Daily Archives: May 4, 2020

Singapore is seeing a spike in coronavirus cases among its hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. Above, a volunteer from a nonprofit group talks to migrant workers now confined to a factory that was converted to a dormitory as part of the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. Ore Huiying/Getty Images hide caption

Singapore is seeing a spike in coronavirus cases among its hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. Above, a volunteer from a nonprofit group talks to migrant workers now confined to a factory that was converted to a dormitory as part of the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, Singapore was praised as a shining example of how to handle the new virus. The World Health Organization pointed out that Singapore's aggressive contact tracing allowed the city-state to quickly identify and isolate any new cases. It quickly shut down clusters of cases and kept most of its economy and its schools open. Through the beginning of April, Singapore had recorded fewer than 600 cases.

By the end of April, however, the case count exceeded 17,000. And not only is all of Singapore now under a strict lockdown, but it has the most coronavirus cases in Southeast Asia.

The vast majority of these cases are in the overcrowded dormitories that house more than 300,000 of Singapore's roughly 1 million foreign workers and the number of cases is expected to continue to rise in the coming weeks.

"We have started our testing with the dormitories where there were a high number of cases detected," Singapore's health minister, Gan Kim Yong, said in a virtual press briefing this week.

Singapore ordered a lockdown on April 7 in response to an uptick in cases in the general population and then began to find a significant number of cases in the dorms.

Gan says Singapore is now testing more than 3,000 migrant workers a day but hopes to expand that number. The virus is spreading so rapidly in the dormitories, however, that the Health Ministry hasn't been able to test all of the suspected cases.

"For dormitories where the assessed risk of infection is extremely high, our efforts are focused on isolating those who are symptomatic even without a confirmed COVID-19 test," Gan says. "This allows us to quickly provide medical care to these patients."

Singapore is a small city-state with a population of just under 6 million inhabitants. On a per capita basis, it's the second-richest country in Asia.

But its economy relies heavily on young men from Bangladesh, India and other countries who work jobs in construction and manufacturing. Singapore has no minimum wage for foreign or domestic employees. The foreign workers' salaries can be as low as US$250 per month, but a typical salary is $500 to $600 a month.

Speaking to the media, Gan credited extensive screening in the dorms with finding many workers who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but who didn't appear sick.

"So far, the majority of the cases here have had relatively mild disease or no symptoms. And they do not require extensive medical intervention," Gan said. "About 30% require closer medical observation due to the underlying health conditions or because of old age."

As of this week, only a handful of the migrant workers fewer than two dozen were in intensive care units.

The city-state is setting up thousands of what it calls "community care beds" in convention centers and other public buildings to isolate and treat coronavirus patients. The hope is that most of the cases can be managed by medical staff in these temporary wards, rather than in hospitals. So far the city has 10,000 community care beds and plans to expand to 20,000 by mid-June.

It's no surprise that the migrant workers are now being infected, says Mohan Dutta, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand who has done research on these migrant laborers. He says conditions in the dorms put the workers at significant risk of catching a respiratory disease like COVID-19. There are 12 to 20 bunk beds per room.

And even though some of the workers are deemed "essential," most are no longer allowed to leave the dormitories. "There is little room to move around. They have little room to store their things, which really contributes to this sense of the rooms being unhygienic," says Dutta.

Dutta, who founded CARE, the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, at the National University of Singapore in 2012, with a focus on marginalized communities, has just published a paper on migrant workers in Singapore during this pandemic.

He says many of them told him they are concerned about whether they'll get paid during the lockdown (Singapore's Ministry of Manpower insists they will) and about the overcrowding and lack of sanitation facilities in the dormitories.

Dutta says that in many dormitories, 100 workers share a block of five toilets and five shower stalls.

Migrant workers in Singapore congregate on the balcony of a workers dormitory now being used as an isolation facility that houses a cluster of coronavirus cases. Edgar Su/Reuters hide caption

"There is this sense of panic and fear, and part of that is related to this sense of not being able to move outside of the room," he says. "Everyone is pretty much stuck in the room at such close proximity."

Singapore's Health Ministry has moved aggressively to try to address the coronavirus outbreaks in the housing blocks. The government is trying to find alternative accommodations for people in the hardest-hit dorms, but Dutta says it's impossible to come up with safe, short-term lodging for more than 300,000 workers.

But he does believe there could be long-term changes that would help the workers. And Dutta hopes this outbreak will force Singapore to examine how it treats this often overlooked population, bringing major changes in how foreign workers are housed and treated.

Meanwhile, the explosion of cases in Singapore over the last three weeks has remained primarily among foreign workers. For example, on May 1 there were 11 new cases reported among Singapore's permanent residents and 905 new infections among the workers residing in the dorms.

Michael Merson, the head of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute in Singapore, says it's unlikely the outbreaks in the dormitories will spill over to the rest of the city.

"There's very little mixing between the foreign workers and the rest of the population," Merson says. He's confident that Singapore's health officials will be able to isolate the infected workers and give them, in his words, "the best medical care possible."

