VOL: 4- ISSUE 191

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-Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

PAGE 04HOT TOPICS

TRUMP WADES FURTHER INTO CHINA COVID-19 ROW

Registered in the Department of Posts of Sri Lanka under No: QD/144/News/2020

PAGE 08PLAGUES, PANDEMICS AND

LAST WORDSPAGE 02BUSINESS PAGE 06COMMENTARY

THE PRESIDENT’S CALL: POLITICS OR CONSTITUTION?

RECALLING A PANDEMIC IN SRI LANKA, A CENTURY AGO

Trending NewsQuote for TodayNever retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.

-Benjamin JowettWord for TodayPanacea [panuhseeuh] – noun- an answer or solution for all problems or difficulties

Today in History

1961 - 1,400 Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA land at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro

Today is...World Hemophilia DayA day to raise awareness about the disease as well as other bleeding disorders

APRIL17 - 19, 2020

US ECONOMY LOSES 22 MILLION JOBS

A displaced Syrian girl from Ras al-Ain, a border town controlled by Turkey and its Syrian proxies, carries a child at the Washukanni camp in Syria's north-eastern Hasakeh province yesterday (16). Hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have survived nine years of civil war and waves of indiscriminate bombing now face a growing threat from a new, silent, invisible enemy: the coronavirus. The roughly three million people who live in Syria's northwest Idlib province have very little to

defend themselves against the global pandemic. Local doctors are urging the international community to step up efforts to help prevent what is already a humanitarian disaster becoming a complete catastrophe. An outbreak in Idlib could kill 100,000 people in the region, according to health officials there. The province is the last rebel-held area in Syria, and since December Syrian and Russian airstrikes have forced almost one million civilians to flee toward the Turkish border. A fragile ceasefire is

currently in place. Thousands have been forced to flee their homes and are now living in makeshift shelters and overcrowded camps, where self-isolation is an unattainable privilege. As of Wednesday (15) health workers had tested 166 people for COVID-19 in Idlib, including some tests in the crowded camps, and there have been no positive tests yet, but Dr.IhsanEidy, who works there, says once it arrives, the virus will spread fast among the displaced population

32 Rohingya die, hundreds rescued from boat after weeks at sea TEKNAF - Thirty-two Rohingya are believed to have died on an over-crowded boat stranded in the Bay of Bengal for nearly two months, an official said yesterday (16) after hun-dreds of "starving" people were res-cued from the vessel.

The boat had tried to reach Thai-land and Malaysia, some of the nearly 400 people rescued from the trawler told the Bangladesh coastguard.

The bodies of the 32 dead were thrown overboard, Lieutenant Shah Zia Rahman told AFP, citing survivor accounts.

Nearly 250 women and children were among those rescued late Wednesday (15) off Bangladesh's south-eastern coast. "They were

starving," Rahman said. Nearly a mil-lion Rohingya live in squalid camps near Bangladesh's border with Myan-mar after fleeing a military offensive in 2017. Thousands try every year to reach other countries on crowded rickety boats.

A Rohingya community leader in Bangladesh, who declined to be named, said there were 482 people on board the boat.

That suggests more than 50 people may have perished.

"It made several attempts to land in Malaysia but was turned back. We think several boats carrying Rohing-ya are still at sea," he said.

"Their bodies have become skel-etal. Some grew beards on the boat,"

local police chief Masud Hossain told AFP.

Coastguard Lieutenant Command-er Hamidul Islam said some of the survivors reported the vessel was de-nied entry by authorities in Thailand and Malaysia.

Only a few of those rescued had ref-ugee cards from the camps and many had boarded in Arakan in Myanmar's Rakhine state, Islam said.

They have been detained for ille-gally entering Bangladesh territory, he added. Bangladesh media reports quoted one of those on board as say-ing the boat was denied entry by Ma-laysia because of stricter controls due to the coronavirus pandemic. "We failed to anchor in Malaysian coast

despite repeated attempts," Moham-mad Jubayer told the bdnews24.com news portal. Admiral Mohamad Zu-bil Mat Som, director-general of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, declined to comment on the reports. But he said the maritime border was being strengthened.

The UN's refugee agency said it had dispatched staff to the site to help the "extremely malnourished and dehy-drated" people.

"UNHCR is offering to assist the government to move these people to quarantine facilities and to receive medical attention for those who re-quire it," Louise Donovan said in a statement.

-AFP

COVID-19 and curfew in Sri Lanka • No new COVID-19 confirmation were reported yesterday (16), as Sri Lanka’s tally of the novel coronavirus infec-tion remained at 238, following a late night confirmation on Wednesday (15). However, two more recoveries were recorded, taking the total number of patients being dis-charged from hospital to 65. • Nagalagam Street in Grandpass was sealed off and placed under isolation following the detection of several people suspected of having contracted COVID-19. Nearly 300 people from various areas inColombo, suspected of having had contacts with a COVID-19 patient, were sent to quar-antine centres as a precautionary measure on Wednesday (15).• The President’s Media Division said an exit strategy for-mulated to revive the economy and to ensure the return of civilian life to normalcy, will be announced over the week-end.• The Government Medical Officers’ Association urged the government to implement ‘aggressive testing,’ more ‘test-ing’ and a ‘lockout’ strategy to control the COVID-19 out-break and restore normalcy.• The districts of Colombo, Gampaha, Kalutara, Puttalam, Kandy and Jaffna, identified as high risk zones continue to be under indefinite police curfew.• Curfew in 19 districts lifted at 6:00 a.m. yesterday (16) was re-imposed at 4:00 p.m. until April 20.• Those with suspected COVID-19 symptoms are urged to call 1390 - emergency hotline- set up for free medical ad-vice and assistance, and to facilitate hospital admissions.• Sri Lanka College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has set up a 24-hours hotline – 0710301225 - for pregnant women to address issues faced by them including COV-ID-19 infection and pregnancy related complications. • Other areas declared as ‘isolated’ in the districts of Co-lombo, Kalutara and Kandy remain under lockdown with no one allowed to enter or leave.• Pharmacies in the high risk areas will remain closed until further notice.

137,500 deaths at 1100 GMT yesterday

Economic downturn could kill hundreds of thousands of children in 2020

Israel edges closer to 4th electionPutin, Xi slam attempts to blame China for late virus response

PARIS- The worldwide death toll from the novel coronavi-rus pandemic rose to 137,500 yesterday (16), according to a tally compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT from official sources.

More than 2,083,820 declared cases have been regis-tered in 193 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China in December.

Of these cases, at least 450,500 are now considered re-covered.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national au-thorities and information from the World Health Organiza-tion (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections. Many countries are testing only the most serious cases.

In the United States, now the epicentre of the pandemic, the death toll stood at 30,985 with 639,664 infections. At least 50,107 patients have recovered.

Italy is the next most-affected country with 21,645 deaths from 165,155 infections.

It is followed by Spain with 19,130 fatalities from 182,816 confirmed infections, France with 17,167 deaths and 147,863 infections and Britain with 12,868 deaths from 98,476 cases.

China - excluding Hong Kong and Macau - has to date declared 3,342 deaths and 82,341 cases with 77,892 recov-eries.

Europe has listed 1,047,303 cases and 90,181 deaths to date, the US and Canada together have 667,870 cases with 32,039 deaths, Asia 151,423 cases with 5,369 deaths, the Middle East 112,377 cases with 5.253 deaths, Latin America and the Caribbean 79,862 cases with 3,669 deaths, Africa 17,293 cases with 910 deaths and Oceania 7,694 cases with 79 deaths.

-AFP

UNITED NATIONS - Hundreds of thousands of children could die this year due to the global economic downturn sparked by the coronavirus pandemic and tens of millions more could fall into extreme poverty as a result of the cri-sis, the United Nations warned yesterday (16).

The world body also said in a risk report that nearly 369 million children across 143 countries who normally rely on school meals for a reliable source of daily nutrition have now been forced to look elsewhere.

“We must act now on each of these threats to our chil-dren,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Leaders must do everything in their power to cushion the impact of the pandemic. What started as a public health emergency has snowballed into a formidable test for the global promise to leave no one behind.”

The new coronavirus, which causes the respiratory ill-ness COVID-19, first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. So far it has infected more than two million people - killing some 138,000 - in 213 countries and ter-ritories, according to a Reuters tally.

Compared with adults, children infected with the coro-navirus are less likely to have symptoms and more likely to have a mild illness, US and Chinese studies have found.

But the UN report warned that “economic hardship ex-perienced by families as a result of the global economic downturn could result in a hundreds of thousands of addi-tional child deaths in 2020, reversing the last 2 to 3 years of progress in reducing infant mortality within a single year.”

-Agencies

JERUSALEM — The Israeli president yesterday (16) handed the task of form-ing a government to Parliament, start-ing a 21-day countdown that could lead to new elections, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival, Benny Gantz, missed another midnight deadline to reach a power-sharing agreement.

The step, which was mainly techni-cal, on its own does little to find a way through Israel’s yearlong political im-passe. Neither Netanyahu nor Gantz can currently muster a majority with-out joining forces, and their parties is-sued a joint statement yesterday saying that negotiations for a unity govern-ment would continue. But the step taken by the president, Reuven Rivlin, set a timer: By law, lawmakers have 21 days to come up with a viable gov-ernment, whether a unity coalition or

some other configuration. Failing that, Parliament will automatically disperse May 7 and, for the fourth time in lit-tle over a year, send Israelis back to the ballot box. The last election, on March 2, produced no clear winner. Netan-yahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and leader of the conservative Likud party, has beseeched Gantz, a former army chief who is leader of the centrist Blue and White party, to join him in a national emergency govern-ment to contend with the coronavirus crisis.

Citing the common good, Gantz en-tered into talks last month, upending his repeated election promises not to sit in a government with a prime min-ister under indictment. Netanyahu is facing trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He has denied any wrongdoing. -NYT

Coronavirus toll

UN warns

As unity talks falter

COVID-19: The global coronavi-rus death toll passes 140,000, with nearly two thirds of all fatalities in Europe.Italy: The EU offers “a heartfelt apology” to the country for letting it down at the start of the coronavi-rus crisis as fresh evidence emerged that few European countries are likely to have achieved herd immu-nity.UK: Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says the government has de-cided to extend a near-lockdown to curb the spread of novel coronavi-rus by at least three weeks.USA: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo extends the state's shut-down to stem the spread of corona-virus until May 15.

- The administrator of a key small business lending program to sup-port companies devastated by coronavirus shutdowns says it has run out of funds due to massive de-mand.- President Donald Trump vows to unveil plans to reopen the world's top economy, following cautious moves in Europe, claiming the country had "passed the peak" of the coronavirus crisis despite a re-cord daily death toll.Russia: President Vladimir Putin says the country’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations marking the anni-versary of the end of World War II in Europe have been postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.France: The coronavirus outbreak claims another 753 lives in the last

24 hours, bringing the country's to-tal fatalities to 17,920.Tunisia: Authorities say two men, including a suspected member of a jihadist network, had been arrested over an alleged "terrorist" plot to infect security force personnel with coronavirus.Mozambique: Health officials say around two-thirds of the country’s confirmed coronavirus cases have been traced back to a Total natural gas exploration site in the north of the country.Singapore: The country reports a record jump in coronavirus cases, most of them linked to packed dor-mitories housing foreign workers, as it battles a second wave of infec-tions.

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping yesterday (16) rejected as coun-terproductive attempts to blame Beijing for delaying informing the world about the coronavirus, the Kremlin said.

Putin and Xi spoke after US President Donald Trump's administration berated China for not sharing data more quick-ly. Washington is also investigating the origins of the coronavirus -- which has killed more than 140,000 people worldwide -- saying it doesn't rule out that the disease came from a labora-tory researching bats in Wuhan, China. The Kremlin said that during phone calls with Xi yesterday, Putin praised "consistent and effective actions" of the Chinese "which allowed the epidemio-logical situation in the country to sta-bilise." The leaders did not refer to the White House directly but stressed the "counter-productiveness" of attempts to

blame China for not informing the world quickly enough about the appearance of a dangerous new infection. Xi called at-tempts to politicize the pandemic "det-rimental to international cooperation," according to a Chinese readout of the call reported by state-run Xinhua.

Xinhua also reported that Putin had called "attempts by some people to smear China" over the virus "unaccepta-ble." Since emerging in China at the end of last year, the pandemic has turned the world upside down, forcing half of hu-manity indoors and sending the global economy into freefall.

Putin and Xi also stressed the two countries' "strategic partnership" and said Russia and China were ready to help each other during the pandemic by exchanging specialists and supplying medical equipment, protective gear and medicines, the Kremlin said.

-AFP

2 APRIL 17 - 19, 2020 WEEKEND EXPRESS

BUSINESS

‘Work from Home’ is the new ‘coronavirus cul-ture. This brings about a new work culture for staff and for managers. Business Continuity Plan-ning and Developing the Business are also focus areas operating under this new paradigm.

In taking these three dimensions, ieWorking from Home, Business Continuity Planning and Developing the Business one by one, my thoughts go back in time to August of 1990, when the Gulf war broke out. At that time, I was Dubai based Citibank’s head of human resources for the Gulf region. We handled a similar situation at that time, but the difference was that the Gulf war was man-made and the current scenario is nature-made.1. Working from Home

Below are some guidelines from my then experience, which I believe holds today too in the current scenario.

What is required in terms of both infrastruc-ture and emotional discipline?• Be self-disciplined in approach and learn to work independently without supervision.• Set a dedicated work area away from possible disturbances by family members.• Set up the necessary infrastructure with technology and tools to effectively facilitate your work.• Get dressed as if going to work, not necessarily in office attire and prepare mentally and emo-tionally for work.• Set a start time and end time for each day of work.• Be organized, identify and prioritize work with action points to be completed during the set timeframe. Set deadlines and complete if pos-sible, ahead of time.• Set up work teams technologically /commu-nication groups (for SMS/e- mail/What'sApp/conference calling) with whom you will need to communicate regularly both orally and written during this period.• MOST IMPORTANT IS TO SET ACTION POINTS FOR THE DAY AND COMPLETE SAME.• Update your immediate supervisor and Depart-ment Head of the output for the day and planned activities for the next day.2. Business Continuity Planning• Create a contingency reserve account on an ongoing basis for staff salaries and to meet other staff costs. Also, for training and development costs without retrenching staff (other than the FAT) since experienced and competent staff will be required to grow the business from “ground zero” at a critical time.• Staff training on the new environment with fo-cus on safety and hygiene aspects and to answer customer queries, should commence as soon as normalcy returns.• Focus on cash flow and cost management.• Do away with all ‘NICE TO DO ACTIVITIES’ to preserve cash, to meet all mandatory fixed expenses in the next 6 to 12 months.3. Developing the Business• Plan to operate in the new business scenario from ‘ground zero.’• Customer expectations will be different in terms of lower pricing, safety and hygienic conditions, air pollution and circulation, distancing and spacing.• Focus on continuous customer and employee engagement through communications during this period and provide them with status updates.• Set a frequency and operate all mechanical and technological equipment and tools including air conditioning and other plants to ensure that they are in proper working order when operations begin.• Similarly, keep building infrastructure and external spaces in a prim and proper condition to be “Future Ready.”4. Advice to employees• With schools closed for a prolonged period, children and grandchildren at home all day, stress and isolation hardships will increase for them. Therefore, spend quality time with them. Keep them happy and occupied. • Use this period at home to think of ways on how you can contribute differently, more efficiently and effectively in the future, once you return to work to rebuild the business.• Be proud of your organization-your employer. Keep its wellbeing uppermost in your mind.• Preserve your cash and don't spend unneces-sarily. Keep as much money for an emergency till the current health situation improves. Be optimistic about the future.• When you return to work, work harder and faster to weather the storm and get back to nor-malcy as soon as the environment permits.

