Thai mall gunman shot dead after massacre of 21 people

New York, Apr 5: New York State, the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, continued to record the highest count of daily deaths from COVID-19 as a staggering number of 630 people died in a 24-hour period and Governor Andrew Cuomo said the outbreak in the state could peak in about seven days.

The state had recorded the highest single increase in the number of deaths from novel coronavirus in a single day between April 2 and 3 when 562 people had died, one person dying from the viral infection almost every two-and-a-half minutes.

In the 24 hours since April 4, the death toll grew to 630, "all-time increase" up to a total of 3,565, up from 2,935 on Friday morning, Cuomo said.

The daily death toll in New York continues to grow at record numbers as the state remains the most impacted in the US from coronavirus.

Coronavirus cases in New York State now stand at 113,704, out of the country's total number of 312,146. New Jersey, the second most impacted state in the US, has about 30,000 COVID-19 cases.

New York City alone has 63,306 coronavirus patients, up from 57,169 the previous 24 hours, and 2,624 deaths.

Cuomo said the apex in the state, the point where the number of infections on a daily basis hits the high point, is still about 4-8 days away.

"We have been talking about hitting that apex, the high point of the curve. I call it the battle of the mountaintop. That's going to be the number one point of engagement of the enemy," he said.

"But our reading of the projections is we're somewhere in the seven-day range, four, five, six seven, eight day range. Nobody can give you a specific number, which makes it very frustrating to plan when they can't give you a specific number or a specific date, but we're in that range," Cuomo said.

"We are not yet at the apex. Part of me would like to be at the apex and just let's do it. But there's part of me that says it's good that we're not at the apex because we're not yet ready for the apex either, still working on the capacity of the (healthcare) system," the governor said.

Cuomo has expressed anger over the short supply of essential medical equipment for healthcare professionals to help them deal with the surge in coronavirus cases across the state and the country.

He said personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, gowns and face shields are in short supply in New York as they are across the country and there is need for companies to make these materials.

"It is unbelievable to me that in the New York State, in the United States of America, we can't make these materials and that we are all shopping China to try to get these materials and we're all competing against each other," he had said earlier.

Cuomo said on Saturday that the state has 85,000 volunteers, including 22,000 from outside the state, and he will also be signing an executive order to allow medical students who were slated to graduate to begin practising, supplementing the state's healthcare professional capacity.

On ventilators, he said the state had ordered 17,000 but there was not enough supply in the federal stockpile to meet this growing demand across the state.    

"China is remarkably the repository for all of these orders - ventilators, PPE, it all goes back to China, which long term we have to figure out why we wound up in this situation where we don't have the manufacturing capacity in this country," he said, adding, "New York has been shopping in China."

The Chinese government helped facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators that will arrive at the JFK Airport in the city, he said, as he thanked the Chinese government, Alibaba head Jack Ma, the Jack Ma Foundation, Alibaba co-founder co-founder Joe Tsai and China's Consul General Huang Ping.
In addition, the state of Oregon would deliver 140 ventilators to New York.    

Cuomo has signed an executive order allowing the state to redistribute ventilators and personal protective equipment from hospitals, private sector companies and institutions that don't currently need them and redeploy the equipment to other hospitals with the highest need.
Those institutions will either get their ventilator back or they will be reimbursed and paid for their ventilator so they can buy a new ventilator.
The 2,500-bed facility at the Javits Convention Centre, which was supposed to be used for non-COVID patients, will now be used as COVID-positive facility.

"The federal government will staff that and the federal government with equip that. That is a big deal because that 2,500-bed facility will relieve a lot of pressure on the downstate system as a significant number of beds and that facility has to make that transition quickly and that's what we're focused on," Cuomo said.

Cuomo emphasised that he wants the pandemic to end as soon as possible as it is taking an unprecedented strain on life.

"I want this to be all over. It's only gone on for 30 days since our first case. It feels like an entire lifetime. I think we all feel the same. This stresses this country, this state, in a way that nothing else has frankly, in my lifetime. It stresses us on every level.

The economy is stressed, the social fabric is stressed, the social systems are stressed, transportation is stressed," he said.

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.

Istanbul, Jul 11: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that the Hagia Sophia, one of the architectural wonders of the world, would be reopened for Muslim worship, sparking fury in the Christian community and neighbouring Greece.

His declaration came after a top Turkish court revoked the sixth-century Byzantine monument's status as a museum, clearing the way for it to be turned back into a mosque.

The UNESCO World Heritage site in historic Istanbul, a magnet for tourists worldwide, was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

The Council of State, Turkey's highest administrative court, unanimously cancelled a 1934 cabinet decision to turn it into a museum and said Hagia Sophia was registered as a mosque in its property deeds.

The landmark ruling could inflame tensions not just with the West and Turkey's historic foe Greece but also Russia, with which Erdogan has forged an increasingly close partnership in recent years.

'Millions of Christians not heard'

Greece swiftly branded the move by Muslim-majority Turkey an "open provocation to the civilised world".

"The nationalism displayed by Erdogan... takes his country back six centuries," Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said in a statement.

The Russian Orthodox Church was equally scathing.

"The concern of millions of Christians were not heard," Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida told Interfax news agency.

The decision "shows that all pleas regarding the need to handle the situation extremely delicately were ignored," he said.

UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said she "deeply regrets" the decision made without prior dialogue with the UN's cultural agency.

The move was also condemned by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which said it was an "unequivocal politicisation" of the monument.

Hagia Sophia, which stands opposite the impressive Sultanahmet Mosque -- often called the Blue Mosque, has been a museum since 1935 and open to believers of all faiths.

Transforming it from a mosque was a key reform under the new republic born out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

Sharing a presidential decree which named Hagia Sophia as a "mosque", Erdogan announced its administration would be handed over to Turkey's religious affairs directorate known as Diyanet.

"May we be blessed," he commented. The decree was published on the official gazette.

Erdogan has in recent years placed great emphasis on the battles which resulted in the defeat of Byzantium by the Ottomans, with lavish celebrations held every year to mark the conquest.

Muslim clerics have occasionally recited prayers in the museum on key anniversaries or religious holidays.

"The decision is intended to score points with Erdogan's pious and nationalist constituents," said Anthony Skinner of the risk assessment firm Verisk Maplecroft.

"Hagia Sophia is arguably the most conspicuous symbol of Turkey's Ottoman past -- one which Erdogan is leveraging to strengthen his base while snubbing domestic and foreign rivals," he told AFP.

'Chains broken'

A few hundred Turks carrying Turkish flags gathered outside Hagia Sophia shouting "Chains broken, Hagia Sophia reopened".

Police heightened security measures around the building, according to AFP journalists.

"It's been a dream since we were kids," said Erdal Gencler, an Istanbul resident.

"(Hagia Sophia) finds its true purpose again. We are very excited, proud, and hopeful that there will be beautiful services here," he added.

Fatma, a woman with tearful eyes, said: "Of course I am crying. (Hagia Sophia) belongs to us."

Ahead of the court decision, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul shared a picture of Hagia Sophia on his official Twitter account, with a message: "Have a good Friday."

Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, tweeted that Hagia Sophia would be reopened to Muslim worship "sooner or later", referring to a quote from Turkish poet Necip Fazil Kisakurek.

The Council of State had on July 2 debated the case brought by a Turkish group -- the Association for the Protection of Historic Monuments and the Environment, which demanded Hagia Sophia be reopened for Muslim prayers.

Since 2005, there have been several attempts to change the building's status. In 2018, the Constitutional Court rejected one application.

Despite occasional protests outside the site by Islamic groups, Turkish authorities had until now kept the building as a museum.