Hospitals in USA may soon overflow with patients amid spike in COVID-19 cases

Beijing, Jun 16: The coronavirus situation in China's capital is "extremely severe", a city official warned Tuesday, as 27 new infections were reported from Beijing where a new cluster has sparked a huge trace-and-test programme.

The COVID-19 resurgence -- believed to have started at the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food market in the capital -- has sparked alarm as China had largely brought its outbreak under control through mass testing and lockdowns imposed earlier in the year.

The new cases took the number of confirmed infections in Beijing over the past five days to 106, as authorities locked down almost 30 communities in the city and tested tens of thousands of people.

"The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely severe," Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian warned at a press conference.

The World Health Organization had already expressed concern about the cluster, pointing to Beijing's size and connectivity.

Officials in the capital have said they will test stall owners and managers at all of the city's food markets, restaurants and government canteens.

Beijing's coronavirus testing capacity has been expanded to 90,000 a day, according to China's official news agency Xinhua.

On Tuesday, the capital's transport commission banned taxi- and ride-hailing services from driving out of the city, Xinhua reported, in another move to try and contain the new outbreak.

All indoor sports and entertainment venues in Beijing were ordered to shut on Monday, and some other cities across China warned they would quarantine those arriving from the capital.

The National Health Commission also reported four new domestic infections in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, and a case reported in southwestern Sichuan province was linked to the Beijing cluster.

Authorities were also racing to track people from Beijing who had travelled to other parts of China, and those who visited the capital have been encouraged to get tested.

Beijing spokesman Xu said: "High-risk people who have left Beijing must inform local authorities immediately."

Market inspections

Authorities shut down another market on Tuesday -- Tiantaohonglian in the central Xicheng district -- after one employee there was diagnosed with COVID-19, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Seven residential estates surrounding that market were also locked down.

In total, Beijing officials said Tuesday they have disinfected 276 agricultural markets, closed 11 markets, and disinfected more than 33,000 food and beverage businesses in a bid to stamp out the new cluster.

Officials had warned Sunday that since May 30, 200,000 people had visited the Xinfadi market -- the original site of the new outbreak.

More than 8,000 workers from Xinfadi have been tested and sent to centralised quarantine facilities.

Until this recent outbreak, most of China's cases in recent months were nationals returning home as the pandemic spread to other countries.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the virus strain found in the Beijing outbreak was a "major epidemic strain in the European countries".

While the virus was detected on chopping boards used to handle imported salmon at Xinfadi, "it does not clearly or definitely indicate it's from imported seafood", Wu Zunyou, the body's chief epidemiologist, said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV.

"Ever since new cases suddenly emerged in Beijing, we have tried to figure out the reasons for the outbreak since there were no COVID-19 cases found over the past two months," Wu Zunyou said.

"We came up with several possibilities, and the most likely one is that the carrier of the novel coronavirus comes from outside China or other parts of China and brought it here."

On Tuesday, another eight imported cases were reported.

Feb 17: Chinese authorities on Monday reported a slight upturn in new virus cases and 105 more deaths for a total of 1,770 since the outbreak began two months ago.

The 2,048 new cases followed three days of declines but was up by just 39 cases from the previous day’s figure. Another 10,844 people have recovered from COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, and have been discharged from hospitals, according to Monday’s figures.

The update followed the publication late Saturday in China’s official media of a recent speech by President Xi Jinping in which he indicated for the first time that he had led the response to the outbreak from early in the crisis. While the reports were an apparent attempt to demonstrate the Communist Party leadership acted decisively from the start, it also opened Xi up to criticism over why the public was not alerted sooner.

In his speech, Xi said he gave instructions on fighting the virus on Jan. 7 and ordered the shutdown of the most-affected cities that began on Jan. 23.

The disclosure of his speech indicates top leaders knew about the outbreak’s potential severity at least two weeks before such dangers were made known to the public. It was not until late January that officials said the virus can spread between humans and public alarm began to rise.

New cases in other countries are raising growing concerns about containment of the virus.

Taiwan on Sunday reported its first death from COVID-19, the fifth fatality outside of mainland China. Taiwan’s Central News Agency, citing health minister Chen Shih-chung, said the man who died was in his 60s and had not traveled overseas recently and had no known contact with virus patients.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe convened an experts meeting to discuss containment measures in his country, where more than a dozen cases have emerged in the past few days without any obvious link to China.

“The situation surrounding this virus is changing by the minute,” Abe said.

Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said the country is “entering into a phase that is different from before,” requiring new steps to stop the spread of the virus.

Japan now has 413 confirmed cases, including 355 from a quarantined cruise ship, and one death from the virus. Its total is the highest number of cases among about two dozen countries outside of China where the illness has spread.

Hundreds of Americans from the cruise ship took charter flights home, as Japan announced another 70 infections had been confirmed on the Diamond Princess. Canada, Hong Kong and Italy were planning similar flights.

The 300 or so Americans flying on U.S.-government chartered aircraft back to the U.S. will face another 14-day quarantine at Travis Air Force Base in California and Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The U.S. Embassy said the departure was offered because people on the ship were at a high risk of exposure to the virus. People with symptoms were banned from the flights.

