Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Amid coronavirus, God goes online to reach worshippers

Reuters
By Umberto Bacchi

TBILISI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As coronavirus closes churches, synagogues and mosques worldwide, religious leaders are taking faith online to ensure God’s word gets to the millions marooned by the pandemic.

Services are being streamed on Instagram, prayers posted by video link and timeless texts shared on cellphones to bring spiritual support to the hundreds of thousands of believers denied a place of worship.

“Because I am not physically close to you, it doesn’t mean I can’t be emotionally close to you,” said Miles McPherson, a senior pastor at the Rock Church in San Diego, California, which moved to online streaming on Sunday.

“It’s better when you are with somebody in a room … but the online services in one way give us opportunity to be with people more because we are with them in their pocket,” he said holding a mobile phone during an online video interview.

With almost 219,000 infections and more than 8,900 deaths so far, the epidemic has stunned the world and drawn comparisons with traumas such as World War Two and the 1918 Spanish flu.

In Italy – home to a large and devout Catholic population – priests have turned to technology to support some of the communities worst hit by the rapid viral spread.

When news broke on Feb. 23 that all Masses in and around the northern city of Milan were to be suspended, priest Fabio Zanin came up with a new way to stay in touch with his flock.

Armed with a mobile phone and help from young parishioners, he set up an Instagram account and started streaming daily functions held behind closed doors on social media.

“We though it would only be for a few days,” said Zanin, a Catholic priest from Cusano Milanino, a small town north of Italy’s financial capital.

“In the meantime, the whole word has been turned upside down,” the 28-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Zanin even asked parishioners to send in photos as they watched the Mass online, saying: “People need human contact”.

The highly contagious respiratory disease that originated in China has pushed governments on every continent to impose draconian lockdowns, hitting sport, shopping, travel and faith.

From Japan to the United States, many religious groups have suspended services and moved faith online, trying out new ways to stay close to their communities, as holy sites and public spaces shut, changing the face of many world cities.

HOLY WATER AND TOILET PAPER

Churches have historically been a place of sanctuary in times of crisis and closures have caused disarray.

Last week, the Pope’s vicar for the Rome archdiocese ordered churches in the Italian capital to shut their doors only to back peddle a day later, following complaints from some Catholics and a caution against “drastic measures” from the pontiff.

Besides broadcasting services, some have come up with novel initiatives to raise morale among those confined to home.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have stopped their custom of knocking on doors and setting up stall at busy crossroads but congregants were still meeting in small home groups in countries where it was permitted, a spokesman said.

In Britain, where the Chief Rabbi has urged synagogues to suspend all activities, a London-based congregation called on members not to “let social distancing become social isolation”.

“Whether you are in need of an extra loo (toilet) roll, some food dropped off or a listening ear to share your fears, let us be the planks for one another in the weeks ahead,” Rabbi Elana Dellal of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue wrote in an online post.

U.S. Buddhist magazine Tricycle has published online meditations to help ease people’s anxiety, while the St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach, California, urged parishioners to put their enforced down time to good use.

“Now is a good time to read Cradle to Cradle and watch those documentaries I asked you to watch!” Reverend Cindy Evans Voorhees wrote in an email newsletter.

In Tbilisi, Georgia, the Orthodox Church – criticised for still serving worshippers bread from a shared spoon – organised a motorcade to bless the city streets and ward off the virus.

On Tuesday, priests holding icons rode on pick-up trucks sprinkling people and pavements from tanks of holy water.

“This will be another good event by the Church to bring peace and calm to people,” said churchgoer Kote Svanadze.

(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

For U.S. small restaurants, coronavirus impact is swift and brutal

By Lindsay Dunsmuir and Ann Saphir

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – On St. Patrick’s Day last year, Amy and Chris Hillyard marked the 30th anniversary of Farley’s, their pair of cafes in San Francisco and Oakland, California, with live bagpipes and noisy crowds.

This year, they spent the day quietly packing up beans, granola, and a vegan coconut curry made from unsold produce to give to the 40 employees they had to lay off on March 16.

In the space of a month, the Hillyards had gone from their strongest financial period, ever, to at least temporarily closing their doors.

“We were running at the top of our game as a business and it’s just devastating to have to turn off the engine,” Amy said.

The rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak in the United States has begun to decimate the restaurant industry as an increasing number of states and regions enforce population lockdowns and close eateries, bars, gyms and other “non-essential” businesses.

The food service industry is the nation’s second-largest private employer, with 15.6 million employees, according to the National Restaurant Association, which counts 1 million restaurants, including fast food outlets, in the United States.

Of these, 90% are small businesses with fewer than 50 employees, NRA says, a figure that includes franchised chain stores, which are usually independently owned.

Restaurants are notoriously high-risk businesses, typically running on pretax margins of 3 to 6%, which makes them extremely vulnerable in a downturn.

The trade group estimates U.S. restaurants could take a sales hit of up to $225 billion in the next three months, a quarter of the $899 billion in sales that they had expected for the full year.

