Tag Archives: Coronavirus

U.S. health experts, officials warn protests may add to virus spread

By Caroline Humer

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Public health experts and government officials, including New York’s governor, are warning that large street protests over racial inequities and excessive police force could worsen the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The protests over the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis last Monday, have spread to cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Baltimore.

They are bringing together hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people just as the country is reopening after lengthy lockdowns to stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

“We’re talking about reopening in one week in New York City and now we’re seeing these mass gatherings over the past several nights that could in fact exacerbate the COVID-19 spread,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms recommended to Georgians that if they were at a protest, they should consider being tested for COVID-19.

Health experts say the close proximity of participants, running and yelling or chanting, may increase transmission because people emit more respiratory droplets under these conditions.

Conversely, the protests have largely been outside, where motion of the air from breezes or people moving quickly can diffuse the virus, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“A lot of people were wearing masks. That will also help dampen the possibility of spread,” he said.

If there are infections, alerting people that they have been near someone with the virus will be difficult, especially if people do not want it known they attended a protest, he and other experts said.

More public health officials may start to make statements to the effect of, “‘If you were at one of these protests, you should consider yourself exposed,'” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer; additional reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; editing by Lewis Krauskopf and Tom Brown)

Special Report: U.S. school closures dramatically shrinking public education, Reuters finds

By M.B. Pell, Kristina Cooke and Benjamin Lesser

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jennifer Panditaratne’s third-grade daughter had been seeing a reading specialist once a week before her Florida school closed abruptly in March due to the novel coronavirus.

Since then, her child has had no contact with the specialist. Panditaratne is left to download her daughter’s special education material and sit with her as she does her school work—in between her own calls as a maritime lawyer in South Florida.

“Is it the same material? Sure,” she said. “But is it being administered by a professional who knows what they are doing? No.”

More than two months after schools across the United States began closing in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the shutdown is taking a profound toll on the nation’s system of education, Reuters found by surveying nearly 60 school districts serving some 2.8 million students.

Almost overnight, public education in the United States has shrunk to a shell of its former self, the review found, with teacher instruction, grading, attendance, special education and meal services for hungry children slashed back or gutted altogether.

The survey encompassed school districts from large urban communities, such as Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the Houston Independent School District, to the smallest rural settings, including San Jon Municipal Schools in eastern New Mexico and Park County School District 6 in Cody, Wyoming. The survey reflects what is happening only in those districts that responded.

Reuters found:

– A large majority of responding districts, 47 of 57, reported they are providing elementary and middle school students with half or less the usual face time with teachers. Eight of those districts said students receive little to no direct instruction. In Philadelphia, tens of thousands of elementary and middle school pupils receive little to no live instruction—and high schoolers receive none at all.

– Fewer than half of districts even take attendance and many of those that do say fewer kids are showing up for class. Riverbank Unified School District in Stanislaus County, California, no longer takes attendance. But educators there learned through Google Classroom and phone calls that only about half of their 3,000 students are participating in virtual school and completing assignments.

– Public schools play a crucial role in feeding America’s poor children—but the lockdown is gutting that role. About three-quarters of districts reported they served a cumulative 4.5 million fewer meals a week. In Washoe County, Nevada, the school district provided 251,000 meals a week before the shutdown. Since then: Just over 39,000 a week.

– About a third of districts aren’t providing federally required services to their special needs students, such as physical and occupational therapy like they did before schools were closed. “One of the many things keeping me up at night is, how are we providing education to those who most need it?” asked Michael Lubelfeld, superintendent of the North Shore School District 112 outside Chicago.

In the School District of Philadelphia, superintendent William Hite already sees young children falling behind, including those missing critical face-to-face teacher time through the district’s early literacy program. For older students, he worries that the loss of the school structure’s safety net could lead to delinquency and crime.

“This is in no way a sufficient replacement of teacher instruction of students in classrooms,” Hite said. “I think the impact has already been felt here.”

Several education researchers who reviewed the survey results said that, if anything, the responses likely represent a rosy picture of what is actually happening in the nation’s schools.

Betheny Gross, associate director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, believes the results reflected more “optimism” than may be warranted. “This is reflective of what superintendents think is happening,” Gross said, while the reality may actually be worse.

Gross cited the high percentage, 84%, of districts reporting that at least some students are still receiving at least some live instruction. She said her own review of material posted online detailing what administrators across the country expected instruction to look like during the closure revealed that only a “small share” of districts were setting a standard that included live instruction.

While few children have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and serious complications for them have been rare, public officials shut down schools to prevent the disease from spreading. Nineteen children under the age of 14 died from COVID-19 from February 1 through May 23, estimates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a figure hovering just above 0% of all U.S. virus deaths.

Data on how school closures affect the disease’s spread in the community is limited because the pandemic is still under way. But researchers at University College London found evidence from past epidemics, previous research and modeling of coronavirus transmission in other countries that closing schools has only a slight impact on preventing contagion.

