Moon’s approval rating at all-time low of 34.1%: Realmeter
Mar 22. 2021President Moon Jae-in (Yonhap)
By The Korea Herald/ANN
President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point of 34.1 percent since he took office in 2017, Realmeter said Monday, citing the negative impact from a massive real estate speculation scandal involving public officials.
In its five-day survey through last Friday on 2,510 adults nationwide, support for the president dropped 3.6 percentage points week-on-week. The previous low of 35.5 percent was recorded in the first week of January.
The proportion of those who disapprove of his presidency jumped 4.8 percentage points to 62.2 percent, the highest mark in the pollster’s tracking research.
The ruling Democratic Party’s approval rating also dived 2 percentage points to the lowest of 28.1 percent since the launch of the liberal Moon administration, according to the pollster. The previous low was 29.3 percent posted in the starting week of 2021.
Public support for the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) gained 3.1 percentage points to 35.5 percent.
In Seoul, where a mayoral by-election will be held April 7, the ruling party lost 1.4 percentage points to 26.2 percent, while the PPP added 2.5 percentage points to 38.9 percent.
A Realmeter official said the property-related issue is apparently continuing to deal a heavy blow to the ruling bloc despite Moon’s public apology over it.
Dozens of officials at the Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), a state-owned enterprise in charge of the public housing supply, and other government offices, as well as some lawmakers, were found to have bought undeveloped land around the capital ahead of announcements on plans to create new residential towns there.
The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points with a confidence level of 95 percent.
A separate poll by Ipsos found that both of the opposition party candidates — Oh Se-hoon and Ahn Cheol-soo — are leading Park Young-sun of the DP by big margins in the Seoul mayoral race.
Oh of the PPP and Ahn, leader of the minor opposition People’s Party (PP), have agreed on a single candidacy. The two parties plan to pick a “unified candidate” this week on the basis of two independent public opinion polls.
In a hypothetical two-way race, surveyed by Ipsos on 1,002 voters in Seoul last Friday and Saturday, Oh won with 50.6 percent over Park with 36.8 percent.
Ahn was in front with 52.3 percent in an one-on-one competition with the DP flag bearer with 35.6 percent. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points with a confidence level of 95 percent.
Meanwhile, Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor general, is maintaining his lead in a survey of who is fit to become South Korea’s next president.
Public support for him came to 39.1 percent in the two-day poll by the Korea Society Opinion Institute (KSOI) of 1,007 people, aged 18 and older, across the nation from last Friday, up 1.9 percentage points from 37.2 percent announced last Monday.
Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung of the DP and former DP leader Lee Nak-yon garnered 21.7 percent and 11.9 percent, respectively. The presidential election is slated for March 9, 2022. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points with a confidence level of 95 percent.
Yoon resigned from the top prosecutorial post in early March, protesting against the Moon administration’s prosecution reform drive.
Keen attention is being paid to the odds of Yoon becoming the flag bearer of the opposition bloc critical of Moon in the election. (Yonhap)
Gov’t expands Metro Manila curbs to four neighboring provinces
Mar 22. 2021Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque
By Jerome Aning Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN
MANILA, Philippines — The government has decided to keep the current quarantine restrictions in Metro Manila in place and expanded the curbs to neighboring Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite provinces for 14 days in a bid to suppress a surge in coronavirus infections.
In an online news briefing on Sunday, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, besides keeping general community quarantine in Metro Manila up to April 4, decided to impose additional restrictions to deal with the surge during its meeting on Saturday.
Some of the additional restrictions, Roque said, were similar to those that had already been imposed by the task force itself and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), including a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., age restriction on people who may go out, and suspension of mass gatherings.
Before the task force’s latest decision, Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite were on modified general community quarantine, the least restrictive level of coronavirus lockdown.
Despite pleas for stronger action by the government, the task force has decided against a hard lockdown, Roque said, referring to enhanced community quarantine, the strictest quarantine level that was imposed on the entire island of Luzon last year.
President Rodrigo Duterte has approved the task force’s recommendations, Roque said.
The Philippines is battling a resurgence of the coronavirus, recording nearly 8,000 new infections daily in recent weeks, which are heavily putting pressure on the country’s health-care system.
On Sunday, the Department of Health (DOH) logged 7,757 additional infections, bringing the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country to 663,794 overall.