Approximately 6.7 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area, a coronavirus hotspot, have been ordered since Tuesday to stay home until April 7 except for essential outings. This type of lockdown is set to become more widespread as cases of the virus rise elsewhere.

On the U.S. East Coast, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut struck a regional agreement on Monday to close all movie theaters, casinos and gyms. New York City may soon also issue a “shelter in place” order. Restaurants and bars in the three states – where about 32 million people live – will serve takeout and delivery only.

For the Hillyards, switching to takeout or delivery was not a viable option, given the cafe is surrounded by now-empty office buildings. By Monday, sales were down 70% from normal, as local businesses sent workers home even before the lockdown started.

Their immediate concern is how to pay their bills. The next payment for the staff’s health insurance plan is due on March 25. Rent, their other big monthly cost, is due on April 1 – but so is a loan payment to Bank of America <BAC.N>, and they cannot make both.

OUT ON A LIMB

In Washington state, another virus hotspot, restaurants were also closed to all but takeout and delivery earlier this week. Fon Spaulding, who runs Kati Vegan Thai in Seattle, has seen sales fall almost 80% – the same proportion of her customers that worked at the nearby headquarters of Amazon.com Inc <AMZN.O>, until they were told to work from home.

The city government has said it will spend $1.5 million on grants for small businesses affected by the coronavirus, but that will not help Spaulding.

“It is for people who don’t have more than five employees. Our restaurant couldn’t get it,” Spaulding said. She also remains confused about what she qualifies for or how to get it. “We have heard about many, many loans … but we don’t know exactly where to start to apply.”

DELIVERY IS NOT ENOUGH

Restaurant visits as measured by OpenTable were down 77% year-on-year on March 16 in Washington, D.C., after the city told restaurants and bars to stop serving customers on the premises, to reduce the public’s potential exposure to the virus.

There as elsewhere the hope is that the rise of online food ordering over recent years will soften the blow.

Meals ordered digitally for delivery were up 16% in 2019 from the year before, while digital orders for takeout increased 33%, data analytics firm NPD Group said.

But delivery is a tiny slice of restaurant sales in normal times, at roughly 3% of orders.

Ris Lacoste has owned Ris, a fine dining restaurant in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C., for 10 years. Diners are used to feasting on mussels as they sip their wine. Delivery and catering usually make up 5% of sales at most.

She has been forced to let go of almost all her 50-odd staff. For now it is just her, a front-of-house manager and a chef. On Wednesday, they began serving a limited takeout menu, offering soup, salad, pot pies and bread.

Lacoste said she cannot offer more choices without knowing how popular they will be, because she cannot yet afford to buy more product or rehire staff. The uncertainty of whether the restaurant will be closed to in-house dining for two weeks or two months also makes it difficult to plan.

“We are figuring out daily costs to keep the lights on,” she said. “Selling to-go is great and it might keep some places alive, but it won’t keep all of us alive.”

The Hillyards are still hoping they will be able to reopen instead of shuttering for good. Instead of loans, which have to be repaid and will never cover the custom they have permanently lost, they would like more direct help from local and federal government.

“We need a bailout,” Amy said, sitting with Chris in the sunny window of the empty cafe. “Why should banks and the cruise industry get a bailout when we are the lifeblood, and the heartbeat, of the community?”

(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir in Washington and Ann Saphir in San Francisco; Editing by Heather Timmons and Matthew Lewis)

UK puts military on standby as coronavirus shuts down swathes of London

Reuters
By Guy Faulconbridge and Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – The United Kingdom put 20,000 military personnel on standby, closed dozens of underground train stations across London and Queen Elizabeth left the city for Windsor Castle as the coronavirus crisis shut down whole swathes of the economy.

As the coronavirus outbreak sweeps across the world, governments, companies and investors are grappling with the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 influenza pandemic, panicked populations and imploding financial markets.

Against a background of panic buying in supermarkets and the biggest fall in sterling for decades, the British government moved to quash rumors that travel in and out of London would be restricted.

“There is zero prospect of any restriction being placed on traveling in or out of London,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman told reporters.

He said police were responsible for maintaining law and order and there were no plans to use the military for this purpose, though the government put military reservists on formal notification.

But dozens of underground train stations across the capital were due to be closed and an industry source said supermarkets were expecting police support amid the fears that London was facing a virtual shutdown.

After ordering the closure of schools across a country that casts itself as a pillar of Western stability, Johnson on Wednesday said the government was ruling nothing out when asked whether he would bring in measures to lock down London.

Johnson has asked the government to come up with plans for a so-called lockdown which would see businesses closed, transport services reduced, gatherings limited and more stringent controls imposed on the city.

Queen Elizabeth on Thursday left the capital for her ancient castle at Windsor. The monarch has also agreed to postpone the planned state visit by Japanese Emperor Naruhito in June.

LONDON CLOSING?

London’s transport authority said it would close up to 40 underground train stations until further notice and reduce other services including buses and trains. The line between Waterloo station and the City of London financial district would be closed.

“People should not be traveling, by any means, unless they really, really have to,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said.

