Here’s what you need to know:
- A global crisis gives rise to divisions among nations.
- Japan declares a nationwide state of emergency, widening earlier measures.
- Nationalism flares in China as the outbreak recedes.
- Spain’s counting of the dead has become bitterly political.
- Britain is expected to extend its lockdown by three weeks.
- Singapore, praised for controlling the virus, has a record increase in infections.
- Kenyans accuse officials of charging them to leave quarantine.
A global crisis gives rise to divisions among nations.
With confirmed cases of the coronavirus surpassing two million worldwide, the divisions in the approach to fighting the outbreak and outcomes between those countries past a peak and those in the throes of a health crisis are increasingly laid bare.
As China, once the center of the epidemic, moves beyond its peak, its success is giving rise to a blend of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia not seen in decades.
In some countries believed to have brought their outbreaks under control, a second wave has emerged. Singapore, long held up as a model of effective containment strategy, announced on Wednesday evening a record jump in coronavirus cases, with most of the 447 new infections in crowded dormitories for migrant laborers.
Singapore has been lauded for its rigorous contact-tracing program, which identified clusters of local transmission, but the coronavirus spread quickly through crammed residences shared by migrant workers.
In the United States, after President Trump asserted that the country was past its peak, the talk turned to plans to ease the economic strain of the outbreak by returning to some level of normalcy. More than 5.2 million workers joined the ranks of the unemployed last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. The four-week total is about 22 million — roughly the net number of jobs created since the last recession.
Public health experts have warned that, with testing still limited, a rush to reopen the nation could exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus. Even as the United States considers easing restrictions, other nations have moved to extend lockdowns.
In Australia, where the numbers dropped, officials said restrictions would remain in place for at least a month. Britain was expected on Thursday to announce a three-week extension to its national lockdown.
And even in countries now believed to be past the peak, the true picture of the toll is still emerging. Spain’s death toll, which remains among the highest in the world, is officially closing in on 20,000, but there is evidence that it could be far higher. Many deaths — especially those in nursing homes — were not initially linked to the coronavirus, and the omission has set off a heated political debate.
Juan Antonio Alguacil, who leads a Spanish association of funerary employees, said that understanding the full truth was the only way “to heal the moral and psychological wound that this pandemic will leave.”
Japan declares a nationwide state of emergency, widening earlier measures.
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said on Thursday that he would declare a national emergency, calling for measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus before a weeklong holiday that is a popular travel period.
Mr. Abe had previously declared a state of emergency in seven of the country’s 47 prefectures, including its largest metropolitan areas, calling for an 80 percent reduction in person-to-person contact. Some areas were left off that list, despite having high caseloads, leading several governors to impose their own emergency measures.
The national declaration will give governors the authority to call on businesses to close and residents to stay inside. They will, however, have no power to enforce the requests.
Japanese lawmakers have so far declined to issue the kinds of mandatory lockdowns put in place in China, Europe and the United States, with some arguing that the country’s Constitution prohibits such measures. Instead, officials have been put in the position of pleading for voluntary compliance.
Experts warn that during the holiday period known as Golden Week, starting April 29, people could spread the pathogen to previously unaffected areas, overwhelming their medical systems.
“As a way to prevent the illness from becoming rampant, I am requesting that governors urge residents to absolutely avoid unnecessary visits to family, travel and movement across regional borders,” Mr. Abe said after meeting with a special advisory group.
He said that the nation would provide individuals with cash payments of 100,000 yen, nearly $1,000, to alleviate economic hardship.
In the last month, Japan has seen a sharp rise in confirmed infections, to more than 8,000. The numbers remain low compared with many countries, but health experts fear that failure to take timely precautions could lead to a sudden jump.
Mr. Abe has come under heavy criticism for his inconsistent approach, taking dramatic actions like calling for all schools to close without first consulting experts, then seemingly hanging back as the outbreak worsened.
Nationalism flares in China as the outbreak recedes.
As the coronavirus pandemic ravages many countries, China’s success in curbing its own epidemic is giving rise to an increasingly strident blend of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia, at a pitch many say has not been seen in decades.
A restaurant in northern China put up a banner celebrating the virus’s spread in the United States. A widely circulated cartoon showed foreigners being sorted into trash bins. In Beijing and Shanghai, foreigners have been barred from some shops and gyms.
Perhaps nowhere has xenophobia manifested itself more strongly than in the southern city of Guangzhou, a manufacturing hub with a large African population. After five Nigerians there tested positive for the virus, African residents reported being evicted from their homes and hotels.
