Putin Extends No-Work Order For Russia Until May Over COVID-19 Pandemic - NPR

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Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a cabinet meeting about the coronavirus via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. Putin said more than 20,000 Russians are waiting to come back home amid the pandemic. Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP hide caption

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Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin is extending a national no-work order through the end of April, hoping to clamp down on the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia reported a spike of 771 new coronavirus patients on Thursday, sharpening a dreaded upward curve in cases.

Russia has now confirmed more than 3,500 coronavirus cases, and 30 people have died from COVID-19. Moscow and St. Petersburg have been hot spots for the respiratory disease, officials say.

"We have not reversed the trend" of new cases in Moscow and other areas, Putin said as he announced the extension, according to a translation by Russian-owned media outlet Ruptly.

Millions of Russians in Moscow and elsewhere are already under stay-at-home orders, and the country is in a weeklong "official non-work period," which Putin ordered last week to slow the spread of the virus.

During the work stoppage, Putin has stipulated that employees must still be paid their regular wages, despite all but the most essential businesses – including pharmacies, groceries and banks – being told to shut down.

The pandemic has also affected the president: Putin is working remotely from Novo-Ogaryovo, a presidential estate west of Moscow, after a doctor he met with last week tested positive for the coronavirus. The doctor leads Russia's main COVID-19 hospital, as The Moscow Times reported.

Putin announced his plan in a speech from Novo-Ogaryovo Thursday afternoon, local time.

The move comes one day after Putin and his cabinet discussed how to cope with thousands of Russian citizens who have been returning home from living abroad.

"Since March 11, 2020, 825,031 people have entered Russia. This is a lot," Putin said on Wednesday. He added that roughly 20,000 more Russians are still trying to come back from overseas.

Putin recently ordered broad policy shifts to soften the pandemic's economic effects, including a suggestion to raise the cap on most unemployment benefits by around 50%, to the level of the national minimum wage of 12,130 rubles per month (around $154).

The president has also proposed a six-month moratorium on bankruptcy claims and declared "consumer loan and mortgage holidays."

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2020-04-02 14:50:39Z
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'US wants to shift the blame': China denies hiding coronavirus cases - New York Post

The Chinese Communist Party disputed the American intelligence community’s conclusion that Beijing hid the extent of the coronavirus outbreak, saying its response was “open and transparent” and accusing the US of fumbling its handling of the pandemic, according to a report.

“Some US officials just want to shift the blame,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Thursday in Beijing, Bloomberg News reported.

“Actually we don’t want to fall into an argument with them, but faced with such repeated moral slander by them, I feel compelled to take some time and clarify the truth again.”

She questioned why the US took so long to respond after the Trump administration banned arrivals from China on Feb. 2.

“Can anyone tell us what the U.S. has done in the following two months?” Hua said.

China reported its first case of coronavirus in December in the city of Wuhan.

Hua was responding to a report in Bloomberg that US intelligence agencies, in a classified report for the White House, said Beijing intentionally underreported the number of total cases and deaths from the coronavirus.

Since the beginning of the outbreak, China publicly reported about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, compared to the more than 216,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths in the US.

President Trump at Wednesday’s White House task force briefing said he had received the intelligence report and expressed doubts about the numbers China reported.

“Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side, and I’m being nice when I say that,” he said.

Vice President Mike Pence, who’s heading up the task force, said the US would have been better prepared to respond if China had been “more forthcoming.”

“What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China,” he said on CNN Wednesday.

China’s National Health Commission acknowledged on Wednesday that it had not been including patients without symptoms in its overall coronavirus infection count and would begin to do so.

Beijing updated its data Wednesday to include 1,367 asymptomatic cases; of those, 130 were reported in the last day, Fortune reported.

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2020-04-02 12:59:02Z
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What about us? Russia's coronavirus supplies to United States spark criticism at home - Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian medical equipment delivery to the United States to help fight the coronavirus drew anger from critics of the Kremlin on Thursday who pointed out that Russia was itself experiencing severe shortages of such items.

FILE PHOTO: A Russian military transport plane carrying medical equipment, masks and supplies lands at JFK International Airport during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, New York, U.S., April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Stefan Jeremiah/File Photo

A Russian military plane carrying protective gear and ventilators landed in New York City on Wednesday. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow had paid half the cost with the other half picked up by Washington.

Critics of President Vladimir Putin said the delivery was a publicity stunt that squandered precious medical resources which Russia’s regions are lacking.

“Russia has actually sold the United States masks and medical equipment when doctors and nurses across the country are left without masks and are infecting one another,” prominent opposition politician Alexei Navalny wrote on Twitter.

“It’s monstrous. Putin is crazy.”