Britain has so far reported 104 deaths from coronavirus and 2,626 confirmed cases, but UK scientific advisers say more than 50,000 people might have already been infected.

Britain faces a “massive shortage” of ventilators that will be needed to treat critically ill patients suffering from coronavirus, after it failed to invest enough in intensive care equipment, a leading ventilator manufacturer said.

With the world’s fifth largest economy coming to a standstill, the pound on Wednesday plunged to its lowest since March 1985, barring a freak “flash crash” in October 2016. On Thursday the pound was down 0.5% at $1.1570.

British shoppers were queuing around the block early on Thursday morning to buy basic supplies such as bottled water and tinned goods ahead of an expected toughening of measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

Supermarkets have been forced to limit purchases after frantic shoppers stripped shelves. Outside one Sainsbury’s supermarket in central London on Thursday, a huge queue had formed ahead of opening, with people standing calmly in the rain.

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Additional reporting by Dylan Martinez, Kate Holton and Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Michael Holden and Giles Elgood)

Without soap or sanitizer, Syrian refugees face coronavirus threat

By Walid Saleh and Laila Bassam

AKKAR, Lebanon/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian refugee Mohamed al-Bakhas is doing his best to protect his family from coronavirus by keeping their camp as clean as he can. But without enough soap or the money to buy sanitizer or face masks, there is only so much he can do.

“They gave us an awareness session and one bar of soap each, but this is not enough,” said Bakhas, 40, referring to aid workers who visited his camp in northern Lebanon this week.

“We ask for disinfectants, sanitizers for the camp. We are a big group,” said Bakhas, who fled to Lebanon from Homs in Syria eight years ago and lives with his wife and child.

Lebanon has recorded 149 cases of coronavirus. Four people have died from the virus so far.

No cases have been recorded yet among Syrian refugees, who number around 1 million of Lebanon’s population of 6 million.

As Lebanon’s public health system struggles with the outbreak, the government is worried about the virus spreading to camps for both Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

Health Minister Hamad Hassan said refugee health care was a responsibility shared by the state and United Nations agencies but he said the international community had been slow to react to the crisis.

“The international community with its U.N. agencies is a bit late in putting plans, thinking about establishing a field hospital or supporting the health ministry so that it can carry out its obligations toward its people: Lebanese society in addition to the Palestinian and Syrian brothers,” Hamad said.

The UNHCR refugee agency said efforts to fight the spread of coronavirus to refugee communities had started early on.

Awareness campaigns and the distribution of hygiene materials were underway and preparations were being made for additional hospitalization capacity that may be needed.

“We are all working around the clock,” said Lisa Abou Khaled, communications officer at UNHCR in Lebanon.

Given the high population density of the camps, Hamad noted the difficulties of maintaining personal hygiene and said the spread of coronavirus was a real danger.

Field hospitals would allow for the isolation and treatment of the infected.

“The international community and U.N. institutions must without delay prepare the ground to save these communities in case the virus spreads among them,” he said.

Lebanon was grappling with a financial and economic crisis before coronavirus hit. The government is appealing for foreign aid for its public health system.

Coronavirus poses a host of new difficulties to refugees who have been struggling in poverty for years in Lebanon.

With water mostly trucked to their camps, refugees do not have enough for regular handwashing, relief workers say.

As it currently stands, accessing health care can also be a big problem: if refugees need to go to hospital, they cannot afford the ride or pay for treatment.

“We are exploring all options including setting up additional facilities in existing hospitals or separate field hospitals…its likely that a combination of both will be needed,” Abou Khaled said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Laila Bassam in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Cheap and creative ideas to protect world’s most vulnerable from coronavirus

By Sonia Elks

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – From handwashing stations to digital advice hubs, initiatives are underway to protect the world’s most vulnerable people from the global coronavirus epidemic.

While richer nations rush to bolster their health systems to cope, poorer nations with fewer resources are likely to struggle and suffer worse impacts, said humanitarian organisations, with refugee camps and war zones facing some of the worst risks.

“Refugees, families displaced from their homes, and those living in crisis will be hit the hardest by this outbreak,” David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a charity working in more than 40 countries.

“As the world struggles to deal with the fallout of COVID-19 across its richest nations, the needs of the most vulnerable must not be neglected or forgotten,” he said in a statement.

COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, emerged in China late last year and has infected more than 200,000 people and killed 9,000, according to a global tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Aid groups have warned of potentially devastating effects if the virus takes hold in refugee camps which often house huge numbers of people in cramped temporary shelters, or in countries in conflict like Yemen where health systems have collapsed.

URGENT ACTION

A range of projects are being launched to provide lifesaving facilities and information, as lockdowns and border closures pinch key supply chains and create new barriers to reaching those at risk.

A multi-million dollar fund has been set up to help the World Health Organization respond to coronavirus, with priority given to more vulnerable countries with weaker health systems.

With hygiene seen as a key first line of defence, health authorities and aid groups such as Oxfam are delivering extra soap, handwashing stations and other sanitation facilities to high-risk areas including refugee camps.

