14 2GM Wednesday April 8 2020 | the times
News
Two Italian regions are testing doctors
and nurses for coronavirus antibodies
in an effort to build up an army of medi-
cal staff with immunity to work in the
most infected isolation wards.
The plan for “immunity licences” in
the regions of Veneto and Emilia-
Romagna in the north was announced
as the government plans a national
roll-out of antibody testing to get people
back to work.
“We got up the courage to go first
because this is so important,” said Mar-
io Plebani, of the University of Padua,
who is managing testing in Veneto.
While saliva can be tested to see if a
subject has the virus, blood testing can
discover if someone has had it and has
developed antibodies to stop it return-
ing. Rome sees immunity testing as key
to getting workers back to essential in-
dustries, possibly on Tuesday.
Yesterday Italy reported 604 deaths
over the previous 24 hours, taking its
total to 17,127, the highest in the world.
The number of new cases, however, was
3,039, a daily rise of only 2.3 per cent,
the lowest increase since March 13 and
a sign that the rate of contagion is slow-
ing. The number of patients in intensive
care fell for the fourth day in a row.
Italy’s outbreak is about two weeks
ahead of the UK, where government
officials are wary of the reliability of an-
tibody testing kits. Professor Plebani
said: “It is reliable and we have already
tested 3,000 health service staff and
will move on to care home staff next.”
Rather than using portable kits that
are said to lack accuracy, Veneto is
taking blood samples to a laboratory for
testing. “We are still experimenting,” he
said. “Since we know that many doctors
have been infected, if this test shows
they have no antibodies we will know
it’s not accurate.”
The blood test identifies two types of
antibody, one which reveals contact
with the virus and a second showing if
Italy puts faith
in antibody test
to get country
back to work
the body has built a defence against it.
“Our tests show the second appears 12
days after the first symptoms and
remains strong for 35 days. After that
we don’t know,” Professor Plebani said.
The testing was ordered by Luca Zaia,
the governor of Veneto who has had a
track record of canny decisions since
overseeing the testing of all 3,300 in-
habitants of the town of Vo’ in February.
“In Vo’ we discovered half the sufferers
were asymptomatic, and now antibody
testing will allow us to find the asymp-
tomatics, who are the invisible spread-
ers, in the wider population,” he said.
In Emilia-Romagna, the authorities
started testing doctors and nurses and
care home staff for antibodies on
Monday and plan to check up to
100,000 in 15 days. “We tested it in one
town and it works,” a spokesman said.
The government is “within hours” of
selecting the kit it wants to use for
nationwide testing, but is being more
“prudent” than the regional governors
who have jumped first, said Walter Ric-
ciardi, a member of the World Health
Organisation’s executive board who is
advising Italy. “We are studying this
carefully so we don’t pick a set-up
which gives false results,” he said. “We
now think one does acquire immunity
after getting the virus, but not perma-
nently. We are probably talking about
months rather than years.”
Doctors in Lombardy, the worst-hit
region, called for the acceleration of an-
tibody testing in a letter to the regional
government. They said that the plight
of Lombardy, where there have been
9,484 deaths, was the result of limited
testing in the initial phase of the
outbreak, a failure to seal off two infect-
ed towns, the “confused” handling of
contagion in care homes, a lack of
protective gear for medical staff and the
fact that patients were massed in
hospitals. They compared Lombardy’s
mortality rate of 18 per cent with 5.8 per
cent in Veneto where more people were
treated at home.Tom Kington Rome
News Coronavirus
Paris bans ‘panting, sweating’
daytime joggers from streets
Adam Sage Paris
by President Macron, people can exer-
cise outdoors for an hour a day, so long
as they remain within 1km of their
home.
The measure comes after it was
claimed that many Parisians have
taken up jogging to get out of their
cramped flats. “In some places, there
are continuous lines of people running,
which is good for health but a little bit
less for the lockdown and which creates
risks,” Ms Hidalgo said.
Robert Sebbag, of the department of
infectious diseases at the Pitié-Salpêtri-
ère hospital in Paris, called for a nation-
wide ban. “When you’re jogging you’re
hyperventilating. You exhale droplets
and you spit and you have them on your
hands. When you go home, you touch
door handles, lift buttons, the stair rail.
The risk is major.”
Jogging has been banned in Spain.
Joggers will be banned from Paris dur-
ing the daytime after doctors com-
plained that their panting risked
spreading Covid-19.
Anne Hidalgo, the city’s mayor, said a
ban on all outdoor sporting activities
between 10am and 7pm would come in-
to force today. The aim is to keep jog-
gers off the streets at times when they
could cross the paths of shoppers. The
fine for jogging outside the authorised
hours will be €135.
The government has given local
authorities leeway to tighten national
restrictions amid claims that too many
people are leaving their homes. Offi-
cials in Biarritz in southwest France an-
nounced a ban on sitting on benches for
more than two minutes.