Nonetheless, the Singaporean government has extended the lockdown for the entire city-state until at least June 1.

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Singapore Was Praised For Controlling Coronavirus. Now It Has The Most Cases In Southeast Asia : Goats and Soda - NPR

The coronavirus has killed so many people in Iran that the country has resorted to mass burials, but in neighboring Iraq, the body count is fewer than 100.

The Dominican Republic has reported nearly 7,600 cases of the virus. Just across the border, Haiti has recorded about 85.

In Indonesia, thousands are believed to have died of the coronavirus. In nearby Malaysia, a strict lockdown has kept fatalities to about 100.

The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious. Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared.

The question of why the virus has overwhelmed some places and left others relatively untouched is a puzzle that has spawned numerous theories and speculations but no definitive answers. That knowledge could have profound implications for how countries respond to the virus, for determining who is at risk and for knowing when its safe to go out again.

There are already hundreds of studies underway around the world looking into how demographics, pre-existing conditions and genetics might affect the wide variation in impact.

Doctors in Saudi Arabia are studying whether genetic differences may help explain varying levels of severity in Covid-19 cases among Saudi Arabs, while scientists in Brazil are looking into the relationship between genetics and Covid-19 complications. Teams in multiple countries are studying if common hypertension medications might worsen the diseases severity and whether a particular tuberculosis vaccine might do the opposite.

Many developing nations with hot climates and young populations have escaped the worst, suggesting that temperature and demographics could be factors. But countries like Peru, Indonesia and Brazil, tropical countries in the throes of growing epidemics, throw cold water on that idea.

Draconian social-distancing and early lockdown measures have clearly been effective, but Myanmar and Cambodia did neither and have reported few cases.

One theory that is unproven but impossible to refute: maybe the virus just hasnt gotten to those countries yet. Russia and Turkey appeared to be fine until, suddenly, they were not.

Time may still prove the greatest equalizer: The Spanish flu that broke out in the United States in 1918 seemed to die down during the summer only to come roaring back with a deadlier strain in the fall, and a third wave the following year. It eventually reached far-flung places like islands in Alaska and the South Pacific and infected a third of the worlds population.

We are really early in this disease, said Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Research Institute. If this were a baseball game, it would be the second inning and theres no reason to think that by the ninth inning the rest of the world that looks now like it hasnt been affected wont become like other places.

Doctors who study infectious diseases around the world say they do not have enough data yet to get a full epidemiological picture, and that gaps in information in many countries make it dangerous to draw conclusions. Testing is woeful in many places, leading to vast underestimates of the viruss progress, and deaths are almost certainly undercounted.

Still, the broad patterns are clear. Even in places with abysmal record-keeping and broken health systems, mass burials or hospitals turning away sick people by the thousands would be hard to miss, and a number of places are just not seeing them at least not yet.

Interviews with more than two dozen infectious disease experts, health officials, epidemiologists and academics around the globe suggest four main factors that could help explain where the virus thrives and where it doesnt: demographics, culture, environment and the speed of government responses.

Each possible explanation comes with considerable caveats and confounding counter-evidence. If an aging population is the most vulnerable, for instance, Japan should be at the top of the list. It is far from it. Nonetheless these are the factors that experts find the most persuasive.

Many countries that have escaped mass epidemics have relatively younger populations.

Young people are more likely to contract mild or asymptomatic cases that are less transmissible to others, said Robert Bollinger, a professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. And they are less likely to have certain health problems that can make Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, particularly deadly, according to the World Health Organization.

Africa with about 45,000 reported cases, a tiny fraction of its 1.3 billion people is the worlds youngest continent, with more than 60 percent of its population under age 25. In Thailand and Najaf, Iraq, local health officials found that the 20-to-29 age group had the highest rate of infection but often showed few symptoms.

By contrast, the national median age in Italy, one of the hardest hit countries, is more than 45. The average age of those who died of Covid-19 there was around 80.

Younger people tend to have stronger immune systems, which can result in milder symptoms, said Josip Car, an expert in population and global health at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

In Singapore and Saudi Arabia, for instance, most of the infections are among foreign migrant workers, many of them living in cramped dormitories. However, many of those workers are young and fit, and have not required hospitalization.

Along with youth, relative good health can lessen the impact of the virus among those who are infected, while certain pre-existing conditions notably hypertension, diabetes and obesity can worsen the severity, researchers in the United States say.

There are notable exceptions to the demographic theory. Japan, with the worlds oldest average population, has recorded fewer than 520 deaths, although its caseload has risen with increased testing.

And Dr. Jha of Harvard warns that some young people who are not showing symptoms are also highly contagious for reasons that are not well understood.

Cultural factors, like the social distancing that is built into certain societies, may give some countries more protection, epidemiologists said.

In Thailand and India, where virus numbers are relatively low, people greet each other at a distance, with palms joined together as in prayer. In Japan and South Korea, people bow, and long before the coronavirus arrived, they tended to wear face masks when feeling unwell.

In much of the developing world, the custom of caring for the elderly at home leads to fewer nursing homes, which have been tinder for tragic outbreaks in the West.

