Hillary Clinton's troubles escalate as FBI to review new emails

New Delhi, Mar 16: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, most airlines in the world will be bankrupt by the end of May and only a coordinated government and industry action right now can avoid the catastrophe, said global aviation consultancy firm CAPA in a note on Monday.

"As the impact of the coronavirus and multiple government travel reactions sweep through our world, many airlines have probably already been driven into technical bankruptcy, or are at least substantially in breach of debt covenants," it stated.

Across the world, airlines have announced drastic reduction in their operations in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. For example, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines stated on Sunday that it would be grounding 300 aircraft in its fleet and reduce flights by 40 per cent.

The US has suspended all tourist visas for people belonging to the European Union, the UK and Ireland. Similarly, the Indian government has suspended all tourist visas and e-visas granted on or before March 11.

CAPA, in its note on Monday, said, "By the end of May-2020, most airlines in the world will be bankrupt. Coordinated government and industry action is needed - now - if catastrophe is to be avoided."

Cash reserves are running down quickly as fleets are grounded and "what flights there are operate much less than half full", it added.

"Forward bookings are far outweighed by cancellations and each time there is a new government recommendation it is to discourage flying. Demand is drying up in ways that are completely unprecedented. Normality is not yet on the horizon," it said.

India's largest airline IndiGo -- which has around 260 planes in its fleet -- said on Thursday that it has seen a decline of 15-20 per cent in daily bookings in the last few days.

The low-cost carrier had stated that it expects its quarterly earnings to be materially impacted due to such decline.

CAPA said the failure to coordinate the future will result in protectionism and much less competition.

"The alternative does not bear thinking about. An unstructured and nationalistic outcome will not be survival of the fittest.

"It will mostly consist of airlines that are the biggest and the best-supported by their governments. The system will reek of nationalism. And it will not serve the needs of the 21st century world. That is not a prospect that any responsible government should be prepared to contemplate," the consultancy firm said.

Wuhan, Apr 15: In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Janaury 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

That delay from Jan 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus.

But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time — the beginning of the outbreak. China's attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected almost 2 million people and taken more than 126,000 lives.

A This is tremendous, a said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan's medical system.

Other experts noted that the Chinese government may have waited on warning the public to stave off hysteria, and that it did act quickly in private during that time.

But the six-day delay by China's leaders in Beijing came on top of almost two weeks during which the national Center for Disease Control did not register any cases from local officials, internal bulletins obtained by the AP confirm. Yet during that time, from Jan 5 to Jan 17, hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country.

It's uncertain whether it was local officials who failed to report cases or national officials who failed to record them. It's also not clear exactly what officials knew at the time in Wuhan, which only opened back up last week with restrictions after its quarantine.

But what is clear, experts say, is that China's rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings. The punishment of eight doctors for rumor-mongering, broadcast on national television on Jan. 2, sent a chill through the city's hospitals.

Doctors in Wuhan were afraid, said Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. It was truly intimidation of an entire profession. Without these internal reports, it took the first case outside China, in Thailand on Jan 13, to galvanize leaders in Beijing into recognising the possible pandemic before them. It was only then that they launched a nationwide plan to find cases distributing CDC-sanctioned test kits, easing the criteria for confirming cases and ordering health officials to screen patients, all without telling the public.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied suppressing information in the early days, saying it immediately reported the outbreak to the World Health Organization.

Allegations of a cover-up or lack of transparency in China are groundless, said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a Thursday press conference.

The documents show that the head of China's National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials.

A memo states that the teleconference was held to convey instructions on the coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, but does not specify what those instructions were.

The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major public health event, the memo cites Ma as saying.

The National Health Commission is the top medical agency in the country. In a faxed statement, the Commission said it had organised the teleconference because of the case reported in Thailand and the possibility of the virus spreading during New Year travel. It added that China had published information on the outbreak in an open, transparent, responsible and timely manner," in accordance with important instructions repeatedly issued by President Xi.

The documents come from an anonymous source in the medical field who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. The AP confirmed the contents with two other sources in public health familiar with the teleconference. Some of the memo's contents also appeared in a public notice about the teleconference, stripped of key details and published in February.

Under a section titled sober understanding of the situation, the memo said that clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible. It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the situation had changed significantly because of the possible spread of the virus abroad.

With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high, the memo continued.

The President of United States Donald Trump has said that countries like India and China would have much more coronavirus cases than America if they conduct more tests.

“I say to my people every time we test; you find cases because we do more testing. If we have more cases, if we wanted to do testing in China or in India or other places, I promise you there would be more cases you are doing a fantastic job in getting out the swabs,” the US president said on Friday.

Trump said that the US has carried out 20 million tests while compared to America, Germany is at four million and much talked about South Korea is about three million tests. He made the remarks at Puritan Medical Products in Maine, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The US has reported nearly 1.9 million cases and over 1,09,000 deaths while the total number of coronavirus cases in India and China stand at 2,36,184 and 84,177 respectively, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center data.

India has so far conducted over 4 million COVID-19 tests, according to the health ministry.

Trump said, “we will be well over 20 million tests. Remember this, when you test more, you have more cases.”

“Puritan is one of the only manufacturers in the world producing high-quality medical swabs that are crucial for rapid testing. And every swab you make at Puritan is proudly stamped with the beautiful phrase made in the USA,” Trump said.

“Thanks to the testing capacity that you are making possible, our country is reopening and our economy is recovering like nobody would’ve thought possible,” he added.

Trump also spoke about the huge unemployment problem the country is currently facing. He said that the economy is now back on track, referring to the latest monthly employment numbers,.

“We absolutely shattered expectations, and this is the largest monthly jobs increase in American history, think of that; that’s a long time,” Trump said

“I think it’s more than double or about double of what our highest was before so this is the largest monthly job increase in American history. And we’re going to have a phenomenal next year. We’re going to have a tremendous couple of months prior to the election on November 3 very, very important date,” the president said.

Keeping an eye on the November 3 presidential elections, Trump is seeking re-election for his second consecutive term. He is pitted against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden who in opinion polls is surging several points of Trump.

“It’s going to be a very important election because the only thing that can screw it up is if you get the wrong president and they raise your taxes, and they open up your borders so that everybody pours into our country,” Trump said.

Trump also vowed to bring the American economy back on track, which has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic. He reiterated that his administration has built a strong economy in the last three years.

Describing the fight against coronavirus as the greatest national and industrial mobilisation since the World War II, Trump said that his administration has marshaled the full power of the US government and US industry to defeat the invisible enemy.

“It is indeed an enemy. It came from China, should have been stopped in China. They didn’t do that,” he alleged.

The administration, he said, has delivered over 1.5 billion pieces of personal protective equipment to doctors and nurses on the front lines. We slashed the red tape to speed up the development of vaccines.

“And vaccines are coming along incredibly well, wait till you see, and therapeutics. And we partnered at private sector leaders such as Puritan to build the largest and most advanced testing capacity on the face of the earth, like this one,” the US president said.

The Puritan factory in Maine, he said, quickly ramped up the production to produce nearly 20 million foam-tipped swabs each month.

“Then in April, my administration invoked the Defence Production Act to help you scale up even more. Under a USD 75 million public-private partnership, Puritan will soon double production to 40 million swabs per month,” Trump added.