Ten killed, dozens injured in Turkey train derailment

Washington, Mar 29: The number of known coronavirus US cases soared well past 115,000, with more than 1,900 dead, as President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was considering imposing a quarantine on the hard hit New York region.

American healthcare workers in the trenches of the pandemic are appealing for more protective gear and equipment to treat a surge in patients that is already pushing hospitals to their limits in virus hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit.

Trump told reporters he could order a quarantine on three states, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which between them have recorded at least 64,000 infections and 895 deaths.

He also appeared to soften his previous comments calling for the US economy to be swiftly reopened. Asked whether he thought the United States would restart by Easter Sunday, April 12, Trump replied, "We'll see, what happens."

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he had no details on any possible quarantine order for his state, telling a briefing: "I don't even know what that means. I don't know how that would be legally enforceable, and from a medical point of view I don't know what you would be accomplishing."

He said New York was postponing its presidential primary election to June 23, from April 28.

As the crisis deepened, nurses at Jacobi Medical Center in New York's borough of the Bronx protested outside the hospital on Saturday, saying supervisors asked them to reuse personal protective equipment, including masks. Some held signs with slogans including "Protect our lives so we can save yours."

"The masks are supposed to be one-time use," one nurse said, according to videos posted online. "Now, all of a sudden the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is saying that it's fine for us to reuse them. These choices are being made not based on science. They're being made based on need."

One resident at New York Presbyterian Hospital said they were issued with just one mask.

"This is your mask forever. You can bring it home with you. Here's how you can clean your mask," said the resident, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "It's not the people who are making these decisions that go into the patients' rooms."

Doctors are also especially concerned about a shortage of ventilators, machines that help patients breathe and are widely needed for those suffering from COVID-19, the pneumonia-like respiratory ailment caused by the highly contagious novel coronavirus.

Hospitals have also sounded the alarm about scarcities of drugs, oxygen tanks and trained staff.

By Saturday afternoon, the US number of cases stood at 115,842 with at least 1,929 deaths, according to a Reuters tally. The United States has had the most recorded cases of any country since its count of infections eclipsed those of China and Italy on Thursday.

BLACK MARKET
As shortages of key medical supplies abounded, desperate physicians and nurses were forced to take matters into their own hands.

New York-area doctors say they have had to recycle some protective gear, or even resort to bootleg suppliers.

Dr. Alexander Salerno of Salerno Medical Associates in northern New Jersey described going through a "broker" to pay $17,000 for masks and other protective equipment that should have cost about $2,500, and picking them up at an abandoned warehouse.

"You don't get any names. You get just phone numbers to text," Salerno said. "And so you agree to a term. You wire the money to a bank account. They give you a time and an address to come to."

Nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York said they were locking away or hiding N95 respirator masks, surgical masks and other supplies that are prone to pilfering if left unattended.

"Masks disappear," nurse Diana Torres said. "We hide it all in drawers in front of the nurses' station."

One nurse at Westchester Medical Center, in the suburbs of the city, said colleagues have begun absconding with scarce supplies without asking, prompting better-stocked teams to lock masks, gloves and gowns in drawers and closets.

An emergency room doctor in Michigan, an emerging epicenter of the pandemic, said he was wearing one paper face mask for an entire shift due to a shortage and that hospitals in the Detroit area would soon run out of ventilators.

"We have hospital systems here in the Detroit area in Michigan who are getting to the end of their supply of ventilators and have to start telling families that they can't save their loved ones because they don't have enough equipment," the physician, Dr. Rob Davidson, said in a video posted on Twitter.

Sophia Thomas, a nurse practitioner at DePaul Community Health Center in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations late last month fueled an outbreak in Louisiana's largest city, said the numbers of coronavirus patients "have been staggering."

In the nation's second-largest city, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said spiking cases were putting Southern California on track to match New York City's infection figures in the next week.

Washington, May 27: Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said in its COVID-19 guidelines which do not recommend following social distancing between two passengers inside a plane or keeping the middle seat unoccupied.

As a result of coronavirus pandemic, air traffic inside the US has come to a near halt. Air traffic is said to be down to about 90 per cent. For all travellers coming from overseas, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended 14 days quarantine.

"Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights because of how air circulates and is filtered on aeroplanes," the CDC has said in its set of COVID-19 guidelines for air travellers.

However, it noted that the air travellers were not risk-free especially in the time of the coronavirus pandemic and recommended Americans to avoid travel as far as possible.

"Air travel requires spending time in security lines and airport terminals, which can bring you in close contact with other people and frequently touched surfaces," it said.

"Social distancing is difficult on crowded flights, and you may have to sit near others (within six feet), sometimes for hours. This may increase your risk for exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19," the CDC said.

But instead of recommended social distancing inside commercial planes, the CDC has advised a series of preventive and hygienic measures to be taken by the airlines pilot and crew to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The US Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration in its latest safety alerts for operators on May 11 said that air carriers and crews conducting flight operations having a nexus to the US, including both domestic and foreign air carriers, should follow CDC's occupational health and safety guidance.

The CDC issued its guidelines in first guidelines for the airlines and airline crew on March and again in May.

The CDC, which has issued an exhaustive social guideline measures in various sections, is silent on keeping the middle seat of a plane unoccupied so as to maintain the six feet distance between two passengers.

