The Globalist Weekly: 23rd March 2020
A concise weekly digest of the top readings, content, ideas and discussions from our global bureaux and correspondents at ComplexGlobal
This week, it’ll come as no surprise that it’s all centred on COVID-19. Iran pardons prisoners to stop the spread, Italy continues their lockdown, US cases pass 8,700, China gets a second wave of cases, Europe closes their borders and Australia continues trying to manage the pandemic.
Iran to pardon 10,000, includes ‘security’ prisoners
Iran is to pardon 10,000 prisoners, including some charged with political crimes, in honour of the Iranian new year on Friday, according to state TV.It was not stated whether the pardons would include the British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe — who was freed on Tuesday for two weeks as part of a separate programme under which 85,000 have temporarily been released because of coronavirus. Iran is the Middle Eastern country worst affected by the pandemic, with a death toll of 1,284, the highest after Italy and China.
Italian doctors hope lockdown works; No plan B
More than 60 million people are living under an increasingly unbearable lockdown that is growing tighter by the day. The stores that remain open are shuttering earlier and police are patrolling in ever-greater numbers, chasing families out for walks back into their homes and ensuring no one is outside without a valid reason. Even so, the number of novel coronavirus cases in the country is rising at a rate of around 3,500 new cases or more every day, and the death toll has topped 2,500.
US coronavirus cases soar past 8,700
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States keeps jumping each day by the hundreds, pushing health care officials and political leaders to take steps to keep the pandemic from overwhelming the system.The battle is to get equipment and beds to doctors and nurses and to stem the economic fallout by taking measures to provide financial relief. The bad news is, as more tests become available, more people will find out they have Covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus.
Beijing, Hong Kong:second coronavirus onslaught
Beijing and Hong Kong are toughening up their 14-day quarantine restrictions as a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic returns to China, brought by homecoming citizens and visitors from overseas and threatening to push up infection rates that had been coming under control.“If we do not impose tougher measures at this stage, our previous efforts to prevent the disease from spreading throughout these two months could be completely wasted,” Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday.
Europe Barricades Borders to Slow Coronavirus
BRUSSELS — The spiraling coronavirus epidemic tore into the fabric of Europe on Tuesday, prompting its leaders to all but wall the continent off from the rest of the world and erect barriers within it, and to throttle back or turn off the engines of ordinary life and livelihoods in hopes of slowing the deadly spread. The move by Brussels was just the most dramatic on a day full of evidence that European life was abruptly becoming more atomized and constrained than anything in Europe’s modern history outside wartime.
PM: We can ‘turn the tide’ on coronavirus crisis
The UK can “turn the tide” on the coronavirus crisis within 12 weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.But pressed on what he meant by the three-month timescale, he said he did not know how long it would go on for.He said trials on a vaccine were expected to begin within a month and warned he would “enforce” Londoners to be kept apart “if necessary”.Earlier, in a message to the nation, the Queen urged people to come together for the common good.
Originally published at https://www.complexglobal.co