In Bangladesh, which recorded its first coronavirus death on Wednesday, women volunteers are educating people living in the world’s largest refugee camp about hygiene. There have been no cases in the camp so far.

Aid groups are also turning to digital channels to share key health messages and support in global coronavirus hotspots.

And after lockdowns disrupted in-person support groups in China, the charity World Vision turned to social platforms including Weibo and WhatsApp to stay in touch with families with child-friendly health messages and advice.

“We need to be thinking creatively and using these low-cost digital messages,” Erica Van Deren, senior program manager at World Vision, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“As people are doing social distancing and staying at home, as governments are putting restrictions up around gathering, people are turning to social media and to their phones for information.”

Social enterprises and community groups have also helped to tackle shortages, from supplying face masks and soap to picking up shopping for elderly neighbours self-isolating at home.

As coronavirus hits economies, the poorest are likely to feel the longer-lasting effects, said Juliet Parker, director of operations at Action Against Hunger UK.

“Aside from the immediate impact on health facilities, which could be overwhelming, there is the longer-term impact this could have on poverty levels,” she said, citing the possible impact on Africa, the world’s poorest continent.

“It’s too early to say what the scale of this might be, but it is conceivable that the humanitarian needs in some countries could increase if the price or demand for African exports is affected.”

(Reporting by Sonia Elks @soniaelks; Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

America’s cleaners: fighting on the coronavirus front line

By Jonnelle Marte

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s been roughly two weeks since Amazon encouraged most employees at its Seattle headquarters to work remotely after one tested positive for coronavirus.

Since then, Ismahan Ali and other janitors who clean the tech giant’s offices say they have been getting paid to work overtime to wipe down stairwells, conference rooms and other high-traffic areas.

Ali, 29, doesn’t clean the building where the infected Amazon employee worked, but she shares a break room with some janitors who do. So every cough or sneeze is a reminder that coronavirus could be lingering on a surface they’ve cleaned, or that one may already have been exposed, she said.

“Everyone is scared,” said Ali, who works for ABM, a maintenance and cleaning firm that employs more than 140,000 people. “We just keep going, let’s do what we can.”

For the three million janitors, housekeepers and maids across America, remote working is not an option. They are on the front line of the war against the virus, often working overnight and weekends to deep clean offices, airports and hotels.

Ali said at first she was not used to the stronger cleaning product she was asked to use as part of an enhanced cleaning protocol put in place because of the virus. The chemical irritated her eyes, throat and skin, but she has since been provided with goggles and a mask, which she said is helping.

ABM did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls requesting comment.

A spokeswoman for Ali’s union, Service Employees International Union Local 6, said ABM had been responsive to its concerns and has committed to providing janitors with more protective gear and training. A janitor with experience of using stronger chemicals is also now providing guidance to other staff at Amazon, the union representative said.

Amazon said safety was a top priority and that it had notified employees and service providers, including janitors, who may have been in close contact with its employee who tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Amazon also said it was committed to paying hourly workers who cannot come to work because of coronavirus.

“We continue to pay all hourly employees that support our offices around the world – from food service, to security guards to janitorial staff – during the time our employees are asked to work from home,” an Amazon representative said in a statement.

‘PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK’

Other cleaning professionals have seen demand for their services dry up as major events are canceled, malls and movie theaters close, and business travel is put on hold.

Those working in the hospitality and entertainment industry have been hit hard, with lost wages adding a new layer of uncertainty to their already precarious financial lives.

Earlier this month, Larrilou Carumba, a 47-year-old housekeeper at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel, applied to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

But then she got her work schedule: she wasn’t needed for at least two weeks. Suddenly unsure of when her next paycheck would land, she withdrew her application.

“I’m more afraid about my bills than the coronavirus,” she said, adding that she would struggle to afford groceries, her car payments and insurance, and other outgoings. “Being a single mom, you live paycheck to paycheck.”

Janitors earned a median hourly wage of $12.55 in 2018 while housekeepers made $11.43. Low-wage workers without unions are also less likely to have fundamental health benefits, including health insurance or sick leave, according to surveys from the Economic Policy Institute.

Think-tank Pew Research Center estimates https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/16/immigrants-dont-make-up-a-majority-of-workers-in-any-u-s-industry more than a third of cleaners and maintenance workers in America are immigrants.

“I’m going to keep cleaning because I have to help my family,” said Ali, who is studying to become a nurse and sends money to her family in Somalia. “I don’t have a choice to stay home. I have to go.”

‘FALLING OFF A CLIFF’

Hotel companies are reeling from a sharp drop in business over the past couple of weeks as conferences are canceled, vacations scrapped and casinos shut down.

Occupancies in the second week of March were 24.4% lower than the same week last year, according to data firm STR. Of the 25 markets it studied, the San Francisco region reported the second biggest hit to occupancy, which fell by 51.6% from 2019.

“Our industry is falling off a cliff,” said D. Taylor, president of the UNITE HERE, a union that represents about 300,000 members in the hotel, gaming, food, transport and other service industries in the United States and Canada.