It calls for the plane crew to report to the CDC a traveller with specific COVID-19 symptoms like fever, persistent cough, difficulty in breathing and appearing unwell.

Asking the airlines and cabin crew to review infection control guidelines for cabin crew, the CDC recommends several measures for cabin crew to protect themselves and others, manage a sick traveller, clean contaminated areas, and take actions after a flight.

Prominent among them include washing hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, particularly after assisting sick travellers or touching potentially contaminated body fluids or surfaces and use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer (containing at least 60 per cent alcohol) if soap and water are not available.

Airlines should consider providing alcohol-based hand sanitizer to cabin and flight crews for their personal use, it said.

The CDC guidelines do not recommend following social distancing inside a plane between two passengers or keeping the middle seat unoccupied. But it asks to minimise contact between passengers and cabin crew and the sick person.

"If possible, separate the sick person from others (by a distance of 2 meters or 6 feet, ideally) and designate one crew member to serve the sick person. Offer a facemask, if available and if the sick person can tolerate it. If a facemask is not available or cannot be tolerated, ask the sick person to cover their mouth and nose with tissues when coughing or sneezing," said the CDC guidelines.

If no symptomatic passengers were identified during or immediately after the flight, the CDC recommends airlines to follow routine operating procedures for cleaning aircraft, managing solid waste, and wearing PPE.

"If symptomatic passengers are identified during or immediately after the flight, routine cleaning procedures should be followed, and enhanced cleaning procedures should also be used," it said.

Clean porous (soft) surfaces (e.g, cloth seats, cloth seat belts) at the seat of the symptomatic passengers and within 6 feet of the symptomatic passengers in all directions, it added.

Washington, Apr 8: President Donald Trump has threatened to put a "very powerful" hold on US' funding to the World Health Organization, accusing the UN agency of being "very China centric" and criticising it for having "missed the call" in its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump slammed the global health agency for its early guidance aimed at countering the international spread of the coronavirus.

"We're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see. It's a great thing if it works. But when they call every shot wrong, that's no good," Trump told reporters at his daily White House news conference on Tuesday.

The Geneva-headquartered World Health Organization (WHO), receives vast amounts of money from the United States.

"We pay for a majority or the biggest portion of their money. They actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did it. They were wrong. They've been wrong about a lot of things. They had a lot of information early and they didn't want to - they're very - they seem to be very China centric," Trump said.

The president said his administration was going to look into the US funding to the WHO.

"We give a majority of the money that they get, and it's much more than the USD 58 million. USD 58 million is a small portion of what they've got over the years. Sometimes they get much more than that. Sometimes it's for programs that they're doing, and-it's much bigger numbers. If the programmes are good, that's great as far as we're concerned," he said.

"But we want to look into it, WHO, because they called it wrong. They (WHO) called it wrong. They missed the call. They could've called it months earlier. They would have known and they should have known and they probably did know. So, we'll be looking into that very carefully, and we're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO," Trump said.

Meanwhile, Senator Jim Risch, chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for an independent investigation into the WHO's handling of the COVID-19 response.

"The WHO has failed not only the American people, it has failed the world with its flagrant mishandling of the response to COVID-19," said Risch.

WHO Director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' apparent unwillingness to hold the Chinese Communist Party to even the minimum standard of global health and transparency hindered the world's ability to blunt the spread of this pandemic, he said.

"It is completely unacceptable that the world's global health organization has become a political puppet of the Chinese government," he alleged, adding that "an independent investigation into the WHO's handling of the COVID-19 response is imperative."

The United States is the largest contributor to the WHO.

"Our valuable tax payer dollars should go towards investments to prevent the spread of disease, not to aid and abet cover-ups that cost lives and isolate portions of the world's population on political grounds, as has been the case with Taiwan," Senator Risch said.

A bipartisan group of nearly two dozen lawmakers announced Tuesday to introduce a resolution to defund the WHO until Ghebreyesus resigns and an international commission investigates the organisation's role in covering up the Chinese Communist Party's failed COVID-19 response.

"The WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party hide the threat of COVID-19 from the world and now more than 10,000 Americans are dead, a number that is expected to rise dramatically in the coming weeks," Congressman Guy Reschenthaler alleged.

"The United States is the largest contributor to WHO. It is not right that Americans' hard-earned tax dollars are being used to propagate China's lies and hide information that could have saved lives. This bill will hold the WHO accountable for their negligence and deceit," he asserted.

The United States' intelligence community has reported that the Chinese government hid the threat of COVID-19 and, as a result, made it difficult for the rest of the world to respond early, appropriately and aggressively, said Congressman Fred Keller.

"For reasons beyond understanding, the WHO acted as a silent partner in this effort instead of protecting the lives of millions across the world, including hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Our hard-earned tax dollars should not go to a global organization more concerned with not offending the Chinese government than providing accurate information and protecting innocent lives," Keller said.

Senator Marco Rubio accused the Chinese Communist Party of using WHO "to mislead the world."

"The organisation's leadership is either complicit or dangerously incompetent. I will work with the Trump Administration to ensure that WHO is independent and has not been compromised by the CCP before we continue our current funding, he added.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are over 1.43 million confirmed coronavirus cases across the world and over 82,000 people have died due to the disease. The US has nearly 400,000 infections, the highest in the world.