TURKEY is sending planeloads of emergency equipment to Britain to help hard-hit medics on the frontline battle coronavirus.
The first flight left earlier today carrying protective equipment including surgical masks, industrial masks and haz-mat suits.
State-run Anadolu Agency said a military cargo plane carrying the medical supplies took off from an air base near the capital Ankara.
A second plane carrying more equipment will depart tomorrow, it reported.
There was no information on the actual quantity of the supplies sent, however photos showed multiple crates being loaded onto a huge plane.
In the past weeks, Turkey has also donated medical supplies to Italy, Spain as well as five countries in the Balkans. Read more
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President Donald Trump has removed the chairman of the federal panel Congress created to oversee his administration’s management of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package – the latest action by the president to undermine the system of independent oversight of the executive established after Watergate.
In just the last four days Trump has ousted two inspectors general and expressed displeasure with a third, a pattern that critics say is a direct assault on one of the pillars of good governance.
Glenn Fine, who had been the acting Pentagon inspector general, was informed Monday that he was being replaced at the Defense Department by Sean O’Donnell, currently the inspector general at the Environmental Protection Agency. O’Donnell will simultaneously be IG at the EPA and acting inspector general at the Pentagon until a permanent replacement is confirmed for the Defense Department.
Late last month, Fine was selected by the head of a council of inspectors general to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, created by the March 27 law.
On Friday, the president notified Congress that he was removing Michael Atkinson as the inspector general of the intelligence community – a decision that Trump acknowledged was in response to Atkinson’s having alerted lawmakers to the existence of a whistleblower complaint about the president’s dealings with Ukraine. The matter ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment in the House before his acquittal in the Senate.
Trump has also refused dozens of congressional subpoenas and asserted to the courts that they lack jurisdiction to oversee his responses to Congress.
“We wanted inspectors general because of an out-of-control president named Richard Nixon and this president is trying to destroy them,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. “What’s happened this week has been a total full-on assault on the IG system.”
Fine is a career official who has served Republican and Democratic presidents. He had been acting Pentagon inspector general for more than four years, and before that was inspector general at the Justice Department for 11 years. Fine and his staff were caught by surprise when informed of the decision Monday, and were given no explanation for the move, according to U.S. federal officials. Read more
Also read Coronavirus victims may be given ‘passports’ so people know they’ve had Covid-19
In defending his strategy against the deadly coronavirus, President Donald Trump repeatedly has said he slowed its spread into the United States by acting decisively to bar travelers from China on Jan. 31.
“I was criticized by the Democrats when I closed the Country down to China many weeks ahead of what almost everyone recommended. Saved many lives,” he tweeted, for instance, on March 2.
But Reuters has found that the administration took a month from the time it learned of the outbreak in late December to impose the initial travel restrictions amid furious infighting.
During that time, the National Security Council staff, the state department and other federal agencies argued about everything from how best to screen for sick travelers to the economic impact of any restrictions, according to two government officials familiar with the deliberations.
The NSC staff ultimately proposed aggressive travel restrictions to high-level administration officials – but it took at least a week more for the president to adopt them, one of the government officials said.
In meetings, Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security adviser and a China expert, met opposition from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, said two former NSC officials and one of the government officials involved in the deliberations. The two top aides were concerned about economic fallout from barring travelers from China, the sources said. Read more
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The coronavirus pandemic is a “nightmare scenario,” but the death toll due to the disease may not be as high as some, including President Donald Trump, have predicted, according to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Trump last week predicted that the U.S. could see between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths from COVID-19 before the outbreak is under control, echoing forecasts from White House health advisor Anthony Fauci.
“If we do the social distancing properly, we should be able to get out of this with a death number well short of that,” Gates told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. He said it’s “very important” those figures are out there so people understand the severity of the situation.
As of Sunday, there were at least 312,245 confirmed cases, including more than 8,500 deaths, in the U.S. Globally, there are more than 1.2 million cases and at least 65,711 deaths.
Gates, who resigned from Microsoft’s board last month to focus on his philanthropic efforts, said if people continue practicing safe social distancing and remain in quarantine, cases should begin leveling off toward the end of this month. Read more
Also Read: CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS MAY BE GIVEN ‘PASSPORTS’ SO PEOPLE KNOW THEY’VE HAD COVID-19
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The often unsanitary conditions in refugee and migrant camps pose a challenge for residents trying to avoid coronavirus.
In Moria in Lesbos, 18,000 people are staying in a facility built for 3,000 and cases of Covid-19 are already on their doorstep.
The BBC’s population correspondent Stephanie Hegarty was sent footage by a group of young filmmakers living in the settlement, who recorded scenes of migrants doing their best to keep people safe. Read more
Also Read: Racism shows ugly side as China fights coronavirus
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Losing your sense of smell and taste may be the best way to tell if you have COVID-19, according to a study of data collected via a symptom tracker app developed by British scientists to help monitor the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus.