-Sunil Dissanayake is Director/ Chief Ex-ecutive Officer-BMICH and Director-Sri Lanka

Convention Bureau

LONDON- IMF head Kristalina Georgieva yesterday (16) sug-gested that Britain and the EU extend their deadline on striking a post-Brexit trade deal in the face of coronavirus uncertainty.

"My advice would be to seek ways in which this element of uncertainty is reduced in the interests of everybody, the UK, the EU, and the whole world," Georgieva told the BBC when asked if she would advise on an extension.

"I really hope that all policymakers everywhere would be think-ing about" reducing uncertainty, she added. "It is tough as it is, let's not make it any tougher." The International Monetary Fund this week warned that the coronavirus pandemic is pushing the global economy into the deepest recession in a century, cutting world output by three percent this year, and cautioned that the crisis could get even worse. British and European Union officials meanwhile have agreed to schedule three new rounds of post-Brexit trade talks, starting next week by video conference, after the coronavirus epidemic disrupted negotiations.

However a joint statement following a call between EU negotia-tor Michel Barnier and UK counterpart David Frost made no mention of postponing the end of Britain's transition out of the bloc beyond December 31. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insists there is no question of the UK remaining under EU rules after that date, while some observers have warned that the COVID-19 pandemic has made a quick deal impossible. The UK government yesterday expected to extend a nationwide lockdown for another three weeks, as the country's coronavirus death toll approached 13,000. The British economy could shrink by 13 per-cent this year in the case of a three-month lockdown, according to the government.

-AFP

Operating in the current environment and being future ready

IMF chief eyes deadline extension to Brexit trade deal

Sri Lanka in talks with IMF for rapid finance COLOMBO - Sri Lanka is in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a program under its Rapid Finance Instru-ment, Director Asia Pacific Department Changyong Rhee said.

“We received the letter from the Sri Lan-kan government about our Rapid Financ-ing Instrument,” Rhee said, adding that the monetary body has begun reviewing Sri Lanka’s request.

Sri Lanka’s existing program with the IMF was stalled after the new administra-tion slashed taxes in January going against its ‘revenue based fiscal consolidation’ thrust, worsening the deficit.

The coronavirus crisis hit in March, which has further hit revenues as economic activities came to a virtual standstill amid lockdown-style curfews to curb the spread of the virus.

“We are now discussing with the gov-ernment whether they want to switch the previous program into our new rapid facili-ties,” Rhee said, adding, “So we will discuss it this week.”

IMF has downgraded Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product to a negative 0.5% for 2020.

-economynext.com

Amid coronavirus crisis

‘Nowhere to hide’

WASHINGTON- Even as political lead-ers wrangle over how and when to restart the American economy, the coronavirus pandemic’s devastation became more evident yesterday (16) with more than 5.2 million workers added to the tally of the unemployed.

In the past four weeks, the economy has lost about 22 million jobs, roughly the net number created in a 9-1/2-year stretch that began after the last recession and ended with the pandemic’s arrival. The latest figure from the Labour Department, re-flecting last week’s initial unemployment claims, underscores how the downdraft

has spread to every corner of the economy: hotels and restaurants, mass retailers, manufacturers and white-collar strong-holds like law firms.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thorn-ton in Chicago. “This is the deepest, fast-est, most broad-based recession we’ve ever seen.”

Some of the new jobless claims represent freshly laid-off workers; others are from people who had been trying for a week or more to file. “We’re still playing catch-up on multiple fronts,” Swonk said. Each day seems to bring unwelcome milestones. On

Wednesday (15), the Commerce Depart-ment reported the steepest monthly drop in retail sales since record-keeping began nearly 30 years ago, and the Federal Re-serve said industrial production had re-corded its biggest decline since 1946. The mounting unemployment numbers seem certain to fuel the debate over how long to impose stay-at-home orders and restric-tions on business activity. President Don-ald Trump has said some measures should be relaxed soon because of the effect on workers. “There has to be a balance,” he said at a news briefing Wednesday even-ing. “We have to get back to work.” Many

governors and health experts are more cau-tious. If business conditions return to nor-mal too quickly, they fear, a second wave of coronavirus infections could spread.

In the meantime, job losses are sure to mount, though perhaps at a slower pace.

When restrictions are lifted, the recov-ery is expected to be gradual. “My worry is that it will be a slow rollout, as it should be, which means a slow recovery,” said Beth Ann Bovino, chief US economist at S&P Global. “Turning on the US economy isn’t like turning on a light bulb. It’s just too big.”

-New York Times

US economy loses 22 million jobs

CB reduces bank rate 500bp to 10%

Fitch revises outlook on Abans to negative on coronavirus stress; affirms ‘BBB+ (lka)’ rating

Oil near 18-year low on demand devastation warning

President discusses rebuilding economy amidst COVID-19 challenges

COLOMBO - Sri Lanka has cut the bank rate, the final lender of last re-sort facility available to banks, to 10% from 15%, to bring it line with cur-rent policy rates, the central bank said.

Sri Lanka’s central bank last cut the bank rate to 15% from 18% in 2003.The central bank said in the future the bank rate will move in line with

the policy rate and remain 300 basis points above the standing lending fa-cility rate, which is the ceiling rate. In the 1980s and early 1990 Sri Lanka used to monetize debt at high level and inflation and currency deprecia-tion was steep, triggering high interest rates. Greater monetary stability was seen from around 2000 to 2011. Monetary stability weakened from around 2012 and has deteriorated sharply from 2015 analysts said.

-economynet.com

COLOMBO– Fitch Ratings has revised the Outlook on Sri Lankan consumer-du-rable retailer Abans PLC’s National Long-Term Rating to Negative from Stable.

Fitch has simultaneously affirmed the National Long-Term Rating at ‘BBB+(lka)’, the ‘BBB+(lka)’ rating on Abans’ outstand-ing senior unsecured debentures and the ‘F2(lka)’ National Short-Term Rating on its commercial paper.

The Negative Outlook reflect the signifi-cant business interruption from the coro-navirus pandemic and the implications of a downturn in discretionary spending that Fitch expects could extend well into 2021.

The rating agency said it expects Abans’ leverage to weaken to 7.8x in the financial year ending March 2021 (FY21) from 4.1x in the last 12 months to 9MFY20 – materi-ally above 5.5x – the level at which it would consider negative rating action. “We expect net leverage to fall below 5.0x by FY22, but

the risks to our forecast are high, including a prolonged continuation of the pandemic, an extended ban on product importation and potential cash flow requirements for its real-estate project,” Fitch said, adding that the Negative Outlook also reflects Abans’s tight liquidity in the next few quarters, which is contingent on banks’ willingness to refinance maturing debt, thereby main-taining exposure to Abans amid the current downturn.

Fitch acknowledge the company has a track record of accessing domestic banks through all points in the cycle. As an addi-tional measure, the company has arranged for extended payment terms with their global vendors who supply most of their products which should also help near-term liquidity, it said, but added that it may take further negative rating action if Abans’s li-quidity weakens further.

-ENCL

SINGAPORE - Oil languished at multi-year lows yesterday (16), with WTI crude remain-ing around $20 a barrel as dire warnings about a virus-triggered demand shock over-shadowed a deal to cut output.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate made small gains in Asian afternoon trade to $20.05 per barrel at one point. It had slipped below the $20 mark Wednesday (15), and hit its lowest price in 18 years.

International benchmark Brent crude, which also suffered heavy losses a day ear-lier, rose half a per cent to trade at $28.12 a barrel.

Prices have crashed as the coronavirus pandemic saps global demand, with the situ-ation compounded by a supply glut resulting from a price war between OPEC cartel king-pin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC rival Russia.

A compromise hammered out at the week-end by Riyadh, Moscow and other crude pro-ducers to slash output by around 10 million

barrels per day briefly boosted prices but the rally soon fizzled out. Investors fear the agreement does not go far enough to offset massive demand losses, as storage capacity around the world shrinks because of the glut.

Adding to traders' worries, the Interna-tional Energy Agency said Wednesday that 2020 was likely to be "the worst year in the history" of the sector.

For 2020 overall, demand will fall by 9.3 million barrels per day (mbd), with April alone down 29 mbd from a year earlier to lev-els last seen in 1995, the IEA said in its latest monthly report.

Stephen Innes, chief global markets strate-gist at AxiCorp, however said that the mar-ket had found some support in Asian trade Thursday as it was "leaning towards a com-bination of deeper OPEC+ cuts and a more assured response from the G20 producers to avoid a further collapse in oil".

-AFP

COLOMBO– President Gotabaya Rajapaksa discussed rebuilding the economy in the face of the current chal-lenges during a meeting with the secretaries to ministries at the Presidential Secretariat on Wednesday (15).

A focal point of the discussion was on returning to normalcy without compromising safety. To do so, the President emphasized the need for the public and private sectors to recommence business activities and the need for curfew to be eased to allow these functionalities to proceed without undue obstruction. The responsibility of ensuring the public adhered to safety regulations and preventing large gatherings was entrusted on the secre-taries to the ministries as well as heads of institutes.

Rebuilding a policy-driven economy is the respon-sibility of all, the president noted, charging ministries with the responsibility of protecting people and the local economy and of creating a new economic trend lies. The importance of establishing new businesses and industries were emphasized as was the need for experienced entre-preneurs to have fresh opportunities. Relevant ministries were instructed to extend the required foundation and support needed for agrarian and fisheries sectors as well as other businesses to recover.

Taking the global crisis into consideration, the need to pay special attention to the local agrarian economy was also underlined. Facilities needed to maximize produc-

tion of export agricultural crops from available land must also be provided, president instructed the officials, urging that even the farmer at the village level has easy access to the State machinery. The discussions also centred on restarting the development projects that were halted due to the prevailing crisis. One of the projects was the initia-tion to add 100,000 km to the existing road network. It was decided to prioritize this project as a starting point.

Secretary to the President P. B. Jayasundara, Principal Advisor to President LalithWeeratunga, Secretary to the Prime Minister GaminiSenarath and Cabinet Secretary S. Amarasekera also joined the discussion.

-LBO

Second e-auction for tea begins

Rupee at 194.60/195.10 to green back in one week forwards

40,000 containers swamp Colombo port COLOMBO – The Colombo Port is swamped in over 40,000 containers after a coronavirus crisis disrupted economic ac-tivities a logistics official said.

Colombo Port’s three container terminals have been operating throughout the crisis at full capacity, but vessel calls are starting to fall. “Though the port has been functioning there has been a big issue about transport,” Romesh David, Chief Executive of South Asia Gateway Terminals told an online fo-rum organized by Advocata Institute, a Colombo based think tank, adding though typically the three terminals have about 10,000-12,000 TEUs (twenty foot equiva-lent units) at a time, the load has now tri-pled with close to 40,000 TEUs, which has caused massive difficulties inside the port. “In reality it is the most expensive space in the world,” he said.

Terminals agreed to waive rent from March 14 to April 16. At first there were delays in customs clearance and transport but the issues have now been solved. How-ever, the concessions ended yesterday (16) and importers will now have to pay port rent and terminal charges. “The only barri-ers right now are the importers themselves’ ability and willingness to clear,” David said, adding, “On top of that shipping lines will also charge demurrage for container.”

Sri Lanka is under curfew from the third week of March to curb the spread of coro-navirus. Colombo has been declared a high risk zone, and health officials have been ag-gressively contact tracing suspected corona-virus patients. Authorities are also hunting a cluster linked to some underserved areas close to the port.

-economynext.com

COLOMBO – A second e-auction for tea got underway in Colombo yesterday (16) with the combined volumes of two auctions amidst low production due to unfavorable weather in early March and a coronavirus crisis.

Yshan Fernando, Managing Director of Forbes and Walker Tea Brokers Ltd said two auctions were put together due to low volumes. He said Colombo normally auc-tioned about six million kilos of tea but due to the dry weather experienced in early March the volumes have come down to un-der four million kilos.

The brokers were hopeful of selling about 6.8 million kilos in the e-auction spread over a period of three days commencing yesterday.

The e-auction started at 0800h yester-day and will continue until 1700h Saturday (18).

Sri Lanka digitized its 127-years old tra-ditional open outcry tea auction last week amid social distancing rules of coronavirus, but it is slower than the manual one so war.

“In last week’s auction, we had demand from most markets because we didn’t have

the auction for over two weeks and the vol-umes were low so there was a lot of activity plus the depreciation of the rupee too would have triggered some demand,” Fernando said, hopeful of a fairly good demand be-cause of last week’s demand pattern. “We expect the same kind of trend to continue,” he said.

Tea brokers said even though time was a crucial factor, the tea traders gave space for buyers and brokers to take one step at a time at the electronic platform.

Colombo saw a lot of demand from its buyers last week as the previous auctions was suspended due to the novel coronavi-rus outbreak in the country.

Brokers said there was heavy buying came from Iraq, Turkey, and Syria while China and Hong Kong remained active par-ticipants. Overall market remained active, they said.

Last week’s sale volume was 4.5 million kilos. This week there may be some pres-sure on prices but brokers said they expect prices to hold up.

-economynext/ENCL

COLOMBO– Sri Lanka’s rupee closed around 194.60/195/10 in the one week for-ward market, while the bond yields fell and the government sought a facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

There were indicative spot rates based on the swap market, where wider forward pre-miums were appearing, dealers said. Bond markets were active in morning trade and yields ended lower.

A bond maturing on 15.12.2021 closed 7.75/95%, while a bond maturing on

01.05.2021 closed at 7.65/80% down from 7.75/85% on Wednesday (15), and a 2-year bond maturing on 01.10.2022 closed at 8.40/47% down from 8.50/60%.

A bond maturing on 01.09.2023 closed at 8.80/90%, down from 8.90/9.00%, and a bond maturing on 15.09.2024 closed at 9.02/9.06% down from at 9.05/9.15% on Wednesday, while a bond maturing on 15.10.2027 closed at 9.30/37 down from 9.35/45%.

-economynext.com

Palestinian farmers wearing surgical masks as a precaution due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic harvest chrysanthemum and other types of flowers in a greenhouse in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday (16). Palestinian farmers had to salvage some and dispose of part of their flower crop due to a drop in sales as export as well as events and gatherings were banned due to the coronavirus pandemic

-SAID KHATIB / AFP

By Sunil Dissanayake

ess e s a e s ey 185, Grandpass Road, Colombo 14, Sri LankaTelephone: 0117 322 705 (Editorial) 0117 322 731 (Advertising)0117 322 789 (Circulation)Email – editor.dailyexpress@encl.lk/weekendexpress@encl.lk Epaper - http://epaper.newsexpress.lkFacebook –News Express Sri Lanka

3 WEEKEND EXPRESS

GLOCAL

In BriefCardinal Malcom urges

For COVID-19-struck Sri Lanka

APRIL 17 - 19, 2020

COLOMBO– Sri Lanka’s leading Ro-man Catholic prelate yesterday (16) called on the government to investigate the attacks on the Muslim community three weeks after the Easter Sunday suicide attacks. Describing them as po-groms against Muslims, Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, said the attacks were aimed at “desta-bilizing Sri Lanka and plunging us into conflict.”

Addressing a press conference yes-terday, the Cardinal said the attacks on Muslim-owned homes and businesses weeks after the suicide assaults were “by organized groups inspired by po-litical elements wanting to create a rift between the Muslim and Christian mi-norities in Sri Lanka.”

Cardianl Ranjith said his community was able to control the angry members from retaliating against Muslims after last year’s suicide attacks on Churches on Easter Sunday that killed more than 260 people.

“It was hard but we were able to hold them back in the interest of the coun-try,” he told reporters.

“We did not want to drag our country back into the era where we had thirty years of ethnic conflict,” he said refer-ring to the devastating separatist con-flict between the state and the LTTE that shackled the island nation.

He recalled that even a week after the attacks some “politically motivated ele-ments” tried to attack Muslim places of worship in the Catholic majority city of Negombo.