They have also been ordered to undergo 14-day quarantines at their own expense, even if they have no recent travel history or have already tested negative. Images shared on social media showed black people forced to sleep on a sidewalk, and a sign banning black people from a McDonald’s.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: Kicked Out of China
As the coronavirus escalated to a worldwide crisis, China expelled our journalists from the country, surveilling our correspondents to prevent reporting.Some of the uglier manifestations of nationalism have been fueled by government propaganda, which has pointed to China’s response to the virus as evidence of the governing Communist Party’s superiority.
Separately on Wednesday, China began a nationwide study of asymptomatic coronavirus carriers as numbers showed that many people who tested positive for the virus did not develop symptoms.
CCTV, the state broadcaster, also reported that a study of asymptomatic carriers was underway in 10 cities, including Wuhan, where the virus first emerged. “The aim of the blood tests is to determine whether there are antibodies for the virus inside the body,” Ding Gangqiang, an official at China’s Center for Disease Control, said on state television.
Spain’s counting of the dead has become bitterly political.
Like many nations trying to measure the toll of the coronavirus pandemic, Spain has been stymied by unreliable figures.
But in a politically fragmented society, the confusion has led to recrimination and sinister claims, with opposition politicians accusing the fragile coalition government of covering up the real numbers.
“Spaniards deserve a government that doesn’t lie to them,” said Pablo Casado, the leader of the opposition Popular Party.
Speaking in Parliament last week, Mr. Casado addressed a direct challenge to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez: “Tell us if it is true that the real number of victims could double the official figures.”
Officially, Spain’s death toll, which is among the world’s highest, is closing in on 20,000. But there is evidence that it could be far higher, with many deaths — especially those in nursing homes — not properly classified as stemming from the coronavirus.
Mr. Sánchez and other officials have rejected accusations that they intentionally underreported fatalities tied to the coronavirus, but the authorities have begun trying again to measure the losses.
Britain is expected to extend its lockdown by three weeks.
The British government is expected to announce on Thursday that it will prolong its lockdown by at least three weeks, amid signs that the country is nearing the peak of its coronavirus outbreak.
Britain is following the lead of other European countries in keeping the restrictions in place, but officials have refused so far to discuss their strategy for starting to reopen the economy.
The announcement will be made by Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has taken over the duties of Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he recuperates from a serious case of the virus.
Mr. Raab has signaled for more than a week that Britain would not lift the lockdown on April 16, the date under which the government is mandated to review the measures adopted through emergency legislation.
“Is it time to ease up on the rules?” he said to reporters last week. “We’re not done yet. We’ve got to keep going.”
Medical experts agree that the most important prerequisite to lifting the lockdown is more extensive testing, and the government has set a goal of conducting 100,000 tests a day by the end of April. It is currently carrying out less than a fifth of that.
Britain’s decision comes as officials expressed hope that the toll from the virus would begin to diminish. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, said that there was a “flattening” of the curve in the number of deaths, and that the contagion was “probably reaching the peak overall.”
The Department of Health on Thursday confirmed 861 hospital deaths from the virus in the previous day, bringing the official toll to 13,729.
Despite signs of progress, the government has been determined not to shift the public debate to what life after the lockdown might look like, and officials have resolutely stuck to their three-sentence mantra: “Stay Home. Protect the N.H.S. Save Lives.”
The lockdown extension, expected to be for three weeks, would come even as some food and retail businesses signaled a gradual reopening. The sandwich chain Pret A Manger opened 10 shops on Thursday near hospitals in Central and Greater London to help front-line health care workers, a company spokesman said in an email.The shops serve only carryout and delivery orders. Under the government guidelines, restaurants and pubs could stay open to prepare food for carryout or delivery. But many opted to close for the safety of their staff members and customers.
Singapore, praised for controlling the virus, has a record increase in infections.
Singapore announced a record jump in coronavirus cases on Wednesday evening, with most of the 447 new confirmed cases coming from crowded dormitories for migrant laborers.
While Singapore has been lauded for its rigorous contact-tracing program, which quickly identified clusters of local transmission, the coronavirus spread quickly through residences for migrant laborers, where up to 20 people are crammed in each room with shared kitchens and bathrooms.
Nearly half of Singapore’s roughly 3,700 coronavirus cases are among low-wage migrant workers, who have built the gleaming, modern city-state. About 200,000 such workers, many from India and Bangladesh, have been quarantined to their dormitories, with healthy residents gradually being transferred to other housing to prevent community transmission.
