Australia warns citizens not to travel abroad; cases surge to 454

Months after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan city of central China, families of those deceased, who contracted the contagious infection, stood in long queues at funeral homes demanding to receive the cremated ashes of their loved ones.

Now this has spurred questions about the actual tally of COVID-19 related casualties in Wuhan, in a renewed pressure on the Chinese government that is already struggling to control its containment narrative of the pandemic spread.

Chinese media outlet Caixin showed how trucks carrying 2,500 urns with the ashes of the deceased COVID-19 cases were being shipped in a funeral home last week. Another picture published revealed how 3,500 urns were stacked within these funeral homes. It is therefore unclear how many urns have been filled in.

According to media reports, workers at several funeral parlors declined to provide any details as to how many urns were waiting to be collected, saying they either did not know or were not authorised to share the number.

Some families said they had been forced to wait for several hours to pick up the ashes. The photos circulated as mass deaths from the virus spiked in cities across the west, including Milan, Madrid and New York, where hospitals were erecting tents to handle the overflow as global infections soar past 500,000, with 24,000 dead.

According to Chinese government figures, 2,535 people in Wuhan have died of the virus. The announcement that a lockdown in place since January would be lifted came after the country said its tally of new cases had hit zero and stepped up diplomatic outreach to other countries hard hit by the virus, sending some of them medical supplies.

But some in China have been skeptical of the accuracy of the official tally, particularly given Wuhan's overwhelmed medical system, authorities' attempts to cover up the outbreak in its initial stages, and multiple revisions to the way official cases are counted.

Residents on social media have demanded disciplinary action against top Wuhan officials.

Many people who died had Covid-19 symptoms, but weren't tested and excluded from the official case tally, Caixin said. There were also patients who died of other diseases due to a lack of proper treatment when hospitals were overwhelmed dealing with those who had the coronavirus.

There were 56,007 cremations in Wuhan in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to data from the city's civil affairs agency. The number of cremations was 1,583 higher than those in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 2,231 higher than the fourth quarter of 2017.

Two locals in Wuhan who have lost family members to the virus said online that they were informed they had to be accompanied by their employers or officials from neighborhood committees when picking up the urns, likely as a measure against public gatherings.

COVID-19 is affecting 199 countries and territories around the world. Over 664,000 coronavirus cases have been registered globally out of which 30,890 have succumbed to the infection.

Washington, May 20: Once dubbed as historic by him, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he now feels ‘differently’ about the trade deal he signed with China earlier this year.

He said this while once again venting out his frustration with the Beijing leadership, accusing it of letting coronavirus spread.

Till Tuesday, over 92,000 Americans have died and 1.5 million tested positive for coronavirus that has globally killed around 320,000 people.

The US and China had signed a deal in January to end their 22-month-long trade war during which the two countries slapped tit-for-tat tariff hikes on products worth nearly half a trillion USD.

Under it, Beijing agreed to increase its purchase of US goods by USD 200 billion in 2020-2021.

“I feel differently now about that deal than I did three months ago,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“We will see what all happens, but it's been a very disappointing situation. A very disappointing thing happened with China because the plague flowed in and that wasn't supposed to happen and it could have been stopped," he said.

Trump said he was very excited when the trade deal with China was signed.

“But once the virus came in, once the plague, as I called it, came in, I said how did they let that happen? And how come it didn't go into other sections of China? Why did they block it from leaving Wuhan? But they didn't block it from going to the rest of the world, including the United States. Why is that? Beijing doesn't have it. Other places don't have it,” he said.

Trump did not respond to questions on retaliation against China.

Meanwhile, top American senators continued to press the administration that rules of engagement with China needs to change post-coronavirus.

“As we know, they unleashed this virus on America and the world with their classic communist cover-up, deception, continued propaganda campaign, costing now over 90,000 American lives, 35 million Americans losing their jobs so far,” Senator Martha McSally said during a Congressional hearing.

“We don’t know who patient zero is, they destroyed samples, they silenced doctors, they kicked out journalists, they impacted international travel to seed this and their reckless behaviour continues to be the root of all this,” she said.

As a result of coronavirus, the American economy has been thrown into recession; more than 36 million people have lost their job – the worst ever after last century’s great depression.

Many of the US states have now started opening up, after taking necessary precautions.

By conservative estimates, it will take several quarters for the economy to be back on track.

Trump in the last a few weeks has exuded confidence that the economy will be back on track next year.

China is aggressively pursuing a diverse range of tactics -- from cyber-attacks to recruiting insiders for economic espionage, Indian security agencies have warned. The specific alert circulated among key stakeholders suggests that Chinese operatives are not only planning to steal classified cutting-edge defense technology but also eyeing to recruit best academicians and researchers around the globe, especially from the US.

Sources said they have noticed that China has authorized an "aggressive program of stealing US science and technology information by recruiting Americans in the technology sector with access to trade secrets".

In the technology sector of the US, many Indians scientists are working at the forefront. "This is a serious matter for Indian government and security establishments," said a top source further adding that Chinese always pursue economic espionage because it suits their low cost manufacturing sector on the basis of stolen research and costly design developed by top companies across the globe.

"An alert was also issued in early January about Chinese cyber intrusion attempts at several companies where Indian researchers are working. The espionage attempt was to target UAV technology and certain top-end military equipment designs. After stealing the techniques and design, China starts producing these equipment domestically and sells at a cheaper rate, inflicting irreparable damage to the original equipment manufacturers," the sources in the security establishment observed.

Recently, the US accused China for targeting academia by sending researchers to American labs and using talent recruitment programme to steal scientific analysis. The US has also found that young recruits of the People's Liberation Army posing as students are entering into various universities across the globe to get research papers and recruit academia.

Earlier this year, the US charged a former Boston University student of visa fraud for failing to disclose the status as a lieutenant in the China's People's Liberation Army.

The US intelligence agencies have found that their "universities have become a soft target in the global espionage war with China".

In January this year, the US Department of Justice charged a leading academician at the Harvard University for hiding his alleged role in a Chinese government programme.

In July last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray had revealed that the FBI is probing nearly 1,000 cases of economic espionage and attempted intellectual property theft, nearly all of them leading back to China.

Accordingly, Indian Missions have been informed about the threats being posed by Chinese spies and attempts to recruit Indian scientists and technologists working in the US and other parts of the world.

Sources further stated that security establishments in India have informed the scientist fraternity to be on alert amid threat posed by Chinese spies.

The Chinese had earlier recruited a personnel, Dongfan Chung, working at Boeing for economic espionage. Chung had stolen secret technology to benefit Chinese government and during the raid at his house more than 2.5 lakh classified pages related to Boeing were recovered.

"There has been intense debate on the international platforms regarding Chinese-sponsored theft of intellectual property. American agencies have gone on record to say that China was targeting trade secrets. In the backdrop of pandemic and global health crisis, Indian establishments in defence and technology sectors have been told to be extra cautious as China is planning to become the most advanced economy while the other countries are crippled by the highly contagious virus," the sources further added.