12 2GM Monday June 29 2020 | the times
News
The number of worldwide confirmed
coronavirus infections passed ten
million yesterday and deaths from the
virus exceeded half a million.
Less than six months after the health
authorities in Wuhan, China, reported
patients falling ill because of a mysteri-
ous new virus, Covid-19 has spread to
more than 170 countries, the most
disruptive global pandemic in modern
history and one of the deadliest.
Although the rate of new infections
has receded in east Asia and Europe,
the first regions to be affected, cases are
multiplying rapidly in south Asia,
Africa and particularly in Latin Amer-
ica where Brazil, the second most af-
fected country, reported 38,693 new
cases on Saturday. Peru, Chile and
Mexico have all climbed into the top 11
countries worldwide by cases.
The global centre for overall infec-
tions and fatalities remains the United
States, which has recorded more than
2.53 million cases and 125,000 deaths,
according to data compiled by the
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The Trump administration’s health
and human services secretary, Alex
Azar, said that time was fast running
out to get to grips with the pandemic.
“Things are very different from two
months ago,” he told the CNN pro-
gramme State of the Union. “This is a
very, very serious situation and the
window is closing for us to take action
and get this under control.”
Case numbers rose last week in 36
out of 50 states. Only two — Connecti-
cut and tiny Rhode Island — reported a
reduction in infections. On Friday the
country had a daily record of 40,
cases reported. The virus is making
deep incursions into rural areas too.
In three of the biggest states by popu-
lation — Florida, Texas and California
— governors have undone recent steps
taken towards reopening their eco-
nomies in the face of new outbreaks.
In California the governor, Gavin
Newsom, rolled back reopenings of
bars in seven counties, including Los
Angeles. He ordered them to close
immediately and urged eight other
counties to issue local health orders
mandating the same.
Politics has been complicating the
response, particularly the looming
presidential election. President Trumphas refused to wear a mask in public —
unlike Joe Biden, the presumptive
Democratic party nominee — and has
pressed governors to accelerate their
timetables for relaxing lockdown
restrictions in the hope of resuscitating
the country’s economy in time for the
final stretch of the campaign.
Last week Mr Trump travelled to
Phoenix, Arizona, and Tulsa, Oklaho-
ma, for indoor rallies that were largely
mask-free and not socially distanced.
There are growing indications,
however, that his chaotic approach toshooting black employees at close
range in a row over pay. That the man-
ager felt free to fire his gun at his work-
ers’ backs in front of a watching crowd
was, many said, a reflection of the sense
of superiority and impunity widely felt
by incomers from China.
The coronavirus pandemic has sore-ly tested a key relationship that was
already under strain from the weight of
Africa’s debt to China.
A headline in the Daily Nation, a Ken-
yan newspaper, summed up the feel-
ings of many when it accused China of
“betrayal” over the harsh treatment of
African traders and students infectedThe murder of three Chinese bosses at
a warehouse in Zambia has been linked
with coronavirus, the crippling effects
of its lockdown and heightened resent-
ment over exploitation of workers by
companies from China.
In the days before the warehouse
owner’s wife and two male supervisors
were beaten to death and their bodies
dismembered and set alight, the mayor
of Lusaka reminded those complaining
about worsening hardships that “black
Zambians did not originate coronavi-
rus. It originated in China”. Acknowl-
edging long-held grudges over pay and
conditions imposed by Asian business-
men, Miles Sampa, 49, claimed Chinese
bosses in the capital were guilty of
“slavery reloaded”.
While police have not linked the
murders last month of 52-year-old Cao
Guifang, and her employees, Bao Jun-
bin, 58, and Fan Minjie, 33, to anti-
Chinese sentiment, the killings are
among a series of violent episodes that
reflect rising tensions between locals in
many African states and the immi-
grants from its biggest trading partner.
There are 10,000 Chinese companies
operating in Africa, according to data
from the consulting firm McKinsey, a
cohort which regularly draws charges
of exploitation and abuse.
Video taken at a gold mine in Zim-
babwe last week showed a Chinese boss
US warned to get a grip
as global cases pass 10m
Ben Hoyle Los Angeles the virus is costing him support among
older conservative voters.
No Democrat has won the majority
of older people for 20 years and Mr
Trump, 74, claimed the over 65s by a
seven-point margin in 2016. However,
new polling by The New York Times and
Siena College showed that he is tied
with Mr Biden, 77, for that demographic
and that Mr Biden leads by a 6 per cent
margin with those voters in the six most
important battleground states.
Nursing home deaths account for the
majority of Covid-19 fatalities in at least
24 states and for 43 per cent of US
deaths overall.
Mr Trump has linked rising case
numbers to improved testing.
In Florida, which reported a state
record 9,585 new coronavirus cases on
Saturday, comparable to New York
during the peak there in April, the
Republican governor, Ron DeSantis,
also blamed widespread testing for
inflating case numbers.
However, Tom Frieden, a former
director of the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), a gov-
ernment agency, said that the national
pattern indicated an actual growth in
infections.
The virus “still has the upper hand,”
he told Fox News. “As a doctor, a scien-
tist, an epidemiologist, I can tell you
with 100 per cent certainty that in most
states where you’re seeing an increase,
it is a real increase.