However, there are notable exceptions to the cultural distancing theory. In many parts of the Middle East, such as Iraq and the Persian Gulf countries, men often embrace or shake hands on meeting, yet most are not getting sick.

What might be called national distancing has also proven advantageous. Countries that are relatively isolated have reaped health benefits from their seclusion.

Far-flung nations, such as some in the South Pacific and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, have not been as inundated with visitors bringing the virus with them. Health experts in Africa cite limited travel from abroad as perhaps the main reason for the continents relatively low infection rate.

Countries that are less accessible for political reasons, like Venezuela, or because of conflict, like Syria and Libya, have also been somewhat shielded by the lack of travelers, as have countries like Lebanon and Iraq, which have endured widespread protests in recent months.

The lack of public transportation in developing countries may have also reduced the spread of the virus there.

The geography of the outbreak which spread rapidly during the winter in temperate zone countries like Italy and the United States and was virtually unseen in warmer countries such as Chad or Guyana seemed to suggest that the virus did not take well to heat. Other coronaviruses, such as ones that cause the common cold, are less contagious in warmer, moist climates.

But researchers say the idea that hot weather alone can repel the virus is wishful thinking.

Some of the worst outbreaks in the developing world have been in places like the Amazonas region of Brazil, as tropical a place as any.

The best guess is that summer conditions will help but are unlikely by themselves to lead to significant slowing of growth or to a decline in cases, said Marc Lipsitch, the director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University.

The virus that causes Covid-19 appears to be so contagious as to mitigate any beneficial effect of heat and humidity, said Dr. Raul Rabadan, a computational biologist at Columbia University.

But other aspects of warm climates, like people spending more time outside, could help.

People living indoors within enclosed environments may promote virus recirculation, increasing the chance of contracting the disease, said Mr. Car of Nanyang Technological University.

The ultraviolet rays of direct sunlight inhibit this coronavirus, according to a study by ecological modelers at the University of Connecticut. So surfaces in sunny places may be less likely to remain contaminated, but transmission usually occurs through contact with an infected person, not by touching a surface.

No scientist has proposed that beaming light inside an infected person, as President Trump has suggested, would be an effective cure. And tropical conditions may have even lulled some people into a false sense of security.

People were saying Its hot here, nothing will happen to me, said Dr. Domnica Cevallos, a medical investigator in Ecuador. Some were even going out on purpose to sunbathe, thinking it would protect them from infection.

Countries that locked down early, like Vietnam and Greece, have been able to avoid out-of-control contagions, evidence of the power of strict social distancing and quarantines to contain the virus.

In Africa, countries with bitter experience with killers like H.I.V., drug-resistant tuberculosis and Ebola knew the drill and reacted quickly.

Airport staff from Sierra Leone to Uganda were taking temperatures (since found to be a less effective measure) and contact details and wearing masks long before their counterparts in the United States and Europe took such precautions.

Senegal and Rwanda closed their borders and announced curfews when they still had very few cases. Health ministries began contact tracing early.

All this happened in a region where health ministries had come to rely on money, personnel and supplies from foreign donors, many of which had to turn their attention to outbreaks in their own countries, said Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center.

Countries wake up one day and theyre like, OK, the weight of the country rests on our shoulders, so we need to step up, she said. And they have. Some of the responses have been beautiful to behold, honestly.

Sierra Leone repurposed disease-tracking protocols that had been established in the wake of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, in which almost 4,000 people died there. The government set up emergency operations centers in every district and recruited 14,000 community health workers, 1,500 of whom are being trained as contact tracers, even though Sierra Leone has only about 155 confirmed cases.

It is not clear, however, who will pay for their salaries or for expenses like motorcycles and raincoats to keep them operating during the coming wet season.

Uganda, which also suffered during the Ebola contagion, quickly quarantined travelers from Dubai after the first case of coronavirus arrived from there. Authorities also tracked down about 800 others who had traveled from Dubai in previous weeks.

The Ugandan health authorities are also testing around 1,000 truck drivers a day. But many of those who test positive have come from Tanzania and Kenya, countries that are not monitoring as aggressively, leading to worries that the virus will keep penetrating porous borders.

Lockdowns, with bans on religious conclaves and spectator sporting events, clearly work, the World Health Organization says. More than a month after closing national borders, schools and most businesses, countries from Thailand to Jordan have seen new infections drop.

In the Middle East, the widespread shuttering of mosques, shrines and churches happened relatively early and probably helped stem the spread in many countries.

A notable exception was Iran, which did not close some of its largest shrines until March 18, a full month after it registered its first case in the pilgrimage city of Qum. The epidemic spread quickly from there, killing thousands in the country and spreading the virus across borders as pilgrims returned home.

As effective as lockdowns are, in countries lacking a strong social safety net and those where most people work in the informal economy, orders closing businesses and requiring people to shelter in place will be difficult to maintain for long. When people are forced to choose between social distancing and feeding their families, they are choosing the latter.