Taylor said hospitality workers were under significant pressure as schools close, and traffic at hotels, casinos and airports plummets. He is advocating for more workers to receive paid sick leave so they can afford to stay home if they are unwell, or need to be quarantined.

For people who are laid off, the union is pushing for fast access to unemployment benefits and extended access to health insurance. “The coronavirus is a pretty scary thing and often our folks are on the front lines,” Taylor said.

Marriott International <MAR.O> said a significant drop in demand worldwide was forcing it take remedial measures.

“Unfortunately, occupancy dictates staffing levels – we are adjusting global operations accordingly and working quickly to mitigate the impact to our business,” it said in a statement.

U.S. regulators and lawmakers are considering different options that could provide relief to low-income workers affected by the pandemic, including leniency with loans, expanding unemployment benefits and providing other financial assistance.

After withdrawing her bid for the apartment, Carumba submitted a different application – for unemployment benefits.

She is still waiting to hear whether she will get any assistance until she can return to work.

“I have a strong faith that this will end,” she said. “I just don’t know when.”

(Reporting by Jonnelle Marte; Editing by Heather Timmons and David Clarke)

‘There are no funerals:’ Death in quarantine leaves nowhere to grieve

By Angelo Amante, Parisa Hafezi and Hayoung Choi

(Reuters) – Struck down by coronavirus at the age of 83, the long life of Alfredo Visioli ended with a short ceremony at a graveyard near Cremona, his hometown in northern Italy.

“They buried him like that, without a funeral, without his loved ones, with just a blessing from the priest,” said his granddaughter Marta Manfredi who couldn’t attend. Like most of the old man’s family – like most of Italy – she was confined to her home.

“When all this is over,” she vows, “we will give him a real funeral.”

Everywhere the coronavirus has struck, regardless of culture or religion, ancient rituals to honor the dead and comfort the bereaved have been cut short or abandoned for fear of spreading it further.

The virus, which has killed nearly 9,000 people worldwide, is reshaping many aspects of death, from the practicalities of handling infected bodies to meeting the spiritual and emotional needs of those left behind.

In Ireland, the health authority is advising mortuary workers to put face masks on dead bodies to reduce even the minor risk of infection. In Italy, a funeral company is using video links to allow quarantined families to watch a priest bless the deceased. And in South Korea, fear of the virus has caused such a drop in the number of mourners that funeral caterers are struggling for business.

There is little time for ceremony in hard-hit cities such as Bergamo, northeast of Milan, where the mortuaries are full and the crematorium is working around the clock, said Giacomo Angeloni, a local official in charge of cemeteries.

Bergamo, home to about 120,000 people, has been dealing with 5-6 times the number of dead it would in normal times, he said.

Italy has now reported nearly 3,000 deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus – the highest outside China where the virus first emerged. The Italian army sent 50 troops and 15 trucks to Bergamo on Wednesday to take bodies to less overwhelmed provinces.

A ban on gatherings has shattered the vital rituals that help us grieve, said Andy Langford, the chief operating officer of Cruse Bereavement Care, a British charity providing free care and counseling to those in grief.

“Funerals allow a community to come together, express emotion, talk about that person and formally say goodbye,” he said.

“When you feel you have no control over how you can grieve, and over how you can experience those last moments with someone, that can complicate how you grieve and make you feel worse,” he said.

EXTRA STAFF

In Iran as in northern Italy, hospital and funeral workers are overwhelmed with bodies, as the virus has torn across the country, killing 1,284 people and infecting thousands, according to state TV.

The authorities have hired new people to dig graves, said a manager at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. “We work day and night,” he said. “I have never seen such a sad situation. There are no funerals.”

Most corpses arrive by truck and are buried without the ritual washing that Islam dictates, he said.

Some Iranians suspect that the official haste to bury them has more to do with obscuring the spiraling death toll than halting the spread of the virus.

Deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded as heart attacks or lung infections, a hospital worker in Kashan, a city about a three-hour drive from Tehran, told Reuters.

“The officials are lying about the death toll,” the worker said. “I have seen dozens of corpses in the past few days, but they have told us not to talk about it.” Two nurses at Iranian hospitals also told Reuters they thought the death toll was higher than the official tally.

Iranian authorities have rejected allegations of a cover-up, and President Hassan Rouhani, in a televised speech on Mar. 18, said his government had been “honest and straightforward with the nation.”

INFECTION RISK

In several countries, clusters of infection have followed funerals. In South Korea, where more than 90 people have died, the government has urged the families of COVID-19 victims to cremate their loved ones first, and hold the funeral later.

Korean funerals usually take place in hospitals, and involve three days of prayers and feasting. Most of the country’s early cases were linked to a church in Daegu city and a hospital in a nearby county. In February, several members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus attended a funeral at the hospital for the brother of the church’s founder.

Since the outbreak, the number of mourners at funerals has plunged by 90%, regardless of whether the deceased had the virus, said Choi Min-ho, secretary general of the Korea Funeral Association.

