New Delhi: The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate several countries across the world — at last count, there were 70,93,585 cases and more than 406,230 deaths.
As Brazil records some of the highest daily death tolls in the world, the government has put a cap on the amount of government data to be made public.
In other news, more than 400,000 shipping crew members are stuck on board or at their homes due to travel restrictions, which might lead to a blow for global trade flows. Meanwhile, the fall in US unemployment numbers might not be as positive as it seems, and a UK doctor recounts the harrowing experience of certifying dead Covid patients who were left at home unattended.
ThePrint brings you the most important global stories on the coronavirus pandemic and why they matter.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro limits release of data
As Brazil has begun to record some of the highest daily death tolls in the world, President Jair Bolsonaro has decided to limit the amount of data the government is releasing to public, reports the Washington Post.
The virus has officially affected at least 672,000 Brazilians and killed 36,000. “But that information disappeared from a government website on Saturday, to be replaced by a daily tally that shows only the numbers from the previous 24 hours,” notes the report.
“The sudden removal of the cumulative data touched off an avalanche of criticism as people in cities returned to their balconies to bang pots and detractors suggested the federal government was trying to obscure the gravity of a public health crisis it has done little to address. President Jair Bolsonaro, who continues to dismiss the disease even as it maims his country, has repeatedly questioned the accuracy of the data and grown increasingly assertive in his efforts to restrict access to it,” says the report.
Threat to global shipping as crews remain stranded
The global shipping industry is warning of a potential risk to international trade given that nearly 400,000 shipping crew are stranded at sea or at home due to travel restrictions, reports the Financial Times.
“Maritime transport is the engine of globalisation. Around 80 per cent of world trade by volume is carried on vessels that range from container ships to fuel tankers and dry bulk carriers, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development,” notes the report.
“However, the smooth operation of the freight trade is being hindered by travel restrictions. These bar crew from disembarking to return to their home country, or from travelling to a port where their ship is waiting for a crew change. Many seafarers are also struggling to obtain entry or exit visas, while the suspension of commercial flights increases the difficulties in moving crew around. Those affected make up more than a fifth of the 1.8m seafarers who crew the world’s 96,000 commercial vessels,” it adds.
Vietnam approves EU-trade pact to attract firms leaving China
The Vietnamese parliament has ratified a free trade agreement with the European Union, which is meant to attract more investment to Vietnam from firms looking to exit China, reports the Nikkei Asian Review.
“The trade deal has already been ratified by the EU, making Vietnam the second Southeast Asian nation to have such a trade treaty with the European bloc after Singapore,” states the report.
“Once the agreement takes effect, 71% of exports from Vietnam to the EU will become duty-free, as will 65% of EU shipments to Vietnam. The remaining tariffs up to 99% will be phased out by Hanoi over 10 years and by Brussels over seven years,” it adds.
How to read fall in US unemployment from 14.7 to 13.3%
A surprising dramatic fall in US unemployment numbers from 14.7 to 13.3 per cent does not mean everything is well in the US economy, argues The New Yorker’s political and economic commentator John Cassidy.
According to estimates, a little more than 28 million Americans lost their jobs during the months of April and May, but the latest jobs report highlighted 2.5 million them might have been re-hired.
But one positive employment “doesn’t mean the recession is over”, he argues. And the rise in employment might be because of a “misclassification of people who aren’t working but are nevertheless counted as employed”.
“Even going by the raw figures, almost twenty-one million Americans are still out of work, and another ten million are working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs. In the past couple of months, many major corporations, such as Boeing and Hertz, have announced large-scale permanent layoffs, and many smaller firms have gone out of business, laying off all their employees,” Cassidy writes.
New Zealand to lift all coronavirus restrictions
New Zealand is set to lift all restrictions, as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that coronavirus has now been “eliminated” from her country, reports Reuters.
“The government will drop social distancing restrictions from midnight on Monday as it moves to a Level 1 national alert from Level 2, Ardern told a news conference. Public and private events, the retail and hospitality industries and all public transport could resume without social distancing norms still in place across much of the world,” explains the report.
“There were no active cases for the first time since the virus arrived in New Zealand in late February, the health ministry said. New Zealand has reported 1,154 infections and 22 deaths from the disease,” it adds.
Joe Biden using Covid to project an empathetic future president
As the US President Donald Trump is accused of not paying enough public respect to Americans who have lost their lives to the novel coronavirus, his key challenger former vice-president Joe Biden has gone on an “empathy offensive”, reports TIME magazine.
“Biden has treated the last week as an audition for the American people, demonstrating his vision of how a President should behave through a national crisis. Part of that is drawing on his painful past: after losing his wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident and his son Beau to cancer in 2015, Biden has developed an uncommon fluency with grief, and a reflex to publicly share mourning that has powered him through his political career,” notes the report.
The anatomy of a pandemic
A new feature by the BBC looks at what scientists have uncovered with respect to the novel coronavirus in the past six months since the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China.
“Investigating an outbreak is not unlike the work of any detective. It’s a race to the scene of the crime before any evidence disappears; witnesses are interviewed — and then the chase begins, to track down and contain the killer before they strike again. But despite rallying an unrivalled international effort, coronavirus continues to advance, killing thousands of people everyday,” notes the feature. It goes on to give an overview of all the important scientific milestones with respect to research on coronavirus since scientists began studying it.
The harrowing task of a coronavirus death-certification doctor
A doctor in the UK has recounted the “difficult task of certifying deaths of coronavirus victims who died at home, often alone”, in an article for The Guardian.
“As it emerged that some of those who died at home alone of Covid-19 lay undiscovered for up to two weeks, one of the doctors who certified the deaths of people who died at home in London for the capital’s Pandemic Multi Agency Response Teams [PMART] explained the sad, challenging and mentally demanding nature of the work,” says the article.
“The longest time someone had gone before being discovered that I had was a week. Those cases were sad, especially given someone’s body had started to decompose. That made it impossible to say definitively if someone had died of Covid or something else, like a heart attack. However, we assumed that many were due to Covid, often exacerbated by underlying health problems,” said the doctor.
What else we are reading:
In a Tokyo school, temperature checks and silent lunches as Japan restarts classes: Washington Post
Toulouse’s troubles mirror those of France as a whole: Financial Times
The economist who could save the world: Washington Post