Counter-intuitively, some countries where authorities reacted late and with spotty enforcement of lockdowns appear to have been spared. Cambodia and Laos both had brief spates of infections when few social distancing measures were in place but neither has recorded a new case in about three weeks.

Lebanon, whose Muslim and Christian citizens often go on pilgrimages respectively to Iran and Italy, places rife with the virus, should have had high numbers of infections. It has not.

We just didnt see what we were expecting, said Dr. Roy Nasnas, an infectious disease consultant at the University Hospital Geitaoui in Beirut. We dont know why.

Finally, most experts agree that there may be no single reason for some countries to be hit and others missed. The answer is likely to be some combination of the above factors, as well as one other mentioned by researchers: sheer luck.

Countries with the same culture and climate could have vastly different outcomes if one infected person attends a crowded social occasion, turning it into what researchers call a super-spreader event.

Because an infected person may not experience symptoms for a week or more, if at all, the disease spreads under the radar, exponentially and seemingly at random. Had the woman in Daegu stayed home that Sunday in February, the outbreak in South Korea might have been less than half of what it is.

Some countries that should have been inundated are not, leaving researchers scratching their heads.

Thailand reported the first confirmed case of coronavirus outside of China in mid-January, from a traveler from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic is thought to have begun. In those critical weeks, Thailand continued to welcome an influx of Chinese visitors. For some reason, these tourists did not set off exponential local transmission.

And when countries do all the wrong things and still end up seemingly not as battered by the virus as one would expect, go figure.

In Indonesia, we have a health minister who believes you can pray away Covid, and we have too little testing, said Dr. Pandu Riono, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Indonesia. But we are lucky we have so many islands in our country that limit travel and maybe infection.

Theres nothing else were doing right, he added.

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The Covid-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others? - The New York Times

People mostly white, sometimes armed, occasionally carrying Confederate flags or hoisting placards emblazoned with a Nazi slogan from the Holocaust have been loudly protesting to push their state governments to reopen business and spaces before enough progress has been made to contain the coronavirus. This is yet another illustration of the race and class divide this pandemic has illuminated in this country.

For some, a reopened economy and recreational landscape will mean the option to run a business, return to work, go to the park or beach, or have a night on the town at a nice restaurant or swanky bar. But for many on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, it will only force them back into compulsory exposure to more people, often in occupations that make it hard to protect oneself and that pay little for the risk.

Georgia was on the forefront of state reopenings. The first businesses that were allowed to reopen were, for the most part, those that provide low-wage jobs that require significant contact like tattoo parlors, barbershops and hair salons, and nail shops.

These are the struggling workers who entertain and aestheticize people of means. These businesses were by no means essential, and they put these workers in danger. There is absolutely no way to practice social distancing while inking someone a tattoo. (Also, what are you so desperate to stamp on your body that you would risk it all during a pandemic?)

And many of the people doing these jobs will have to take public transit to get to work, and search for suitable child care before they leave home. Schools in most cases are still closed.

But, even among professions that we dont immediately consider low-wage or minority-dominated, there are areas of high risk and low wages. For many people, the image that comes to mind about the medical field, those on the front lines, are doctors and nurses, people who are highly educated and highly paid. But there are many other people in those hospitals that make them run.

For instance, a majority of nursing assistants are members of racial minority groups. A third are African-American. Half have completed no formal education beyond high school. And, according to RegisteredNursing.org, the median annual wage for a nursing assistant in a hospital is just $30,000. For those in nursing homes and providing home care, the pay is even lower.

It has been widely reported that the virus is having a disproportionate impact on black and brown people in America, both in terms of infections and death. But that is only one aspect of the disparities. In a country where race and ethnicity often intersect with wealth and class, there are a cascade of other impacts, particularly economic ones, to remain conscious of.

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted last month, 52 percent of low-income workers said they or someone in their household had lost a job or taken a pay cut as a result of the pandemic. But, when you look at this through a racial lens, another striking reality emerges: 61 percent of Hispanic people agree with the statement, compared to 44 percent of African-Americans and just 38 percent of white people.

And, as Pew pointed out, lower-income adults are less prepared to withstand a financial shock than those with higher incomes.

A McKinsey and Company report last month found:

Thirty-nine percent of jobs held by black workers, seven million jobs in all, are vulnerable as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, compared with 34 percent for white workers.

Forty percent of the revenues of black-owned businesses are in the five most vulnerable sectors including leisure, hospitality and retail compared with 25 percent of the revenues of all U.S. businesses.

Beyond the threat to black personal economics, the crisis also poses a threat to black institutions. As the McKinsey report pointed out, the crisis is likely to significantly and quickly hobble historically black colleges and universities.

Even when the country starts to recover, the race and class disparities will most likely still be present and working against minorities in low-wage jobs. As the Center for American Progress wrote last month, Evidence demonstrates that while workers of color are often the first to be fired during economic downturns, they are often the last to be rehired during recoveries.

This pandemic is likely to not only expose inequalities, but also exacerbate them.

America has never been comfortable discussing the inequalities that America created, let alone addressing them. America loves a feel-good, forget-the-past-lets-start-from-here mantra.

