Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
The ILO has warned that if another Covid-19 wave hits in the second half of 2020, there would be global working-hour loss of 11.9 percent - equivalent to the loss of 340 million full-time jobs.
According to the 5th edition of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Monitor: Covid-19 and the world of work, the recovery in the global labour market for the rest of the year will be uncertain and incomplete.
The report said that there was a 14 percent drop in global working hours during the second quarter of 2020, equivalent to the loss of 400 million full-time jobs.
The number of working hours lost across the world in the first half of 2020 was significantly worse than previously estimated. The highly uncertain recovery in the second half of the year will not be enough to go back to pre-pandemic levels even in the best scenario, the agency warned.
The baseline model – which assumes a rebound in economic activity in line with existing forecasts, the lifting of workplace restrictions and a recovery in consumption and investment – projects a decrease in working hours of 4.9 percent (equivalent to 140 million full-time jobs) compared to last quarter of 2019.
It says that in the pessimistic scenario, the situation in the second half of 2020 would remain almost as challenging as in the second quarter.
“Even if one assumes better-tailored policy responses – thanks to the lessons learned throughout the first half of the year – there would still be a global working-hour loss of 11.9 per cent at the end of 2020, or 340 million full-time jobs, relative to the fourth quarter of 2019,” it said.
The pessimistic scenario assumes a second pandemic wave and the return of restrictions that would significantly slow recovery. The optimistic scenario assumes that workers’ activities resume quickly, significantly boosting aggregate demand and job creation. With this exceptionally fast recovery, the global loss of working hours would fall to 1.2 per cent (34 million full-time jobs).
The agency said that under the three possible scenarios for recovery in the next six months, “none” sees the global job situation in better shape than it was before lockdown measures began.
“This is why we talk of an uncertain but incomplete recovery even in the best of scenarios for the second half of this year. So there is not going to be a simple or quick recovery,” ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said.
The new figures reflect the worsening situation in many regions over the past weeks, especially in developing economies. Regionally, working time losses for the second quarter were: Americas (18.3 percent), Europe and Central Asia (13.9 percent), Asia and the Pacific (13.5 percent), Arab States (13.2 percent), and Africa (12.1 percent).
The vast majority of the world’s workers (93 per cent) continue to live in countries with some sort of workplace closures, with the Americas experiencing the greatest restrictions.
During the first quarter of the year, an estimated 5.4 percent of global working hours (equivalent to 155 million full-time jobs) were lost relative to the fourth quarter of 2019. Working- hour losses for the second quarter of 2020 relative to the last quarter of 2019 are estimated to reach 14 per cent worldwide (equivalent to 400 million full-time jobs), with the largest reduction (18.3 per cent) occurring in the Americas.
The ILO Monitor also found that women workers have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, creating a risk that some of the modest progress on gender equality made in recent decades will be lost, and that work-related gender inequality will be exacerbated.
The severe impact of Covid-19 on women workers relates to their over-representation in some of the economic sectors worst affected by the crisis, such as accommodation, food, sales and manufacturing.
Globally, almost 510 million or 40 percent of all employed women work in the four most affected sectors, compared to 36.6 percent of men, it said.
The report said that women also dominate in the domestic work and health and social care work sectors, where they are at greater risk of losing their income and of infection and transmission and are also less likely to have social protection.
The pre-pandemic unequal distribution of unpaid care work has also worsened during the crisis, exacerbated by the closure of schools and care services.
Even as countries have adopted policy measures with unprecedented speed and scope, the ILO Monitor highlights some key challenges ahead, including finding the right balance and sequencing of health, economic and social and policy interventions to produce optimal sustainable labour market outcomes; implementing and sustaining policy interventions at the necessary scale when resources are likely to be increasingly constrained and protecting and promoting the conditions of vulnerable, disadvantaged and hard-hit groups to make labour markets fairer and more equitable.
“The decisions we adopt now will echo in the years to come and beyond 2030. Although countries are at different stages of the pandemic and a lot has been done, we need to redouble our efforts if we want to come out of this crisis in a better shape than when it started,” Ryder said.
United Nations, May 7: An average of 80,000 COVID-19 cases were reported each day in April to the World Health Organization, the top UN health agency has said, noting that South Asian nations like India and Bangladesh are seeing a spike in the infections while the numbers are declining in regions such as Western Europe.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that countries must also be able to manage any risk of the disease being imported into their territories, and communities should be fully educated to adjust to what will be a "new norm".
He said as the countries press forward in the common fight against COVID-19, they should also lay the groundwork for resilient health systems globally.