To be sure, public schools, like businesses and governments, were forced into a sudden new world with the pandemic’s spread.

Teachers, parents, researchers and district administrators told Reuters that while distance learning can improve, for the vast majority of students it will fall far short of in-person instruction. If students are not in front of teachers next school year, the public should expect only a fraction of the live instruction, special needs services going unfulfilled and far fewer meals served.

“I just don’t know how we call off school next year,” said Gregory Cizek, who studies education at the University of North Carolina.

For students, parents and educators, the Reuters survey shows, the loss of live instruction has been significant.

LIMITED HOME RESOURCES

Eliza McCord, 16, wasn’t able to participate in her math class for the first six weeks after her Fort Wayne, Indiana, high school went virtual, because her sister had a college class at the same time. Inside their home, there weren’t enough devices to go around.

Even now, her family writes a class schedule on a white board. Also in the rotation for devices and WiFi: Her mother, an elementary school special education teacher; her father, a librarian; and her younger brother, in sixth grade.

Many of Eliza’s classmates have told her they don’t have regular access to a computer to download files, or reliable access to the Internet to join Zoom calls. That said, Eliza thinks some students are not participating because their grades for the final quarter of the year don’t count.

“There are students who just have essentially given up on the rest of the school year,” she said.

Charles Cammack, chief operations officer for Fort Wayne Community Schools, said the majority of students remained engaged after schools were closed. Still, he acknowledged that after the system announced grades would not count for the fourth marking period, some students checked out.

“It would be naïve to say we didn’t know there was a risk some kids would take that position, but given the circumstances I don’t know how we could avoid that happening,” he said.

Special education services such as occupational and physical therapy are challenging to provide remotely, and some services can only be provided face-to-face, survey respondents said.

Schools also rely heavily on parental support. “For any therapy, the parents will need to follow the instructions of the teacher to complete the exercises with the students,” said Dr. Jason Lind, superintendent at Millburn School District 24 in Illinois. “This works well if parents have time to spend helping their children. If parents are also working full-time, this does not work.”

When Fort Wayne’s public school district shut down, Eliza’s mother, special-ed teacher Dawn Cortner-McCord, called the parents of her students. She gave them her personal cell number, and talks with about a third of her students daily, dropping off books and other learning materials at their homes.

But talking on the cell phone is no match for in-class teaching, Dawn said. She cited the example of twin third-grade girls who do math at a first-grade level and had been making progress with hands-on learning. Now she worries they, and other students, are falling back.

“We are just trying to maintain the skills that they have,” she said. “A lot of my students still need that sensory input.”

In Broward County Public Schools in Florida, where Jennifer Panditaratne’s daughter has not seen a reading specialist since schools closed, the district found not all teacher engagement is equal. Panditaratne said her third-grade daughter has a daily 15 minute group Zoom call with her class teacher, going over assignments for the day. Her daughter in fifth grade is getting more live video instruction, but it varies by teacher.

In March, the teacher’s union and district agreed teachers would provide at least three hours a day of deep engagement with students. Many teachers conducted live video instruction, while others used email, phone calls or discussion boards, said Daniel Gohl, the district’s chief academic officer. That left a sense of inequity. So starting this summer, all teachers will provide at least three hours of live-video instruction daily.

“We now know students and teachers need to see and talk to each other,” Gohl said. “We acknowledge we did not get everything right and we are committed to improving.”

MISSING MEALS

By law, U.S. public school districts are required to provide free or reduced-cost meals to children in need. With schools shut, getting those vital meals to the qualifying students has been hindered, in several instances, by significant hurdles.

Despite school districts’ efforts, Reuters found children are missing school meals they should have received. Thirty-four districts, or about three-quarters of those that responded, said they were providing fewer meals a week than before the closure, the Reuters survey found.

Miami-Dade County Public schools provided 1.33 million free breakfasts, lunches and after-school meals a week to its students prior to the March 16 closure. As of May 1, the district said it was serving less than one-third of that number, about 420,000 meals a week.

One reason, according to four parents in the county, was that the district made meals available, but limited pickup to twice a week, leading to long lines. Another roadblock: Lack of transportation to reach the pickup locations. Three of the parents said they were forced to find other sources of food, such as a food bank or a state-funded lunch program.

Victoria Lynn Dennis, a 29-year-old customer service agent in Miami, said she hasn’t been able to access school meals for her 5-year-old pre-kindergartner and 6-year-old kindergartner because she doesn’t have a car. A week after the schools closed, someone from a nonprofit program that partners with the district came to her door with macaroni and cheese. There have been no visits since.

“Telling my kids they can’t eat as much, because we have to save it, it kills me,” she said.