But, this virus is exploiting these man-made inequalities and making them impossible to ignore. It is demonstrating the incalculable callousness of wealth and privilege that would willingly thrust the less well off into the most danger for a few creature comforts.

This crisis is exposing the class savagery of American democracy and the economic carnage that it has always countenanced.

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Covid-19s Race and Class Warfare - The New York Times

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Levi Sucre Romero remembers hearing the news back in January about a novel coronavirus infecting people in China. I honestly didnt believe it would make it this far, he said. I felt like it was really far away.

A member and leader of the Bribri, one of Costa Ricas largest indigenous groups, Romero lives in Talamanca, a remote, mountainous region in the south of the country full of meandering rivers, dense jungle canopies and a near-constant drizzle of warm rain. Though the thatched-roof wooden homes of Talamanca Bribri, the groups territory, are far removed from the countrys popular tourist hubs, Romero soon realised that it was only a matter of time until the virus reached them.

Romero also realised something else: the virus, he believes, was unleashed by human greed and ill treatment of the planet. Were unbalancing the habitat of species, were cutting down trees, were planting monocultures, were filling the world with cities and asphalt and were using too many chemicals, Romero said. Its a cocktail of bad practices.

Like Sars and Mers, two other recent, deadly coronaviruses, Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease that came from an animal. Evidence points to its likely origin in a bat, followed by a potential crossover into an intermediary species possibly a pangolin before transmission into humans at a wet market in Wuhan, China. While Covid-19s exact origins have yet to be pinpointed, overwhelming research shows that deforestation and commercial wildlife trade heighten the risk of zoonotic diseases that can potentially cause pandemics. And according to Romero, both are human activities that entail the destruction of nature.

My people have cultural knowledge that says when Sib, our God, created Earth, he locked up some bad spirits, Romero said. These spirits come out when were not respecting nature and living together.

Romero coordinates the Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests, one of the most important land-rights platforms for indigenous communities in Central America and Mexico, which represents more than 50,000 people who live in the most densely forested lands in the region. He knows for a fact that there is another, more sustainable and respectful way to live in relation to the Earth because the Bribri and many other indigenous groups around the world practice it.

I do not believe this will be the last pandemic of this type

For years, Romero and other indigenous leaders have been urging the rest of the world to adopt a more indigenous-inspired way of coexisting with nature, including leaving habitats intact, harvesting plants and animals at sustainable levels and acknowledging and respecting the connection between human and planetary health. Now, they are reiterating that message in light of the coronavirus.

At a March panel sponsored by the global journalism initiative Covering Climate Now in New York City, held days before the city shut down and later became the global epicentre of the worldwide pandemic, Romero and other indigenous leaders from Brazil and Indonesia emphasised the role that traditional knowledge, practices and land stewardship can play in protecting the planet. These protections, they said, extend not just to lessening climate change and biodiversity loss, but to reducing the risk of future pandemics.

We are convinced that this pandemic is the result of a wrong use of natural resources and a wrong way of living together with these resources, Romero said. I do not believe this will be the last pandemic of this type.

A wealth of research supports the link between novel disease emergence and environmental destruction. Many viruses naturally occur in animal species, and deforestation increases the odds of people coming into contact with an animal carrying a virus that is new to humanity, potentially resulting in a spill-over event. A 2017 Nature Communications paper revealed that emerging zoonotic disease risk is highest in tropical forests that are experiencing land-use changes, including from logging, mining, dam building and road development. As the authors report, such activities carry an intrinsic risk of disease emergence because they disrupt ecological dynamics and increase contact between humans, livestock and wildlife.

Its a stochastic process, said Erin Mordecai, a biologist at Stanford University. Its driven by chance encounters between particular people and particular animals, and what pathogens theyre carrying at that time.

Deforestation can also spread existing diseases. In October, Mordecai and co-author Andrew MacDonald reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that an increase in deforestation in Brazil tends to increase the rate of malaria transmission, with about six-and-a-half new cases occurring per square kilometre of cut-down forest. The reason, they believe, is that cutting trees creates more forest edge the favourite breeding habitat for Brazils malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Development in frontier regions also brings more people closer to the forest and draws pioneers in from other parts of the country who have never been exposed to malaria and thus have no resistance.

Deforestation tends to lead to these opportunities in which species that dont normally come into contact are coming into contact

While every disease is different, the general pattern, Mordecai told me, is that deforestation disrupts ecosystems and creates edge habitats hovering between domesticated and wild, in which the human and natural world overlap. Deforestation tends to lead to these opportunities in which species that dont normally come into contact are coming into contact, she said. That creates opportunities for pathogens to spill over.

Studies reveal that the both legal and illegal commercial wildlife trade also increase the risk of new diseases emerging by subjecting wild animals to stressful, unhygienic conditions. Still-living species are often mixed together, allowing them to exchange viruses. Trade also often takes place in urban centres, where many people may come into contact with the animals and with each other further encouraging a new diseases spread.

