Fear and racism spread worldwide along with coronavirus

May 15: Global tensions simmered over the race for a coronavirus vaccine Thursday, as the United States and China traded jabs, and France slammed pharmaceuticals giant Sanofi for suggesting the US would get any eventual vaccine first.

Scientists are working at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, which has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide and pummelled economies.

From the US to Europe to Asia, national and local governments are easing lockdown orders to get people back to work -- while fretting over a possible second wave of infections.

Increased freedom of movement means an increased risk of contracting the virus, and so national labs and private firms are labouring to find the right formula for a vaccine.

The European Union's medicines agency offered some hope when it said one could be ready in a year, based on data from clinical trials already underway.

But Marco Cavaleri, the EMA's head of vaccines strategy, acknowledged that timeline was a "best-case scenario," and cautioned that "there may be delays."

The race for a vaccine has exposed a raw nerve in relations between the United States and China, where the virus was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.

Two US agencies warned Wednesday that Chinese hackers were trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research -- a claim Beijing rejected as "smearing" its reputation.

US President Donald Trump, who has ratcheted up the rhetoric against China, said he doesn't even want to engage with Chinese leader Xi Jinping -- potentially imperilling a trade deal between the world's top two economies.

"I'm very disappointed in China. I will tell you that right now," he said in an interview with Fox Business.

"There are many things we could do. We could do things. We could cut off the whole relationship."

On Capitol Hill, an ousted US health official told Congress that the Trump government had no strategy in place to find and distribute a vaccine to millions of Americans, warning of the "darkest winter" ahead.

"We don't have a single point of leadership right now for this response, and we don't have a master plan," said Rick Bright, who was removed last month as head of the US agency charged with developing a coronavirus vaccine.

The United States has registered nearly 86,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 -- the highest toll of any nation.

World leaders were among 140 signatories to a letter published Thursday saying any vaccine should not be patented and that the science should be shared among nations.

"Governments and international partners must unite around a global guarantee which ensures that, when a safe and effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge," it said.

But a row erupted in France after drugmaker Sanofi said it would reserve first shipments of any vaccine it discovered to the United States.

The comments prompted a swift rebuke from the French government -- President Emmanuel Macron's office said any vaccine should be treated as "a global public good, which is not submitted to market forces."

Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson said the US had a risk-sharing model that allowed for manufacturing to start before a vaccine had been finally approved -- while Europe did not.

"The US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it's invested in taking the risk," Hudson told Bloomberg News.

Macron's top officials are scheduled to meet with Sanofi executives about the issue next week.

The search for a vaccine became even more urgent after the World Health Organization said the disease may never go away and the world would have to learn to live with it for good.

"This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away," said Michael Ryan, the UN body's emergencies director.

The prospect of the disease lingering leaves governments facing a delicate balancing act between suppressing the pathogen and getting their economies up and running.

In the US, more grim economic data emerged Thursday, with nearly three million more Americans applying for unemployment benefits.

That takes the overall total to 36.5 million -- more than 10 percent of the US population.

Further signs of the damage to businesses emerged when Lloyd's of London forecast the pandemic will cost the global insurance industry about $203 billion.

European markets closed down, but Wall Street rallied despite the new jobless claims. In a sign of progress, the New York Stock Exchange trading floor was due to reopen on May 26.

The reopening of economies continued in earnest across Europe, where the EU has set out proposals for a phased restart of travel and the eventual lifting of border controls.

"Maybe it's a mistake, but we have no choice. Without tourists, we won't get by!" Enrico Facchetti, a 61-year-old former goldsmith, said of Venice's reopening.

Japan -- the world's third largest economy -- lifted a state of emergency across most of the country except for Tokyo and Osaka.

And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said national parks would partially reopen on June 1.

But in Latin America, the virus continued to surge, with a 60 percent leap in cases in the Chilean capital of Santiago.

Authorities said 2,000 new graves were being dug at the main cemetery.

South Sudan reported its first COVID-19 death on Thursday.

And in Bangladesh, the first case was confirmed in the teeming Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, which are home to nearly one million people.

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.

May 6: In a first, a Pakistani Hindu youth has become the first person from the minority community to join the Pakistan Air Force.

Rahul Dev has been recruited as a General Duty Pilot Officer, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) said in a tweet.

Dev hails from Tharparkar district of Sindh province.

Sharing the picture of the young man, the PAF recently tweeted, "Good news during #COVID19 tense situation. Thar rocked again...Congratulations #RahulDev who hails from very remote village of Tharparkar has been selected as GD Pilot in #PAF."

Though Dev's exact age is not known, those inducted in PAF at his level are often around 20.

The official Radio Pakistan on Wednesday said it is "for the first time in Pakistan's history" that a Hindu youth has been recruited as a general duty pilot officer in PAF.

The Express Tribune in a report published on Wednesday said the induction showed that the PAF was breaking barriers.

Last year, Kainat Junaid became the first woman from Khyber-Pakthunkhwa province to have been selected for fighter pilot training.

Junaid not only secured the top position in PAF's test for General Duty Pilot, but also became Pakistan’s first female fighter pilot to serve the country alongside her father.

Her father Ahmed Junaid is a Squadron Leader in the PAF.