Ranjith said he and the head of the apex body of the Islamic clergy in Sri Lanka, MuftiRizwe Mohammad imme-diately visited the mosques in Negombo and were able to calm both communi-ties.

Two weeks later, Ranjith recalled, he went to a place where the Muslim com-munities had been attacked.

“I asked members of the Catholic community whether they had stoned the Muslims and their shops and they told me the attacks were carried out by mobs that came from areas outside their towns,” Ranjith said.

In the town of Minuwangoda, a 20-minute drive from the country’s only international airport, more than 93 businesses were attacked and torched three weeks after the Easter Sunday at-tacks.

Most of the businesses that were damaged or completely destroyed were owned by the Muslim community al-though shops owned by members of other communities were also damaged as fires raged through the prosperous town.

The “mobs” described by the Cardi-nal consisted of young men between the ages of 18 and 24 who mostly wore full-face motorcycle helmets and were armed with cobble-stones.

They looted local businesses and van-dalized them before setting fire to parts of the town. Local shop-owners inter-viewed accused police of not interven-ing to stop them.

Local businessmen, civil leaders and clergy said they were organized by allies of the current ruling Sri Lanka Podu-janaPeramuna (SLPP) party.

The Police sought warrants against MadhuMadhavaAravinda, a leader of the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya for leading the mob in Minuwangoda but eventu-ally failed to arrest him.

-economynext.com

Cardinal urges government to probe attacks on Muslims after Easter Sunday blasts

COLOMBO– In a comprehensive exit strategy formulated for Sri Lanka from the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, the Col-lege of Community Physicians Sri Lanka (CCPSL) has recommended that normalcy be restored in a staggered manner, taking into consideration the evolving dynamics of the epidemic.

“In the context of COVID-19, an exit strategy should be considered as a con-tingency plan that needs to be executed by the ‘whole-of-government and whole-of-society’ approach, once the stipulated objectives of containing the epidemic has been partly/fully achieved, which could maximize benefit and/or minimize dam-age,” the CCPL said in a report released on Wednesday (15). “It is equally impor-tant to prepare the mind-set of the general public with a well-executed immediate communication plan. It should reinforce the continuous need for hand-washing, respiratory etiquette and physical distanc-ing and inform that a revert is likely in the event of epidemiological evidence of com-munity spread, if the public do not com-ply,” it added.

Outlining the exit strategy, the CCP-SL said the objectives of such a strategy should be threefold: maintaining the case-

load well below the country’s health sys-tem capacity, returning to near normal public life, and economic recovery.

A careful analysis of the interventions already adopted should be made, the re-port suggested, adding that which of these need to be removed or gradually scaled down should also be determined.

This should be executed under the strict guidance, coordination and supervision of the National Operation Centre for Preven-tion of COVID-19 Outbreak, the collective of physicians said.

An in-depth understanding of the epi-demic behaviour, the report said, is re-quired for decision making on the time-lines and exact strategies that need to be deployed. This will be facilitated by con-ducting escalated strategic RT-PCR test-ing.

In addition to passive, active and senti-nel surveillance, the CCPSL recommends antibody testing among those providing frontline essential services and those neg-ative for RT-PCR 2 weeks after recovery.

This, it said, will provide guidance to determine the stage of the epidemic in the country and help categorize the geograph-ical areas based on risk as well as deter-mine the pattern of infectivity by aggres-

sive continuous contact tracing. Warning that ending the curfew too soon could lead to a second outbreak, the CCPSL said that, on the other hand, enforcing it for too long could further cripple the economy and public morale.

“When to end the current phase must be decided at national level by an expert panel comprising health and non-health authorities with vigilant monitoring of the area-specific caseloads, as premature re-laxation of the lockdown in any part of the country could affect the spread in the rest of the areas. If Sri Lanka can maintain the low numbers of new COVID-19 cases at national level along with no solid evidence of community transmission (i.e. no known epidemiological link for the transmission), moving to more and more relaxed phases can be considered with time,” it said.

Since every geographical area would not pose a similar threat for COVID-19, a blan-ket exit strategy is not applicable across the board to the entire country. Instead, said the CCPSL, targeted strategies need to be worked out at area level – at the district level. In the initial stage, each district in the country should be categorized accord-ing to the caseload prevailing in each area.

With further understanding of the be-

haviour of the epidemic/ people in each district, relevant authorities may shift the focus to clusters of divisional secretariats (DS) areas or to individual DS areas within a district, the report said. However, it add-ed, in all situations, more stringent criteria should continue to be applied for areas un-der strict quarantine.

“It should be reiterated that such deci-sions on relaxing or maintaining lockdown should be facilitated by a multi-discipli-nary expert panel at national level with adequate representation from the index localities. In the absence of defined case-wise cut-offs or strict timelines, the de-cision makings throughout this process must be reflective and done using a fre-quently revisited process.”

Within each of the identified risk areas, the withdrawal of curfew implemented measures/restrictions needs to be carried out in phases in a staggered manner, while ensuring the continuity of interventions carried out so far to contain the epidemic, the CCPSL said.

The report also went onto outline coun-try-level measures to be taken in the event of an exit from the current lockdown, with recommendations for future challenges.

-economynext.com

Community Physicians recommend staggered exit strategy

Prioritize containing COVID-19 over elections

FUTA questions regulator decision to reopen universities in May

Govt. steps up efforts to assist Sri Lankans in the Middle East

Muslims call for probe into ‘hate mongering’

Meteor shower visible in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO – Now is not the time for elections in Sri Lanka, given the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, Malcolm Cardi-nal Ranjith said.

Addressing a media briefing in Co-lombo yesterday (16) he said the country should not go to the polls until no new cases are reported.

“I believe that getting over the hurdle of the virus pandemic is more important than the elections,” the Catholic Bishop of Colombo said.

“There are new cases being reported every day and thousands in quarantine at the moment, so we are yet to fully control this epidemic,” he said.

He also said the sombre events planned for the first anniversary of the Easter Sunday bombings last year have been cancelled because of the COVID 19 threat. “We planned for events at the shrine of St

Anthony at Kochchikade and at St Sebas-tian’s at Katuwapitiya, but those events are cancelled for April 21,” he said.

Instead, he called on all Sri Lankans to observe two minutes silence at 8:45 a.m. on the 21st in remembrance of the victims.

“After that at 8:47 light a lamp and pray for the victims and their families,” he said.

Ranjith pointed out that apart from the many Catholics and Christians, people of other faiths, as well as foreign tourists had lost their lives in the attacks.

“We are requesting the Churches to ring the bells at this time and the Tem-ples and the Kovils and other placed where they have bells to do so,” he said. “They can light a lamp or a candle and say a Gaatha or a stanza at the time,” he said.

-economynext.com

COLOMBO - Sri Lanka’s Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) yesterday (16) urged the Univer-sity Grants Commission (UGC) to recon-sider a decision to reopen state universi-ties in May.

In a statement issued yesterday, FUTA questioned the rationale behind the UGC decision in a situation where the govern-ment has yet to rule out the possibility of a surge in COVID-19 cases even as the situation appears to be under control.

“Though the COVID-19 situation in the country appears to be under control com-pared to other countries, the daily patient count is still in the rise and more impor-tantly, the epidemiologists and the medi-cal experts have not ruled out the possi-bility of a surge in the number of patients yet,” the statement said.

The UGC’s announcement regarding a three phase reopening of State univer-sities starting from May 4, FUTA said, came as a surprise to the entire country.

“Though all of us would love to see the end of this crisis and resume to work as soon as possible, the UGC’s decision to reopen the universities even before the government eases the restrictions on so-cial movements seems a bit premature and irrational,” FUTA said.

Considering the safety of the students and the staff under the prevailing situa-tion, FUTA urged the UGC to explain the rationale behind its decision to reopen the universities on the given dates “at a time when all expert in the entire world have failed to accurately predict a time-line to eradicate the disease.”

-ENCL

COLOMBO - Several Muslim organiza-tions have called for an “immediate inves-tigation and urgent action on the contin-ued hate mongering against the Muslim community,” in a letter addressed to the acting Inspector General of Police amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

“We wish to state that it is also impor-tant to investigate whether any organized group is supporting, aiding and abetting the spread of racial and religious hatred to destabilize the country at a time when

the Government’s fullest attention is on controlling and eliminating the deadly COVID-19 here in Sri Lanka,” the letter said.

It goes on to detail several incidents of reported hate speech towards Muslim, including one where a speaker claims “intelligence personnel of the country’s armed forces” were involved in spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Amongst the other incidents were calls not to buy products from Muslim shops

and conspiracy theories claiming Mus-lims were aiding the spread of coronavi-rus on the island.

The letter comes after the Sri Lanka government made cremations compulso-ry for all coronavirus victims, disregard-ing advice from the World Health Organi-zation (WHO) and going against Islamic tradition. The move was criticized by UN Special Rapporteurs who appealed to Co-lombo to reconsider.

-TG

COLOMBO – Lyrids, One of the oldest known annual meteor showers, will be vis-ible in Sri Lanka from April 16 to 25, peak-ing on the night of April 22.

Professor ChandanaJayaratne, Director, Astronomy and Space Science Unit, Univer-sity of Colombo, in a press release yesterday (16) said the meteor shower is best seen dur-ing early morning hours before the sunrise, and would be visible together with Jupiter, Saturn and Mars close to the overhead and Mercury above the eastern horizon.

Meteors of the Lyrids appear to come from the constellation of Lyra and from a single point in the sky – the radiant – that

lies just above the bright blue star Vega, the release said, explaining that between April 16 and 25, a few meteors can be seen per night, but on the night of April 22, the Earth will encounter the densest part of the me-teor stream.

“After 17th, the Moon will be out of the way allowing us to see the full display un-hindered,” Professor Jayaratne, adding the period was also favourable for sky observa-tions as air pollution caused by human ac-tivities has become minimum due to coro-navirus pandemic, resulting in very clear skies.

-ENCL

COLOMBO - Welfare measures for mi-grant workers in the Middle East received an added boost this week, following a de-cision by the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) to make available resources from the Workers’ Welfare Fund, originally confined to those reg-istered with the Bureau, to all migrant workers irrespective of their registration status, through units within Sri Lanka Missions abroad in 16 stations.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations in a statement issued yesterday (16) said this was in addition to funds already allocated by the ministry and the services provided by the missions in collaboration with lo-cal Sri Lankan associations and religious establishments across the world in 67 cit-ies.

It said the ministry had also sought an additional allocation from the Treasury to meet the increasing needs of all overseas Sri Lankans in need of assistance amidst

the COVID-19 outbreak, to increase the efforts of distribution of dry rations. “This is to help overcome immediate dif-ficulties experienced by the migrants who are unable to return to Sri Lanka, in view of the present closure of the airports in Sri Lanka for arrival, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the ministry said.

It said the measures followed a video conference held on Wednesday (15) chaired by Foreign Secretary Ravi-nathaAryasinha and attended by senior officials overseeing the region and with the ambassadors of Sri Lanka Missions and Consulates in the Middle East.

Generic issues and other aspects of the present crisis, were also discussed during the meeting, it said, adding that heads of mission and SLBFE Heads of Unit in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Iran and Israel participated in the discussion.

-ENCL

Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Ranjithadjusts his face mask during a press conference in Colombo yesterday (16), announcing the cancellation of all commemorative events marking the first anniversary of the deadly Easter Sunday bombings to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

J.Sujeewakumar/ENCL

BOI companies to recommence operations

Companies under the Board of Invest-ment of Sri Lanka (BOI) are to be allowed to gradually recommence operations, ac-cording to its Director General, Sanjay-aMohottala. The decision had been taken in line with the government’s desire to gradually open up the economy. Mohottala said the BOI will be facilitating the rele-vant companies to recommence operations while strictly adhering to the guidelines of the Ministry of Health.SLMC calls for party secretaries’ meeting

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) has requested the National Election Com-mission to convene a Party Secretaries meeting at the earliest to discuss various matters. This follows the announcement by the Commission of its inability to hold the 2020 General Election as scheduled, due to the COVID -19 outbreak in Sri Lanka. The party has also requested the Commission not to take any decision to publish a ‘No-

tice of poll’ at the prevailing conditions, as it would seriously compromise any chance of holding free and fair elections.

China to air-freight PCR kits, medical equipment

A batch of medical supplies including 20,016 PCR diagnostic kits, 10,000 pro-tective medical face mask and 100,000 surgical face masks donated by the govern-ment of China is to be air-freighted from Shanghai to Colombo today (17). Ranil urges Trump to reconsider WHO funding

Former Prime Minister RanilWick-remesinghe has requested US President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), which could have a detrimental impact on the programs in countries like Sri Lanka. President Trump announced on Tuesday (14) that US fund-ing would be put on hold for 60 to 90 days pending a review of the WHO’s warnings about the coronavirus and China.

APRIL 17 - 19, 2020 WEEKEND EXPRESS

India hospital segregates Muslim and Hindu coronavirus patients Don’t expect that to last

As focus turns to easing lockdowns

Amid outbreak India imposes fines, jail term for spitting in public

In South Korea vote By e San un

By S e en lan eBy a

HOT TOPICS

Corona-apartheid

LONDON- Donald Trump has again questioned China’s transpar-ency over the coronavirus outbreak, casting doubt on the origins of the virus and number of cases, while signalling the US would soon join countries across Europe in easing its lockdown.

“Do you really believe those num-bers in this vast country called Chi-na?” the US president said, when asked about the severity of the US death toll at a White House press briefing. “We report everything, we’re reporting the cases and our reporting is good. We’re reporting every death.”

Worldwide, cases have topped two million, with more than 137,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US accounts for more than 638,000 cases, and close to 31,000 deaths, while China has recorded a little over 83,000 cases and 3,300 deaths.

Trump went on to endorse a the-ory that the naturally occurring vi-rus escaped a laboratory in Wuhan, saying: “We’re hearing the story, and we’ll see … but we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.” Secretary of state Mike Pompeo later told Fox News the Wuhan virus lab was near the wet market and said: “The Chinese government needs to come clean.”

China’s foreign ministry spokes-man Zhao Lijian did not directly address Trump’s comments during a daily briefing yesterday. But he

did say that World Health Organi-zation’s officials “have said multiple times there is no evidence the new coronavirus was created in a labo-ratory.”

Trump’s comments provoked an angry response from the editor of the state-run Global Times.

The Pentagon’s top general, Mark Milley, cast doubt on the lab theory this week. Trump had previously drawn condemnation from Beijing by referring to coronavirus as “the Chinese virus.”

He was expected to announce new guidelines yesterday (16) aimed at helping states with low virus trans-mission rates ease their restrictions sooner than May 1, claiming some states were “champing at the bit.”

“The battle continues but the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases,” he said, without giving details. “Hope-fully that will continue, and we will continue to make great progress.

“These encouraging develop-ments have put us in a very strong position to finalise guidelines on states for reopening the country.”

Mike Pence, who heads the coro-navirus task force, said: “The Amer-ican people will be encouraged to know as we stand here today, 24% of the counties of this country have no reported coronavirus cases.”

However, US business leaders have warned Trump that a dramatic increase in testing and availability of protective equipment would be needed before they could restart

commercial operations, measures echoed by health experts.

Similarly, the European Union and embattled WHO have urged caution and co-operation before any steps are taken to ease lock-downs.

Spain and Italy – the worst-affected EU nations – have begun allowing some non-essential work-ers back to work, and France has said it will start easing restrictions from 11 May. Germany will partially reopen schools and some smaller shops early next month. Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic have all made small-scale moves to lift some measures.

The European commission said loosening restrictions would “una-voidably lead to a corresponding increase in new cases” and said all action should be gradual and coor-dinated.

Economic pressure to open up national economies is mounting. The IMF said yesterday Asia’s eco-nomic growth would grind to a halt for the first time in 60 years, as the crisis takes an “unprecedented” toll on the service sector and major ex-port destinations.

