International

Doctors despair, schools to shut as pandemic worsens in Portugal

Reuters

Lisbon, Jan 21: Overwhelmed by record numbers of COVID-19 patients, doctors in Portuguese hospitals say they are exhausted and in despair.

The government was preparing to shut all schools, kindergartens and universities from Friday to try to halt the surge in coronavirus cases, state news agency Lusa reported on Thursday.

“We do not have enough human resources,” said Guida da Ponte, deputy head of a doctors’ union near Lisbon, adding while there was a lack of intensive-care beds, more could be set up “but we don’t have the professionals.”

“Doctors are desperate. The word really is ‘despair’.”
Western Europe’s poorest country coped well in the first wave of the pandemic last year but has been swamped in recent weeks by a faster-spreading variant of the virus, registering the world’s highest infection and death rates.

Ambulances have been queuing outside hospitals, waiting for beds to become available. An elderly man died in an ambulance after waiting inside the vehicle for three hours on Tuesday in the town of Portalegre.

A government spokeswoman said the cabinet was discussing new measures to tackle the pandemic but declined to give details.

Without waiting for the government announcement, some local officials were urging parents to keep their children at home.
“If you have the chance, don’t let your children go to school.

Time is essential in controlling the effects of a catastrophe,” Carlos Carreiras, the mayor of Cascais near Lisbon, wrote on Facebook.

SCHOOL SHUTDOWN

Ricardo Mexia, head of the association of public healthcare doctors, said authorities had failed to prepare for the new surge in infections after relaxing restrictions for the year-end holidays.

“The decision to close schools is coming too late, but it is important to reduce contagion,” he said.

“We don’t have the means to conduct epidemiological surveys, we haven’t recruited enough people, we haven’t trained people… I fear the numbers will get even worse.”

Under a lockdown that started last week, all non-essential services are shut and people urged to stay home, but the government has so far kept schools open, despite calls to shut them from parents’ groups, students and opposition parties.

“It is not good to come to classes as there are high-risk groups we could infect,” said Frederico Nunes, 20, a university student.

“I think it’s annoying because this could have been avoided if the government had adopted online classes.”

The government has acknowledged that holiday-time contagion played a role, but blamed the increase in cases mostly on the more contagious variant of the virus first detected in Britain, which is spreading rapidly across Portugal.

The daily death toll reached a record high of 221 on Thursday, up from 219 the day before, bringing the total to 9,686 fatalities since the start of the pandemic, health authority DGS said.

The country of 10 million people reported 13,544 infections over the last 24 hours, below Wednesday’s record of 14,647.

Portugal has the world’s highest rolling average of new cases, at 1,044 per million inhabitants over the last seven days, according to data tracker ourworldindata.org.

Around 20% of new COVID-19 cases being reported are of the more transmissible variant and that number could reach 60% as early as next week, Health Minister Marta Temido told broadcaster RTP on Wednesday.

International

World’s Most Vaccinated Nation Activates Curbs as Cases Rise

(Asian News Hub) – Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated more of its population against Covid-19 than any other country, has closed schools and canceled sporting activities for two weeks as infections surge.

The measures, which include bans on the intermingling of households and the early closure of bars, come even as the country has fully vaccinated more than 60% of its adult population with two doses of coronavirus vaccines. The curbs are similar to those last imposed at the end of 2020.

“Despite of all the exceptional efforts we are making, the Covid-19 situation in our country is critical right now with many daily cases reported last week,” Peggy Vidot, the nation’s health minister, said at a press conference Tuesday.

The Indian Ocean archipelago, which has a population of about 98,000, is dependent on tourism for much of its foreign exchange and acted quickly to begin vaccinations in January using a donation of Chinese vaccines from the United Arab Emirates. It has procured other vaccines since.

By April 12, 59% of the doses administered were Sinopharm vaccines and the rest were Covishield, a version of AstraZeneca Plc’s shot made under license in India.

To date 62.2% of its eligible population is fully vaccinated, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. That compares with 55.9% for Israel, the next most vaccinated nation.

Officials at the press conference gave little detail on what could be behind the infection surge other than to say people were taking fewer precautions against the virus than before and the surge may be due to celebrations after Easter.

The number of active cases in the nation rose to 1,068 on May 3 from 612 on April 28, according to health ministry announcements.

Bloomberg

International

Devastating impact of the pandemic on media, deplorable situation in India: PEC

(Asian News Hub) – The Covid-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on the media, the Switzerland based media rights and safety body Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) lamented on Friday in preparation for World Press Freedom Day on 3 May.

Human cost of the pandemic is particularly high where over one thousand journalists have lost their lives due to novel corona virus aggravated ailments. India recently lost over 50 journalists in 2 weeks (3.5 per day).