After weeks of slow transmission, Singapore began recording a rapid rise in cases in March, as travelers from Europe and the United States brought the virus with them. But no imported cases have been recorded for nearly a week.
The rapid spread of the coronavirus among foreign laborer communities has prompted the Singaporean government to vow changes in the way migrants are treated, even if the dormitories met standards set by the International Labor Organization.
“In terms of living conditions for foreign workers, collectively many of us were blind to this, and this has to change,” said Teo Yik Ying, the dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. “But in Singapore, it will change because we are committed to learning lessons from every epidemic.”
Kenyans accuse officials of charging them to leave quarantine.
More than two dozen Kenyans held in quarantine on the Kenyatta University campus in the capital, Nairobi, have protested over being held for long periods even after testing negative for the coronavirus and finishing 14-day quarantines.
Some said they were presented with bills in order to be allowed to check out. On social media, those in quarantine posted about being threatened when they complained and about feeling hungry and experiencing anxiety attacks.
The protests at the university dormitory on Wednesday came days after more 30 people escaped another quarantine facility in the country’s northeast. Officials said police officers had colluded to sneak the individuals out of the facility.
Kenya’s government, facing criticism for mishandling quarantine measures, has yet to explain why people in quarantine were being asked to pay or were held in isolation for longer periods. The government has also been accused of charging poor workers staying in isolation units and holding individuals in conditions they say caused them mental anguish.
From the outset, many of those placed into mandatory quarantine complained of mismanagement, lack of information and the poor state of isolation centers.
Travelers who returned to the country in late March before the suspension of international flights were among those being held. Passengers who could pay at the time were taken to hotels, while those who couldn’t were ordered to university dormitories or government facilities.
The Health Ministry has reported 225 confirmed infections.
As Britain claps for health care workers, an anti-xenophobia video resonates.
As Britain prepared on Thursday for its weekly applause session to show support for the National Health Service, a video of immigrant workers and others reciting an antiracist poem is circulating on social media as a powerful plea for tolerance.
The poem, titled “You Clap for Me Now” and written by Darren James Smith, begins by addressing xenophobia and nods to the Brexit campaign that tapped into some Britons’ fears of outsiders flooding the job market.
The threat, the poem reveals, is the coronavirus — not the immigrant workers who have become essential to treating patients and keeping the economy running during the pandemic.
“Don’t say go home. Don’t say not here. You know how it feels for home to be a prison. You know how it feels to live in fear,” workers recite.
Sachini Imbuldeniya, the video’s producer, told The Guardian on Wednesday that she knew immediately on reading the poem that its message had to be shared.
“We decided to turn it into a short and shareable video featuring a mixture of first-, second- and third-generation immigrants” living in Britain, she said.
The hashtag #YouClapForMeNow was trending on Twitter in Britain, and the video has been shared by thousands, including politicians, and viewed millions of times on social media.
“London would not be London without those who have chosen to make our city their home,” the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, wrote on Twitter. “To everyone putting their lives on the line to keep us safe in the fight against COVID19: thank you.”
South Koreans trade privacy for a life without lockdowns.
Imagine you are at your favorite Starbucks when a text arrives on your cellphone warning you that a person previously found to be infected is also in the same shop.
That sort of detailed alert regularly arrives on citizens’ smartphones in South Korea. Widespread testing coupled with the country’s super fast internet allows the government to trace individuals’ movements and warn the public of potential dangers in real time.
As a result, most restaurants, bars, churches — even the airports — remain open, and a national election took place this week. Social distancing and lockdowns do not exist. In a country of 50 million people only 220 have died from the virus, about the number who are felled on a quiet day in New York City.
But there is a trade-off.
Big Brother is watching, and so is everyone else.
Testing is widely available, and anyone who receives a test must also install the tracing app on his or her phone. Those who test positive are made to self-isolate for the duration of the illness.
The app allows the government to track the locations and contacts of infected people. That information is then used to alert those who have the app on their phones — and that is almost everyone.
For those who are being tracked the degree of detail of their movements is stunning.
Recently, the residents of the Songpa District in Seoul, the capital, learned that an infected person from another city was visiting their neighborhood. Residents learned when the individual arrived, the hotel in which he stayed, the hospital he waited outside in his car and that he dropped by a 7-Eleven and a kimbap restaurant.
They also were able to breath a sigh of relief, knowing exactly when he left town.
In a Manila slum, the lockdown has made life worse.
Even before the coronavirus arrived in Manila, a saying in the capital’s sprawling San Roque slum — “no one dies from a fever” — crystallized the many threats that its residents faced in their daily lives.