The DOH declared 15,288 people with mild or no symptoms as recovered after completing a 14-day quarantine, pushing the total number of COVID-19 survivors in the country to 577,754. But 39 more patients had died, it said, raising the death toll to 12,968.
Left were 73,072 active cases, of which 95 percent were mild, 2.3 percent asymptomatic, 0.58 percent moderate, 1.1 percent severe, and 1 percent critical.
With the “explosive” rise in infections, the independent group of researchers OCTA said on the weekend that Metro Manila hospitals would run out of COVID-19 beds by the first week of April.
A measure of virus transmission speed is its reproduction number, which in Metro Manila is 1.95, meaning an infected person infects nearly two others.
“Our modeling suggests that with the current reproduction number hovering around 1.95, we expect both total bed and [intensive care unit] capacity to reach full 100-percent occupancy by the first week of April,” OCTA Research said in its latest monitoring report.
“Reducing the reproduction rate to 1.5 delays this critical threshold by about one to two weeks to the middle of [April],” the group said.
‘Drastic action’
“Unless the national government and [the local governments] take drastic and immediate action to significantly reduce the reproduction number of the surge in Metro Manila, we should expect our hospital[s] and medical front-liners to be overwhelmed within a period of several weeks, just around and after Easter,” it said.
Philippine General Hospital in Manila, one of only three COVID-19 referral hospitals in the country, has reached intensive-care capacity, and converted some rooms to intensive care units to admit more COVID-19 patients.
The hospital’s health workers are nearing exhaustion. “We may eventually experience a shortage in staff caring for COVID-19 patients because some of our health-care workers are sick or under quarantine due to exposure,” hospital spokesperson Jonas del Rosario said in a radio interview on Sunday.
A common recommendation for the suppression of the surge is a hard lockdown, which the government has rejected even before the flare-up in infections, saying the economy, which contracted by 9.5 percent last year due to the pandemic, can no longer take another shutdown.
Announcing the task force’s latest decision on Sunday, Roque said the economy would remain open. “You can still go to work,” he said, but added that some establishments—including driving schools, movie theaters, leisure arcades, libraries, archives, museums and cultural centers—would remain closed.
Even street vendors and small stores will be allowed to operate, Roque said, since they are considered economic activities.
But all social events in the tourism industry remain suspended, although open-air tourist attractions are allowed to operate, Roque said.
He said Metro Manilans should cancel their Holy Week travel plans.
The 17 local governments in Metro Manila have imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. to reduce movement and stem the spread of the virus. People below 18 years old and above 65 are not allowed to go out. Pregnant women and people suffering from illnesses are ordered to stay at home, but they can go out to buy essentials.
Exempted from the restrictions on movement are health workers; government officials and workers in essential industries; emergency responders; journalists; people going to the airport for international travel, and returning overseas Filipino workers.
Roque said Metro Manila residents returning from the provinces and nonresidents returning to their provinces would also be allowed to travel.
Public transportation will be allowed to operate following guidelines set by the Department of Transportation, he said.
Experts see push to reopen Philippines economy as a factor in 7,999 new COVID-19 cases
Mar 21. 2021
By Cebu Daily News
MANILA, Philippines — With a record 7,999 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, the Philippines for the second straight day exceeded the coronavirus infection numbers in August last year when health-care workers called for a “timeout.”
The Department of Health (DOH) report did not immediately say what parts of the country the cases came from.
The infections reported on Saturday brought the country’s total COVID-19 cases to 656,056, the DOH said.
It said the recoveries rose to 562,484 with the addition of 597 patients who had gotten well. But another 30 had died, raising the death toll to 12,930.
The recoveries and deaths brought the number of active cases to 80,642. Of these, 94.4 percent are mild, 3.1 percent asymptomatic, 0.9 percent critical condition, 1 percent severe and 0.53 percent moderate.
The DOH said it removed nine duplicates from the total case count, while 10 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The DOH on Saturday also said that of the 150 COVID-19 positive samples mostly from Metro Manila that were analyzed, 108, or 72 percent, were found to have two of the three globally recognized “variants of concern” (VOC) which are highly transmissible.