Human cost of the pandemic is particularly high where over one thousand journalists have lost their lives due to novel corona virus aggravated ailments. Journalists are engaged in a profession which is particularly exposed to the virus, as many have been forced to continue working in contact with the population. Until 29 April 2021, since March 2020, within 14 months, the PEC (www.pressemblem.ch/) has counted more than 1,200 journalists who died from complications related to Covid-19 in 75 countries.

“This is an unprecedented slaughter and a great loss for the profession,” said PEC secretary-general Blaise Lempen adding, “On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, we call for honoring eminent colleagues of all ages who have not survived the pandemic.” He appeals to all concerned governments to take action to help the media most affected and support the families of the victims on this auspicious occasion.

PEC also considers there is a need to distribute vaccines equally all over the world, to stop spread of the virus and its new strains in developing countries.

Vaccine production is limited and it is available for the wealthiest countries, preventing access to journalists in South America and South Asia. As long as this situation continues, deaths will keep on increasing, it added.

The rate of deceased journalists accelerated further in April with the deaths of 126 journalists in one month or four media-victims per day. Since the pandemic broke out in March 2020, four countries have been particularly affected with more than one hundred journo-casualties each including Brazil (more than 183 media corona-casualties), Peru (140 dead), India (122) and Mexico (106).

There is nevertheless a positive note that the number of journalists’ deaths slowed sharply in Europe and North America, thanks to effective protection measures and the progress of vaccination. By region, Latin America tops the list with more than half of the victims, 673 in 20 countries. Asia follows with 256 in 18 countries, then Europe with 175 in 19 countries.

Africa comes next with 56 dead in 16 countries, ahead of North America with 47 in 2 countries.

India recently lost half a century journalists within a fortnight to corona-complications, said Nava Thakuria, PEC’s country representative adding that the populous country might have lost more journalists than documented, as many media outlets in India prefer to tone done the corona casualties among their journo-colleagues. India’s neighbour Bangladesh recorded 52 journo-victims to Covid-19 followed by Pakistan (26 dead), Afghanistan (9) and Nepal (7). Other tiny neighbours namely Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar etc have not reported a single corona media casualty.

The robust Indian media fraternity has lately lost Rohit Sardana, Nilakshi Bhattacharyya, Aiyushman Dutta, Bhanu Prakash Rath, Manas Ranjan Jaipuria, Amjad Badshah, Sridhar Dharmasanam, Raju Mishra, Sadanand Shinde, Kakoli Bhattacharya, Kondra Srinivas Goud, Sammi Reddy, Akash Saxena, Khwaja Mujahiduddin, Anil Basnoi, Venga Reddy, Madiraju Harikrishna Giri, Syed Shabaz, etc to the corona-pandemic. Good bye friends and rest in absolute peace around the unseen world.

International

India rapidly losing scribes to Covid-19, global tally reaches 1175

(Asian News Hub) – India is fast losing working journalists to Covid-19 and crossed 100 mark, where as the global tally hit 1,175. The country lately starts losing three journalists every day.

Brazil continues to be the worst affected country with 181 media corona-casualties followed by Peru (140) and Mexico (106), stated the Switzerland based media rights & safety body Press Emblem Campaign (PEC).

India, which witnessed the death of nine journalists due to novel corona virus infection aggravated ailments in the last three days, is just behind of Mexico with 101 casualties since the pandemic broke out in March 2020. The nation with a billion plus populace comes far ahead of Italy (52 dead), Bangladesh (51), USA (47), Colombia (47), Ecuador (46), United Kingdom (28), Dominican Republic (27), Pakistan (25), Turkey (22), Iran (21), etc.

Expressing apprehensions that the situation may worsen for the safety of journalists on the ground due to the corona-pandemic, Blaise Lempen, general secretary of PRESS EMBLEM CAMPAIGN (PEC), advocates for adequate compensations to the victim families. He also emphasized on early vaccinations to media workers so that they can perform their duties as corona warriors after the doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, etc without endangering their lives.

Even after the launch of a massive corona-vaccination program covering around 13 million Indian citizens India till now in the backdrop of around three million reported infections every day mounting its cumulative Covid-19 cases to over 16 million (total casualty crosses 190,000).

Reported names of recent corona-victims include Shailesh Raval (Gujarat), Sopan Bongane, Ashok Tupe, Motichand Bedmutha (Maharashtra), P Tataiah, Chandrashekar Naidu, Srinivasa Rao (Andhra Pradesh), Ashish Yechury, Chanchal Pal Chauhan (New Delhi), Chinta Naga Raju, Ramachandra Rao (Telangana), Govind Behera, Manoj Kumar Sahu, Karunakar Sahu, Naresh Behera (Odisha), Jodu Chutia (Assam), etc.

“India has the probability to increase the number of media corona-victims as a number of States went on under-reporting about the actual figures because of various reasons,” commented PEC’s country representative Nava Thakuria adding, in many cases even the established media houses had not reported about their own corona-positive cases to avoid unwanted interferences from the authority under the health protocols.