Drug-fueled petty crime. Food shortages. Overcrowding and poor sanitation. Fever, body aches and coughs were commonplace 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 continues to rage. Yet the restrictions have not stopped runny-nosed children from playing tag in the slum’s labyrinth of alleyways, as parents shout halfhearted admonitions to stay away from one another.
Home to roughly 6,000 families — conservatively, about 35,000 people — San Roque, in Manila’s northern suburb of Quezon, has for years been home to some of the poorest people on the fringes of Philippine society.
Frustration over the lockdown recently exploded into violence. An April 1 gathering in San Roque became an impromptu rally, with dozens taking to the streets demanding answers from the government about when they would receive promised relief.
Police officers in riot gear and fatigues responded with force, scuffling with protesters and sending 21 people to jail. Mr. Duterte accused Kadamay, a group that advocates for the poor, of inciting the violence, and warned that his government would not be lenient toward those who challenged it.
So far, there have been no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in San Roque. As of Wednesday, 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 Philippine government having just begun mass testing this week.
Liechtenstein plans to test biometric bands that track coronavirus symptoms.
Citizens of Liechtenstein, the tiny European nation nestled between Austria and Switzerland, will soon be offered biometric wristbands as part of a pilot program that will try to detect early symptoms of the coronavirus.
About 2,000 people in the country of 38,000 will be issued sensory bracelets that track skin temperature, heart rate, resting pulse rate, blood perfusion and breathing rate, a spokesman for Liechtenstein’s ministry for social affairs said on Thursday.
The data collected from the wristbands, which have been successfully used to monitor women’s fertility cycles, will be automatically sent to a lab to be analyzed for early symptoms of the coronavirus, including fever, dry cough and shortness of breath.
The aim of the study is to have results available before a potential second wave of illness in the fall. If successful, the wristbands will be made available to all citizens.
“From a scientific point of view, it is vital that we get a better understanding of the new coronavirus as quickly as possible,” said Dr. Lorenz Risch, a leader of the study. “Only then will we be in a position to identify and implement the right clinical and health policy action to improve the health of those affected by Covid-19 and effectively contain the international health emergency.”
The overall results of the study will be shared with the government, but personal data will be kept confidential by the lab, the ministry’s spokesman said.
“As well as being in the national interest, this is also a matter of international solidarity,” said Mauro Pedrazzini, the minister for social affairs.
‘Milk Tea Alliance’ battles Chinese nationalists online.
A social media feud between Chinese nationalists and critics of Beijing over comments shared by Thai celebrities has inspired growing solidarity between internet users in Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as the coronavirus inflames online debate.
People in Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong have banded together online in recent days in the so-called Milk Tea Alliance — named after the popular sweet drinks — just as Beijing has worked to stave off international criticism over the pandemic, and as longstanding tensions flared between China and its smaller neighbors.
Pro-Beijing cyberwarriors have taken on a Thai actor, Vachirawit Chivaaree, and the Thai model Weeraya Sukaram, who were both accused of supporting Taiwan and Hong Kong independence — views anathema to Beijing. Ms. Weeraya was also accused of sharing a Twitter message that questioned whether the coronavirus had originated from a Chinese laboratory.
Mr. Vachirawit, who goes by the name Bright, has since apologized for “liking” photos that listed Hong Kong as a country, but Chinese users on Weibo, a microblogging service, have called for a boycott of his popular TV drama.
The hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance and one in Thai translated as #MilkTeaIsThickerThanBlood have since been widely shared on social media in an unexpected show of unity against authoritarian rule and Beijing’s influence, as internet users on both sides traded barbs, insults and memes.
The Chinese Embassy in Thailand even joined the fray. In a Facebook message posted on Tuesday, the embassy said the “recent online noises” challenging Beijing’s claims that Taiwan is an inviolable part of greater China “only reflect bias and ignorance.”
“The scheme by some particular people to manipulate the issue for the purpose of inflaming and sabotaging the friendship between the Chinese and Thai people will not succeed,” the embassy wrote, attracting thousands of angry emojis and replies.
Russia’s battle with the plague prepared it for the virus.
Like a ghost from the medieval past, the bubonic plague still makes occasional, unwelcome appearances in remote regions of the former Soviet Union, where it survives today in wild rodents.
Over the centuries, with improved public hygiene, the plague declined as a threat. Today, as a bacterial infection, it is treatable with antibiotics, if caught in time.
But the plague was still a lethal menace in the 1920s and also an embarrassment for the Soviet Union, which established 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 response to the coronavirus.