G20 finance ministers have agreed to suspend poorer coun-tries’ debt payments to help them prepare for increased spending on healthcare. The measure takes ef-fect from 1 May and lasts until the end of the year.

-The Guardian/Agencies

By a a ussell an a en ies

Trump wades further into China COVID-19 row

Facebook takes on virus fakery Virus delivers landslide win to governing party

Spewing offenceLONDON - Facebook yesterday (16) announced its many users will see tailor-made warnings highlighting facts about the coro-navirus pandemic, after being accused of failing to counter the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories.

The leading social media platform has already been publishing fact-checking articles about the global outbreak through its part-nerships with media organizations, including one with Agence France-Presse.

"We will also soon begin showing messages in News Feed to people who previously engaged with harmful misinformation related to COVID-19 that we've since removed, connecting them with accurate information," chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

The messages will pop up in the relevant language for users who have previously clicked on or shared virus disinformation, and point them to authoritative sources like the World Health Organi-zation.

The new service goes beyond warnings that Facebook says it slapped on about 40 million posts related to the virus in March alone, following reviews of the posts by independent fact-checkers such as AFP. "When people saw those warning labels, 95 percent of the time they did not go on to view the original content," Zuck-erberg said.

Another new program called Get The Facts will highlight coro-navirus articles on Facebook written by fact-checking partners.

Among recent articles by AFP's Fact Check service, one coun-tered the idea that garlic is an effective treatment against COV-ID-19. Another refuted theories that the virus is somehow rooted in 5G telecommunications. Facebook said that on its main plat-form and on Instagram, more than 350 million of its two billion users had now clicked through to a dedicated coronavirus infor-mation centre since its launch last month.

The company has also limited the number of times users can forward messages on its WhatsApp calling and texting service, to curb disinformation. Well before the current crisis, Facebook had been under pressure from governments and regulators for ped-dling fake news and violating users' privacy. European Commis-sion vice president Vera Jourova welcomed the new measures, which she noted came after a series of contacts between Facebook and EU representatives. "However, we will need more transparen-cy and better access to data for researchers to fully verify the scope and impact of false content and to be able to assess Facebook's ac-tions from the perspectives of both public health and fundamental rights," she said. The enhanced warnings were also welcomed by online activist group Avaaz, which like other critics has accused Facebook of acting sluggishly even when users' posts clearly im-part fake or harmful content.

-Agence France-Presse

SEOUL — President Moon Jae-in’s governing party in South Korea won a landslide in parliamentary elections Wednesday (15), as he leveraged his surging popularity over his country’s largely successful battle against the coronavi-rus to increase his political sway.

With more than 99% of the votes counted, Moon’s left-leaning Democratic Party had won 163 seats in the 300-mem-ber National Assembly, according to the National Election Commission yesterday (16) morning. A satellite party the Democrats created for Wednesday’s elections won 17 seats. Together, the two groups took three-fifths of all seats, giving Moon the largest majority of seats in three decades.

The main conservative opposition United Future Party and its own satellite Future Korea Party suffered a crush-ing defeat, winning 103 seats between them. The remain-ing seats were taken by independents and candidates from smaller parties. Pandemic or not, South Koreans proved ea-ger to vote in the election, widely seen as a midterm referen-dum on Moon, elected to a five-year term in 2017. The voter turnout was 66.2%, the highest for a parliamentary election in 28 years. Wednesday’s election marked the first time in 16 years that left-leaning parties have secured a parliamen-tary majority, as South Koreans expressed their support for Moon’s government, which has won plaudits for bringing the epidemic under control.

Their victories could embolden Moon to reinvigorate his stalled diplomacy with North Korea and press ahead with domestic priorities, like reforming state prosecutors’ offices. In South Korea, elections typically have been decided by re-gional loyalties, ideological differences over North Korea or issues like the economy and corruption. But this time, “how the government has responded to the coronavirus was the most decisive factor in the president’s approval ratings and in the parliamentary election,” said Park Si-young, head of WinG Korea, a Seoul-based political survey company.

The election in South Korea “tells other world leaders that how they respond to their own crisis could make or break their political fortunes,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior adviser on Northeast Asia and nuclear policy at the International Crisis Group. “Because the pandemic is at the top of every-one’s mind.”

-New York Times

NEW DELHI– Spitting in public in India will be punishable with a fine and a jail term of up to one year, the government has said, as the number of COVID-19 positive cases crossed 12,000 yesterday (16). Spit-ting is one of many widespread problems that the country of 1.3 billion has to tackle in its efforts to contain the spread of the disease.

Spitting after chewing tobacco, betel leaf, areca nut and related products is common across India and local authorities in several cities have imposed penalties on such acts for years, but in most cases the strictures are not taken seriously. There have also been re-cent incidents of COVID-19 patients spitting at healthcare workers.

"The virus spreads through droplets so spitting is a dangerous act in the present circumstances and we need to impose the strictest punishment," Home Ministry spokeswoman Punya Srivastava said. New guidelines issued by the federal Home Min-istry recommended that regional govern-ments should impose a strict ban on tobacco that is chewed and not smoked and strictly prohibit spitting. Refusal to comply with government orders under the Disaster Man-agement Act may result in imprisonment up to one year or a fine, or both. The exact pen-alties are set by the regional governments.

India's COVID-19 positive cases reached 12,380 yesterday with 1,489 recoveries. Of the 414 who died, more than 180 were from financial hub Mumbai and the western state of Maharashtra. The new guidelines were issued on Wednesday (15), after India ex-tended a 21-day nationwide lockdown in its efforts to contain the coronavirus to May 3.

-dpa

Coronavirus has lifted leaders everywhere

BRUSSELS — President Emmanuel Macron, never very popular, has touched his highest ap-proval ratings in France since the onset of the coronavirus. As Italy has been devastated, Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte has hit a remarkable 71%, up 27 points. Even in Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson waffled over a strong response, then became seriously ill himself, the government is the most popular in decades.

There is nothing like a good crisis to get di-verse populations to rally around their leaders. When people are confused and afraid, they tend to trust their governments because to think that authorities are themselves confused and afraid, let alone incompetent, is too much to bear.

The question is whether that will last once the crisis eases, criticism mounts and normal politics resumes. Usually, it does not last long. Formal inquiries into the inevitable errors and mistakes soon follow, and voters, if allowed, often take their revenge, even on the most effective leaders.

And it is safe to say that many of those getting a boost for the moment have been less than ef-fective, judging by the crushing toll of a virus im-pervious to partisan bluster and unforgiving of mistakes.

The uncertainties may best be demonstrated in the United States, where President Donald Trump, in a highly charged election year, got only a small bump up that did not last, given widespread ambivalence about how the White House has handled the pandemic.

“The initial instinct is to rally around the flag because it is seen as unpatriotic and unhelpful not to do so,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But so-cieties can’t be mobilized in perpetuity. There’s inevitably a fatigue, and people will ask more dif-ficult questions.”

One might expect competent leadership to benefit more. That has been largely the case in countries, particularly in northern Europe, that imposed tough measures early that allowed them to start reopening tentatively this week.

In Austria, where returning workers are re-quired to wear masks, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s approval has risen to 77%, up 33 points. Similarly, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands has 75% support, up 30 points.

As some children return to school and her gov-ernment prepares Danes for a phased reopening that could take many months, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s support is up 40 points, to 79%.

The virus has even managed to revive the lame-duck government in Germany, which had been shedding support to both the Greens and the far-right. Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose performance has been mostly ap-plauded both inside and outside the country, has risen 11 points, to 79%.

But even in the countries hardest hit by the vi-rus, leaders have also gotten a boost, in ways that at first glance would not seem to make perfect sense.

Italy has the highest death toll in the world behind the United States, and the government seemed to fumble through a piecemeal response that was always a step behind the virus. But Con-te has seen his overall approval rating soar.

“In a warlike situation, you want to trust who governs you, and that goes for bad leaders and competent ones,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs. “But my hunch is that ultimately true colours will show.”

Already there are signs that some leaders are slipping from their peaks as public patience wears thin. In the case of Macron, who acknowl-edged mistakes as he announced an extension of France’s lockdown this week, polls show him back down to 43% from 59% March 13, the high-est rating of his administration.

The crisis surrounding the coronavirus has produced much the same pattern as more vio-lent conflict, when shows of support are typically immediate, if ephemeral. In October 1979, Presi-dent Jimmy Carter had a 31% approval rating. But after the siege of the US Embassy in Iran, his approval hit 58% in January 1980. Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan that November.

Trump’s smaller-than-expected bump, given the coronavirus, has made him something of an outlier. While other world leaders are reaching highs in the 70% range, his approval ratings hov-er between 40% and 45%, reflecting his strong base but also widespread criticism of his perfor-mance. One “positive” result of the virus, Tocci said, may be the discrediting of populism and a return to trust in expertise and more rational government.

“The whole nationalist populist surge was con-nected to an historical moment where you could afford to play with fire,” she noted. “But now the situation is really bad, so much more dangerous, and people don’t want the easy nonsense from media-savvy populists.”

She cited polls showing that Matteo Salvini, the noisy Italian populist, has been losing sup-port on the right, while another far-right opposi-tion politician, GiorgiaMeloni, “on the rational, coolheaded, nonpopulist right,” has done better.

Much of the public reaction may ultimately depend on how long the sense of crisis lasts, the onslaught of the virus being uncertain and open-ended. The unlocking of the lockdown will itself be fraught with political danger.

“Though we see these leaders making deci-sions, they’re not making them from a position of strength but from uncertainty and weakness,” said Nicholas Dungan, a Paris-based senior fel-low at the Atlantic Council.

“They’re not leading so much as administer-ing,” he said. “And once people are out and about and not confined anymore doing their duty, peo-ple are going to be quite angry, and this will lead to greater instability.”

Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics, noted that Win-ston Churchill was revered for having presided over the victory over Adolf Hitler but was sum-marily tossed out of office in 1945.

“Winning a war is absolutely no recipe for stay-ing in office,” Travers said. “When the threat of illness goes away, then the consequences of be-ing protected from the threat are very different.”

-New York Times

Medical workers work a night shift outside of a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Centre in the Borough Park neighbourhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Wednesday (15). Hospitals in New York City, which have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus, are still struggling with an influx of COVID-19 cases

- Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP

4

In what many are calling a case of "apartheid" dur-ing a global pandemic, a government-run hospital in Ahmedabad, the main city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, has segregated coronavirus patients based on their religion, claiming the order came from the govern-ment.

"Generally, there are separate wards for male and fe-male patients. But here, we have made separate wards for Hindu and Muslim patients. It is a decision of the govern-ment and you can ask them," The Indian Express quoted Dr.Gunvant H.Rathod, the medical superintendent of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, as saying on Wednesday (16).

The Gujarat state is governed by the Hindu national-ist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also governs the country. Narendra Modi was the state's chief minister for nearly 13 straight years from 2001 before he became In-dia's prime minister in 2014.

Jayanti Ravi, the principal secretary of health in the Gujarat government, when questioned about the segrega-tion of patients on religious lines, said "I have no idea."

Meanwhile, Gujarat's Health Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel said nothing of that sort had happened.

"Whatever is needed to give people the best possible treatment is being done," he said and hung up.

The state's health department also put out an official statement, calling reports of separate wards for Muslims and Hindus "baseless."

"Patients are kept in different wards based on their medical condition, severity of the symptoms and age, purely based on the advice of the treating doctors. There-fore, reports appearing in certain media are totally base-less and misleading," it said.

However, in The Indian Express report, a patient was quoted as saying, "On Sunday night, the names of 28 men admitted in the first ward (A-4) were called out. We were then shifted to another ward (C-4)."

"While we were not told why we were being shifted, all the names that were called out belonged to one commu-nity. We spoke to one staff member in our ward and he said this had been done for 'the comfort of both commu-nities'." According to a doctor quoted in another report by The Hindu newspaper, "Certain patients from the major-ity community were not comfortable being in the same ward with patients of the minority community."

"After some patients complained, it was decided to segregate them on temporary basis," the doctor told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.

When Ahmedabad-based sociologist Ghanashyam Shah was asked by if the hospital segregating patients according to their religion amounted to apartheid, he re-plied, "Absolutely."

"Knowing Gujarat, I am not surprised it has happened," he said. "It is a very obvious kind of thing. The fake news propaganda around Muslims spreading the virus is prob-ably rampant across India. But I can see it is visible in Gujarat." Shah was alluding to a widespread Islamopho-bia fuelled by the coronavirus pandemic, especially after TablighiJamaat, a Muslim missionary group, organised a congregation in New Delhi in March.

The congregation was later linked to hundreds of COV-ID-19 positive cases across the country, triggering a na-tionwide hunt to trace the attendees.

On Wednesday, TablighiJamaat chief MaulanaSaad-Kandhalvi was charged with "culpable homicide."

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization had warned against any religious profiling of coronavirus pa-tients by the governments across the world.

"Having COVID-19 is not anybody's fault. Every case is a victim. It is very important that we do not profile the cases on the basis of racial, religious and ethnic lines," WHO's emergency program director Mike Ryan had said.

According to media reports, more than half of the near-ly 500 cases of coronavirus in Ahmedabad have come from Muslim-majority neighbourhoods.

The city has long been a hotbed of communal divide, with separate localities marked for Hindus and Muslims.

In 2002, Ahmedabad was one of the main sites of state-wide religious violence, in which nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed, dozens of women raped, and thousands oth-ers displaced.

The violence followed the outbreak of fire on a passen-ger train, in which 60 Hindu pilgrims were killed.

-Al Jazeera

Dispatch

Wedding preparations resume in Wuhan as coronavirus lockdown lifts

By as n u ie e

By lissa u in

By iyali Su

REALITY CHECK

By B en a as Suen

It is dusk, my favourite hour except for dawn, and the muezzin is singing the evening prayer. There will be one more prayer, at about 8:30. These two prayers (for me) are the most beautiful of the day. No matter the temperature, hot or cold, I open my windows to hear them.

Now the mosques are empty, and the religious authorities have closed the shrines to keep people from gathering in large groups. Even the Friday Prayer — the most important of the week, when thousands usually fill the larger mosques and spill into the streets — is done at home. It was a hard step for the clerics to take; mosques stayed open even during the US-led invasion.

I often walk at this hour along the Ti-gris. There is almost no one there now. The families that used to spread their blankets on the strip of park next to the river no longer picnic, and the hawkers of cheap biscuits and orange soda have all gone home. So the silence of this twilight walk makes for a sad if peaceful inter-lude. Soon it will be too hot for walking even at night, but for now the evenings are soft.

Baghdad, a city of about seven mil-lion, is usually a cacophony. The infra-structure is dilapidated, and litter lies in heaps, but the city had been defiantly alive. Until the curfew, the streets were a jumble of armoured 4x4 vehicles, cheap Iranian-made taxis and the occasional horse-drawn cart. Given that many peo-ple live in small houses or apartments, life happened mostly outside. At dusk the streets were crowded with shoppers, kids kicking soccer balls and men play-ing dominoes on flimsy card tables. Not anymore.

Even in the worst days of the 2003 war, when the Americans were bomb-ing, it was hard for people to stay inside. But the invisible enemy of the virus has hit people’s nerves differently. They are staying home because they are afraid. Although the number of confirmed cases nationwide is relatively low, about 1,400, there is fear that many more infected people are going undetected because of the stigma associated with illness and quarantine.

Almost all the demonstrators who had gathered to protest government corrup-tion and Iranian influence have with-drawn from Tahrir Square, though many of the tents, tattered by the wind and rain, remain. There are still some food vendors selling bowls of warm chickpeas to the few protesters who have stayed, but the music and art and a sense of po-litical possibility are long gone.

It is as if someone has dimmed all the lights.