Of the total that was sequenced by the Philippine Genome Center (PGC), 46 were of the B.1.1.7, or United Kingdom variant, and 62 were of the B.1.351, or South African variant. Of the UK variant, 36 were from Metro Manila, where 41 of the South African variant also came from. In all, the PGC found 77, or 71.29 percent of the two VOC, in Metro Manila.
The surge has alarmed both the health sector and some lawmakers.
‘Complex scenario’
Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the World Health Organization’s country representative, to the Philippines on Friday said the spike in the number of cases was a “complex scenario,” which could have been influenced by possible “vaccine optimism” that caused a decrease in compliance to health standards, or by the spread of the more transmissible variants of the virus.
Public health experts, however, believe there may be other reasons.
Dr. Anthony Leachon, a former adviser to the National Task Force, against COVID-19 said he disagreed with Abeyasinghe.
He said poor decision-making on the part of the government, as well as an emphasis on reopening the economy fueled the current surge.
‘Set up to fail’
“Our economic managers set us up to fail,” Leachon said.
The country’s economic managers had pushed hard for the reopening of the economy—including opening malls and cinemas, as well as allowing minors age 10 to 15 to go out, despite coronavirus transmission remaining uncontrolled, Leachon said.
The loosening of regulations “set the people up to be lax,” he added.
“At the end of the day, these government officials blame the people for not following protocols, when they were the ones who set up the rules,” Leachon said.
He said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), the temporary government body overseeing the country’s response to the pandemic, was “not properly analyzing” the situation.
“It is ineptitude. The knowledge exists, but they failed to apply it correctly,” Leachon said.
He added that contrary to the DOH claim that the failure to adhere to minimum public health and safety standards was to blame for the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, Leachon found that only those who do not have the capacity to follow break the rules.
Blaming people
“I have been saying provide masks to the poorest of the poor, because the only people who cannot follow are those who are unable to,” he said.
President Rodrigo Duterte ordered his officials last week to distribute free masks to low-income citizens, more than a year after the pandemic started.
Dr. Inday Dans, a clinical epidemiologist and founding member of Health Professionals Alliance Against COVID-19 (HPAAC), said it was “hard to pinpoint” the reasons for the surge, but the government had a “tendency to blame the people.”
The daily cases were averaging around 3,818 for a week before it jumped to 6,725 on Aug. 10, 2020. This prompted HPAAC and other health and medical organizations to call for a “timeout” to stop the spread of the virus and protect health workers.
These groups at that time proposed several courses of action to handle the surge, including putting up a one hospital command center, and one COVID-19 referral network for local governments.
They also called on the government to enforce workplace safety guidelines, provide transport safety rules and encourage active transport, such as biking, make the internet accessible to all, especially the poor, establish a social amelioration plan and strengthen the Health Technology Assessment Council.
However, months later, and after several meetings with officials, Dans said little progress had been made in realizing their proposals.
“They put up a One Hospital Command [Center], but it is not working. You call the number and they will tell you to inform them if you have found a hospital already, when it should be the other way around, they should be the ones telling the patients which hospitals still have vacancies,” she said.
Dans said the government “should make it easy for the public to follow policies.”
Open, closed spaces
“We’re calling for more open spaces, since studies show these really decrease infection risk. But instead of open areas, it is malls that were opened, in an effort to lift the economy. But those are closed spaces,” she said.
Reacting to the finding that two VOC were found in majority of positive cases in Metro Manila, both Dans and Leachon said the 150 samples were too small to make any conclusions.
“Unfortunately the Philippines has no funds to do bigger sample [sequencing,]” Dans said, suggesting pouring more government funds into the monitoring effort.
Leachon supported a call by the OCTA Research group for stricter implementation of community quarantine regulations and proposed taking a further step of imposing a “systemic lockdown” instead of just granular or localized lockdowns.
“In localized lockdowns, there is still mobility of people, what we need is a systemic one,” Leachon said, adding that the government should provide ‘ayuda,’ or economic subsidy, to those who will be affected.
“We need to realign the funds, the President has that particular power. There are no vaccines yet, the money that we borrowed for purchase should be used to provide ayuda so we can go on MECQ (modified enhanced community quarantine),” he said in Filipino.
‘UK, US and EU among those blocking vaccine manufacturing plans for developing nations’
Mar 21. 2021
By The Daily Start
Wealthy countries are blocking proposals to help developing nations increase their vaccine manufacturing capabilities, a BBC report said today.