It is too early to tell if the former Soviet antiplague centers, as the sites were called, have made any difference in the coronavirus outbreak, which so far has infected more than 24,000 Russians, killing198.
At most, the legacy Soviet system helped delay the spread, and it is just one data point in assessing why the coronavirus moved more slowly in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries than in Western Europe and the United States.
Russia maintains 13 antiplague centers, 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 antiplague center in Moscow to expand its ability to test for the coronavirus.
The Microbe institute, originally dedicated wholly to bubonic plague but later expanded to tackle other infections such as cholera, yellow fever, anthrax and tularemia, models the spread of the coronavirus.
Australia’s new cases drop, but restrictions will stay in place.
Australia will consider lifting some restrictions in four weeks if the number of new cases continues to drop and crucial public health benchmarks are met, officials said on Thursday.
Australia remains in “the suppression phase,” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Before restrictions can ease, the country will need to extend surveillance measures, improve contact tracing and respond to local outbreaks faster, he said.
Research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine indicates that Australia has one of the best detection rates in the world, with 92 percent of all symptomatic cases identified, said Brendan Murphy, the chief medical officer of Australia. The rate of new daily cases has dropped in the country, but he cautioned that it was too soon to relax.
As of Thursday, the country has 6,457 reported cases and 63 people have died, with 42 on ventilators. More than half of those who have contracted the virus have recovered, Mr. Morrison said.
Economically, Australians would also need to prepare for some “very sobering news” in the months ahead, he added. “It will be a different world on the other side of the virus.”
Australia had previously enjoyed the world’s longest economic boom, with nearly three decades without a recession. Now, with the employment rate expected to double to 10 percent by the end of June, the government has approved $200 billion in stimulus measures.
Trump wants to reopen the economy, but experts warn: Not too soon.
President Trump is set to issue new federal guidelines on distancing measures on Thursday in a bid to move the country closer to reopening for business, even as public health officials warned that it was far too early for any widespread return to public life.
The health experts’ main concern is that the country is not conducting enough testing to track the coronavirus in a way that would let Americans return to work safely. And with supply shortages rampant, many tests are still restricted to people who meet specific criteria.
Here’s what else is happening in the United States:
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Some workers are starting to protest the movement restrictions. Thousands of demonstrators in cars jammed the streets around the Michigan State Capitol on Wednesday, and dozens of people in Frankfort, Ky., shouted through a window as Gov. Andy Beshear provided a virus update.
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After an anonymous tip, the New Jersey police discovered 17 bodies inside a nursing home that has been hit hard by the virus.
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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that, starting Friday, New York would require people to cover their faces in public where they could not keep six feet from others, including settings like buses, subway trains, sidewalks and grocery stores. Those who violate the rule could face fines.
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Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s eldest daughter and a senior White House adviser, has not followed the federal guidelines advising against discretionary travel, leaving Washington even as she has publicly thanked people for staying home. Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, also traveled with their three children to a Trump golf club in New Jersey for the first night of Passover.
Indian officials are attacked while conducting medical screenings.
Residents of a village in northern India attacked medical workers and police officers who were carrying out health screenings, officials said on Thursday.
Saurabh Jorawal, a local official in the state of Bihar, where the attack occurred, said that villagers in East Champaran threw stones at workers on Wednesday, injuring at least five people, some of them seriously.
“We sent in more police, and they arrested 44 people from the village,” Mr. Jorawal said.
As fears of a rapid viral spread rise in India, health care workers have reported being assaulted, spat at and threatened with sexual violence for treating coronavirus patients.
India has reported more than 12,000 infections and 414 deaths.
Police officials said that people in the area were ignoring distancing guidelines and other government restrictions urging all 1.3 billion Indians to stay inside amid a nationwide lockdown that will last until at least May 3.
Officials have faced staggering challenges enforcing the lockdown, which has shut most businesses, leaving millions of Indians dependent on food subsidies and other government handouts to survive.
Reporting was contributed by Ceylan Yeginsu, Iliana Magra, Ben Dooley, Kai Schultz, Tiffany May, Hari Kumar, Vivian Wang, Amy Qin, Raphael Minder, Elaine Yu, Isabella Kwai, Su-Hyun Lee, Rod Nordland, Megan Specia, Abdi Latif Dahir, Hannah Beech, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Choe Sang-Hun, Andrew E. Kramer, Austin Ramzy, Stephen Castle, Jason Gutierrez, Yonette Joseph and Tariq Panja.
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