Under the nationwide rules drawn up
Cases spreading across the globe
Italy 135,586 17,127 2,243 283
Spain 141,942 14,045 3,036 300
US 394,182 12,716 1,191 38
France 109,069 10,328 1,671 158
UK 55,242 6,159 814 91
Iran 62,589 3,872 745 46
China 81,740 3,331 57 2
Netherlands 19,580 2,101 1,143 123
Belgium 22,194 2,035 1,915 176Germany 107,591 2,012 1,284 24
Switzerland 22,253 821 2,571 95
Turkey 34,109 725 404 9
Brazil 13,831 681 65 3
Sweden 7,693 591 762 59
Canada 17,872 377 474 10
Portugal 12,442 345 1,220 34
Austria 12,639 243 1,403 27
Indonesia 2,738 221 10 0.
Ireland 5,709 210 1,156 43
Denmark 5,071 203 875 35Romania 4,417 197 230 10
Algeria 1,468 193 33 4
S. Korea 10,331 192 202 4
Ecuador 3,747 191 212 11
Philippines 3,764 177 34 2
India 5,311 150 4 0.
Poland 4,848 129 128 3
Mexico 2,439 125 19 1
Peru 2,954 107 90 3
Dom Rep 1,956 98 180 9
Egypt 1,450 94 14 0.Cases Deaths
Cases/
1m popDeaths/
1m popCountries reporting most deaths
Most new cases
US
BRAZIL
ICELAND
DOMINICAN
REPUBLICTURKEY
IRAQ
SAN MARINO
ALGERIA
UK
BELGIUMEGYPT
SAUDI
ARABIASERBIA
LITHUANIA
FRANCE
SWITZERLAND
PORTUGAL
MOROCCO
IRELAND
GREECE
ITALY
NETHERLANDS
DENMARK
GERMANY
COLOMBIA
MEXICO
PERU
CHILE
ARGENTINA
SOUTH
AFRICAECUADOR
CANADA
3,
3,
3,
3,
1,
2,
1,
32
4,
11,
1 US
2 France
3 Germany
4 Spain
5 Turkey
6 UK
7 Italy
8 Iran
9 Brazil
10 Belgium
68 China
26,
SPAIN
O
ne of the world’s
strictest lockdowns to
fight coronavirus had
exposed South Africa’s
inequalities even before
the country recorded its first deaths
(Jane Flanagan writes).
The order for 57 million people to
stay at home has confined millions
to cramped townships. Practising
social distancing or safe hygiene is
near impossible. Barely half the
population have running water or a
lavatory in their homes.
“How are we supposed to stay in
our shacks and not leave for days?”
Thandasizwe Jonas asked from the
Ramaphosa township near
Johannesburg. He is all too aware
that this unseen threat, which has
ended livelihoods overnight, arrived
on an international flight. While
the wealthy minority can hoard
food, the majority are panicking. “I
have never seen the inside of a
plane, but I must suffer because
people are travelling,” he said.
The virus in Africa has spread
fastest in countries such as South
Africa, which have more travel
connections with the world. As the
virus has taken hold in some of the
poorest areas of almost all 54
African countries, it has started to
expose racial resentment. Reports
of pale-skinned people being spat
at, stoned and chased have led
many expats and foreign workers to
flee, or at least send their familieshome. Ulrike Müller, a
French-German citizen, has lived
and worked in Africa for many
years but fear pressed her to leave
Burkina Faso. “Many believe
[whites] brought the virus. It’s not a
baseless accusation,” Ms Müller, a
pregnant mother of two, told a
German TV station.
The US embassy in Ethiopia has
reported a rise in assaults on
foreigners. In footage shot in
Johannesburg, locals could be
heard shouting “corona, corona” as
they battered the side of a tour bus
full of Germans. A newspaper in
Senegal questioned whether France
was out to “coronise” its former
colony after its first patients, two
French people, tested positive.
Video of a suburb of Nairobi, the
Kenyan capital, showed an Asian
couple being mobbed and an MP
was quoted on Facebook defendinghis people’s right to chase away
unquarantined outsiders.
Africa has passed 10,000 cases with
500 dead.
Sixty-six people, most of them
staff at one South African hospital,
have tested positive, the health
minister said yesterday as the
national total of cases jumped to
1,749. Authorities are now rushing
to temporarily shut St Augustine
hospital in Durban. Of those
infected, 48 are hospital staff, Zweli
Mkhize said. South Africa has
reported 13 deaths so far, including
four at the same hospital.
Data from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation predicts millions
of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa,
where there is one doctor for every
5,000 people, compared with one in
300 in Europe.
Many African states have more
ministers in their cabinets than theyRacial anger
in Africa at
virus flown
in by whites