According to the report, several developing countries have asked the World Health Organization to help them, but the richer nations have pushed back on “provisions in international law that would enable them to achieve this.”
The revelations came through a copy of a document leaked to BBC Newsnight show.
Among those richer nations are the UK, the US, as well as the European Union, the BBC report says.
“Where we could have language in there that would make it easier for countries to produce more vaccines and more medicines within their country, it would include initiatives that would finance and facilitate that. The UK is on the opposite side of the argument of trying to remove those kinds of progressive proposals from the text,” Diarmaid McDonald, from Just Treatment, a patient group for fair access to medicines, told the BBC.
The BBC quoted a spokesperson for the UK government as saying “a global pandemic requires a global solution and the UK is leading from the front, driving forward efforts to ensure equitable access around the world to Covid vaccines and treatments”.
The spokesperson said the UK is one of the largest donors to international efforts to ensure over one billion doses of coronavirus vaccines get to developing countries this year.
“If and when governments should intervene to ensure affordable supplies of medicines is a long-standing issue,” the report adds.
The pandemic has brought focus on the ability of different countries to source vaccines and many experts say equitable access to vaccines is essential to prevent cases and deaths and to contribute to global population immunity.
But the global capacity for producing vaccines is about a third of what is needed, Ellen t’Hoen, an expert in medicines policy and intellectual property law, told the BBC.
“These are vaccines that are produced in wealthy countries and are in general kept by those wealthy countries.
“Developing nations are saying we need to have a share of the pie, not only the share of the vaccines, but also the share of the right to produce these vaccines,” she added.
According to the BBC report, the WHO does not have the authority to sidestep patents, but it is trying to bring countries together to find a way to bolster vaccine supplies.
The discussions include using provisions in international law to get around patents and helping countries to have the technical ability to make them.
But the drug industry argues that eroding patents would hinder its ability to invest in future treatments for Covid and other illnesses.
Earlier this month, representatives of the US drug industry wrote to US President Joe Biden to share their concerns, the BBC reports.
“Eliminating those protections would undermine the global response to the pandemic,” they wrote, including ongoing efforts to tackle new variants.
It would also create confusion that could potentially undermine public confidence in vaccine safety, and create a barrier to information sharing, the representatives said.
“Most importantly, eliminating protections would not speed up production,” they added.
By The Japan News A powerful magnitude-6.9 earthquake hit Miyagi Prefecture on Saturday evening.
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the earthquake’s focus was 59 kilometers deep, and it occurred off Miyagi Prefecture at around 6:09 p.m. Tremblors measuring an upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 were felt in Miyagino Ward, Sendai; Ishinomaki; and other parts of the prefecture. A lower 5 was recorded in Ofunato and Ichinoseki in Iwate Prefecture as well as Kesennuma and Minami-Sanriku in Miyagi Prefecture.
A tsunami advisory was issued.
According to Tohoku Electric Power Network Co., about 200 households in Miyagi Prefecture were hit by power outages as of 6:30 p.m.
Rise in tiger numbers may be good news but people in Bardiya live in terror
Mar 21. 2021In the past few days authorities have captured two tigers that killed people. Photo Courtesy: Bardiya National Park
By Chandan Kumar Mandal Kathmandu Post
Nine people have been killed since July, three in March alone. Authorities say the victims had gone to the forest for fodder but tigers are seen in human settlements too.
Santa Kumar Shah has been living in constant fear for the last few months. He has reason to.
A tiger has been regularly seen prowling near his house in Bhagraiya of Madhuwan Municipality, Bardiya.
“I cannot gather the courage to walk even in broad daylight,” said Shah, 57. “Tigers have been attacking locals during the day.”
With no market nearby, he has to go to Orali Bazaar, a few kilometres away, even to buy daily essentials.
It is not just Shah who is scared. Most of the people living near Bardiya National Park and the adjacent forest areas are too.
Sudhan Tharu gets restless until her children return home from school.
“I keep waiting for them to return home as soon as they leave for school in the morning,” said Tharu. “People have not been going even to each other’s places after sunset.”
Communities around the national park and adjoining forests have seen several tiger attacks, leaving local residents dead and injured.
