Month: March 2020

Spain is reeling under the onslaught of the coronavirus, with fatalities surpassing those of China, the health system collapsing and retirement homes becoming open graves. Hospitals are running out of critical supplies, and about a third of medical staff have been contaminated by the highly contagious virus, carried by tens of thousands of infected people cramming clinics in Madrid, Barcelona and other large cities.   “Intensive care units and hospitals are on the verge of collapse,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told Congress on Wednesday evening, when he asked for his emergency powers to be extended until April 12.   Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez holds a videoconference with some of his ministers over the coronavirus outbreak, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, March 13, 2020.He also asked Congress for $350 billion in emergency funding to confront the crisis and cushion the country against the economic consequences of confining people to their homes for a month. The government expects three months of economic paralysis, which could cause a 9.7% drop in GDP this year and a 10% rise in its deficit, according to Goldman Sachs. “There are more dark and uncertain days ahead,” Sanchez said before an almost empty congressional chamber. Most lawmakers could not attend because of quarantines and other travel restrictions. Several leading ministers have caught the virus. Spain’s coronavirus cases have risen to 48,000 this week, according to the health ministry. But Social Security Minister Jose Luis Escriva has said that almost twice that number could yet be infected, as there are 83,000 workers reporting coronavirus symptoms who have not yet been diagnosed. Twenty-five percent of hospital workers have contracted coronavirus, according to the health ministry, which reports that 5,400 medical staff have been contaminated on an accelerating scale, with 2,000 falling ill in the past two days.   Patients are being neglected at Madrid’s Gregorio Marañon hospital, where videos broadcast over national television have shown patients strewn across the floor. A nurse at the hospital told reporters that they are out of essential supplies and that she and other medical staff are using garbage bags as protective gowns.   Despite overstretched resources, health workers in Spain have managed to cure more than 5,000 coronavirus patients, who have been discharged, according to the health ministry. Spain’s King Felipe VI visits a military hospital set up at the IFEMA conference center in Madrid, March 26, 2020.The daily death toll was reported to be dropping Thursday, although Spain’s deaths have surpassed the 4,000 mark, well above the 3,200 reported in China, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University in the United States. Italy remains the worst-hit country with more than 8,000 fatalities and more than 80,000 confirmed cases, almost equal to China’s figure.  Coronavirus deaths have mostly struck people older than 70, considered the most vulnerable age group. Military emergency teams inspecting retirement homes in Madrid and other cities have found them abandoned by staff and with most of the residents dead in their beds. “Survivors mingled among cadavers,” an army officer told reporters. Army engineering units have set up field hospitals in parks and turned empty warehouses, fair pavilions and other public spaces into makeshift clinics to relieve the overcrowded hospitals. This has led to ugly scenes in some neighborhoods, where protests have erupted over the busing-in of potentially contaminated people. A youth gang in the city of La Linea, which has until now been a zone of low contamination, fought police in an attempt to block buses bringing groups of elderly citizens from badly hit regions. In a first-ever electronic vote, Congress unanimously passed the 15-day extension of emergency powers and funding requested by the government. But Sanchez faced strong criticism from opposition parties, which accused his administration of “dithering” and being late to act despite clear warning signs from health experts weeks before the pandemic broke out. Far-right leader Santiago Abascal held separatist authorities in Catalonia responsible for the spiraling number of coronavirus cases reported in Barcelona, where they tried to block a deployment of the army. 
…

As Italy continues to battle the coronavirus, a patient who contracted the virus earlier this month warns the world to be careful because the virus can be passed by those who show no symptoms.Italy’s rate of coronavirus infection slowed for a fourth day Thursday, with many hopeful that the long lockdown is providing the results everyone has been praying for.  Authorities are cautious, though, asking Italians not to lower their guard and continue to respect the rules.  One hospitalized patient is speaking about his experience. Fausto Rossi, 38, started feeling unwell with a fever March 5 and four days later he was taken to Santa Maria Goretti Hospital in the city of Latina, where he tested positive for the coronavirus.  He says, “the problem with this virus is when it gets to your lungs because it attacks them aggressively and causes a very serious pneumonia with an extremely high percentage of death.”  He stressed that this pneumonia is devastating.He said, “It’s incredibly strong and has a very high mortality rate.” He added that, if he suffered from other ailments or was of a different age, he would probably not be here today.  “It’s a horrible feeling not to be able to breathe,” he said.Rossi, who is still in the hospital, but has been released from the intensive care unit and hopes to soon return to his family at home, said everyone in Italy underestimated this virus. He said he hopes this pandemic will end as quickly as possible so that everyone can return to their normal lives. He offered his advice.People wear masks as they line up to enter a pharmacy, in Rome, March 16, 2020.People must respect the restrictive measures that have been put in place, leaving the house only for primary needs; they must stay at home and avoid social contact with others because “this virus walks on his own legs of those who have no symptoms, so anyone could have it.”Rossi is very grateful towards those who treated him.”My thanks go to all the doctors and nurses of the hospital’s infectious diseases unit, they are the true heroes of this battle. Every day they work in extreme conditions, psychologically under pressure and with the constant fear of contracting the virus and of not being able to return home to their families,” he said.This Italian coronavirus patient says his days in the hospital were passed in great solitude with no family members nearby and no one to support him.  He said the experience has changed his life and taught him to appreciate the small things he took for granted: “living, breathing, a walk, a hug, a glass of wine, freedom.”
…

Illegal migration flows to Greece have dropped to their lowest point since the start of the year, counting upwards of 100 cases this week, after the governments in Athens and Ankara lock down their countries to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
 
The dramatic decrease offers some respite for Greece, which has been struggling to fend off thousands of asylum seekers from streaming into the country after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in late February he no longer would block their access to Europe.
 