I go shopping for food and feel privi-leged. Many Iraqis are running out of money because they cannot work under the lockdown, so the outdoor markets are filled with women picking things up and putting them down again after checking the price. It seems a small in-convenience that I am getting bored of halloumi cheese. The sweet-tart citrus fruit called sindhi — a cross between a grapefruit and a pomelo but drier, so you can pick up peeled slices and not get your fingers sticky — is still in the markets. Soon, though, its season will be over.

To keep people close to home, there is a car curfew; exceptions are made for “essential workers” and journalists, who are given badges that police can check. The curfew is being observed more scru-pulously in wealthier areas. But in poorer places tuk-tuks still zoom around and sidewalk vendors lay out their wares, then quickly gather them up when police come around the corner. For the most part, though, Baghdad has come to a standstill.

On a recent day in Sadr City, the vast impoverished slum in eastern Baghdad, I said “Shlonich?” (How are you?) to a bosomy lady standing at the gate of her house, grandchildren clustered around her.

“Imam Hussain is protecting me,” she replied, referring to a revered and mar-tyred grandson of the Prophet Muham-mad. “I can never get sick.” She pulled a brilliant green scarf from around her neck that she said came from the sacred city of Karbala and stretched out her hand to give it to me. I am afraid that I stepped back and held up my hand in the international signal for “stop.” She looked at me dubiously, as if to say, “You’re really missing something.”

I am grateful that I have not fallen ill and that I am not — like so many Iraqis — anxious about how to feed my family. I am grateful for the silence and for the few sounds that no longer have to com-pete with the clatter of the city. A bird’s song. The muezzin’s call to prayer. In normal times, that call draws the men to mosque and signals working people to lay out their prayer rugs wherever they are. Now it echoes down the empty streets and ends with this plea: “Sali fi beitak.” (Pray at home.)

- Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times’ Baghdad bureau chief,

is on her fourth tour of Iraq since 2003. She was there when the country

stopped flights in and out in mid-March to slow the coronavirus and declared

a lockdown for all but trips to markets and doctors, or for short walks. We

asked her to tell us about life in Iraq since then

MANILA — Even before the coronavirus arrived in Manila, a saying in the capi-tal’s sprawling San Roque slum — ‘No one dies from a fever’ — crystallized the many threats that its residents faced in their daily lives.

Drug-fuelled petty crime. Food short-ages. Overcrowding and poor sanitation. Fever, body aches and coughs were com-monplace long before the virus came.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s lockdown of Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island and home to Manila, is moving into its second month, plunging San Roque’s people even deeper into poverty as the virus contin-ues to rage. Yet the restrictions have not stopped runny-nosed children from play-ing tag in the slum’s labyrinth of alleyways as parents shout half-hearted admonitions to stay away from one another.

Home to roughly 6,000 families — con-servatively, about 35,000 people — San Roque, in Manila’s northern suburb of Qu-ezon, has for years been home to some of the poorest people on the fringes of Philip-pine society.

Many of the men are day labourers who work at construction sites in the ever-ex-panding metropolis. Others are provincial migrants whose journeys took them to the slum’s squalid shanties, made from dilapi-dated cardboard and rusting iron sheet roofing. “Now it is a nightmare for people like us,” said Susana Baldoza, a grand-mother of four who has lived nearly half her 59 years in San Roque, subsisting on odd jobs. “Now that there is a lockdown, we can’t go outside to look for jobs, to survive.”

She said she does not doubt that the virus is a killer but believes that many are likelier to die of hunger because government aid has been slow to trickle in. Now neighbours are helping neighbours as the community turns inward to feed its poorest residents.

Frustration over the lockdown recently exploded into violence. An April 1 gather-ing in San Roque became an impromptu rally, with dozens taking to the streets de-manding answers from the government about when they would receive promised relief.

Police officers in riot gear and fatigues responded with force, scuffling with pro-testers and sending 21 people to jail. Du-terte accused Kadamay, a group that advo-cates for the poor, of inciting the violence and warned that his government would not be lenient toward those who challenged it.

“Now is the time to set an example to everybody,” Duterte said, telling police to “shoot them dead” if they believed pro-testers were endangering their lives. “I am not used to being challenged. Not me. Let this be a warning to all.” So far, there have been no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in San Roque, although Baldoza is almost sure that residents have been infected.

“I pray to God that there won’t be any, but how could there be none?” she said.

As of Wednesday (15), 349 people had died in the Philippines from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 5,453 infections had been confirmed. But that figure is likely to rise sharply, with the Phil-ippine government having just begun mass testing this week. Community leaders in San Roque have been tacking up cardboard signs reminding people not to spit. Some people have started wearing face masks, but most don’t. Wearing them in the city’s stifling heat can be suffocating, some said; others said they would rather spend what little money they had on food.

Baldoza, the grandmother of four, was volunteering as a cook for a community kitchen in San Roque, serving fried herring over rice, courtesy of the Catholic Church and a civic group that has been helping residents weather the crisis.

“People here are very poor, as you can see,” said Baldoza, frying fish outdoors in a wok. “We don’t have money and the luxury of going to the supermarkets. We haven’t received help from the government, no help from the outside, except the donations that they give us. And people can’t work.”

Her neighbour AnalynMikunog was waiting for the food to be served. Miku-nog’s partner has no permanent job, al-though sometimes he is lucky enough to find work on construction sites. He had just been hired as a day labourer when Duterte imposed the lockdown. Now the family’s future is bleak. “Sometimes we talk and wonder how long this lockdown will last,” she said. “Will we die hungry?”

-New York Times

Baghdad, a city gone still

WUHAN - Peng Jing stifles a laugh as she looks into the eyes of her tuxedo-clad fian-cée, Yao Bin, who is in turn trying not to step on the long train of her white wedding dress.

“Smile!” shouts the photographer as he snaps away.

Weddings, birthdays and celebrations have been cancelled around the world be-cause of the coronavirus pandemic but in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first appeared, they are finally resuming as authorities relax a strict lockdown that separated families, friends and lovers for over two months. Peng, a 24-year-old re-ceptionist and airport worker Yao, 28, had

been looking forward to getting married and carrying out wedding tasks including an elaborate photo shoot, when the epidemic abruptly put their plans on hold.

“We were supposed to register our mar-riage on Feb. 20, 2020” she said, referring to what was supposed to be one of the coun-try’s most popular wedding dates thanks to the incidence of number “2” and its conno-tations with couple hood.

The city’s lockdown on Jan. 23 put a halt to that, and prompted marriage registration bureaux across China to shut amid efforts to curb the virus. More than 50,000 peo-ple have been infected in Wuhan and 2,579

have died from the virus. “I sent her home and the next day the lockdown happened,” Yao said, recalling how abrupt it was. “I was very unhappy.”

While Yao’s job meant that he was allowed to continue to leave the house for work, the couple avoided seeing each other, only man-aging to talk, or sometimes argue, through games or messaging app WeChat.

“He kept wanting to send me things to eat and drink because the lockdown meant that we couldn’t go out to buy things, but I was scared, like what if he caught something while on the way? The situation was very se-rious at the time,” she said. They only man-

aged to meet in person at the end of March, when Peng’s office reopened.

“I was overwhelmed with emotions,” he said of that meeting.

The couple registered their marriage last Saturday (11), days after the city’s marriage registration bureau and are now making preparations to hold their traditional wed-ding feast in May. It will be a simple one, however, as continued epidemic control ef-forts in the city mean that big gatherings are still frowned upon and hotels are not taking bookings. Instead, they will hold it at Yao’s family home, they said.

-Reuters

Love wins

NEW DELHI - Polamma carefully descends the 250 steps from the hilltop slum where she lives in southern India to walk one kilometre to the nearest grocery store.

She is nine months pregnant and has four children to feed, but at the bottom of the steps community leaders of a dominant caste force her to go back empty-handed.

Since India went into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus on March 25, 57 families who live in Polamma's hilltop village in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, have been barred from going down the hill, even to pur-chase essentials such as food and medicine.

The families are part of the Yanadi com-munity, who work mainly as waste pickers and drain cleaners and who - even before the coronavirus - were segregated because of their caste.

"We've been locked up here, like prisoners -- we live near a milk factory, and there is not a drop of milk for my children to drink. We are called dirty, and they say we spread the disease," said Polamma, who only goes by one name.

India's caste system was officially abol-ished in 1950, but the 2,000-year-old social hierarchy imposed on people by birth still ex-ists in many aspects of life. The caste system categorizes Hindus at birth, defining their place in society, what jobs they can do and who they can marry.

Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, who fall outside the four main categories of Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders and merchants) and the Shudras (laborers), are considered "untouchables" or Dalits.

Millions of people, about 25% of India's population of 1.3 billion people, are grouped under the scheduled castes (Dalits) and scheduled tribes (Adivasis) in India's consti-tution. Adivasis are indigenous Indians who have been socially and economically margin-alized for centuries.

Both groups have long endured social iso-lation, but it's feared the rapid spread of the coronavirus and measures to stop it have worsened their segregation. Jobs that Dal-its and Adivasis have been forced to take for centuries - cleaners, manual scavengers and waste pickers - expose them to a greater risk of catching the virus. During the pandemic, their jobs are considered essential services by the Indian government, but many say they haven't been given adequate equipment to protect themselves against COVID-19. And if they get sick, there's no social safety net to ensure they don't fall even deeper into pov-erty. When the Spanish Flu pandemic ripped through India in 1918 killing almost 17 mil-lion people, caste played a crucial role in de-termining who received health care - and who died. Lower caste people living in crowded slums were the most exposed to the virus, and the least able to find food and medicine as the flu spread, according to historian Da-vid Arnold, who has extensively researched and written about the Spanish Flu epidemic in India. Historian Amit Kapoor, author of ‘Riding the Tiger,’ said 61 lower caste people died for every 1,000 in the community. For upper caste Hindus it was 19 for every 1,000, and the figure was even lower for Europeans living in India.

However, Kapoor believes that while peo-ple belonging to the lower caste were dis-proportionately impacted in 1918, the situa-tion now is different. "While caste was very

predominant in 1918, in 2020 the impact of epidemics have more to do with the economic hierarchy than the social hierarchy," said Ka-poor.

There's little doubt that lower caste Indi-ans are poorer than higher castes. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)'s global mul-tidimensional poverty index (MPI), half of scheduled tribes were considered poor com-pared to 15% of higher castes. Poverty makes lower castes more vulnerable during emer-gencies, according to the findings of a 2013 study by the International Dalit Solidarity Network, a network of international human rights groups fighting Dalit discrimination. For example, after the 2004 Asian tsunami, Dalits were forced to remove bodies and debris, for very little if any pay, and weren't offered any psychological support. Many weren't compensated for their lost posses-sions, such as the bikes and fishing nets that were swept away, the report said. Dalit activ-ists fear the coronavirus will again reinforce inequality in India.

"India has 600,000 villages and almost every village a small pocket on the outskirts is meant for Dalits," said Paul Divakar, a Dalit activist from the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights. "This settlement is far from health care centers, banks, schools and other essential services. During times like Covid-19, the aid may not even reach this small pocket." He said repeated advice on social distancing threatened to encourage the kind of behav-ior seen in the northern city of Bareilly when migrant workers were doused with bleach disinfectant. "COVID-19 is legitimizing these actions all in the name of hygiene and social distancing," said Divakar.

Dalits are forced to take up the jobs such as cleaning, manual scavenging, working at brick kilns and leather-crafting -- occupa-tions considered "filthy" or "dishonourable" for higher-caste communities. The sanita-tion and cleaning work formally and infor-mally employs five million people, of which 90% belong to the lowest Dalit sub-castes, according to a five-month study of sanita-tion workers across India carried out in 2017 by Dalberg Advisors, a development policy and strategy firm, with the support of The Gates Foundation. The Indian government has deemed sanitation and cleaning to be es-sential services, which must continue during the lockdown. India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a directive that sani-tation workers in hospitals and elsewhere should be provided with personal protective equipment (PPE), including N95 masks and gloves. Sanitation workers clean hospitals for seven to eight hours a day, but many say they have not been given sufficient, if any, protec-tive gear, said SuryaprakashSolanke, leader of a Dalit workers union in Mumbai.

"For years they have been cleaning and scrubbing hospitals, residential complexes, streets and railway stations. But instead of providing them with protective gear, and re-warding them, people are ostracizing them. Some have even been refused water to drink, when requested while at work," said Solanke.

VanitaBhaskar Salvi works as a sanitation worker in a hospital in the Mumbai district of Thane. She says she and her colleagues have only been given single-layered cloth masks to protect them from the virus while at work. "We are lesser humans. We clean and wash

the entire ward. When patients soil their clothes, we clean them up. All for Rs 8,500 ($115) a month. And now we are further at risk of disease as we have no protection gear when we touch and clean all the waste," she said.

Salvi says she is scared of contracting the virus and would prefer not to go to work, but as the only one with a job in her family, she has no option. Kiran Dighavkar, officer at the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the civic body governing Mumbai, said: "There are enough kits with us for sanitation work-er. Masks, gloves, kits, everything." CNN reached out to officials in the Health and Labour Ministry for comment on allegation insufficient PPE had been provided to sanita-tion workers but did not receive a response. The work Dalits do exposes them to another risk: discrimination.

Sanoj Kumar left his job at a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu to return to his village near Bodh Gaya in Bihar before the lockdown was im-posed. He said he faced ostracism as soon as he stepped off the train.

"The police started stopping the returning migrants at the railway station and sending them for check-ups to the hospital. They were stopping people in a random manner. Those who were well dressed and seemed like be-longing to an upper class and dominant caste were not singled out. The others like me were stopped and sent to the hospital," he said.

After his check-up, Kumar was sent home and ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days. He says health workers check on him every two days. He obliges because he understands the need to fight the virus, but every time they visit, it adds to his family's social stigma.

"They should come up with a better and more sensitive way of doing this," said Ku-mar.

Lower caste Indians are not only more ex-posed to the coronavirus and face more stig-matization, but they're also being left out of government subsidies.

On March 26, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that all healthcare workers would be covered by health insur-ance for three months, and that sanitarian workers would receive special insurance cov-er. The Rs 50 lakh ($66,000) measure was part of the government's $22.5 billion stimu-lus package. But to claim it, workers need an employment ID card validating their status as sanitation workers. Many sanitation work-ers don't have that. According to the Dalit Bahujan Resource Centre, 22% of sanitation workers, manual scavengers and waste pick-ers did not have the 12-digit, biometric na-tional identification number and 33% did not possess ration cards to get subsidized food through the public distribution system. The unique national identification number is re-quired to access many government schemes including getting subsidies and direct cash transfers, and health insurance under the prime minister's health project, as well as to open a bank account.

"It has been seen that most Dalits and Adi-vasis, find it difficult to get these government ID cards ... or ration cards. Either the infor-mation doesn't reach them, or the enrolment camps to get biometric IDs are never set up in their villages and mostly they are asked to pay huge bribes to get these IDs made," said AlladiDevakumar, executive secretary of Dalit Bahujan Resource Centre.

-CNN

Virus piles on the pain for India’s untouchables

Pollama said she was stopped by higher caste community members as she tried to walk one kilometer to the market for food

- CNN

WEEKEND EXPRESS APRIL 17 - 19, 2020 5

‘Will we die hungry?’A teeming Manila slum chafes under lockdown

COMMENTARY

–AP

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President Gotabaya Rajapaksa addresses the Parliament during the ceremonial inauguration of the session in Colombo on January 3, 2020

Government’s dilemma

Patriotic science

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has a tough task ahead as he has to choose between holding elections on time at the end of May risking a fresh outbreak of COVID-19 infections or face a full-blown consti-tutional crisis.

With the Parliament dissolved a newly elected House needs to sit by June 2 and to do so elections have to be held within the next few weeks. All this is simple, if you are to listen to Minister Wimal Weerawansa.

In a video available on YouTube Weerawansa says the government is confident it is winning the battle with COVID-19.

“We can go into the election with confidence as we have beaten the virus. If in case an election is not possible within the period, then there will be no Parliament, but we have a president who has been elected by a huge margin and it will be his preroga-tive,” he says.