But park officials say that tiger attacks have occurred only in those areas that fall under the park’s jurisdiction—core areas of the park and buffer zone—and in areas that fall within the scope of Division Forest Office, Bardiya.
Dalli Rawat, 62, of Mohnapur, Thakurbaba Municipality, was the latest victim of tiger attack. She was killed on Tuesday. According to park officials, she was killed deep inside the protected area where she had gone to collect fiddlehead ferns.
Three other people who had accompanied Rawat managed to flee.
On March 10, another woman was killed. Renuka Sunar, 27, of Kothiaghat in Madhuwan Municipality, too had gone to a community forest adjoining the protected area to collect fodder.
Of the nine tiger attack victims, four were women.
“On Tuesday, women had gone inside the park which is an illegal activity as trespassing is not allowed there,” said Ashim Thapa, information officer of the Bardiya National Park. “Even earlier, such deaths were reported from forest areas.”
Before the two incidents within the span of a week, 62-year-old Lal Bahadur Chaudhary of Kalabanjar, Rajapur Municipality was killed in Nawaranga Bajhpur Community Forest, adjacent to Bardiya National Park, where he had taken his cattle for grazing, on March 1.
In January, a tiger from Bardiya National Park snatched 52-year-old Nandakala Thapa off a moving motorcycle while she was riding pillion with her son at night time along the Amreni-Chisapani stretch of East-West Highway that traverses the park.
This spike in deaths of late from tiger attacks is worrying. According to the park’s records in the four years up to the fiscal year 2019-20, only six people had been killed and 12 others injured in tiger attacks.
Chiranjibi Pokharel, a wildlife expert, says such frequent attacks and killing of local residents by tigers are unusual.
“Tigers attacking and killing people inside the park could be normal. But tigers regularly killing local residents and venturing out of its territory is strange,” said Pokharel, also the project manager of Central Zoo in Lalitpur. “It could be either because tigers are facing some problems or due to the increasing tiger population inside the park.”
This is also the assessment of park officials.
“According to our analysis, it is because of the increased number of tigers in Bardiya,” said Thapa. “The victims are those who are living in the buffer zone and are dependent on the forest for resources. They were attacked when they entered the forest despite the risk.”
There were 87 tigers in Bardiya in 2018, according to the national parks department. Photo courtesy: Bhawany Kandel
The increase in tiger population in Bardiya National Park has been impressive. There were 87 individual tigers in 2018, a rise from 50 in 2013, according to the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
“The regular killing of humans by tigers is worrisome,” said Haribhadra Acharya, spokesperson for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
Most incidents of tiger attacks have taken place along the Khata Corridor, a vital strip of forest that connects Bardiya National Park with adjoining forests as well as Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, India, used by wildlife.
According to officials, at least six deaths this fiscal year have been reported from the area.
Following frequent losses of human lives in tiger attacks, Madhuwan Municipality on Saturday prohibited local residents from entering Khata Corridor and Samjhana Community Forest. The local government barred its residents from entering the forest and the corridor to collect fodder and firewood and graze their cattle after five individuals were killed in separate tiger attack incidents in the community forest area alone.
“Park authorities have been taking initiatives in managing the tigers and warning the locals so that they do not reach risky areas,” said Acharya. “Even local FM stations and park officials have been disseminating messages to alert the local people while other measures have also been deployed.”
Following the tiger attack incident on the East-West Highway, the park had earlier barred movement along the Amreni-Chisapani section of the highway from 8pm to 6am.
“We have stopped jungle walk and public movement along the highway at night on two-wheelers and on foot. The park has been regularly asking locals not to walk at night time or enter the jungle alone,” said Shrestha. “Even local community leaders are being made aware so that they can impart the message to others.”
Other measures taken include installing camera traps to monitor the problem-causing tigers.
“We have placed cameras where Tuesday’s incident took place. We need to identify the tiger before managing it,” said Bishnu Prasad Shrestha, the chief conservation officer of Bardiya National Park. “If we identify and locate the tiger, we can remove it from the area. With this approach, the problem can be solved effectively.”
In October last year, the tiger that killed a man in his fifties was darted and captured from the Geruwa area after nine days. The tiger is still being held captive at the park headquarters at Thakurdwara.
On Wednesday, two separate teams of park officials and wildlife technicians were in the field on elephants to capture tigers at two locations—Khata Corridor and Geruwa. A male tiger was captured from Gola Community Forest of Geruwa on the same day. Another male tiger was captured from the Khata Corridor area on Thursday.