The Kremlin has cast the move as a goodwill gesture at a time when it says all nations need to unite to take on coronavirus and said it hopes Russia might be able to access U.S. medical equipment in future if necessary.

“There is always criticism like this”, Interfax news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

Russia has so far recorded 3,548 coronavirus infections in 76 of its more than 80 regions. Thirty people have died across the country, authorities say.

The Health Ministry said on Wednesday it was pleased with Russian regions’ readiness to tackle the virus. But some say they are experiencing shortages of the most basic equipment.

Doctors at a hospital in the Moscow region told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper they had been asked to sew their own masks, while state television in Bashkortorstan, a region about 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) east of Moscow, last month showed viewers how to make their own masks because pharmacies had run out.

The Alliance of Doctors, a trade union for medical workers which is often critical of the authorities, said it had been collecting money across Russia to buy protective gear for doctors and was distraught to see the country now shipping the same equipment to the United States.

“It’s just making a mockery of everything,” the trade union wrote on Twitter.

Another Russian Twitter user pointed out that while ventilators had landed in New York, similar shipments were not reaching needy Russian cities such as Saratov and Voronezh.

Russia’s Health Ministry said on Thursday that the country had enough ventilators to meet its current needs and that hospitals would receive another 8,000 by the end of May.

Russia’s delivery has angered some people in the United States too. Former U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk was among those criticising President Donald Trump for serving up what he called “a propaganda bonanza” to Putin.

Moscow has also flown several flights carrying medical supplies to Italy, which has recorded more than 13,000 dead. Several European Union and NATO officials characterised the aid as a geopolitical move to extend Russian influence in Europe.

Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; editing by Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-04-02 13:12:06Z
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Japanese Prime Minister's coronavirus mask plan criticized as insufficient as emergency looms - CNN

The number of confirmed cases of the virus has spiked in recent weeks, after it appeared that Japan's initial response had got the virus relatively under control. As of Wednesday, there were more than 2,300 cases across Japan, and 57 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

That spike has seen a raft of new restrictions put in place in Tokyo and other major cities, and a run on protective gear, including face masks. On Wednesday, Abe said the provision of cloth masks to the worst hit areas "will be helpful in responding to the rapidly increasing demand."

But Abe's proposal to send two masks to each household attracted outrage and mockery online Wednesday, with the hashtag "Abe's mask" and "screw your two masks" trending on Twitter.

Many felt the move was lackluster and would not go into effect fast enough to have a chance at curbing the spread of the virus, with masks not due to be distributed until the end of the month. Others dubbed the policy "Abenomask policy" as satirical memes showing well-known cartoon characters sharing one mask between four family members popped up online.

The anger comes as Abe resisted calls Wednesday to declare a state of emergency, saying that use of such powers was not imminent.

A declaration of a state of emergency would allow prefectural governors to send out a stronger message when it comes to urging the public to stay at home, but the measures will not be legally binding.

Last week, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike urged residents in the city of roughly 13.5 million to telework where possible and avoid bars, restaurants and public gatherings up until April 12. Tokyo has now extended the closure of schools and public facilities like zoos and museums up until May 6.

Koike on Tuesday called on Abe to issue the national emergency declaration, after the capital recorded 78 new cases, its highest single-day jump so far.

Explosive surge

Abe said the government would prioritize distributing masks to around 50 million households in areas where coronavirus infections have been spiking. The distribution will kick off later this month and each household with a registered postal address will receive the masks through the post, part of a wider coronavirus economic package that the government is rolling out.

Over the past week, Japan has scrambled to avert an explosive surge in infections. While the current tally stands at around 2,300 cases, Japan -- a country of over 127 million people -- has only tested just over 30,000, compared with 394,000 tests carried out in neighboring South Korea, which has a population of just over 51 million.

The apparently low infection rate has created what many experts fear is a false sense of security, with people still going out in public, some not wearing masks, to see cherry blossoms, a traditional spring pastime.

On Wednesday, medical experts warned that Japan's healthcare system would not be able to bear the strain if coronavirus infections continued to spread.

A government panel warned that though Japan has not seen an explosive increase in infections so far, hospitals and medical clinics in Tokyo, Aichi, Kanagawa, Osaka and Hyogo were increasingly stretched and that "drastic countermeasures need to be taken as quickly as possible."

Economic repercussions are also a concern. Earlier this week, Japan's ruling party pledged to secure a 60 trillion yen ($556 billion) stimulus package to cushion an economy already hit by the postponement of the Olympics and coronavirus pandemic.

DIY masks amid shortages

While Abe's cloth mask proposal was met with anger, Japan isn't the only place mulling the use of improvised facial wear, amid widespread shortages in proper protective gear.