“The culture of funerals has changed significantly,” he said. “A handful of mourners quickly offer condolences and leave the place without dining together out of infection worries.”

Condolence money, traditionally handed over in cash, is now sent via bank transfer, he added.

Authorities in Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s outbreak and location of the majority of its deaths, quickly identified the funeral business as a potential source of transmission.

The local civil affairs bureau in late January ordered all funerals for confirmed COVID-19 victims to be handled at a single funeral home in the city’s Hankou district. Mourning ceremonies, usually boisterous social events in China, were curtailed along with all other public gatherings.

Those restrictions are still in place, even though the number of new cases has dwindled in recent weeks. Bereaved families are not even allowed to see the bodies of their loved ones, a worker at the funeral home told Reuters.

In China, the ashes of the deceased tend to be kept in funeral homes until they are taken to a family plot on public holidays such as the Tomb Sweeping Festival in April. That’s also canceled this year.

“DEATH MANAGEMENT”

In Spain, too, a large cluster of cases has been traced to a funeral in the northern town of Vitoria in late February. At least 60 people who attended tested positive after the event, said local media reports.

With over 600 deaths, Spain is the second-worst hit country in Europe after Italy, and most people are now confined to their homes. Referring to these restrictions, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called coronavirus a “cruel” disease that paralyses the human need to socialize.

In Ireland, up to 100 guests are still allowed at all funerals – for now. But most families are opting for small private ceremonies and encouraging others to express their condolences online through websites such as RIP.ie, where death notices and funeral invitations are usually posted.

Open casket funerals are out for any victim of coronavirus, and “the family should be advised not to kiss the deceased,” according to new guidelines from Ireland’s Health and Safety Executive to its funeral directors.

The risk of catching coronavirus from a dead body is slim, public health officials say, but some countries are recommending extra measures.

Israel has reported no coronavirus deaths, but its health ministry says the deceased should be double-wrapped in impermeable plastic. Ritual washing and rites will be performed in full protective gear and the corpse re-wrapped in plastic for burial. Normally Israel’s Jewish dead are laid to rest in a cloth smock and shroud.

Ireland’s guidelines advise workers in funeral parlors to put face masks on dead bodies before moving them, in case they “expel a very small amount of air and viral droplets from the lungs” and infect the living.

In Britain, where the pandemic is still gathering pace, there is widespread anxiety about the likely death toll.

Britain has been slower in implementing the strict measures seen elsewhere in Europe, and expert estimates of how many will die from COVID-19 have ranged wildly from the tens to the hundreds of thousands.

An emergency bill to tackle the virus, which has killed 104 people in Britain, includes a number of measures the government says will “streamline the death management process.” The measures include allowing funeral directors to register a death on behalf of a self-isolating family.

Deborah Smith, a spokesperson for the National Association of Funeral Directors, said the bill will help the profession “preserve the dignity of those who die and care for their bereaved families with compassion – even if they are not able to have the kind of funeral they would have wanted.”

Smith would not be drawn on the expected numbers, but said “funeral directors are preparing for a variety of scenarios.”

“NOT ALONE”

One scenario is already playing out in Wuhan.

Last month, a worker at the funeral home in Hankou district, identifying himself only as Huang, wrote an essay that was circulated on social media. He said funeral workers were as overwhelmed as the city’s medics but had received less recognition.

He said staff had worked without a break since the start of the epidemic. “Some of our employees don’t even drink water because they need to go to the toilet and it’s difficult to take off the protective clothing,” he wrote.

Half a world away, in the virus-stricken Italian town of Bergamo, funeral workers wage a near-identical struggle.

“It’s like being in a war with an invisible enemy,” said Roberta Caprini, a partner in Centro Funerario Bergamasco, a funeral service in Bergamo. “We’ve been working without interruption for two weeks and sleeping 3-4 hours a night when we manage it. Everyone in our area, us included, has lost someone or have someone sick in their home.”

Bergamo’s Church of All Saints has become a makeshift mortuary, its pews pushed aside to accommodate the dead. Caprini said she had counted at least 60 coffins when she visited on Tuesday.

She spoke of the “real torture” felt by families who watched sick relatives taken away to hospital and never saw them again. Her company has arranged video links to burials, to allow families to watch the priest bless the deceased.

Sometimes, she said, they drive the hearses past the bereaved family’s home, so mourners “can at least come down at the moment and offer a quick prayer.”

(This story has been refiled to fix the bylines)

(Reporting by Elisa Anzolin and Emilio Parodi in Milan; Angelo Amante in Rome; Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; David Stanway in Shanghai; Joan Faus in Barcelona; Hayoung Choi in Seoul, Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Emma Farge in Zurich; Kate Kelland in London and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing and additional reporting by Andrew RC Marshall; Edited by Sara Ledwith and Jason Szep)

New York expects spike in coronavirus cases after big batch of overnight tests

By Maria Caspani

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – The state of New York tested 8,000 people for the coronavirus overnight in what may be the largest batch of testing to date in the United States, likely leading to a spike in positive cases once results come in, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday.