Faced with a burgeoning health crisis, the Turkish leader rescinded his orders last week. By that time, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu explained Thursday, some 150,600 migrants and refugees had managed to enter Greece — the biggest migrant push to the West since more than 1 million, mainly Syrian refugees, fled to Europe to escape their country’s civil war in 2016.  
 
Athens refutes the figures, and United Nations’ data show the total number of migrant entries to Greece totaling 9,486 since the start of the year. Just 105 were recorded in the last week, 10 times less than the 1,288 documented in early March, according to the U.N.’s refugee agency.
 
Coast guard and migration officials are calling the swoon “dramatic,” saying it is among the largest drop-offs since the EU and Turkey stitched together a landmark deal to limit the 2016 refugee crisis.“We’re seeing zip, zilch, zero rubber rafts for days now,” said a senior coast guard official on Lesbos, an island on the forefront of Europe’s lingering migration crisis. “Even so,” the official said on the condition of anonymity, “we remain vigilant.”
 Many refugees are arriving at Istanbul’s bus station broke, exhausted and often sick after failing to cross the border into Greece. Formal aid organizations or journalists are not on the scene, March 20, 2020. (Courtesy of aid workers)NATO allies Greece and Turkey have been at loggerheads for years over conflicting sea and air rights, mainly in the oil and mineral-rich Aegean Sea. Athens frequently has accused Erdogan of using the more than 3 million refugees in his country to pressure the EU and Washington into supporting its own military offensive in the nine-year Syrian war.
 
Now that migratory pressures having eased, though, officials in the Greek capital are scrambling to shield more than 100,000 asylums seekers trapped in the country since a host of Balkan states sealed their borders and threw up steel fences to stop them from reaching the heart of Europe during the 2016 refugee crisis. More than 40,000 refugees are crammed in unsanitary and overcrowded camps on a host of Aegean islands.
 
“We are enforcing the strictest possible controls, even tougher than those imposed on the rest of the population in Greece, to cope with the situation,” Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis said.
 
But Athens is refusing to heed pressure from the EU to move migrants from five island camps to the Greek mainland – a move the government fears could enflame the spread of coronavirus.
 
To date no cases of COVID-19 have been reported among Greece’s community of refugees and migrants.
 
On Thursday, Greek Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said she was working with the Greek government “to agree on an emergency plan to help reduce the risk as much as possible in the overcrowded hotspots on the islands.”
 
She suggested the plan could include relocating the most susceptible to the virus – mainly the disabled, elderly and chronically ill.  
 
Earlier this month, the government imposed strict restrictions on the movement of asylum seekers in camps. It also has designs to turn at least two of the five Aegean camps into enclosed facilities.
 
Aid workers and human rights advocates have been critical of the measures, warning that if the virus spreads to the camps, it could decimate the migrant communities.
“The government’s strategy is to lock everyone in one place and throw away the key,” said Eva Cossé, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Thousands of people, including older people, those with chronic diseases, children… pregnant women, new mothers, and people with disabilities, are trapped in dangerously overcrowded, deplorable conditions on the islands amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” Human Rights Watch said.“Forcing asylum seekers to remain in conditions that violate their rights and are harmful to their well-being, health, and dignity cannot be justified on grounds of public health,” the international, New York-based non-governmental organization said in a statement.
    
…

A 72-year-old woman diagnosed with the coronavirus died in Armenia on Thursday, the Health Ministry’s spokeswoman said, reporting the country’s first death related to the virus.Armenia, a country of around 3 million people, had reported 290 coronavirus cases as of Thursday, the highest number among countries in the South Caucasus region.
…

In a redeveloped urban park in Lisbon, a “drive-thru” clinic is performing five-minute swab tests through car windows on people with coronavirus symptoms, as Portuguese authorities ramp up testing facilities to tackle the growing health emergency.Portugal reported on Thursday 3,544 confirmed cases of the virus since the start of the epidemic, with 60 deaths. That is still far below neighboring Spain or Italy, but the government expects the epidemic only to peak around mid-April.The model of mobile clinics now popping up across Europe and the Americas began in South Korea in February and has been recommended by the World Health Organization as a way of alleviating pressure on hospitals and reducing the risk of contagion by keeping patients in their cars.The Lisbon “drive-thru,” which opened on Monday and expects to perform 150 tests a day, is one of 10 new testing centers to be launched in coming weeks in Portugal.Portugal’s first such site, in the northern city of Porto where the country’s first coronavirus case was detected, started operations last week and now tests about 400 people a day.
…