He goes on to say Parliament will not be there and the Constitution has no provisions to deal with such a situation, so it will be up to the president, and claims, “The courts will have no role.”

Not so fast, says constitutional expert Dr Jayam-pathyWickremeratne, who explains: “The govern-ance structure is like a three-legged stool and the country needs the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary to function. The president is answer-able to Parliament and the country cannot function without the House.”

The country cannot run without a Parliament for more than three months according to the Basic Law and that is why it is essential a poll needs to be held at the end of May.

“If that happens there will be an unprecedented crisis,” Wickremeratne warns.

But there is a way out, he says. “The president can rescind his order dissolving Parliament, which will buy time. Parliament can then nominally re-convene and continue until the end of its five-year term in August. Then Parliament can be dissolved and fresh elections called.”

This Wickramaratne says, would allow the coun-try to get over the COVID-19 epidemic.

Eminent legal scholar, Dr NihalJayawickreme has also proposed the same solution.

“If the parties are agreed that the same nomi-nations for the polls are needed then a one-time constitutional amendment in these extraordinary times could be agreed to among the parties and proposed to the courts,” he has said.

This solution is also supported by former parlia-mentarians such as MangalaSamaraweera.

“Parliament could also pass a Supplementary Estimate to battle the COVID-19 pandemic,” he proposed in a statement issued on Wednesday (15).

“I don’t want to contest an election where I have to climb over a pile of dead bodies to do so,” he said.

There is no doubt that a section of the govern-ment, particularly many of the Sri Lanka Podujana-Peramuna (SLPP) leaders who have been nomi-nated to run in the elections would prefer a quick campaign and a May-end poll.

The SLPP can win, but whether the party still has the momentum to win big is in some doubt.

Even the usually optimistic high profile health minister, PavithraWanniarachchi, conceded “that we are sure of winning 113 seats” which is a simple majority in Parliament.

The SLPP would prefer to win 150+ a two-thirds majority with which the party would roll-back the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

People are angry because of the restrictions on livelihoods and the damage done to the general economy, the loss of income by the COVID-19 pandemic and rightly or wrongly tend to blame the government in power.

The longer these restrictions go on the less popu-lar the government will be.

Professor RatnajeevanHoole who is a member of the National Elections Commission wrote earlier this month that the Commission stated the elec-tions cannot be held on time for the new Parlia-ment to meet by June 2.

“If we set that date, it would mean one of two things. One, the public in fear of COVID-19 would not stand in lines to vote. That means they will lose their franchise but will exercise their franchise if we do not rush into polls and watch the situation. This care for the franchise of the people, therefore, seems insincere and disingenuous to me, to service a narrow political agenda rather than any national cause as the time urgently calls for,” he said.

Hoole also warned that if the country were to “guestimate when the pandemic will be over, and set a date and the pandemic is still raging, people will go to the polls, stand in crowded lines, and spread this life-threatening virus. Alternatively, we might have 225 MPs elected with a handful of votes each as happened in the 1990s when EPDP MPs got returned sometimes with under 10 votes as a result of LTTE death threats against those who go to vote.”

The situation is comparable to that of the presi-dential election of 1988 when the poll went ahead while two insurrections in both the North and the South were raging and the Indian Peacekeeping Force was in the country.

The then opposition candidate Sirimavo Bandaranaike insisted that the poll be postponed until the threats to voters from the JVP in the South and the LTTE in the North ended. But the government of the day went ahead and brought the ruling UNP candidate to power even though barely half the registered electorate voted.

Another danger the Samagi Jana Balavegaya has pointed out is that the government is also impos-ing something of an extra-constitutional autocratic regime on the country “in the guise of fighting the COVID-19” pandemic.

With that machinery in hand, the media behav-ing like well-trained puppies and the police arrest-ing even people who criticize the government on Facebook, the president is in a powerful position to control the environment in the country during the elections.

The opposition is also in disarray and with voters and supporters fearful of gatherings because of the threat of the deadly virus, the ruling party could have a free run at the poll.

These are powerful temptations for the SLPP to run the risk of a COVID-19 outbreak and hold the elections, and win, come what may.

-economynext.com

By una ana ana

On March 26, the Chairman of the Government Medical Officers’ Asso-ciation (GMOA), Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon AnuruddhaPadeniya, extolled the virtues of pirit, or ritual Buddhist chanting, on national TV. Pad-eniya claimed that studies carried out in other countries have proven that pirit has physiological benefits and piritpæn (water that is blessed during chanting) undergoes molecular changes making it beneficial to human health.

The TV host eagerly latched on to Pad-eniya’s comments. He pointed out that people on social media with high school science knowledge derided traditional Sinhala religio-cultural practices, while here was a highly qualified medical pro-fessional affirming its value. Many of the other members on the panel discussion eagerly endorsed these views.

Padeniya also extended his views about the virtues of pirit to the idea of fostering apēkama or a traditional and healthy lifestyle inspired by a sense of authenticity. The institutional legitima-cy of these views were affirmed when the Sri Lankan state decided to use air force helicopters to scatter piritpæn from the air.

Padeniya’s comments came in a con-text where the COVID-19 pandemic is raising questions about dominant and normative knowledge systems. A falter-ing Euro-American response–with some parts of the Global South outperform-ing the Global North in public health management–has fuelled this trend. In Sri Lanka such a challenge to the domi-nance of ‘western’ science has emerged in the form of the promotion of tradi-tional medicinal and religious practices. What is particularly intriguing is that the main agents of this challenge have been western medical doctors, or at least the frontline leadership of the powerful Government Medical Officers Associa-tion -the trade union of State-employed-western-medical practitioners in the country.

The GMOA’s vocal promotion of tradi-tional medicine and Buddhist religious ritual is representative of how so-called alternatives to ‘western modernity’ have long genealogies in anti-colonial nation-alism. The GMOA’s advocacy of tradi-tional medicine and Buddhist ritual are an extension of a long-standing Sinhala nationalist discourse about the ‘scien-tific’ nature of Sinhala and Buddhist culture. At the same time, western doc-tors’ strategic positioning of themselves as ‘modern’ custodians of traditional knowledge also points to tensions within this discourse of patriotism, science, and indigeneity.

The ideas Padeniya expressed are not new. In the late-nineteenth century AnagārikaDharmapala—a globe-trotting lay Buddhist missionary and a key figure in Sinhala nationalist thinking—made similar claims about Buddhism. Dhar-mapala was keen to claim coevality with western scientific knowledge in a con-text where local knowledge was seen as quaint and superfluous. Dharmapala solved this dilemma though the crea-tive appropriation of the already exist-ing ‘rational’ discourse about Buddhism promoted by orientalist scholars like Max Muller who saw Buddhism as a phi-losophy, consonant with modernity and science.

The idea that Buddhism is scientific has persisted in Sri Lanka–particularly among educated middle-class Buddhists who form the vast majority of profes-sional bodies like the GMOA. At one level then, Padeniya’s invocation of pirit addressed and old but persistent colo-nial dilemma. Padeniya’s remarks, and remarks of like-minded commentators, are often accompanied by a particular ‘anti-western’ tone, which says, “you” (an imaginary West and its perceived sympathizers within Sri Lanka) “say we are unscientific but we will prove you wrong”. In essence this attitude resolves a postcolonial ontological dilemma. It allows an individual to be simultane-

ously modern and traditional.However, such anti-Western patriot-

ism is not limited to the Sinhalese. De-pending on the context, other Sri Lan-kans could also feel pride when Sri Lanka bucks the trend – for instance, winning the cricket world cup which was seen as a ‘Sri Lankan’ victory against Australia and ‘western’ cricketing nations. But what is different in the invocation of pi-rit is that the sense of cultural pride it in-vokes is ethno-nationally biased. While the idea of ‘indigenous knowledge’ as an alternative to ‘western knowledge or medicine’ is something not confined to Sri Lanka or the Sinhalese—and even western science conducts research into such alternatives—in Sinhala national-ism it is only Sinhala and Buddhist prac-tices that are seen as scientific. The dis-course of pirit-as-science unfortunately replicates the history of Sinhala nation-alist exceptionalism that marginalizes other communities. This is especially so in the COVID-19 context where the Mus-lim community’s concerns about the cre-mation of COVID victims, rather than burial as mandated by Islam, is char-acterized as parochial and unscientific. Sinhala culture is normative while the culture of others such as Muslims (and this can easily extend to other minority communities) is seen as aberrant.

This Sinhala-centric discourse of indigenous knowledge, however, has a contested history. During one of Sri Lanka’s most significant politi-cal events–the 1956 elections in which S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike came to power riding a wave of Sinhala and Buddhist nationalist sentiment–Ayurveda doc-tors formed a significant pillar in a core village-based constituency (colloquially dubbed the pancamahabalawēgaya or ‘the five great forces’). For many Sinhala nationalists 1956 rather than 1948–the official year of independence–marked emancipation from a west-sympathizing comprador political class. One of Sri Lanka’s twentieth century literary giants

Martin Wickremasinghe dubbed it the ‘fall of the Brahmin/comprador’ class (bamunukulayebiňdawætīma). There was much expectation that this was the dawn of an indigenous economic and cultural revival, but this dream soured quickly and Bandaranaike’s political career was cut short by assassination in 1959. The professional recognition of Ayurveda doctors or the institutionali-zation of Ayurveda as an alternative to western medicine did not materialize. Western medicine on the other hand grew exponentially and became the de-fault health option in the country.

Padeniya’s comments on pirit and tra-ditional healing must be considered in this context. It is as a western trained scientist that he and other medical pro-fessionals promoting indigenous knowl-edge do so. In so doing they position themselves as rational, scientifically trained interpreters of indigeneity, un-like Ayurveda practitioners. Therefore, this articulation of patriotic indigenous science celebrates the local while simul-taneously delegitimizing local agents lacking the social capital of western-trained medical practitioners. This is a classic nationalist dilemma where one class appropriates the right to speak on behalf of a weaker other.

COVID-19 has thrown open a space where the hegemony of ‘western’ science and knowledge is being challenged. This space has also facilitated the emergence of other marginalized alternative dis-courses. However, the local-alternative versus the western-normative is not a simple binary. The local discourses which seek to challenge and displace ‘western’ knowledge are themselves im-plicated in power hierarchies that ex-clude various social groups. The ‘local’ can be as hegemonic as the ‘global’.

-Harshana Rambukwella is Director and Professor in English at the Postgraduate Institute of English, Open University of Sri Lanka

By a s ana a uk ella

The coronavirus pandemic, nationalism and indigeneity

The government is continuing to take actions to keep the country in lockdown mode, and the general population has been cooperating, even though it is creat-ing economic hardships to wide swathes among them. These include the imposi-tion of a 24-hour curfew that is now into its fourth week in some areas. Despite the hardships there is widespread support for what the government is doing as the fear of COVID-19 infection is also widespread.

However, the prolonged 24-hour non-stop curfew and accompanying lockdown are also becoming more difficult for daily income earning sections of the popula-tion to cope with. The pressure will be mounting on the government to bring an end to the curfew, which has been at the heart of its COVID mitigation strategy.

There is economic pressure coming from both affected individuals and cor-porates. The government has been able to provide recipients of poor relief via the Samurdhi program with a financial grant of Rs 10,000. But there are many others who have become equally poor if not poorer on account of their inability to go out and earn their daily incomes. They are not recipients of government aid in any systematic manner.

The pressure on the government is also coming from the corporate sector. Big business companies have slashed the incomes of their employees by signifi-cant amounts that vary from 25% to up to 60% in some cases. Smaller business companies without reserves and without cash flows have found themselves unable to pay their employees at all, with the employees helpless to raise objection as they are housebound due to the 24 hour curfew. They would want the government to end the lockdown which would enable them to get back to their regular commer-cial activities.

However, economic pressure is not the only reason why the government will wish to bring the regime of 24-hour cur-

few and lockdown to an end.The government has a political mo-

tivation to declare a quick victory over the COVID virus. This is on account of its interest in holding general elections without further delay. With each passing week, as the economy weakens, and pric-es rise, public opinion can shift against the government. Prices are bound to rise steeply in the months ahead as the rupee weakens against the dollar, as it already has, and imports become more costly.

The growth rate of the economy is an-ticipated to be negative with the World Bank predicting a recession for the coun-try of up to 3% of GDP in common with other South Asian countries. The down-turn in the economy will be largely for reasons outside the control of the gov-ernment, such as the large scale cancella-tion of orders from foreign buyers that is severely impacting on Sri Lankan export companies.

The government’s desire to declare early victory over the COVID-19 is being contested by those in the medical pro-fession who have been among its sup-porters in recent times. One of the un-expected conflicts of the present time is the one between the State sector doctors represented in the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) who are in the frontline of the battle against the COVID-19 and the Ministry of Health. The latter, led by the Minister of Health, are claiming the COVID-19 crisis is under control.

The minister was reported in the State media to have said that “by April 19 all possible COVID-19 patients in Sri Lan-ka will appear and the people who had it without any symptoms or with mild symptoms will be completely recovered. All we, Sri Lankans need to do is stay at home without going out until April 19. The country can then be saved from COV-ID-19…” The GMOA can hardly be said to be an anti-government group, as its lead-

ership campaigned vigorously on behalf of the president during last year’s presi-dential election. However, the stance they are now taking in the public interest is contradictory to the political strategy of the government, which appears to be to conduct the general elections as early as possible. Instead of prematurely declar-ing victory over the COVID-19, the GMOA has been asking for intensified approach to be taken to contain the virus, including more testing and preventing free move-ment of people across districts. But the dilemma for the government is that the longer it delays holding the elections, the worse the economic crisis is likely to get.

The government is also heading to-wards a constitutional crisis due to gov-erning the country without a functioning parliament. The problem here is that the government’s current budget period ends on April 30. If the government is to obtain more funds from the Treasury it needs to obtain parliamentary approval. This is a legal requirement and is part and parcel of the democratic system. Those who spend the money need to be held ac-countable. This requires transparency on the part of the Executive, and Parliament should be a check and balance to ensure that those public funds are used in the public interest.

There are three methods by which Parliament may be brought into the pic-ture to give the government the legal sanction for the actions that need to be taken. These have been summarized by Ameer Faaiz, LL.M, Attorney-at-law, and NizamKariapper, LL.M, President’s Counsel, in an article titled ‘A looming constitutional crisis, courtesy COVID-19,’ published in the Groundviews website.

The first option would be to set the date for fresh general elections that would en-able the convening of a new Parliament on or before June 2, which is the consti-tutional deadline for the new Parliament to meet. This permits the Election Com-

mission to publish a new date for the poll. However, with COVID still raging, this is a dangerous option for the health of the country, for which the government, medical personnel and people have made great sacrifices to protect. It will also not help the government to address the issue of obtaining public funds after April 30.

The second option would be for the president to use the power vested in him of by Article 70(7) of the Constitution to summon parliament any time after its dissolution to deal with an emergency.

The third option would be for the pres-ident to rescind the proclamation he is-sued on March 2 to dissolve Parliament. If this is done it would restore the Parlia-ment which was originally elected August 17, 2015 to continue until September 1, 2020.

From the perspective of public safety, and to preserve the gains that the long curfew and lockdown have brought with it, while remaining within the frame of the Constitution, the government will need to choose between two latter op-tions, both of which involve reviving the dissolved Parliament. The option to utilize Article 70(7) of the Constitution that permits Parliament to be revived for emergency measures would be political-ly least costly to the government. It will enable the regularization of the curfew, passage of a short term budget, amend-ing laws and, hopefully, to evolving an all-party mechanism to decide on a legal amendment that would take into account the inability for a newly constituted Par-liament to be convened before June 2. The other option would be for Parliament to be recalled by the president to serve the balance five months of its term until September 1, 2020.