With the United States slow to roll out mass testing for the virus – which has spread rapidly to become a global pandemic – some health officials have feared the number of known cases lags far behind reality.

Nearly 9,000 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported in the United States, more than 3,000 of them in the New York state, according to state health departments.

Some 151 deaths had been reported nationwide, including 21 in New York and 66 in Washington state as of 11 p.m. Wednesday.

“I think the spread of the virus is well in advance of any of these numbers,” Cuomo told MSNBC television. “We did 8,000 overnight, which is one of the largest number I think ever done in the country. We haven’t gotten this morning’s tally, but you’re going to see a jump astronomically – I have no doubt – because we did so many tests.”

The real number of cases may be 10 times the number of confirmed positives, or even more, Cuomo said.

As a result, the state may see 110,000 hospitalizations and about 25,000 to 37,000 people needing intensive care unit beds at peak time in five to six weeks, the governor projected.

U.S. health experts fear the country is on a similar trajectory as Italy, the worst-hit European country where the government reported a record 475 deaths on Wednesday alone, increasing that nation’s death toll to 2,978.

The total number of cases in Italy rose to 35,713, up 13 percent from the previous day, its Civil Protection Agency said.

U.S. stock markets fell again for the third time this week, signaling that panic-stricken equity investors remained unconvinced that sweeping policy actions would avert a global recession over the coronavirus. In early trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> the S&P 500 index <.SPX> were down around 2%.

President Donald Trump, who declared a national emergency last week and had stepped up the federal response after initially downplaying the threat, plans to visit Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, where he will hold a video teleconference with state governors on the coronavirus.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday urged Congress to move quickly to pass a $1 trillion economic relief measure by early next week, saying he expects bipartisan support for the bill to get cash payments to Americans during the crisis.

Mnuchin, in an interview on Fox Business Network, said the federal government was focused on being able to provide liquidity to companies and had no problem issuing more debt, but that it expected loans to businesses to be paid back.

Congress is taking up its third legislative package to address the pandemic, which has caused widespread economic disruption.

Lawmakers already have passed a $105 billion-plus plan to limit the damage from the outbreak through free testing, paid sick leave and expanded safety-net spending, as well as an $8.3 billion measure to combat the spread of the pathogen and develop vaccines. Trump has signed both into law.

“We’re going to get through this,” Mnuchin said. “This is not the financial crisis that will go on for years.”

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the Republican president to speed up mass production of medical and protective equipment using powers under the Defense Production Act, citing shortages in the country. Trump on Wednesday said he would invoke the decades-old law.

“Right now, shortages of critical medical and personal protective equipment are harming our ability to fight the coronavirus epidemic, endangering frontline workers and making it harder to care for those who fall ill,” Pelosi, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, the United State’s top public health official, said on Thursday the virus is affecting people across a wide age range and authorities continue to learn more about it every day.

“Right now there is a not a big fear that the virus is mutating,” Adams told Fox News. “But what we are seeing is the virus is playing out differently in different populations based on their mitigation efforts, based on their access to healthcare and based on who is getting sick.”

Adams stressed that Americans should continue to self-isolate and follow precautionary guidelines.

“It’s about social distancing, it’s about washing your hands. It’s about ensuring that you’re protecting yourself and protecting others. It’s not about partying on beaches during spring break,” Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, told CBS “This Morning.”

But clearly, many Americans were ignoring expert advice.

“Get off the beach,” U.S. Senator Rick Scott of Florida said on Thursday as people still gathered on the state’s beaches despite warnings. While people could walk alone on the beach away from others, “that’s not what’s happening” as college students still congregated during spring break.

If people failed to heed social isolation warnings, government officials might need to act, Scott told CNN in an interview.

“You’ve got to figure out how to get these people off the beach,” he said.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Exclusive: UK faces ‘massive shortage’ of ventilators – Swiss manufacturer

By John Miller

EMS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Britain faces a “massive shortage” of ventilators that will be needed to treat critically ill patients suffering from coronavirus, after it failed to invest enough in intensive care equipment, a leading ventilator manufacturer said on Wednesday.

“England is very poorly equipped,” said Andreas Wieland, chief executive of Hamilton Medical in Switzerland, which says it is the world’s largest ventilator maker.

“They’re going to have a massive shortage, once the virus really arrives there,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Ventilators, running in the thousands of dollars per unit, are used to help people with respiratory difficulties to breathe. They are high-tech versions of the “iron lungs” that kept people alive into the 1950s during fierce polio epidemics.

Worldwide, the devices have become shorthand for the rapid advance of the disease — and the desperation of officials who fear their stocks are inadequate. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the 3,000 devices in his state where 20 people have died are a fraction of what he’d like to have.

“The entire world is trying to buy ventilators,” Cuomo said, according to a transcript published on Wednesday, adding he is hoping to tap a U.S. federal government stockpile.

Germany’s Draegerwerk  last week got a government order for 10,000, equal to a typical year’s production.