Mask use has been widespread in Asia since the beginning of the pandemic, but shortages and conflicting advice in many western countries has caused many people to go without, despite widespread evidence that masks help protect against the spread of the virus.

Cloth masks are not as effective as surgical masks or respirators, but they do offer limited protection and are easier to produce.

Across the US, people have been stepping up to create homemade masks for health care workers and other high risk populations amid widespread shortages and complaints from hospitals that they are not receiving supplies fast enough.

In March, US retailer JOANN Fabrics and Craft Stores released a video tutorial on how to make face masks. The retailer encouraged people to drop them off at store locations, where they will be donated to local hospitals.

But with a dwindling supply of N95 respirators and a surge in virus cases, healthcare facilities are bracing for the worst, and Japan may not be the last country to distribute cloth masks to its citizens.

CNN's Harmeet Kaur contributed to this report.

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2020-04-02 12:54:52Z
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Anger as Japanese Prime Minister offers two cloth masks per family while refusing to declare coronavirus emergency - CNN

The number of confirmed cases of the virus has spiked in recent weeks, after it appeared that Japan's initial response had got the virus relatively under control. As of Wednesday, there were more than 2,300 cases across Japan, and 57 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

That spike has seen a raft of new restrictions put in place in Tokyo and other major cities, and a run on protective gear, including face masks. On Wednesday, Abe said the provision of cloth masks to the worst hit areas "will be helpful in responding to the rapidly increasing demand."

But Abe's proposal to send two masks to each household attracted outrage and mockery online Wednesday, with the hashtag "Abe's mask" and "screw your two masks" trending on Twitter.

Many felt the move was lackluster and would not go into effect fast enough to have a chance at curbing the spread of the virus, with masks not due to be distributed until the end of the month. Others dubbed the policy "Abenomask policy" as satirical memes showing well-known cartoon characters sharing one mask between four family members popped up online.

The anger comes as Abe resisted calls Wednesday to declare a state of emergency, saying that use of such powers was not imminent.

A declaration of a state of emergency would allow prefectural governors to send out a stronger message when it comes to urging the public to stay at home, but the measures will not be legally binding.

Last week, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike urged residents in the city of roughly 13.5 million to telework where possible and avoid bars, restaurants and public gatherings up until April 12. Tokyo has now extended the closure of schools and public facilities like zoos and museums up until May 6.

Koike on Tuesday called on Abe to issue the national emergency declaration, after the capital recorded 78 new cases, its highest single-day jump so far.

Explosive surge

Abe said the government would prioritize distributing masks to around 50 million households in areas where coronavirus infections have been spiking. The distribution will kick off later this month and each household with a registered postal address will receive the masks through the post, part of a wider coronavirus economic package that the government is rolling out.

Over the past week, Japan has scrambled to avert an explosive surge in infections. While the current tally stands at around 2,300 cases, Japan -- a country of over 127 million people -- has only tested just over 30,000, compared with 394,000 tests carried out in neighboring South Korea, which has a population of just over 51 million.

The apparently low infection rate has created what many experts fear is a false sense of security, with people still going out in public, some not wearing masks, to see cherry blossoms, a traditional spring pastime.

On Wednesday, medical experts warned that Japan's healthcare system would not be able to bear the strain if coronavirus infections continued to spread.

A government panel warned that though Japan has not seen an explosive increase in infections so far, hospitals and medical clinics in Tokyo, Aichi, Kanagawa, Osaka and Hyogo were increasingly stretched and that "drastic countermeasures need to be taken as quickly as possible."

Economic repercussions are also a concern. Earlier this week, Japan's ruling party pledged to secure a 60 trillion yen ($556 billion) stimulus package to cushion an economy already hit by the postponement of the Olympics and coronavirus pandemic.

DIY masks amid shortages

While Abe's cloth mask proposal was met with anger, Japan isn't the only place mulling the use of improvised facial wear, amid widespread shortages in proper protective gear.

Mask use has been widespread in Asia since the beginning of the pandemic, but shortages and conflicting advice in many western countries has caused many people to go without, despite widespread evidence that masks help protect against the spread of the virus.

Cloth masks are not as effective as surgical masks or respirators, but they do offer limited protection and are easier to produce.

Across the US, people have been stepping up to create homemade masks for health care workers and other high risk populations amid widespread shortages and complaints from hospitals that they are not receiving supplies fast enough.

In March, US retailer JOANN Fabrics and Craft Stores released a video tutorial on how to make face masks. The retailer encouraged people to drop them off at store locations, where they will be donated to local hospitals.