About 255 Canadians and 330 Hong Kong residents are on board the ship or undergoing treatment in Japanese hospitals. There are also 35 Italians, of which 25 are crew members, including the captain.

In China’s Hubei province, where the outbreak began in December, all vehicle traffic will be banned in another containment measure. It expands a vehicle ban in the provincial capital, Wuhan, where public transportation, trains and planes have been halted for weeks.

Exceptions were being made for vehicles involved in epidemic prevention and transporting daily necessities.

Hubei has built new hospitals with thousands of patient beds and China has sent thousands of military medical personnel to staff the new facilities and help the overburdened health care system.

Last Thursday, Hubei changed how it recognized COVID-19 cases, accepting a doctor’s diagnosis rather than waiting for confirmed laboratory test results, in order to treat patients faster. The tally spiked by more than 15,000 cases under the new method.

Washington, Jan 15: The historic impeachment trial of US President Donald Trump will begin on Tuesday next week, Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate's Republican majority, has announced.

Earlier on Tuesday (January 14), Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended the standoff between the Senate and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives saying that it would vote on next Tuesday to send the impeachment documents to the upper house so it can hold the trial on charges that Trump obstructed Congress and abused presidential powers.

This will be only the third time in the nation's history that a US president is tried after impeachment and Trump can expect to be acquitted like his two predecessors - Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 - because there won't be a two-thirds majority to convict and remove him from office.

McConnel told reporters on Tuesday that preparations like swearing in the Senators as jurors for the trial could begin this week ahead of the formal start on next Tuesday.

"This Impeachment Hoax is an outrage," Trump tweeted, repeating his longstanding complaint about it, when the move to hold the trial finally appeared to gain traction.

"The American people deserve the truth and the Constitution demands a trial," Pelosi said.

She had held on to the Articles of Impeachment - the chargesheet against Trump - that the House voted on December 18 in a bid to pressure McConnell to accept her terms for holding the trial and in an attempt to get some Republican senators to break ranks on procedural matters.

But she has agreed to let the process move forward, without an agreement on the main Democratic demand to call in their witnesses at the trial and to introduce new evidence.

The House Intelligence Committee, which conducted the investigation against the president, on Tuesday released what it said was new evidence from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Parnas is facing criminal charges.

Pelosi said that starting the trial without witnesses or documents "a pure political cover-up."

The impeachment process is only an investigation by the House and the framing of the chargesheet for the Senate trial that will be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts with the Senators as jurors and nominees of the House as prosecutors.

While there is no chance for removal of Trump from office, Democrats see the Senate trial as a propaganda mechanism ahead of the elections in November by giving the charges against Trump another public airing and turning voter opinion against Republican senators facing re-election.

Trump called for an outright dismissal of the impeachment by the Senate, but McConnell said, "There is little or no sentiment in the Republican conference for a motion to dismiss."

He added, "Our members feel that we have an obligation to listen to the arguments."

Trump tweeted that by not dismissing the impeachment out of hand, the Senate trial was giving "credence to a trial based on the no evidence, no crime" and "the partisan Democrat Witch Hunt credibility."

Pelosi had hoped to make some Republican senators break ranks with the leaders on the procedures for the trial and has partially succeeded in this as at least four of them appear open to witnesses being called.

While Trump's conviction and ouster from office is virtually impossible because of the two-thirds vote requirement in the 100-member Senate, only a simple majority is required on procedural matters. The Republicans have 53 members and four of them shifting positions could make a difference here.

McConnell appeared confident that he would have a hold on his party senators to set the rules for the trial.

Whether witnesses would be called to testify is still open as the Republicans have said that it would be decided when the trial starts.

The main sticking point is the Democrats demand to call their witnesses to testify at the trial.

The Democrats did not allow the Republicans to call their own witnesses to testify during the impeachment proceeding in the House and Republicans did not seem inclined to oblige them in the Senate.

Trump tweeted, "'We demand fairness' shouts Pelosi and the Do Nothing Democrats, yet the Dems in the House wouldn't let us have 1 witness, no lawyers or even ask questions."

The charges against Trump stem from a July phone call he had with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked him as a "favour" to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Democrats say that this was an abuse power and amounted to inviting foreign interference in US elections as Biden is the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination to run against Trump in this year's election.

They also say that he withheld crucial military aid to Ukraine, a US ally against Russia, to pressure Zelensky and this endangered US national security. Trump said he delayed the aid to make sure the new government stomped out corruption.

Hunter Biden, who was made to leave the Navy because of alleged drug use and had no experience in the energy industry or in Ukrainian businesses was appointed a director of a gas company there and received monthly payments of $83,000, according to Republicans.

The former vice president, who was looking after Ukrainians affairs, had a prosecutor looking into gas company removed.

He and the Democrats say that it was because the prosecutor was corrupt, while Republicans see it as a conflict of interest.

The obstruction of Congress resulted from Trump's refusal to provide documents that the House demanded and allow some administration officials to testify at the House hearings.