"More than 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 and almost 250,000 deaths have now been reported to the WHO. Since the beginning of April, an average of around 80,000 new cases have been reported to the WHO every day," Ghebreyesus said in Geneva yesterday.
Asserting that the virus cases were not just numbers, he said: "every single case is a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a brother, sister or friend".
He said while the numbers are declining in Western Europe, more cases are being reported every day from Eastern Europe, Africa, South-East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Americas. Even within regions and within countries, there are divergent trends, the agency added.
While some countries are reporting an increase in COVID-19 cases over time, many have seen caseloads rise because they have ramped up testing, the WHO official said.
"We've also seen in Europe and Western Europe a fundamental decrease in the number of cases, but we have seen an associated increase in the number of cases reported in places like the Russian Federation. Southeast, the Western Pacific areas are relatively on the downward trend like Korea and others, but then we do see in South Asia, in places like Bangladesh, in India, some trends towards increase.
"So it's very difficult to say that any particular region is improving or (not improving). There are individual countries within each region that are having difficulties getting on top of this disease and I am particularly concerned about those countries that have (an) ongoing humanitarian crisis," WHO's Executive Director Michael Ryan said.
The death toll due to COVID-19 in India rose to 1,783 while the number of cases climbed to 52,952 on Thursday, registering an increase of 89 deaths and 3,561 cases in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry said.
The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 35,902 while 15,266 people have recovered, it said.
Noting that while seeing an increase in the number of cases is not good in terms of transmission, WHO's Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit head Maria Van Kerkhove said: "but I don't want to equate that with something (being) wrong".
"I want to equate that with countries are working very hard to increase their ability to find the virus, to find people with the virus, to have testing in place to identify who has COVID-19, and putting into place what they need to do to care for those patients," Kerkhove said.
With more countries considering easing restrictions implemented to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the WHO has again reminded the authorities of the need to maintain vigilance.
"The risk of returning to lockdown remains very real if countries do not manage the transition extremely carefully, and in a phased approach," Ghebreyesus said.
He urged countries to consider the UN agency's six criteria for lifting stay-at-home measures.
That advice includes ensuring surveillance is strong, cases are declining and transmission is controlled. Health systems also must be able to detect, isolate, test and treat cases, and to trace all contacts.
Additionally, the risk of outbreak in settings such as health facilities and nursing homes needs to be minimised, while schools, workplaces and other public locations should have preventive measures in place.
"The COVID-19 pandemic will eventually recede, but there can be no going back to business as usual. We cannot continue to rush to fund panic but let preparedness go by the wayside," he said.
He said the crisis has highlighted the importance of strong national health systems as the foundation of global health security: not only against pandemics but also against the multitude of health threats that people across the world face every day.
"If we learn anything from COVID-19, it must be that investing in health now will save lives later," Ghebreyesus said.
While the world currently spends around USD 7.5 trillion on health annually, the WHO believes the best investments are in promoting health and preventing disease.
"Prevention is not only better than cure, it's cheaper, and the smartest thing to do," he said.
The deadly coronavirus, which originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year, has infected over 3.7 million people and killed 263,831 people globally, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Washington, Apr 24: President Donald Trump has favoured a phased reopening of the US economy, devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed nearly 50,000 lives and infected over eight lakh people in the country.
More than 95 per cent of the country's 330 million people are under stay-at-home order as a result of the social mitigation measures, including social distancing, being enforced till May 1.
Trump on Thursday indicated that the stay-at-home order might be extended beyond May 1, but vehemently advocated the need to gradually open up the economy.
In the past few weeks, more than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits and the figure is soon likely to cross 40 million.
Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have projected a negative growth in the US in 2020.
To keep America gaining momentum, every citizen needs to maintain the vigilance, and we all understand that very well we've gone over it many, many times this includes practising good hygiene, maintaining social distance, and the voluntary use of face covering, Trump said.
Safe and phased reopening of our economy -- it's very exciting, but it does not mean that we are letting down our guard at all in any way; on the contrary, continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy to get our country back to work to take our country back, he told reporters at his daily White House news conference on coronavirus.
The data and facts on the ground suggest that the US is making great progress, he said.
In 23 states, new cases have declined. In the peak week, 40 per cent of the American counties have seen a rapid decline in new cases. As many as 46 states report a drop in patients showing coronavirus-like symptoms, he said.
Trump said the US is very close to finding a vaccine for COVID-19.
We are very close to testing... when testing starts it takes a period of time but we will get it done, he said.
According to Vice President Mike Pence, data continues to show promising signs of progress in the New York Metro area, New Jersey, Connecticut, Detroit and New Orleans. All appear to be passed their peak and we are seeing consistent declines in hospitalisation and cases in regions across the country, he said.
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