Almost 60% of patients who were subsequently confirmed as positive for COVID-19 had reported losing their sense of smell and taste, the data analysed by the researchers showed.
That compared with 18% of those who tested negative.
These results, which were posted online but not peer-reviewed, were much stronger in predicting a positive COVID-19 diagnosis than self-reported fever, the researchers at King’s College London said.
Of 1.5 million app users between March 24 and March 29, 26% reported one or more symptoms through the app. Of these, 1,702 also reported having been tested for COVID-19, with 579 positive results and 1,123 negative results.
Using all the data collected, the research team developed a mathematical model to identify which combination of symptoms – ranging from loss of smell and taste, to fever, persistent cough, fatigue, diarrhoea, abdominal pain and loss of appetite -was most accurate in predicting COVID-19 infection. Read more
Also Read: Arizona Cop With History Of Racism Fired After Stopping A Black Man Over An Air Freshener
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In a week when the coronavirus closures and quarantines hit like falling dominoes – the lockdown in Italy, the empty workplaces and college campuses in the U.S., suspended sports seasons, canceled festivals – far less attention fell on the global scientific community’s drive to find treatments for the new virus.
But researchers are already suggesting strategies to help patients suffering from the virus, which is marked by fever, coughing and difficulty breathing. One treatment could be just weeks away.
With no vaccine expected anytime soon, treatments are crucial to saving the lives of thousands of the infected, especially high-risk patients – the elderly, those with compromised immune systems and those with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease and lung disease.
“I’m very hopeful and very positive. We’ll get through this,” said Robert Kruse, a doctor in the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. “I’ve been shocked this week at the measures that have been taken (to alter daily life). They were probably the correct ones, given that they have worked in other countries.”
‘Time is of the essence’
Kruse has been pursuing two treatment strategies, one of which has a long history and could be available within weeks rather than months. The quickest option is likely to be the use of antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients. As of Saturday, there were almost 72,000 such patients worldwide. The virus has infected about 150,000, killing more than 5,500.
The use of survivor antibodies, serum therapy, dates back to 1891 when it was used successfully to treat a child with diphtheria. Since then, serum from recovered patients has been used “to stem outbreaks of viral diseases such as poliomyelitis, measles, mumps and influenza,” according to a paper Friday in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Read more
China’s claims of how it’s handling coronavirus recovery should be taken with more than a few grains of salt.
Even before COVID-19 became a global crisis, Chinese leaders had been criticized for their handling of the situation and lack of transparency about the disease’s progression. Things now look like they’re on the upswing, and businesses even appear to be headed back to work — but whistleblowers and local officials tell Caixan that’s just a carefully crafted ruse.
Beijing has spent much of the outbreak pushing districts to carry on business as usual, with some local governments subsidizing electricity costs and even installing mandatory productivity quotas. Zhejiang, an province east of the epicenter city of Wuhan, claimed as of Feb. 24 it had restored 98.6 percent of its pre-coronavirus work capacity.
But civil servants tell Caixan that businesses are actually faking these numbers. Beijing had started checking Zhejiang businesses’ electricity consumption levels, so district officials ordered the companies to start leaving their lights and machinery on all day to drive the numbers up, one civil servant said. Businesses have reportedly falsified staff attendance logs as well — they “would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials,” Caixan writes.
In Wuhan, officials have tried to make it appear that recovery efforts are going smoothly. But when “central leaders” personally survey disinfecting regimens and food delivery, local officials “make a special effort” for them and them alone, one resident told Caixan. And in a video circulating on social media, residents can be seen shouting at visiting leaders from the apartments where they’re being quarantined — “Fake, it’s all fake.” Read more
China has banned funerals, burials and other related activities involving the corpses of deceased victims of the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, according to new trial regulations issued Saturday to slow the spread. China’s National Health Commission (NHC), together with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security, issued new regulations Saturday stating that all victims who succumb to the virus must be cremated at the nearest facility. “No farewell ceremonies or other funeral activities involving the corpse shall be held,” the NHC announcement reads.
The new regulations come as the death toll for the novel coronavirus (nCoV-2019) continues to rise.
The NHC reported in a separate update that as of the end of Saturday, 304 people have died and 14,380 people have been infected by the virus, which has spread across all of China and to around two dozen other countries. read more
President Trump has warned the US is “targeting” 52 Iranian sites and will strike “very fast and very hard” if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets.
The president’s remarks followed the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in a drone strike.
Soleimani’s killing was a major escalation between the two nations, and Iran vowed to take “severe revenge”.
Writing on Twitter, Mr Trump accused Iran of “talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets”.
He said the US had identified 52 Iranian sites, some “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture”, and warned they would be “HIT VERY FAST AND HARD” if Tehran struck at the US.