The wildlife trade itself is also linked to deforestation. Hunters and poachers tend to access wilderness areas through roads. As formerly remote areas are opened up by new transportation corridors, wildlife trade tends to follow.

Medical experts and conservationists have been warning of the health risks posed by both deforestation and wildlife trade for decades, but to no avail. In 2003, for example, China briefly banned wildlife trade in response to Sars, but business resumed within a year and has only grown since.

As land stewards, many indigenous groups help to guard against these threats. By protecting indigenous landscapes, youre protecting not only those people and their way of life, but also preventing really rapid transformation of landscapes, Mordecai said. That rapid transformation has huge-scale cultural and environmental consequences, but also disease-transmission consequences.

How travellers can help protect indigenous land

Indigenous tourism directly engages indigenous people to let them share their culture and land on their own terms. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, indigenous tourism can spur cultural interaction and revival, bolster employment, alleviate poverty, curb rural flight migration, empower women and youth, encourage product diversification, and nurture a sense of pride among indigenous people.

To ensure that your travel will directly benefit the people whose culture and land you experience, the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance recommends booking indigenous-owned-and-operated tours. Fortunately, indigenous-led travel experiences have recently surged in places like Australia, Canada and the US. In the last few years, the Bribri launched Costa Ricas first indigenous-operated tour agency, which teaches visitors about the groups worldview and spiritual connection to the land, with all funds going back to the community.

A large number of indigenous groups live in tropical forests precisely the landscapes with the highest risk for new disease emergence, and also the places facing the highest rates of deforestation. Tropical deforestation is accelerating and accounts for about 90% of total deforestation worldwide. A 2020 study reported that at least 36% of the worlds remaining intact forests half of which are located in the tropics fall within indigenous lands.

Of course, indigenous people are extremely diverse. Some live in cities, others in forests; some extract resources for profit, others use nature only for subsistence. In general, though, indigenous groups are much more effective at protecting the forest and environment on their lands than most other users, said Mary Menton, a research fellow in environmental justice at the University of Sussex. In certain parts of Brazil, for example, indigenous protection is visible in satellite images from space.

You can see exactly where the lines of indigenous territories are, Menton said. Deforestation eats into forests around where indigenous areas are, and those areas really act as an effective barrier for expansion.

Indigenous peoples lands, by and large, tend to be much better protected than other areas of the forest

This is also supported by scientific evidence. A 2012 study comparing 40 protected areas and 33 community-managed forests revealed that the community-managed areas suffered less deforestation. If we look across the tropics, indigenous peoples lands, by and large, tend to be much better protected than other areas of the forest, even comparing community and indigenous lands to protected areas, Menton said.

Practically speaking, this is partly because indigenous people tend to live on large areas of land with relatively small populations. But even groups that live in smaller tracts of forest in north-east Brazil, for example, live more sustainably than much of the rest of humanity. Its not just that they have lots of forest, its the way they treat and see the forest, and interact with it, Menton said.

Many groups have been living in forested areas for generations and view the landscape as part of their community. Some also believe that their ancestors are part of the forest. Protecting nature, therefore, isnt just about ecology and biodiversity, Menton says, but also about preserving lives, history and culture.

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Indigenous people accomplish this through a variety of means that largely boil down to having a respect and awareness of the effect they have on the forest, Menton said. The Bribri, for example, divide their land into family and community areas, each of which have internal rules designed to promote sustainability. For example, members of the community can cut as many leaves as they want from local suita palms used to make everything from houses to brooms so long as they leave at least five leaves on each harvested plant so it can produce more leaves.

We need to rethink the model of development thats based on accumulating wealth while destroying resources

Many indigenous people also do not treat the forest as a means or impediment to getting rich. Romero, for his part, thinks that hyper-globalisation and consumerism are at the heart of many of the worlds ills. We need to rethink the model of development thats based on accumulating wealth while destroying resources, Romero said. I see an economic model that is predatory to resources and to nature, that causes a lack of balance in the world.

However, profit-driven companies, governments and individuals often view indigenous people as standing in the way of economic growth. Around the world, indigenous land rights are under attack by agriculture, mining and other extractive industries. Between 2002 and 2017, Menton found that more than 1,500 environmental defenders were murdered in 50 countries, and that indigenous peoples died in higher numbers than any other group on the list. In 2015 and 2016, for example, indigenous people represented 40% of all murdered environmental defenders. A report published in April 2020 by the Pastoral Land Commission, a non-profit organisation in Brazil, likewise revealed that one-third of all families who faced land conflicts in rural Brazil in 2019 were indigenous.

Menton adds that indigenous people face additional threats because of racism and perceptions that theyre second-class citizens. Often, this is a problem promoted from the top down. Brazils president, Jair Bolsonaro, recently said, for example, that Indians are evolving to become increasingly human, like us. Indigenous people, in other words, are facing threats both in terms of actual physical conflicts over land, but also cultural threats and attacks over their right to exist, Menton said.

Attacks on indigenous rights are not just attacks on individual cultures, Romero says, but on the health of the planet as a whole. When we have rights over our forests and our lands, that means survival for us, for our families, he said. But it also means we have a better probability of avoiding pandemics.