-Jehan Perera is the Executive Director at National Peace Council of Sri Lanka

The president’s call: Politics or Constitution? By e an e e a

6 APRIL 17 - 19, 2020 WEEKEND EXPRESS

Beat COVID-19 or hold elections

By i ael D S ea

Why Trump targeted the WHO

RETHINKING AMERICA

Thousands of Americans would be alive to-day if President Donald Trump had spent more time listening to the World Health Organization (WHO) instead of trying to destroy it.

Trump’s announcement that he will halt US funding for the WHO just as the world is facing a raging pandemic is a dangerous attempt to find a scapegoat for his own failings. It is like taking away a fire department’s trucks in the middle of a blaze.

Many Americans know nothing about the WHO, but its worldwide budget (of which the United States pays about one-fifth) is less than that of some American hospital centres. Yet it is charged with fighting Ebola and polio, sav-ing children’s lives and keeping the world safe from pandemics like this one.

Trump says that he is cutting the funds while his administration reviews the WHO’s handling of the coronavirus. His own pandemic prepar-edness plan, which he characteristically has failed to implement, called for building support for the WHO — because it’s a critical player to keep Americans safe.

Yes, some of the complaints about the WHO are valid, and I’ve made them myself. It has been too cozy with China, it made some wrong calls on the coronavirus early on (such as doubting Jan. 14 that there was human-to-hu-man transmission), and it should stop blocking participation by Taiwan. But it has still man-aged the coronavirus crisis far better than the Trump administration.

The WHO tweeted its first warning about the coronavirus as early as Jan. 4 and then rang alarm bells, culminating at the end of that month when it declared a “public health emer-gency of international concern.” It developed an effective diagnostic test for the coronavirus that is used in dozens of countries worldwide, while the United States still cannot manage adequate testing.

In late January and February, the WHO issued increasingly urgent warnings about the coronavirus. Trump ignored them, instead insisting that it was “totally under control,” predicted the number of infections would drop, declared that “it’s going to disappear” and consistently downplayed the virus while talking up the stock market.

Trump’s passivity — even as the WHO and his own advisers warned him of the risks — squandered the chance to acquire more personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses. His likening of COVID-19 to the flu led people to join public gatherings like Mardi Gras and Florida spring break, and that is one reason the United States has had 80 deaths per 1 million inhabitants from COVID-19, com-pared with four in South Korea and fewer than one in Taiwan.

I’ve known the WHO’s director general, Dr.TedrosAdhanom Ghebreyesus, for almost 20 years and have had disagreements with him, largely over his accommodation of dicta-tors. But I have deeply admired his passion for battling malaria, malnutrition and maternal mortality, and I’ve seen his work save lives. Growing up in Ethiopia, he lost a younger brother, Yemaine, apparently to measles, and that left him with a deep commitment to im-prove health care access.

The WHO is bureaucratic, frustrating, timid — and indispensable. No other organization can fill its international role overseeing the fight against disease. It has battled an outbreak of Ebola since last year in Congo, and that’s one reason we haven’t had Ebola cases in the United States.

Every day, the WHO saves lives. It has promoted safe childbirth, and the number of women dying in childbirth has been cut almost in half over 25 years. It fights female genital mutilation and helps women with obstetric fistula. It is struggling to eliminate cervical cancer. It is part of the campaign against polio.

Normally, an American president is a leader in global health, and Democrats and Republi-cans have often cooperated on a humanitarian agenda. President George W. Bush started a program against HIV/AIDS called PEPFAR that has saved 17 million lives. President Ba-rack Obama helped lead the global effort to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16.

In contrast, Trump has provided zero global leadership against the coronavirus, and he is now trying to crush the one organization pro-viding such leadership.

(Readers have asked how they can contribute to help ease the suffering from COVID-19. Stay tuned: I’ll have a column at the end of next week with five suggestions.)

Trump’s main complaint about the WHO is that it is too close to China, and there’s some truth to that — but Trump himself fawned over China’s response to the pandemic.

“China has been working very hard to con-tain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted on Jan. 24. “I want to thank President Xi.”

If I seem angry, it’s because I’ve seen too many women dying in childbirth in poor coun-tries, too many children dying of diarrhoea, too much leprosy. Gutting the WHO will mean more kids dying of malnutrition, more moms dying of cervical cancer, and the coronavirus infecting more people in more countries — im-pairing the pandemic response, which may well cost even more American lives. And all because an American president is seeking a scapegoat for his own ineptitude.

Yes, Americans have died unnecessarily from COVID-19, and I’ve been seared by my own reporting in “hot zones” of New York hospitals. But if Trump insists on holding people ac-countable, he needn’t denounce the WHO. He can gaze in the mirror.

-New York Times

Trump’s deadly search for a scapegoat

By i las is

NEW YORK - Imposing a stricter measure to control the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday (15) he would start re-quiring people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public when-ever social distancing was not possible.

The order will take effect today (17) and will apply to people who are unable to keep 6 feet away from others in pub-lic settings, such as on a bus or subway, on a crowded sidewalk or inside a gro-cery store.

“Stopping the spread is everything,” Cuomo said during his daily briefing in Albany. “How can you not wear a mask when you’re going to come close to a person?” The new requirements

are bound to make face coverings an inescapable and perhaps jarring sight in New York City for the foreseeable fu-ture. They could also introduce a level of mutual obligation and civic duty about wearing masks in public that is more firmly established in Asia than in the West.

Maryland also announced on Wednesday that it would require peo-ple to wear masks in public.

Cuomo said local governments would enforce the order, but he noted that riders without face coverings would not be ejected from public transit. The pandemic has devastated New York’s public transit system, with 59 workers having died of the virus and 2,269 test-

ing positive for the infection.The state would consider issuing civil penalties to people who fail to abide by the or-der, but not criminal penalties: “You’re not going to go to jail for not wearing a mask,” Cuomo said.

Permitted face coverings include proper masks, as well as scarves or bandannas, the governor said.

A similar rule was issued in New Jer-sey last week. The order, issued by Gov. Philip Murphy, made it mandatory for all people inside stores and other essen-tial businesses to wear face coverings unless they are under two years old or have a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a mask. Signs have popped up at stores throughout New

Jersey warning customers that they will not be allowed in unless they cover their faces. Some stores have taken a stronger stance, asking people without coverings to leave.

The mandates were the latest public safety measures from two states that are at the epicentre of the pandemic in the United States. New York and New Jersey have worked in tandem since the outbreak reached the region, shuttering nonessential businesses at the same time and recently forming a coalition with neighbouring states to coordinate the reopening of their econ-omies.

-New York Times

New York orders residents to wear masks in public By uis e Sa u n an a ia a e

WASHINGTON - Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts endorsed Joe Biden on Wednesday (15), becoming the most high-profile progressive woman in the party to try to help the former vice president expand his appeal among liberal voters.

Her announcement follows Sen. Bernie Sanders’ on Monday (13) and former Presi-dent Barack Obama’s on Tuesday (14). Warren’s support had been a foregone con-clusion, but she left the timing of her an-nouncement up to Biden’s team, according to people familiar with the matter. There was no holdup or demand for concessions, these people said.

The process of securing prominent en-dorsements for Biden has been underway for some time, people close to the campaign said, but some Democrats said it was impor-tant to give Sanders space to endorse on his own terms, out of respect for his campaign and his supporters, whom Biden must now win over. Obama’s endorsement made re-peated overtures to Sanders and his backers.

The series of endorsements has been a carefully choreographed show of force, remi-niscent of the one-two-three punch of sup-port Biden received from Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke before Super Tuesday. It is also a show of unity de-signed to quash any narrative of a fractured Democratic Party.

Democrats are indeed, for once, in array, which was far from an inevitable outcome after a primary in which the party’s ideologi-cal fault lines were bitterly clear. The rela-tively swift arrival of two liberal challengers, Warren and Sanders, into the Biden camp is a striking reminder of the sense of urgency among Democrats to coalesce against Presi-dent Donald Trump when the public’s atten-tion is so focused on the coronavirus.

During the primary campaign, Biden criti-cized Warren as having an “elitist attitude” and repeatedly jabbed at Sanders for not be-ing a card-carrying Democrat. Warren and Sanders were also sharply critical and still differ with Biden on many issues — but their endorsement announcements this week were as positive and helpful as one could hope for from ideological opponents.

Two swing-state senators, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Gary Peters of Michigan, also formally backed Biden on Wednesday, as did Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to Obama.

In her endorsement video, Warren said, “In this moment of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the next president restores Americans’ faith in good, effective govern-ment.

“Joe Biden has spent nearly his entire life in public service. He knows that a govern-ment run with integrity, competence and heart will save lives and save livelihoods. And we can’t afford to let Donald Trump con-tinue to endanger the lives and livelihoods of every American.”

Since Warren ended her own campaign, she and Biden have spoken multiple times about policy issues, including Biden’s plan to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. At the staff level, Warren’s chief campaign strate-gist, Joe Rospars, and Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Biden, have been engaged in talks bridging the two camps.

In late March, Biden endorsed forgiving at least $10,000 in federal student loans and credited Warren for the proposal. Over the weekend, he said during his podcast that he supported immediately increasing Social Se-curity payments by $200 a month, another proposal that Warren had championed.

“One thing I appreciate about Joe Biden is that he will always tell you where he stands,” Warren said in her endorsement video. “When you disagree, he’ll listen — not just listen, but really hear you and treat you with respect, no matter where you’re com-ing from. And he has shown throughout this campaign that when you come up with new facts or a good argument, he’s not too afraid or too proud to be persuaded.”

-New York Times

‘When you disagree, he’ll listen’

By a ie s an a ie lue k

Elizabeth Warren endorses Joe Biden

WASHINGTON — Fox News pundits and Republican lawmakers have raged for weeks at the World Health Organization (WHO) for praising China’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. On his podcast, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, urged his former boss to stop fund-ing the WHO, citing its ties to the “Chinese Communist Party.”

And inside the West Wing, the president found little resistance among the China sceptics in his administration for lashing out at the WHO and essentially trying to shift the blame for his own failure to aggressively confront the spread of the virus by accusing the world’s premier global health group of cov-ering up for the country where it started.

Trump’s decision Tuesday (14) to freeze nearly $500 million in public money for the WHO in the middle of a pandemic was the culmination of a concerted conservative cam-paign against the group. But the president’s announcement on the WHO drew fierce condemnations from many quarters.

The US Chamber of Commerce said cutting its funding was “not in US interests.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the decision “dangerous” and “illegal.” Former President Jimmy Carter said he was “distressed,” calling the WHO “the only interna-tional organization capable of lead-ing the effort to control this virus.”

Founded in 1948, the WHO works to promote primary health care around the world, improve ac-cess to essential medicine and help train health care workers. During emergencies, the organization, a United Nations agency, seeks to identify threats and mitigate the risks of dangerous outbreaks, espe-cially in the developing world.

In recent years, the United States has been the largest contributor to the WHO, giving about $500 mil-lion a year, though only about $115 million of that is considered man-datory as part of the dues that Con-gress agreed to pay as a member. The rest was a voluntary contribu-tion to combat specific health chal-lenges like malaria or AIDS.

How Trump’s order to freeze the group’s funding while officials con-duct a review of the WHO would be carried out was not clear. Con-gressional Democrats who oversee foreign aid said they did not believe Trump has the power to unilaterally stop paying the nation’s dues to the WHO. Congressional aides cited a Government Accountability Office report in January that concluded that the administration could not simply ignore congressionally di-rected funding for Ukraine simply because Trump wanted to.

A senior aide to House Demo-crats said they were reviewing their options in the hopes of keeping the money flowing. But Democrats conceded that Trump most likely has wide latitude to withdraw the voluntary contributions to specific health programs run by the WHO.

White House officials say Trump was moved to act in part by his well-known anger about sending too much of the public’s money to international organizations like NATO and the United Nations. And they said he agreed with the criti-cism that the WHO was too quick to accept China’s explanations after the virus began spreading.

They cited a Twitter post by the WHO on Jan. 14 saying that the Chinese government had “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #corona-virus” as evidence that the WHO was covering up for China. And they noted that in mid-February, a top official at the WHO praised the Chinese for restrictive meas-ures they insisted had delayed the spread of the virus to other coun-tries, saying, “Right now, the stra-tegic and tactical approach in China is the correct one.”

“It is very China-centric,” Trump said in announcing his decision Tuesday in the Rose Garden.

“I told that to President Xi,” he said, referring to Xi Jinping of China. “I said, ‘The World Health Organization is very China-centric.’ Meaning, whatever it is, China was always right. You can’t do that.”

Public health experts say the WHO has had a mixed record since the coronavirus emerged in late De-cember.

The health organization raised early alarms about the virus, and Dr.TedrosAdhanom Ghebreyesus, the group’s director-general, held almost daily news briefings begin-ning in mid-January, repeating the mantra, “We have a window of op-portunity to stop this virus. But that window is rapidly closing.”

But global health officials and political leaders around the world — not just Trump — have said the group was too willing to accept in-formation supplied by China, which still has not provided accurate numbers on how many people were infected and died during the initial outbreak in the country.

Last Wednesday (8), Scott Morri-son, the prime minister of Austral-ia, called it “unfathomable” that the WHO had issued a statement sup-porting China’s decision to allow the reopening of so-called wet mar-kets, the wildlife markets where the virus is believed to have first spread to humans. And in Japan, Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister and fi-nance minister, recently noted that

some people have started referring to the WHO as the “Chinese Health Organization.”

But defending the WHO on Wednesday (15), Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of its emergen-cies programs, cited the early warn-ing it sounded. “We alerted the world on January the 5th,” Ryan told reporters.

Trump’s decision to attack the WHO comes as he is under intense fire at home for a failure to respond aggressively to the virus, which as of Wednesday had claimed more than 28,000 lives in the United States and infected at least 600,000 peo-ple in all 50 states.

The president publicly shrugged off the virus throughout January and much of February, repeatedly saying that it was under control. He said in mid-February that he hoped the virus would “miraculously” dis-appear when the weather turned warm.

Trump barred some travel from China in late January, a move that health experts say helped delay widespread infection. But he also presided over a government that failed to make testing and medical supplies widely available and re-sisted calling for social distancing that allowed the virus to spread for several critical weeks.

The president’s decision to freeze the WHO funding was backed by many of his closest aides, including Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, and key members of the National Security Council, who have long been suspicious of China. Trump himself has often offered contra-dictory messages about the coun-try — repeatedly saying nice things about Xi even as he wages a fierce on-again, off-again trade war with China.

“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted Jan. 24. “The Unit-ed States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency.”

At a meeting of his coronavirus task force last Friday (10), Trump polled all the doctors in the room about the WHO, according to an official who attended the meeting. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that the WHO had a “China problem,” and then others around the room — including Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the US response, and Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention — agreed with the state-ment, the official said.

But the president’s critics as-sailed the timing of the announce-ment, saying that any assessment of the WHO should wait until the threat was over.

-New York Times

Dr.TedrosAdhanom Ghebreyesus at a coronavirus news conference in February in Geneva

- Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

7WEEKEND EXPRESS APRIL 17 - 19, 2020

PLAGUES, PANDEMICS AND LAST WORDS

A Sri Lankan family, in the early 1900s. The influenza or the Spanish flu of 1918-19 killed more than 20,000 people in then Ceylon

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By Bala an an

By n e a e

NEW YORK — Lying in a hospital bed last month, MadhviAya understood what was happening to her.

She had been a doctor in India, then trained to become a physician assis-tant after she immigrated to the United States. She had worked for a dozen years at Woodhull Medical Centre, a public hospital in Brooklyn, where she could see the coronavirus tearing a merciless path through the city.

Within days of her last shift as a car-egiver, Aya became a patient. She had worked in Woodhull’s understaffed emer-gency room, taking medical histories, or-dering tests and asking about symptoms. Now she had become infected.