According to Shrestha, capturing the problem-causing tigers has been difficult, as four different tigers were recorded on camera in Khata Corridor.
“We had even kept a buffalo calf as a bait to capture the tigers, but the tiger did not show up. Earlier, we had to retract from the area [Khata Corridor] after 12 days,” said Shrestha. “We believe these are different tigers causing havoc in Bardiya.”
As most of these killings have taken place when the locals have entered the forests for collecting fodder for their cattle or firewood and taking out their cattle for grazing, they have become prone to tiger attacks.
“All these attacks have taken place in the jungle—either community forests or the park’s core area—but tigers have not taken out anyone from human settlements,” said Acharya. “Women have been attacked because they tend to go to collect fodder. Likewise, members of marginalised groups have died because they are the ones who live in nearby forest areas and are dependent on forest resources.”
It is not a problem limited to Bardiya. Two persons were killed last October by tigers in Chitwan forests where they had gone to collect fodder.
According to Acharya, who is also an ecologist, tigers should get adequate prey inside their habitat.
“Since extending their habitat is difficult, what can be done is to reduce the dependency of local communities on forest products,” said Acharya. “Promotion of home-stay and other tourism activities as alternative enterprises should be done so that they do not have to go to the forests as often.”
Pokharel, who has conducted several research studies on tigers, says tigers usually do not venture out of their territories.
“Tigers do not like even the slightest disturbance. They do not usually wander outside like leopards. The tiger is a territorial species and strictly maintains its territory hence does not go out much,” said Pokharel. “Even if it wanders outside, it hardly attacks. But to understand what is happening in Bardiya, there must be a detailed study. The study can find out whether it is because of an inadequate prey base or because of the high number of tigers.”
According to Pokharel, competition for territory is usually among male tigers and this could lead to displacement of some tigers to the forest periphery or nearby human settlements.
“In such a situation, a tiger might look for easy prey, which could be cattle or even human beings,” said Pokharel
Such negative interaction between wildlife and local communities result in human-wildlife conflict leading to retaliatory killing of predators. Locals often demand that the authorities kill tigers, claiming that the animals have become maneaters.
A study in 2014 that investigated the incidence and perception of human-tiger conflict in the buffer zone of Bardiya National Park found that the annual loss of livestock attributable to tigers was 0.26 animals per household, amounting to a yearly loss of 2 percent of the livestock.
While park tigers have only killed people in the forests in recent times, they have been entering human settlements frequently, causing fear among local communities.
According to Shrestha, sightings of tigers have been recorded even outside the park and tigers have also attacked livestock after entering villages.
“Tigers have snatched cattle from sheds, but they have not killed any humans there,” said Shrestha.
But villagers are scared.
Villages like Bhagraiya, with nearly 60 households, of Madhuwan Municipality are reeling under the tiger’s threat the most. For nearly seven months, locals have not been able to walk around or work in their fields freely, fearing tiger attack.
“We never know when a tiger will attack. My home, which is not a concrete one, doesn’t have a toilet inside,” said Shah. “Due to the fear of a tiger outside, we have been managing inside.”
Not only have people altered their lifestyles like going to the market less often or managing the toilet inside, they are also scared to death about how they will manage in case of an emergency.
“Even when we have to take an ill person outside, we need to gather 10-12 people and walk in a group,” said Durga KC, from Bhagraiya. “The hospital is far from here. There is no guarantee of getting an ambulance on time. The path to the main road is through a dense forest and there is always the fear of a tiger attack.”
Mar 20. 2021Employees work at a truck assembly workshop of Shaanxi Automobile Holding Group Co in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, in February. [Photo/Xinhua]
By China Daily/ANN
China’s economy witnessed a strong recovery in the first two months of the year, as factory and retail activity surged and beat expectations, foreign media outlets said in recent reports.
Industrial output rose 35.1 percent in the first two months from a year earlier, up from a 7.3 percent uptick seen in December, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed, stronger than a median forecast of a 30.0 percent surge found in a Reuters poll of analysts.
Retail sales increased 33.8 percent, also faster than a forecast 32 percent rise and marking a significant jump from 4.6 percent growth in December and a 20.5 percent contraction for January and February of 2020, it added.