Wieland’s company in the Swiss Alps has boosted normal production of some 15,000 ventilators annually by 30-40% and now can produce about 80 ventilators daily.

He has shifted his 1,400 employees to seven-day work weeks as well as borrowed workers from other companies in the Rhine River valley where his two-year-old ventilator plant is located.

Last week, Hamilton Medical shipped 400 ventilators to Italy, whose intensive care units have been overwhelmed by more than 35,000 cases of the rapidly spreading virus and almost 3,000 deaths.

About 50% of those with coronavirus in Italy accepted into intensive care units are dying, compared with typical mortality rates of 12% to 16% in such units.

Wieland said a similar outbreak in Britain, now with more than 2,600 cases and about 100 deaths, would swamp the system there, too.

“They are not well equipped with ventilators and intensive care stations,” he said. “They invested very little, and I think now they will pay the price.”

UK health minister Matt Hancock has acknowledged the existing stock of 5,000 ventilators is inadequate.

“NO NUMBER TOO HIGH”

“We think we need many times more than that and we are saying if you produce a ventilator then we will buy it,” he said earlier this week. “No number is too high.”

Wieland said he was in “close contact” with UK medical leaders and aimed to prioritize shipments there soon, though for now Italy was taking precedence.

But he also has orders from the United States, Turkey, France and China, where in January he stocked up on components in anticipation of rising demand as the virus spread from its origins in Wuhan.

The UK’s Intensive Care Society, an organization of medical professionals, did not immediately return emails and phone calls from Reuters seeking comment on the nation’s readiness for a possible explosion of coronavirus cases.

“We are likely to need more,” a National Health Service spokesman told Reuters. “Engineers have already been tasked with developing plans to produce more ventilators in the UK, at speed.”

Hamilton CEO Wieland is skeptical, however, of the British government’s recent call for manufacturers from other industries including Ford, Honda and Rolls Royce to help make equipment including ventilators.

“I wish them the best of luck,” Wieland said. “I do not believe anything will come of it. These devices are very complex. It takes us four to five years” to develop a new product.

(Reporting by John Miller in Ems, Andrew MacAskill in London; Editing by Mark Potter and Chizu Nomiyama)

Trump says he will invoke wartime act to fight ‘enemy’ coronavirus

By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump moved on Wednesday to accelerate production of desperately needed medical equipment to battle the coronavirus pandemic and said an estimate that U.S. unemployment could conceivably reach 20 percent was a worst case scenario.

Scrambling to address the virus after initially playing it down, Trump said he is invoking the Defense Production Act, putting in place a law that will allow the U.S. government to speed production of masks, respirators, ventilators and other needed equipment.

“We’re going to defeat the invisible enemy,” said Trump, who said the unfolding crisis had basically made him a “war-time president.”

Trump said he would invoke another law that would allow U.S. authorities to turn back migrants seeking to cross the southern border of the United States illegally. The border will not be closed, he said.

“No, we’re not going to close it, but we are invoking a certain provision that will allow us great latitude as to what we do,” he said.

Trump has made staunching the flow of migrants across the border with Mexico a central pillar of his presidency and has poured billions of dollars into building a border wall that is far from completed.

Immigrant rights groups have slammed the idea of mass returns of foreign nationals to Mexico.

Trump said a hospital ship will be sent to hard-hit New York to help people affected by the contagion, and that a second hospital ship will be deployed on the West Coast.

He defended his description of the coronavirus as “the Chinese virus” despite concerns among some Americans that he was making an ethnic slur.

“It’s not racist, not at all. It comes from China,” he said of the illness, whose origin has been traced back to Wuhan, China.

Trump, appearing in the White House briefing room for what has now become a daily news conference with his coronavirus task force, said he would sign the Defense Production Act later on Wednesday.

The law, which dates back to the Korean War of the 1950s, grants the president broad authority to “expedite and expand the supply of resources from the U.S. industrial base to support military, energy, space, and homeland security programs,” according to a summary on the Federal Emergency Management Agency website.

Reuters was first to report last month that Trump’s action was being considered. (https://reut.rs/2U0TVqk)

“We will be invoking the Defense Production Act just in case we need it,” said Trump.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin fanned fears of economic collapse on Wednesday by telling lawmakers on Capitol Hill that 20 percent unemployment was an extreme possibility should the virus have devastating effects on American businesses, many of which are already under duress.

“That’s an absolute total worst case scenario,” said Trump. “We’re nowhere near it.”

Vice President Mike Pence, head of the coronavirus task force, urged all Americans to put off elective surgery to allow hospitals to concentrate on the rising influx of patients with the COVID-19 respiratory illness caused by the new virus.

Deborah Birx, a member of the task force, urged young people to adhere to government guidelines, calling for a 15-day effort to slow the spread of the virus. Young people are considered key transmitters of the virus, which can be passed along even with mild or no symptoms.

There are now more than 7,300 U.S. cases of the illness and at least 118 deaths.

(Reporting By Jeff Masonm, Steve Holland, Alexandra Alper, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Lisa Lambert; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Alistair Bell and Steve Orlofsky)