The Bribri, like much of the world, are now on lockdown. The rhythm of our lives has been cut short, he said. Visits with elders are no longer permitted, sales of produce to the national market have dropped by around 90%, and the groups cultural and ecological tourism efforts including guided trips to mountains and rivers, traditional food tours and home stays on family ranches have stopped as well. I could go on and on. Theres a lot of impacts, Romero said.

Once the world does emerge from Covid-19, Romero hopes that there will be a silver lining to all of the suffering, loss and hardship that it has caused. He hopes that people will be more receptive to the knowledge that he and other indigenous leaders have to offer, and that humanity will begin to re-evaluate its relationship with nature.

I think we have a long way to go, but after the coronavirus, I have faith that this will open up some space with governments, Romero said. After this pandemic, governments should listen more.

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Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo, Governor Murphy, Governor Lamont, Governor Wolf, Governor Carney, Governor Raimondo & Governor Baker Announce Joint Multi-State Agreement to Develop Regional Supply Chain for PPE and Medical Equipment | Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Skip to main content

States Will Aggregate Demand for PPE, MedicalEquipment and Testing on a Regional Basis

Regional Supply Chains Will Help Realize Better Pricing, Delivery and Reliability of PPE and Medical Equipment for States

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont,Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf,DelawareGovernor John Carney,Rhode Island Governor Gina RaimondoandMassachusetts Governor Charlie Bakertoday announced a joint multi-state agreement to develop a regional supply chain for personal protective equipment, other medical equipment and testing.

While the states will continue to partner with the federal government during this global and national public health crisis,they will also work together to identify the entire region's needs for these products, aggregate demand among the states, reduce costs and stabilize the supply chain. The states will also coordinate policies regarding the inventory of PPE each state's health care infrastructure should have to be prepared for a possible second wave of COVID-19. The states will also coordinate policies on what supplies local governments should have on hand for their First Responders, and if any requirements regarding PPE for the non-for-profit and private sector are needed.

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The states will then seek to identify suppliers within the country, region or state who can scale to meet the demand of the entire region over the next three months. The goal of this approach is to decrease the potential for disruptions in the supply chain forPPE and medical equipment, including sanitizer and ventilators, and testing,and promote regional economic development.

In addition, the states are discussing how to collectively exploreemerging technologies on an ongoing basis to take advantage of the potential associatedwith alternative methods of production for existing products and innovation that would lead to more effective and/or less expensive alternatives.For example, 3D Printers may represent an attractive alternative to manufacturing certain personal protective equipment and medical products.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a mad scramble for medical equipment across the entire nation - there was competition among states, private entities and the federal government and we were driving up the prices of these critical resources

"The COVID-19 pandemic created a mad scramble for medical equipment across the entire nation - there was competition among states, private entities and the federal government and we were driving up the prices of these critical resources,"Governor Cuomo said."As a state and as a nation we can't go through that again. We're going toform a regional state purchasing consortium with our seven northeast partner states to increase our market power when we're buying supplies and help us actually get the equipment at a better price. I want to thank our neighboring states for their ongoing support, generosity and regional coordination on these important efforts."

Governor Murphy said,"Our states should never be in a position where we are actively competing against each other for life-saving resources.By working together across the region, we can obtain critical supplies as we begin the process to restart our economies, while also saving money for our taxpayers. This concept is at the heart of the regional approach we've established."

Governor Lamont said,"With global supply chains continuing to experience a major disruption due to the pandemic, combining the efforts of our states into a regional purchasing initiative will help our states obtain needed PPE and other medical equipment without competing against each other. I've long been advocating for the federal government to get involved because pitting all 50 states against each other to compete for these supplies has never made any sense. Partnering with our neighbors helps make our purchasing power stronger and more dependable."

Governor Wolf said,"By working together we can combine our strengths to build the capacities we all need. We can exploit our market size to encourage producers to make what we need, we can exploit our financial strength to give that encouragement added weight, and we can exploit the great research institutions and the brainpower in our region to increase our chances of success. I look forward to working with my fellow governorsand my neighbors-to build a strong regional supply chain."

Governor Carneysaid,"We need a consistent approach for moving our states out of this crisis, and that includes ensuring a sufficient supply of PPE and tests. I'm thankful for this coordination with my fellow Governors in the region. We'll be better positioned to continue tackling this crisis working together with the states around us."

GovernorRaimondo said,"Our healthcare workers should never have to worry if we have enough PPE to keep them safe. Over the past two months, we've been scouring the earth for supplies and have worked hard to meet the demand on the frontlines. We know that, in order to safely reopen the economy, we need a long-term supply of PPE for all critical infrastructure workers. I look forward to continuing to collaborate with states across the region in order to build and maintain a steady, reliable and affordable supply of PPE."

Governor Baker said,"Massachusetts looks forward to working with other states to identify more options for PPE procurements for our health care workers and public safety personnel."

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Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic - ny.gov

New Zealand has recorded its first day of no new cases of Covid-19 since a stringent national lockdown began more than one month ago.