“We have a positive outlook for exports and manufacturing investment this year,” head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics Louis Kuijs told Reuters. “And we expect household consumption to become a key driver of growth from Q2 onwards, as confidence improves and the government’s call to reduce travel is toned down.”
China’s ability to contain the coronavirus pandemic before other major economies has allowed it to rebound faster, Reuters pointed out, adding in 2020, China was the only major economy to report positive annual growth with an expansion of 2.3 percent.
The recovery has been driven by robust trade, pent-up demand and government stimulus, and export growth hit a record pace in February while factory gate prices posted their biggest expansion since November 2018.
The Wall Street Journal also pointed out many economists say China’s economy could grow by 8 percent or more in 2021, even with tighter fiscal and monetary policies.
Coming into 2021, China’s factory production continued to be buoyed by strong external demand and government policies that encouraged workers to stay at their workplaces rather than return home for this year’s Lunar New Year. Those policies had the dual effect of containing infections and boosting production, WSJ said.
China is still the only major economy to have powered out of the pandemic after early control over the virus and amid surging global demand for medical goods and work-from-home devices. The economy grew 2.3 percent in 2020 and is forecast by economists to expand 8.4 percent this year, Bloomberg said, concurring with the other outlets.
[Japan] New hospital bed allocation plan required by May
Mar 20. 2021Medical staff prepare to treat COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, in February. (Yomiuri Shimbun file photo)
By Takaya Toda Yomiuri Shimbun/The Japan News/ANN
One of the reasons the government decided to end the coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures on Sunday was because of lower hospital bed occupancy rates.
According to the health ministry, the rate in Tokyo peaked at 83.6% on Jan. 13, but it had dropped to 25.1% as of Tuesday. The rates in Saitama and Chiba prefectures also dropped to under 40%.
“Under the current infection situation, [the hospital bed occupancy rate] is at a level that would not rapidly reach a crisis situation,” an official from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said.
In preparation for a possible resurgence of infections after the end of the state of emergency, the government revised its basic policy on dealing with the pandemic, to strengthen the structure of medical care in two phases.
The central government will first ask municipal governments in urban areas to make a plan for a situation in which daily novel coronavirus cases double in two weeks and reach twice the number seen at the peak of the “third wave.” For Tokyo, this would mean daily cases jumping from about 2,500 to about 5,000 in two weeks.
Since securing new hospital beds will take time, the key will be to strengthen measures for those who receive care at home or in lodgings such as hotels. Municipal governments will be asked to work with local medical associations to promptly set up a cooperation system that includes doctors making home visits.
The central government will then request prefectural governments to comprehensively revise their plans to secure hospital beds. The central and prefectural governments underestimated the situation when writing up the plan last year.
As a result, Tokyo ended up having over 9,000 COVID-19 patients staying at home at one point during the third wave of infections, even though the Tokyo metropolitan government gradually increased the number of hospital beds secured for coronavirus patients to about 5,000 from the original 3,500.
In order to increase the number of available beds for COVID-19 patients, the health ministry is considering asking hospitals to report the maximum number of COVID-19 patients they can admit after a thorough review of the numbers of beds, doctors and nurses required for other treatments.
“We need hospitals to fundamentally review their bed usage,” a health ministry official said.
The health ministry’s deadline for prefectural governments to submit their revised bed plans is the end of May. However, there is criticism within the central government about the ministry’s lack of speed.
Some say that May is likely too late because there is no telling when the spread of coronavirus variants may cause a new surge in infections. Therefore, the health ministry is now adjusting its plans so that interim reports will be submitted in April and will be made public.
Daily Covid-19 cases in Philippines soar to record high, setting back lockdown efforts
Mar 20. 2021
By Raul Dancel The Straits Times/ANN
MANILA – The Philippines on Friday (March 19) reported its highest daily Covid-19 infections, even as it began to adopt some “circuit breaker” measures to check a record-setting surge fuelled in part by new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus.
The Health Ministry reported 7,103 new cases, surpassing the previous high of 6,958 recorded in August last year when the outbreak peaked as the country was coming out of one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns.
The Philippines is the second worst-hit country in South-east Asia, after Indonesia, with more than 648,000 cases in total and close to 13,000 deaths.
