focusing on protecting your health workers, preparing your health systems and enhancing your disease surveillance,” she told The Intercept.

Even Britain, which was initially exempt from Trump’s travel ban, has expressed scepticism about its effectiveness.

“With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here,” Finance Minister Rishi Sunak told BBC radio on Friday.

He added: “The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans are going to have a material effect on the spread of the infection.”

Source: France 24