Judges hammer attorneys on both sides of travel ban case

Sao Paulo, June 20: Brazil’s government confirmed on Friday that the country has risen above 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases, second only to the United States.

The country’s health ministry said that the total now stood at 10,32,913, up more than 50,000 from Thursday. The ministry said the sharp increase was due to corrections of previous days’ underreported numbers.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro still downplays the risks of the virus after nearly 50,000 deaths from COVID-19 in three months, saying the impact of social isolation measures on the economy could be worse than the disease itself.

Specialists believe the actual number of cases in Brazil could be up to seven times higher than the official statistic. Johns Hopkins University says Brazil is performing an average of 14 tests per 1,00,000 people each day, and health experts say that number is up to 20 times less than needed to track the virus.

Official data show a downward trend of the virus in Brazil’s north, including the hard-hit region of the Amazon, a plateau in cases and deaths in the countries’ biggest cities near the Atlantic coast, but a rising curve in the south.

In the Brazilian countryside, which is much less prepared to handle a crisis, the pandemic is clearly growing. Many smaller cities have weaker health care systems and basic sanitation that’s insufficient to prevent contagion.

“There is a lot of regional inequality in our public health system and a shortage of professionals in the interior,” said Miguel Lago, executive director of Brazil’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health officials.

That creates many health care deserts, with people going long distances to get attention. When they leave the hospital, the virus can go with them.

The cattle-producing state of Mato Grosso was barely touched by the virus when it hit the nation’s biggest cities in March. Sitting far from the coast, between the Bolivian border and Brazil’s capital of Brasilia, its 33 lakh residents led a mostly normal life until May. But now its people live under lockdown and meat producers have dozens of infected workers.

In Tangará da Serra, a city of 1,03,000 people in Mato Grosso, the mayor decided Friday to forbid the sale of alcoholic drinks for two weeks as an incentive for people to stay home.

Fᢩo Junqueira said the measure was needed after a spike in COVID-19 cases that filled 80% of the city’s 54 intensive care beds. The city has had nearly 300 cases of the disease, plus three fatalities.

In Rondonópolis, only 300 miles away from Tangará da Serra and home to a thriving economy, health authorities closed the local meatpacking industry after 92 cases were confirmed there. The city of 1,44,000 inhabitants counted 21 deaths from the virus and more than 600 cases. The mayor has also decided to limit sales of alcoholic beverages.

Even regions once considered examples of successful efforts against the virus are now struggling.

Porto Alegre, home to about 14 lakh people, had success in slowing the virus’ spread over the last three months. But now its mayor is considering increasing social isolation measures after ICU occupancy in the city jumped to 80% this month.

We were already making projections for schools to come back, Mayor Nelson Marchezan Jr. told The Associated Press. Now the trend is to impose more restrictions. Outside Sao Paulo city, five regions of the state’s countryside will have to close shops starting Monday due to a rise in coronavirus cases. Governor João Doria announced the decision Friday.

Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s executive director, said at a news conference that Brazil needs to increase its efforts to stop the spread of infections.

“The epidemic is still quite severe in Brazil. I believe health workers are working extremely hard and under pressure to be able to deal with the number of cases that they see on a daily basis,” Dr. Ryan said.

“Certainly the rise is not as exponential as it was previously, so there are some signs that the situation is stabilising. But we’ve seen this before in other epidemics in other countries.”

Margareth Dalcolmo, a clinical researcher and professor of respiratory medicine at the state-funded Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, believes the reopening in major cities and the virus traveling by road into Brazil’s heartland will keep the pressure on the country’s health system.

“The risk in the interior now is very big,” she said. “Our health system just can’t solve the most serious cases of COVID in many places of the countryside.”

Jan 23: Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan called on Wednesday for the United Nations to help mediate between nuclear armed India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

"This is a potential flashpoint," Khan said during a media briefing at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, adding that it was time for the "international institutions ... specifically set up to stop this" to "come into action".

The Indian government in August revoked the constitutional autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir, splitting the Muslim-majority region into two federal territories in a bid to integrate it fully with the rest of the country.

Kashmir is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan. The two countries have gone to war twice over it, and both rule parts of it. India's portion has been plagued by separatist violence since the late 1980s.

Khan said his biggest fear was how New Delhi would respond to ongoing protests in India over a citizenship law that many feel targets Muslims.

"We're not close to a conflict right now ... What if the protests get worse in India, and to distract attention from that, what if ..."

The prime minister said he had discussed the prospect of war between his country and India in a Tuesday meeting with US President Donald Trump. Trump later said he had offered to help mediate between the two countries.

Khan said Pakistan and the United States were closer in their approach to the Taliban armed rebellion in Afghanistan than they had been for many years. He said he had never seen a military solution to that conflict.

"Finally the position of the US is there should be negotiations and a peace plan."

In a separate on-stage conversation later on Wednesday, Khan said he had told Trump in their meeting that a war with Iran would be "a disaster for the world". Trump had not responded, Khan said.

Khan made some of his most straightforward comments when asked why Pakistan has been muted in defence of Uighurs in China.

China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in remote Xinjiang province that Beijing describes as "vocational training centres" to stamp out ""extremism and give people new skills.

The United Nations says at least one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained.

When pressed on China's policies, Khan said Pakistan's relations with Beijing were too important for him to speak out publicly.

"China has helped us when we were at rock bottom. We are really grateful to the Chinese government, so we have decided that any issues we have had with China we will handle privately."

Shanghai, Jun 13: Authorities in Beijing have temporarily shut a major wholesale agricultural market following a rise in locally transmitted novel coronavirus infections in China's capital city over the past two days.

The closure of the Xinfadi wholesale market at 3 a.m. local time on Saturday (1900 GMT on Friday), came after two men working at a meat research centre who had recently visited the market were reported on Friday as having been infected by the novel coronavirus. It was not immediately clear how the men had been infected.

Concern is growing of a second wave of the new virus, even in many countries that seemed to have curbed its spread. It was first reported at a seafood market in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, in December.

Beijing authorities had earlier halted beef and mutton trading at the Xinfadi market, alongside closures at other wholesale markets around the city.

Reflecting concerns over the risk of further spread of the virus, major supermarkets in Beijing removed salmon from their shelves overnight after the virus causing COVID-19 was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon at the market, the state-owned Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Beijing authorities said more than 10,000 people at the market will take nucleic acid tests to detect coronavirus infections. The city government also said it had dropped plans to reopen schools on Monday for students in grades one through three because of the new cases.

Health authorities visited the home of a Reuters reporter in Beijing's Dongcheng district on Saturday to ask whether she had visited the Xinfadi market, which is 15 km (9 miles) away. They said the visit was part of patrols Dongcheng was conducting.

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China reported 11 new COVID-19 cases and seven asymptomatic cases for Friday, the national health authority said on Saturday. And all six locally transmitted cases were confirmed in Beijing.