The latest Health Ministry bulletin was released just hours after the government announced a slew of tougher curbs meant to slow the surge in infections.
“We are considering everything to balance the livelihood and health of our citizens,” Mr Harry Roque, President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, told reporters.
Covid-19 infections have more than doubled from about 13,000 a week in mid-February to 25,000 last week.
Hospitals are quickly running out of beds for patients, with the sudden spike in cases.
Three in five beds in intensive care units in Metro Manila are already occupied. At least 50 hospitals have said occupancy rates are now at critical or high-risk levels, with nearly all their beds already in use.
The government is walking back many of the policies it introduced just weeks ago that were meant to ease quarantine restrictions and revive a stalled economy.
It is again shutting down cinemas, gaming arcades, museums, public libraries and driving schools.
Gatherings for business and worship have been capped at 30 per cent of the capacity of venues, from the previous 50 per cent.
The government is also capping the number of its employees who will have to report for work on site to 30 per cent.
A curfew is already in place in Metro Manila, and many cities in the region have already placed certain districts under hard lockdown.
Mr Roque said the government was ready to further tighten the screws.
It was also considering a proposal from data researchers to concentrate its vaccination drive in Metro Manila, where nearly half the cases are found, and in other “hot zones”, he said.
The University of the Philippines-based Octa Research Group said on Friday that the Philippines could dramatically reduce infections if it could inoculate eight million people in Metro Manila – the capital region that spans 16 cities and is home to some 13 million people.
That should be enough to give Metro Manila herd immunity and “protect other regions indirectly”, said Professor Guido David, the group’s spokesman.
“If we wait for the whole Philippines to achieve herd immunity, that would require about 70 million vaccines and could take two to three years,” he said.
Professor Ranjit Rye, an Octa research fellow, said the Philippines would probably soon need a circuit breaker lockdown.
That would entail banning social gatherings and indoor dining, sending workers back to work-from-home arrangements or on staggered hours, reissuing quarantine passes to limit those going out only to workers and for essential tasks.
“The problem is a very serious surge. We can’t minimise or downplay it. We need to deal with it, and deal with it collectively,” he said.
Seoul withdraws testing mandate for all foreign workers in policy U-turn
Mar 20. 2021People line up for COVID-19 tests in Guro-gu, Seoul, March 19. (Yonhap)
By Shin Ji-hye The Korea Herald/ANN
The Seoul city government on Friday withdrew an order requiring mandatory coronavirus testing for all foreign workers after facing criticism from foreigners, medical workers and the human rights commission.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government released a statement on Friday afternoon, saying, “We changed the administrative order issued on March 17 after the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters requested the withdrawal of the order.”
“We changed from the mandate to test all foreign workers to recommendation on testing (workers) in high-risk workplaces,” it said.
The government now only recommends that foreign workers at high-risk workplaces, such as those in close, dense and enclosed work environments, undergo diagnostic tests by March 31.
It also recommends Koreans employed at the same business establishments to get tested.
The change came after the National Human Rights Commission of Korea also launched an investigation on Friday into the city government’s decision to mandate coronavirus tests for all foreign workers, after some foreigners filed a petition against the administrative order.
“Foreigners have filed a petition with the NHRC, saying that they feel hatred and racism,” NHRC Chairperson Choi Young-ae said in a statement. “In response, the NHRC will quickly determine whether discrimination and human rights violations are committed.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the Seoul government issued an administrative order requiring all foreign workers in the city to undergo diagnostic tests March 17-31 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Fines of up to 2 million won ($1,778) will be imposed if they fail to get tested during the period.
President Moon Jae-in (Yonhap)
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque
In the past few days authorities have captured two tigers that killed people. Photo Courtesy: Bardiya National Park
![Employees work at a truck assembly workshop of Shaanxi Automobile Holding Group Co in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, in February. [Photo/Xinhua]](https://media.nationthailand.com/images/news/2021/03/20/30403919/800_879eb805eb36252.jpeg?v=1616206925)
Employees work at a truck assembly workshop of Shaanxi Automobile Holding Group Co in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, in February. [Photo/Xinhua]
Medical staff prepare to treat COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, in February. (Yomiuri Shimbun file photo)
People line up for COVID-19 tests in Guro-gu, Seoul, March 19. (Yonhap)
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