“It is not more tests, it is more spread
of the virus,” he said, and hasty reopen-
ings, notably in Florida, Texas and
Arizona, meant the caseload would
“continue to get worse for weeks”. The
published numbers could be “a tip of the
iceberg”. The CDC said last week that
the number of people infected was like-
ly to be ten times greater than the re-
ported figure, based on antibody tests.
Global cases 10,225,
Global deaths 503,World update
*Reported new casesCountries reporting
most deathsSource: Worldometer, June 28, 11pmUS 2,630,541 128,395 388
Brazil 1,344,143 57,622 271
UK 311,151 43,550 642
Italy 240,310 34,738 575
France 162,936 29,778 456
Spain 295,850 28,343 606
Mexico 212,802 26,381 205
India 549,197 16,487 12
Iran 222,669 10,508 125
Belgium 61,295 9,732 840
Peru 279,419 9,317 283
Russia 634,437 9,073 62
Germany 194,864 9,029 108
Canada 103,210 8,522 226
Netherlands 50,147 6,105 356
Chile 271,982 5,509 288
Sweden 65,137 5,280 523
Turkey 197,239 5,097 60
China 83,500 4,634 3
Ecuador 54,574 4,424 251
Pakistan 202,955 4,118 19
Colombia 91,769 3,106 61
Egypt 65,188 2,789 27
Indonesia 54,010 2,754 10
South Africa 138,134 2,456 41
Switzerland 31,617 1,962 227
Iraq 45,402 1,756 44
Bangladesh 137,787 1,738 11Cases DeathsDeaths/
1m popMost new cases171 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910
11
12
13
14
15
21
93US
Brazil
India
Russia
South Africa
Mexico
Chile
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Bangladesh
Peru
Iran
Iraq
Turkey
Egypt
UK
China34,
28,
19,
6,
6,
4,
4,
4,
3,
3,
3,
2,
2,
1,
1,
901News Coronavirus
300 clubbers
switzerland
Zurich’s health authority said it
had ordered a 10-day quarantine
for almost 300 guests and staff of a
nightclub after a reveller tested
positive for the coronavirus and
had been proven to have infected
others. Last week the daily number
of new infections in Switzerland
increased from 18 on Monday to
69 on Saturday. The country has
recorded 31,555 coronavirus
infections with 1,682 deaths so far.china
China imposed a strict lockdown
on nearly half a million people in
Hebei province, which surrounds
Beijing, to contain a fresh
coronavirus cluster on Sunday, as
the authorities said the outbreak
was still “severe and complicated”.
Health officials said yesterday
that Anxin county — about 90
miles from Beijing — would be
“fully enclosed and controlled”, the
same strict measures imposed on
the city of Wuhan earlier this year.
Another 14 cases of the virus had
been reported in the previous 24
hours in Beijing, taking the total to
311 since mid-June.Chinese bear brunt of African anger over Covid
with Covid-19 in the southern Chinese
city of Guangzhou, where they were
evicted from homes and hotels and re-
fused service in shops. Videos of the
abuse triggered anger on social media.
“Mask diplomacy” was swiftly de-
ployed to head off any rupture in
China’s relations with Africa, with
planeloads of PPE and testing kits
being donated to every affected coun-
try. President Xi assured the World
Health Organisation that any Covid-
vaccine developed in China would be
made available to Africa.
In the past two decades, China has
lent more than $150 billion to Africa,
and Beijing holds about a fifth of all
African debt — the continent’s biggest
bilateral creditor. The main benefit, as
Mr Xi is often quick to highlight, is that
Beijing’s investment in Africa “comes
with no political strings attached”.
While Africans are becoming in-
creasingly hostile to China over the
daily effects of a debt burden that eats
up spending for education and health,
as well as the more immediate effects of
the coronavirus lockdown, its leaders
remain in thrall to their most powerful
financier, Eric Olander, managing edi-
tor of the China Africa Project website
and podcast, said.
“At the civil society level there is defi-
nitely a greater sense of scepticism
about the Chinese presence in Africa
but politically, among governing elites,
that’s not the case at all,” he said.Jane Flanagan
An annual dog meat festival in the
Chinese city of Yulin has been held
this year, despite calls from animal
rights activists and health experts to
ban consumption of dog meat after
the coronavirus pandemic.
At least two cities, Shenzhen and
Zhuhai, have outlawed eating dog
meat, and the national agricultural
ministry has removed dogs from the
livestock list and categorised them
as “companions”, all seen by animal
rights groups as a move towards a
ban on dog meat consumption and
the demise of the Yulin festival. The
city has long welcomed the summer
with a feast of dog and lychees.
Still, many defend the right to eat
dog meat. “It’s not appropriate to
pass a law to ban dog meat eating,”Dog meat festival still held
Didi Tang Beijing Sima Nan, a well-known Chinese
commentator, said. “Otherwise you
cannot stop others from passing
laws to forbid the consumption of
other animal meats, such as pork
and beef.”
Some even argued that animal
protection is an anti-China plot by
foreign forces to smear it.
Coronavirus and the public’s
renewed demand for food safety
may be spoiling its appetite for dog
meat. The number of visitors to
Yulin is down this year, although
that might be due to the epidemic.
On social media, calls to boycott
the festival far outweigh the voices
defending it. For the first time, local
vendors and restaurants dropped
“dog meat” from the festival’s name
but called it the “summer solstice
holiday” this year.