Aya, 61, was alone in a hospital, less than 2 miles from her husband and 18-year-old daughter on Long Island, who could not visit her. She did not have the solace of familiar colleagues; she had been admitted to a different facility near-er her home. In a text with her family, she described horrible chest pain from trying to get out of bed.

“I have not improved the way should have been,” she wrote her husband, Raj, on March 23.

As she grew sicker, her texts came less frequently and in short, sporadic bursts.

“I miss you mommy,” her daughter, Minnoli, wrote on March 25. She craved the reassurance of her mother’s hugs, the comfort of crawling into her bed. “Please don’t give up hope because I haven’t giv-en up. I need my mommy. I need you to come back to me.”

“Love you,” Aya wrote the next day.“Mom be back.”Aya could not keep that promise.Front-line health care workers face a

high risk of contracting the coronavirus, and scores have become sick. But it is less

known how many have died in New York from the virus after working closely with COVID-19 patients.

Aya’s text messages and her family’s account of her final days reveal a wom-an who spent much of her life devoted to medicine before succumbing to the cruel and familiar arc of a patient with COVID-19. Her early mild symptoms and quarantine at home were followed by a rapidly escalating illness and long waits for care, until she died alone.

“She was always there for us, whenever we wanted,” her husband said. But when she got sick, “no one was next to her,” he said.

Aya moved to the United States in 1994 to join her husband, who had immigrat-ed a decade earlier and met her on a re-turn trip to India. She started working at Woodhull in 2008 and became a senior physician assistant. Colleagues said she nurtured younger co-workers by drawing on the experience she had gained as an anaesthesiologist and internist in India, along with her instinct as a caretaker.

Aya’s daughter, Minnoli, said her emo-tions have ranged from intense grief to disbelief. She thinks about becoming a doctor herself and is angry at a health care system that she believes did not pro-tect its front-line workers. Sometimes she is angry at her mother for not coming home.

“I just want to be able to hug her and have her tell me everything is going to be OK,” Minnoli said.

There is no way to determine how Aya became infected. While she worked at Woodhull in early March, front-line em-ployees had not yet been instructed to wear protective masks for all patients, one staff member said. Later, as the crisis grew, hospitals realized that people com-

ing in for apparently unrelated problems were also testing positive for the virus, potentially exposing unwitting health care workers.

On March 17, Woodhull’s adminis-tration advised emergency department workers to wear masks for all patients. A spokesman for New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corp., which oversees Woodhull, said protective equipment was available to its health care workers.

Aya’s shifts could be gruelling at Wood-hull, a 320-bed public hospital at the in-tersection of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bush-wick and Williamsburg. Her husband often drove her to work from their home in Floral Park as early as 6:00 a.m. and picked her up 12 hours later so she could relax in the car.

“We have to take care of our patients first,” she often said.

At the beginning of the outbreak, Aya worried about bringing the virus home to her 64-year-old husband, whom she had guided through an aortic bypass in 2017, and her 86-year-old mother, Malti Masrani, for whom she had cared after a stroke late last year.

She began coughing around the time of her last shift on March 12, Raj Aya said. He drove her to Woodhull the next even-ing so a doctor could examine her, pick-ing her up many hours later, after she was tested.

For the next few days, they quarantined on different floors of their Cape Cod-style home. Aya had no underlying medical conditions, family members said.

But her cough worsened at home, and she developed a fever. In the early after-noon of March 18, Raj Aya dropped his wife off at Long Island Jewish Medical Centre, near their home. He would not see her again. For an hour and a half, Raj

Aya sat in his car in the hospital parking lot, texting his wife — almost always ad-dressing her as “SH,” for “sweetheart”— to check if she had received a chest X-ray and to say that he had tried to get in to see her.

“You go home I call you I am waiting,” she wrote.

At 4:47 a.m. the next morning, Aya tex-ted that she was still waiting for a bed. When Raj Aya woke up, he asked if he could bring her coffee. She said no. She reported her test had come back from Woodhull. Positive.

“I’m so sorry to hear,” he replied.They spoke by phone, and she told him

to take care of her mother and bring her daughter home from school.

The next day, MinnoliAya returned from the University at Buffalo, where she was a freshman. She believed her mother had pneumonia and hoped to surprise her. Instead, she learned her mother had contracted the coronavirus.

“I was just on the floor, and I was bro-ken,” Minnoli said.

Over the next week, she texted with her mother, who continued to deteriorate. Doctors called Raj Aya daily. By the end of the week, his wife was increasingly having trouble breathing.

By the morning of March 29, doctors got ready to put Aya on a ventilator. But there was a life-threatening complication, and they asked Raj if he wanted to see his wife for what could be the last time. He worried that his heart condition would put him at risk if he caught the virus, and Minnoli could be left without a parent.

The decision not to go, he said, has haunted him. That afternoon, the hospi-tal called to say that his wife had died.

-New York Times

A hundred years ago, in 1918-19, Sri Lanka and large parts of the world went through a pandemic of humongous proportions, namely, influenza or the Spanish flu.

The ‘flu’ claimed 50 to 100 million lives across the globe; hit the poor as well as the rich; the prosperous West as well as the poverty-stricken East. And all were struck with equal severity. In South Asia, more than 20 million died in India and 20,000 perished in Sri Lanka.

Mahatma Gandhi, who had just then ar-rived from South Africa, caught the deadly flu in Bombay. He survived, but was so weakened by it that he wrote: “I lost all interest in living.”

As in the case of COVID-19, influenza came to Sri Lanka from abroad. In the 1918-19 case, soldiers returning from the World War I European battlefields to In-dia and the US, brought it to their home countries. Travel and trade between the West, India and Sri Lanka brought it to Sri Lanka through then important sea ports of Colombo and Talaimannar. In the case of COVID-19, the carriers were tourists, business travellers and migrant workers entering through the airport in Colombo.

As in the case of COVID-19, the 1918-19 flu hit particular age groups. While COV-ID-19 is proving to be dangerous or even fatal for seniors above 60 and the very young, and for men more than women, the flu of 1918-19 hit the early middle age group up to 45. While COVID-19 has ap-parently spared women, the 1918-19 flu hit the women hard. Langford and Storey

An academic paper titled ‘Influenza in Sri Lanka, 1918–1919: the impact of a new disease in a pre-modern Third World set-ting’ by C.M. Langford and P. Storey of the Department of Population Studies, London School of Economics, tells the sad tale of the past.

Here are some extracts from the paper:As elsewhere, there was a mild first wave

followed by a virulent second wave, which was characterized by fatal pneumonic complications. Fertility fell. About 1.1% of

the population died. Mortality seemed to be concentrated among those aged 20–40 and especially those aged 25–35. There was also a third wave in some cases.

The first wave was in the spring-sum-mer of 1918 and was apparently fairly mild. The second was in autumn-winter of 1918. This showed a terrible propensity to lead on to pneumonic complications and death. About 20% of those contracting the flu developed pneumonic complications and eight out of these 20% died. The third wave (where there was one) came in the early part of 1919.It was serious but its overall impact was much less.United States then as now

As in the COVID-19 case, the US had a big part in the flu epidemic. In the cur-rent case, though the coronavirus started its journey in China, it was when it went to the US that it became a pandemic. A century ago, according to Langford and Storey, the flu began in the US in March 1918 and spread across the world in the next four months.

It struck Britain in June and July, reached Bombay in June 1918 and came to Colombo and Talaimannar thereafter. At that time, Talaimannar was second only to Colombo in terms both of the number of vessels using the port and the size of their crew. About 200,000 people passed through Mandapam quarantine camp in Tamil Nadu in 1918 en route to or from Sri Lanka.

In 1918-19, death due to influenza in Sri Lanka was 19,102 of which 18,887 were recorded in the last quarter of 1918.The first to get the flu were Colombo dock workers. But by September and October 1918 nearly every province and district in the island was affected.

A notable feature of the disease was a rapid onset of pneumonia, which is a lung inflammation caused by bacterial or viral infection in which the air sacs are filled with pus and become solid. Deaths were mostly due to bronchopneumonia.Malaria complicated matters

At the end of November 1918, influenza

abated, but malaria surfaced in a big way. The latter made the people so weak that when attacked by flu they succumbed to it. Many cases of malaria were complicat-ed by a pneumonic sequel probably due to influenza, local health officials reported.

Districts in the Dry Zone (such as Anu-radhapura) suffered more than those in the Wet Zone. According to the authors, the Dry Zone suffered more because it was generally less healthy, less developed and less well provided with health and sani-tary facilities than the Wet Zone. And the Dry Zone was also much more prone to malaria than the Wet Zone. Malaria com-bined with flu proved to be deadly cock-tail.

In the South, the plantation sector suf-fered a lot because of the congested living conditions, the unhealthy environment in the “Line Rooms” where the tea workers lived, and the poor health of the estate workers who were poor labourers from impoverished South India. Ethnic differences

According to the 1911 Sri Lankan cen-sus, 66% of the population were Sinha-lese, 13% were Ceylon Tamils, 13 % were Indian Origin Tamils and 6% were Ceylon Moors.

In the short term, and in the worst months, the Indian Origin Tamils bore the brunt of the pandemic. The Muslims were next in line, and the Sinhalese were third. This position of the Sinhalese may well have reflected the fact that their habi-tations were much more scattered while other communities tended to live in close proximity.

However over a longer 15- month peri-od, ethnic differences in morbidity disap-peared, the researchers noted.Women

It is clear from the data that women suf-fered higher mortality than men. A possi-ble factor is the risk associated with preg-nancy and childbirth. In most pandemics up to and including that of 1918–19, there were reports of abortions and stillbirths due to influenza. In 1918–19, a series of

1350 pregnant women who had influenza were observed and it was found that abor-tion, stillbirth or premature labour oc-curred in 26% of those without pneumo-nia, and 52% of those with pneumonia.

But the authors state that the higher mortality experienced by females dur-ing the 1918–1919 epidemic could not be entirely explained by pregnancy-related factors. The real answer may be that, in general, at that time in Sri Lanka, mortal-ity tended to be higher for females than males, they pointed out. The mean expec-tation of life at birth in Sri Lanka, in early 20th Century, based on the ‘normal’ rates, was 32.7 years for males and 30.2 years for females.

Mortality rates were higher for females than males in all ages except during infan-cy and in the 45–54 age group. Indian Or-igin Tamil women tended to suffer heavier mortality than men in the 1918–1919 epi-demic partly because they were already in a somewhat worse health than men.Food shortage

The effect of the epidemic on agricul-tural production, and the possible signifi-cance of food availability for mortality in the 1918-19 epidemic cannot be ignored Langford and Storey said.

There is little doubt that the influenza epidemic disrupted agricultural produc-tion in Sri Lanka. Low local production and the Indian ban on exports of food items (India was also suffering from the epidemic) were at least partly to be blamed for the food shortage and the con-sequent nutritional deficit and mortality in Sri Lanka, the authors stated.

MOSCOW — In a remote alpine meadow in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago, a teenage boy killed and skinned a marmot. Five days later, his par-ents carried the sweating, delirious boy to a vil-lage hospital where he died of bubonic plague.

Like a ghost from the medieval past, the plague still makes occasional, unwelcome ap-pearances in remote regions of the former So-viet Union, where it survives today in wild ro-dents. Over the centuries, with improved public hygiene, the plague declined as a threat. Today, as a bacterial infection, it is treatable with an-tibiotics, if caught in time. But the plague was still a lethal menace in the 1920s and also an embarrassment for the Soviet Union, which es-tablished a specialized state agency to track and contain it. Successors to that agency still exist in Russia and in half a dozen other countries that were once Soviet republics, and, with their ready quarantine plans and trained personnel; they have become a mainstay of the regional re-sponse to the coronavirus.

It is too early to tell if the former Soviet an-tiplaque centres, as the sites were called, have made any difference in the coronavirus out-break, which so far has infected more than 21,000 Russians, killing 170. At most, the legacy Soviet system helped delay the spread, and it is just one data point in assessing why the corona-virus moved more slowly in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries than in Western Europe and the United States. Luck, border clo-sures or officials covering up the true numbers of deaths could also explain the low numbers.

Infections are in any case now shooting up, and those countries seem to be headed the way of the rest of the world toward bulging hospitals and morgues. But employees of the antiplaque-centers say their early work helped, becoming a silver lining to the region’s long-lingering plague problem.

“Of course, it helped” early on, said Ravshan-Maimulov, director of a regional antiplaque ser-vice in Kyrgyzstan who examined the teenage plague victim when he died in 2013. He used the same quarantine plan that he had instituted after the boy’s death to respond to the coronavi-rus in March. When the 15-year-old had arrived at the village hospital, “the body was still damp from sweat and I felt swelling under the armpits and chin,” Maimulov said. But the boy was too far gone to save, and he died within hours.

Maimulov, 57, trained at a Russian antiplaque institute called Microbe. After the boy’s death, he had the authority to immediately put in mo-tion plans for a lockdown, even though at that point they had only a partial diagnosis.

He relayed the news to a regional governor in code — they would need to implement ‘Formula 100’ — lest word leak and inhabitants of the vil-lage, Ichke-Zhergez, should try to flee before the door slammed shut.

“We needed to prevent them all from running away,” he said.

By the next morning, police checkpoints were in place and the village was sealed.

On his recommendation, authorities in the surrounding Issyk-Kul region used the same approach in March in introducing coronavirus lockdowns. “We worked under the operative plan for the plague,” Maimulov said in a tele-phone interview. The region of about half a mil-lion people has reported three coronavirus cas-es, he said. Kyrgyzstan has reported five deaths.

Russia maintains 13 antiplaque centres, from the Far East to the Caucasus Mountains, five plague research institutes and multiple field stations. In March, the authorities moved new laboratory equipment into the antiplaque centre in Moscow to expand its ability to test for coro-navirus.

The Microbe institute, originally dedicated wholly to bubonic plague but later expanded to tackle other infections such as cholera, yel-low fever, anthrax and tularaemia, models the spread of the coronavirus.

Starting in January, directors of antiplaque-centers in the Eurasian Economic Union, the Moscow-led trade alliance of Armenia, Bela-rus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, held conference calls about the coronavirus. And a plague institute in Odessa, Ukraine, is among agencies responding to the coronavirus there, officials said.

“The very fact that Russia and the other for-mer Soviet states are, exactly, former Soviet states means a common legacy,” in health care, said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. A legacy of focus on epidemics helped, he said. Soviet health care had haphaz-ard success at treating individuals but “could re-spond like the military to epidemics,” he noted.

Other analysts of former Soviet medical ser-vices say that, in the longer term, the Soviet legacy will prove no gift. The capacity to counter epidemics had degraded while little was done to improve an ability to treat patients, according to Yevgeny S. Gontmakher, a professor at the Higher School of Economics and an authority on Russian health care.

“The plague doctors were the elite of a hun-dred years ago, not today,” he said.

In Kyrgyzstan, Maimulov works in a wooden laboratory in what had been, until a few weeks ago, the medical backwater of plague control. Most years, he plans for campaigns of spraying insecticide into rodent burrows, to kill fleas and slow the spread in animals.

The disease cannot be fully stamped out.“They are rodents; they reproduce quickly,”

he said. “It’s not worthwhile to kill them.”The family of the 15-year-old boy were herd-

ing sheep in the mountains and trapping mar-mots for fur as a side-line. The boy skinned the marmot with a razor blade. Although the Black Death typically spreads by flea bite, in this in-stance the boy caught it simply by nicking his finger.

Eventually, 32 villages were put under quar-antine while about 700 nurses went door to door looking for infection. Marmot hides were collected and burned. But the antiplaque team had acted quickly enough. The boy was the only confirmed case.

-New York Times

8 APRIL 17 - 19, 2020 WEEKEND EXPRESS

P LIS ED EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS E P , L D N - 2 7, RA A AWA A, EKALA - A - ELA

Recalling a pandemic in Sri Lanka, a century ago

The heart-breaking last texts of a hospital worker on the front lines

How bubonic plague has helped Russia fight the coronavirus