14 2GM Friday August 7 2020 | the times
News
The United States has the world’s worst
Covid-19 outbreak, its leading virus ex-
pert said, as President Trump was cen-
sored by Facebook for saying that child-
ren were “almost immune” to the virus.
Anthony Fauci, who has tangled with
Mr Trump over America’s virus respon-
se, told CNN when asked whether the
US outbreak was worse than any other:
“Yeah, it is quantitatively if you look at it,
it is. I mean the numbers don’t lie.”
The US has more confirmed cases
and deaths than any other country, al-
Indigenous elder dies after
19-hour journey to hospital
Stephen GibbsA figurehead of Brazil’s indigenous pop-
ulation whose illness and 19-hour car
journey to hospital came to represent
his people’s plight under the pandemic
has died of Covid-19.
Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, who was 71,
had been in intensive care for two
weeks after being taken ill in his village
in the Xingu indigenous reserve.
“He was a great advocate in the strug-
gle to preserve and perpetuate his
people’s culture for future generations
and a tireless activist against the effects
of deforestation,” his family said in a
statement.
Known for sporting a traditional
feather headdress and body paint dur-
ing meetings with international digni-
taries, he was one of the last speakers of
the Yawalapiti language. He had led his
tribe since 1980, and had been an out-
spoken advocate for the preservation of
indigenous reserves and the rainforest.
He was taken to a hospital in Goianiatwo weeks ago after a 19-hour overland
journey, during which he had to breath
with the aid of oxygen tanks. His death
was attributed to lung complications
caused by the disease.
Before he became ill he had been
raising funds to help indigenous com-
munities cope with the pandemic. Ac-
cording to Brazil’s main indigenous or-
ganisation, 631 indigenous people have
died from Covid-19, though President
Bolsonaro’s government claims that
the figure is 294.
Brazil, the second worst-hit country
behind the United States, reported
51,603 new cases and 1,154 deaths from
Covid-19 yesterday, bringing the totals
to 2.8 million cases and 95,819 deaths.Chief Aritana
Yawalapiti was an
outspoken leader
among Brazil’s
native peoplesNews Coronavirus
We have the world’s worst virus
north korea
Thousands of people have been put
into quarantine and the
government is shipping food and
other aid to Kaesong after the city,
near the border with South Korea,
went into lockdown. Pyongyang
said that it had imposed its
“maximum emergency system” late
last month after a person showed
symptoms of Covid-19. Dr Edwin
Salvador, the country’s World
Health Organisation representative,
said that 64 first contacts and 3,
secondary contacts were under a
40-day quarantine. The country
maintains that it is virus-free.iraq
The holy city of Kerbala is
quarantining dozens of Covid-
patients in apartment buildings
owned by Imam Hussein shrine,
one of Iraq’s most powerful
religious authorities. The shrine
has built ten medical centres and
aims to build ten more. Iraq is
relying on the religious authorities
to support its battered healthcare
system. “When we see that the
services available are not sufficient,
we have to step in,” said Afdhal
al-Shami, an official at Imam
Hussein. Infections are rising by
about 3,000 a day and approaching
140,000. At least 5,000 have died.united states
More than 500 inmates of a prison
have tested positive, officials said.
The Arizona Department of
Corrections said that 517 inmates,
nearly half the total number, at the
Tucson Whetstone prison were
“being housed as a cohort in
separate areas and are receivingPyongyang
admits that
one person
has Covid
Henry Zeffman Washington though Mr Trump attributes this to
high levels of testing. The fatality rate,
at 471 per million population, is lower
than Italy, Spain and the UK but
slightly higher than France and Brazil.
“Every country has suffered,” Dr
Fauci said. “We, the United States, have
suffered... as much or worse than any-
one. When you look at the number of
infections and the number of deaths, it
really is quite concerning.”
He said that the US could combat the
virus more effectively without the
stringent lockdowns of the initial stage
of the pandemic. “We can do much bet-
ter without locking down, and I think
that strange binary approach — either
you lock down or you let it all fly —
there’s some place in the middle when
we can open the economy and still
avoid these kinds of surges.”
Dr Fauci also spoke about receiving
death threats, saying that he had had to
hire security to protect his family. “I
wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest
dreams that people who object to
things that are pure public health
principles are so set against it... that
they actually threaten you,” he said.
Mr Trump was challenged by Face-book and Twitter for his claims about
the coronavirus. He told Fox News on
Wednesday that children were “almost
immune”, and a clip was posted to his
Facebook page. Facebook removed the
post shortly afterwards. “This video
includes false claims that a group of
people is immune from Covid-19, which
is a violation of our policies around
harmful Covid misinformation,” it said.
It was the first time Facebook had
taken such a step against the president.
It had labelled some posts misleading
but stopped short of more direct penal-
ties imposed by other social networks.
The same clip was posted on Twitter
by the Trump campaign account.
Twitter added a notice saying that the
message violated its rules, and told the
campaign to delete it before it could
tweet again.
Courtney Parella, from the cam-
paign, said that the measures were a
“display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias
against this president”. She said Mr
Trump was “stating a fact that children
are less susceptible to the coronavirus”.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the main US public health
body, has said that although adults
make up most of the known cases some
children have contracted the virus and
they can pass it on to others.
In June Facebook removed adverts
by the campaign that featured a Nazi
symbol for political prisoners, but it has
never censored Mr Trump’s own posts.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-
founder and chief executive, has been
criticised for being too permissive of the
president, inspiring an advertising
boycott by some leading companies.
In May Twitter accused Mr Trump of
“glorifying violence” and concealed a
tweet in which he told protesters that
“when the looting starts, the shooting
starts”. Mr Trump signed an executive
order that sought to limit legal protec-
tions for social media companies over
what is posted on their platforms.
The president had a near-miss with
the virus yesterday when the governor
of Ohio tested positive hours before the
two were due to meet at an airport in
Cleveland. Mike DeWine, 73, was test-
ed as part of a protocol for those about
to come into contact with the president.
He did not have symptoms and
would isolate at home for 14 days, his
office said. Kevin Sitt, 47, an Oklahoma
Republican, was the first governor
known to have caught coronavirus.