But with a dwindling supply of N95 respirators and a surge in virus cases, healthcare facilities are bracing for the worst, and Japan may not be the last country to distribute cloth masks to its citizens.

CNN's Harmeet Kaur contributed to this report.

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2020-04-02 12:33:51Z
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Japanese Prime Minister's coronavirus mask plan criticized as insufficient as emergency looms - CNN

The number of confirmed cases of the virus has spiked in recent weeks, after it appeared that Japan's initial response had got the virus relatively under control. As of Wednesday, there were more than 2,300 cases across Japan, and 57 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

That spike has seen a raft of new restrictions put in place in Tokyo and other major cities, and a run on protective gear, including face masks. On Wednesday, Abe said the provision of cloth masks to the worst hit areas "will be helpful in responding to the rapidly increasing demand."

But Abe's proposal to send two masks to each household attracted outrage and mockery online Wednesday, with the hashtag "Abe's mask" and "screw your two masks" trending on Twitter.

Many felt the move was lackluster and would not go into effect fast enough to have a chance at curbing the spread of the virus, with masks not due to be distributed until the end of the month. Others dubbed the policy "Abenomask policy" as satirical memes showing well-known cartoon characters sharing one mask between four family members popped up online.

The anger comes as Abe resisted calls Wednesday to declare a state of emergency, saying that use of such powers was not imminent.

A declaration of a state of emergency would allow prefectural governors to send out a stronger message when it comes to urging the public to stay at home, but the measures will not be legally binding.

Last week, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike urged residents in the city of roughly 13.5 million to telework where possible and avoid bars, restaurants and public gatherings up until April 12. Tokyo has now extended the closure of schools and public facilities like zoos and museums up until May 6.

Koike on Tuesday called on Abe to issue the national emergency declaration, after the capital recorded 78 new cases, its highest single-day jump so far.

Explosive surge

Abe said the government would prioritize distributing masks to around 50 million households in areas where coronavirus infections have been spiking. The distribution will kick off later this month and each household with a registered postal address will receive the masks through the post, part of a wider coronavirus economic package that the government is rolling out.

Over the past week, Japan has scrambled to avert an explosive surge in infections. While the current tally stands at around 2,300 cases, Japan -- a country of over 127 million people -- has only tested just over 30,000, compared with 394,000 tests carried out in neighboring South Korea, which has a population of just over 51 million.

The apparently low infection rate has created what many experts fear is a false sense of security, with people still going out in public, some not wearing masks, to see cherry blossoms, a traditional spring pastime.

On Wednesday, medical experts warned that Japan's healthcare system would not be able to bear the strain if coronavirus infections continued to spread.

A government panel warned that though Japan has not seen an explosive increase in infections so far, hospitals and medical clinics in Tokyo, Aichi, Kanagawa, Osaka and Hyogo were increasingly stretched and that "drastic countermeasures need to be taken as quickly as possible."

Economic repercussions are also a concern. Earlier this week, Japan's ruling party pledged to secure a 60 trillion yen ($556 billion) stimulus package to cushion an economy already hit by the postponement of the Olympics and coronavirus pandemic.

DIY masks amid shortages

While Abe's cloth mask proposal was met with anger, Japan isn't the only place mulling the use of improvised facial wear, amid widespread shortages in proper protective gear.

Mask use has been widespread in Asia since the beginning of the pandemic, but shortages and conflicting advice in many western countries has caused many people to go without, despite widespread evidence that masks help protect against the spread of the virus.

Cloth masks are not as effective as surgical masks or respirators, but they do offer limited protection and are easier to produce.

Across the US, people have been stepping up to create homemade masks for health care workers and other high risk populations amid widespread shortages and complaints from hospitals that they are not receiving supplies fast enough.

In March, US retailer JOANN Fabrics and Craft Stores released a video tutorial on how to make face masks. The retailer encouraged people to drop them off at store locations, where they will be donated to local hospitals.

But with a dwindling supply of N95 respirators and a surge in virus cases, healthcare facilities are bracing for the worst, and Japan may not be the last country to distribute cloth masks to its citizens.

CNN's Harmeet Kaur contributed to this report.

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2020-04-02 11:34:09Z
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Spain reports 950 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours - Al Jazeera English

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

1. Spain reports 950 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours  Al Jazeera English
2. Spain reports 950 COVID-19 deaths in the past day, highest daily toll so far, while infections growth wanes  Washington Post
3. Spanish deaths rise as European toll passes 30000 - BBC News  BBC News
4. Spain's coronavirus death toll tops 10,000 after another record daily toll  Reuters
5. Spain coronavirus death toll passes 10,000: Live updates  Al Jazeera English
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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2020-04-02 10:56:55Z
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