The public has been engrossed by the daily release of case numbers by the health ministry each afternoon especially as a deadline looms for the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to decide whether the countrys lockdown rules will ease further next Monday.

One week into level-3 restrictions, however, officials sounded a cautious note as breaches of the shutdown rules continued to rise.

It is cause for celebration It is important that we reflect that it is symbolic of the effort that everybody has put in, said Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealands director-general of health, as he announced zero new cases of the coronavirus on Monday. I dont want to downplay that but once again, we need to be continuing vigilance.

Ardern also warned that the public was jeopardising the good result by breaching the lockdown rules.

Any gains youve seen at the moment are actually from the lockdown period, she said, referring to the long incubation of the virus, which is thought to be up to two weeks.

Adding that she was a perfectionist, Ardern said she would revisit the numbers later this week when the more relaxed rules had had time to bed in.

We need to not get ahead of ourselves, stick to our bubble, and finish what we started, she said.

There have been 1,487 confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, with 86% of them now recovered. Seven people are in hospital. Twenty people have died of the virus; no additional deaths were reported on Monday.

Bloomfield said that one person already registered in the total as a probable case had had their status changed to confirmed for Covid-19. But he added that the good result was just one moment in time.

We are still wanting to be sure that there is no undetected community transmission, he said.

The last time there were no new Covid-19 cases on a single day in New Zealand was on 16 March, ahead of the national lockdown which was brought in on 25 March and before the daily briefings by health officials began when the total number of cases was rising by one or two at a time.

New Zealands government has won international praise, including from the World Health Organization, for the swift and strict lockdown imposed by Ardern as cases in the country began to increase more rapidly. No one had died of the virus at the time the shutdown was imposed.

Measures were relaxed slightly last Monday, when the national alert level for the coronavirus was reduced just before midnight. The looser rules allowed slightly more freedom of movement and more businesses to re-open, although they can only trade in completely contactless ways.

It has also led to more breaches of the rules, New Zealands police said. Officers have taken action against more than 500 people for flouting the restrictions over the past week. Nearly 150 of them faced prosecution, while the rest escaped with warnings.

We did see at the weekend that it can be easy to start slackening off, Bloomfield said

The breaches included two separate incidents on Sunday in which people out fishing required rescue by helicopter. Fishing by boat is a banned activity under the current rules.

Bloomfield said the real test of how well New Zealanders were observing the rules will come later in the week, when lockdown breaches since last Monday would become apparent, based on the virus incubation period.

Arderns cabinet was due to make a decision next Monday about whether the lockdown rules should be eased further. A lower alert level, if imposed, would likely be implemented next Wednesday. One measure she will be considering in her decision will be the speed of the countrys contact tracing, which was criticised early on in the pandemic. But another will be New Zealanders behaviour to date.

Its not just the number of cases or the pattern, said Bloomfield, But the level to which people are taking seriously the expectations, particularly around physical distancing, hygiene measures and not really squandering the advantage weve created for ourselves.

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New Zealand records first day with no new Covid-19 cases since before lockdown - The Guardian

Gallup sits along historic Route 66 in McKinley County, about 20 miles from the state's border with Arizona. To the north lies the Navajo Nation and to the south the Zuni Reservation.That northwestern portion of the state represents the highest number of cases, according to a map provided by the New Mexico Department of Health.Due to the high case count Gov. Lujan Grisham invoked the State's Riot Control Act to shut down the city of Gallup on Friday.

"The spread of this virus in McKinley County is frightful," Lujan Grisham said when the emergency was declared last week. "And it shows that physical distancing has not occurred and is not occurring. The virus is running amok there. It must be stopped, and stricter measures are necessary."

The act authorizes the governor to prohibit people from being on or using public streets and highways during a temporary state of emergency.

As a result, all roads into the city have been closed. The Gallup City police and the McKinley County Sheriff's Department have partnered with state police and the department of transportation to enforce road closures. The New Mexico National Guard has also been called into to support the efforts in a non-law enforcement capacity, a release from the governor's office said.

Other restrictions in Gallup include a limit of only two people per car and businesses are only operating between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. All residents are encouraged to stay in their homes unless they need to leave for an emergency.

Highest case count

As of Sunday night, 1,144 people had tested positive for coronavirus in McKinley County, a count which increased by more than 100 cases in just four days.

The county accounts for nearly 30% of the state's cases and has the highest concentration of positives cases in New Mexico.

Mayor Bonaguidi said in a letter Sunday to Gov. Lujan Grisham that the extension of the act was needed to fight the continued spread of the virus.

"The virus has caused many deaths, stretched our medical facilities and resources to their capacity, and adversely impacted the welfare of the City of Gallup," Bonaguidi said. "Our community is unable to adequately address the outbreak without the continued imposition of certain restrictions necessary to regulate social distancing, public gatherings, sales of good, and the use of public streets."

CNN's Jessica Jordan and Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

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The roads into this New Mexico town remain closed as lockdown is extended to slow Covid-19 outbreak - CNN