New Delhi: The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate several countries across the world — the latest count is 5,687,793 cases and more than 352,261 deaths.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approval ratings fell by 20 per cent amid the controversy over his key advisor flouting lockdown rules. The pandemic has disproportionately affected Democrat-ruled states in the US. Meanwhile, the pandemic is exposing Putin’s “vertical of power” and Wuhan tested 7 million people in 10 days.
ThePrint brings you the most important global stories on the coronavirus pandemic and why they matter.
Boris Johnson’s approval ratings nosedive after advisor row
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approval ratings fell by a dramatic 20 per cent after the controversy with his key advisor Dominic Cummings, reports The Telegraph. Johnson had publicly backed Cummings after the latter flouted lockdown restrictions to travel to his family home in northern England from London.
“According to Savanta, a coronavirus data tracker looking at how the UK population is responding to the pandemic, the Prime Minister’s current approval rating is -1 per cent, a big fall from the +19 per cent figure of just four days ago,” notes the report.
“The decline comes after Mr Johnson said Mr Cummings had followed the ‘instincts of a father’ and refused to sack his chief aide after revelations that he had made a 260-mile trip to County Durham, despite lockdown restrictions, with his four-year-old son and his wife, who was suffering from coronavirus at the time,” it adds. Cummings also refused to apologise or resign.
Coronavirus is partisan in US
As the US approaches 1 lakh coronavirus-related deaths, an analysis by the New York Times shows that a disproportionate number of these deaths have come from blue regions, the states and counties that vote for the Democratic party.
“The losses have been especially acute along its coasts, in its major cities, across the industrial Midwest, and in New York City. The devastation, in other words, has been disproportionately felt in blue America, which helps explain why people on opposing sides of a partisan divide that has intensified in the past two decades are thinking about the virus differently,” notes the report.
“Counties won by President Trump in 2016 have reported just 27 percent of the virus infections and 21 percent of the deaths — even though 45 percent of Americans live in these communities,” it adds.
Pandemic exposes weakness of Putin’s ‘vertical of power’
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin rose to power 20 years ago, the Kremlin has propagated the idea of Putin’s “vertical of power” — the top down apparatus that has become the hallmark of his rule. However, the coronavirus pandemic in Russia has exposed the deficiencies of such a system, argues the New Yorker.
“Putin’s much heralded vertical of power has proved flat-footed, even absent. Putin himself periodically appeared on television to announce a series of rolling ‘non-working holidays,’ leaving it up to individual regions to opt for lockdowns—or not—and declining to offer much in terms of economic relief. His video-conference meetings with governors were broadcast on federal airwaves, but ended up portraying him as bored and disengaged,” notes the report.
Russia has recorded more than 3,62,000 cases of coronavirus and is behind only the US and Brazil in overall numbers.
Nigeria is running out of food
The Nigerian government asked its farmers to produce more food, as the country has run out of funds to import them, reports the Gzero Media.
“The authorities say the country has run out of funds to import food for its people to eat, but workers say that years of chronic under-investment in the country’s agricultural sector has meant that even before the pandemic they were struggling to supply enough produce for Nigeria’s 200 million people. They warn that millions could now starve unless the government itself brings in more rice and other staples,” says the report.
Coronavirus forcing firms like Uber to return to start-up roots
One victim of the coronavirus pandemic has been human mobility, which in turn has had a devastating effect on the global app-based cab service Uber, reports the Washington Post.
“With rides down as much as 80 percent, the pandemic is testing whether Uber and other large start-ups can still innovate,” notes the report.
“The global pandemic presents the biggest test of this class of large start-ups, which also includes Airbnb and WeWork. It’s putting a huge strain on their business models, raising the question of whether they are too established to innovate,” Washington Post added.
Wuhan’s testing miracle
Authorities in Wuhan — where the Covid-19 pandemic originated — have pulled off a near impossible task of testing around 7 million people in a span of just 10 days, reports the G Zero media. “The ambitious testing scheme, dubbed a ’10-day battle’ by state officials, is an attempt to prevent a second wave of infection in the city where COVID-19 first surfaced back in December,” notes the report.
“To put the feat in perspective, testing 7 million people in 10 days means testing 8 people every second of every day. How did they do it? Medical booths were set up in every neighborhood so that all residents could easily access testing, while technicians paid home visits to elderly and disabled residents who were unable to leave their homes. On Friday alone, Wuhan performed around 1.47 million tests, compared to 394,296 tests performed throughout the entire US on the same day,” it adds.
When will the music start again?
The pandemic and the necessary requirements of social distancing have meant that concerts all across the world had to be temporarily suspended. While many concert halls are going to remain closed for many months ahead, some of them are showing the way forward, reports the Financial Times.
When on Sunday night, Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra came out on stage to play, it raised hopes across the world that music would eventually return.
“On the face of it, the omens are good. Other venues and festivals around the world are promising public events in the near future. The venerable Musikverein in Vienna will reopen in June with concerts, though with only 100 in the audience. The Ravenna festival in Italy will start with an open-air concert in late June. The Rossini opera festival in Pesaro will operate with the audience seated only in the theatre’s boxes,” notes the report.
“And yet, at the same time, other music organisations are announcing further cancellations and even closures,” it adds.
Tracking the coronavirus apps that are ‘tracking us’
Several governments across the world have released their own version of coronavirus-tracking apps, raising alarms about privacy and surveillance by the state on its citizens. Responding to such concerns, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review in US has started an initiative that tracks each one of these coronavirus apps.
“When we began comparing apps around the world, we realized there was no central repository of information; just incomplete, constantly changing data spread across a wide range of sources,” notes the report.
“So to help monitor this fast-evolving situation, we’re gathering the information into a single place for the first time with our Covid Tracing Tracker—a database to capture details of every significant automated contact tracing effort around the world,” it adds.
What else we are reading:
Mexico suffers 501 deaths in single-day record: Nikkei Asian Review
Cambodia’s ‘handsome hero’ Premier Hun Sen lauded for virus fight in new book: Straits Times
COVID-19 Infections and Deaths Among Natives Are Underreported. It’s Time For State Health Departments To Step Up: The Appeal
Chinese tourists, travel bubbles: how Asia can refloat its battered travel industry: South China Morning Post