Penny Parham, the food and nutrition officer for Miami-Dade schools, said her heart goes out to the students they aren’t serving. But while they are serving many students, the system can feed more young people in school cafeterias than in the district’s 50 remote distribution sites. As unemployment rises in Florida, she’s seen the lines at these sites grow longer.

“How long can it keep up and are you missing the most critical person?” she asked.

BUDGET DEFICITS, QUESTIONS LOOM

As they look ahead, nearly 70% of districts told Reuters they face a budget deficit. The total shortfall of these districts alone exceeds $450 million.

Philadelphia already faces a $38 million deficit, even after receiving federal assistance. With local revenue plummeting, that number could expand in the weeks to come.

Many school districts are now confronting a question most on the minds of parents: Will they reopen schools in the fall, or continue the distance learning?

Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA The School Superintendents Association, a group representing school district chiefs, meets every week with a task force on reopening consisting of 30 superintendents from across the country.

Three options are being considered for the fall, he said: fully reopening schools as they were prior to the pandemic; a hybrid model in which some students attend school in-person and some continue with remote learning; and continuing with complete remote learning.

The hybrid option, Domenech said, appears to have the most support. But staying entirely remote, he added, is “beginning to get some traction because the cost of opening schools and following the guidance the CDC has offered is going to be cost prohibitive.” The added costs include more buses to maintain social distancing, protective equipment for students and staff and the daily cleaning of each school.

As districts weigh that question, some parents and teachers worry what comes next.

Portia Hudson, a math teacher at Edwin Fitler Academics Plus School in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, recalls teaching virtually this spring and watching one student, already battling anxiety problems, fall five weeks behind. During another session, a second student played on a swing during class time.

“If we have virtual learning in September, that’s when I’m really going to be concerned, because virtual learning will look like it does now,” Hudson said. “Kids not logging on. Kids on swings.”

(Reporting by M.B. Pell and Benjamin Lesser in New York, and Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles. Editing by Ronnie Greene)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now 6-02-20

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Inhaled remdesivir

Gilead Sciences Inc is developing easier-to-administer versions of its antiviral treatment remdesivir for COVID-19 that could be used outside hospitals, including versions that can be inhaled after trials showed moderate effectiveness for the drug given by infusion.

Remdesivir is the only drug so far that has been shown to help patients with COVID-19, but Gilead and other companies are looking for ways to make it work better.

Sell, stow or dump?

Forget fast or slow fashion, now it’s ground to a halt.

A mountain of apparel stock has been piling up in stores, distribution centres, warehouses and even shipping containers during months of COVID-19 lockdowns. As retailers reopen around the world, they have to work out how to get rid of it.

Their main options? Keep it in storage, hold a sale, offload it to “off-price” retailers like TJ Maxx which sell branded goods at deep discounts, or move it to online resale sites.

Save the crabs

Wildlife advocates are pushing drugmakers to curb the use of prized horseshoe crab blood by switching to a synthetic alternative for safety tests that detect bacterial contamination in intravenous drugs or implants, including those needed before a COVID-19 vaccine can be used on humans.

This shift could save 100,000 horseshoe crabs annually on the U.S. East Coast alone and help threatened migratory birds that depend on crab eggs for survival say the National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife and other groups.

Horseshoe crabs’ milky-blue copper-rich blood has helped the species to survive for 450 million years – and made it a source of one of the drug industry’s most unusual raw materials because it clots in the presence of bacterial endotoxins.

Mockery over coronavirus “sex ban”

The British government faced mockery on Tuesday over coronavirus rules which were cast by some media as a “sex ban”, though a junior minister said the regulations were aimed at keeping people safe.

Under amendments introduced to English rules on Monday, no person may participate in a gathering which takes place in a public or private place indoors and consists of two or more people. Britain’s tabloid media cast it as a “bonking ban” while #sexban was trending in the United Kingdom on Twitter.

“What this is about is making sure we don’t have people staying away from home at night,” junior housing minister Simon Clarke told LBC radio when questioned about the ban.

(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Nick Tattersall; Editing by Nick Macfie)

George Floyd protests recall earlier tensions, promises of economic change

By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In November 2015, the shooting death of Jamar Clark by Minneapolis police touched off a debate on race and economic inequality that challenged the city’s progressive image and led local corporate leaders to back efforts at better sharing the spoils of a booming Midwestern state.

Five years later, the killing of George Floyd has reopened those wounds and highlighted a growing concern nationally: The last few years of economic growth saw gains for lower-income families, but any hope for a durable narrowing of economic gaps may have been short-circuited by the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic crash falling heavily on minorities.

Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis last week may have been a catalyst for an anger that has spawned protests nationwide, but it was in effect the third major shock to hit in as many months, said Tawanna Black, chief executive of Minnesota’s Center for Economic Inclusion (CEI), a group that grew out of those corporate promises of five years ago.

Before the recent surge in joblessness, “we saw the employment gap closing rapidly,” Black said. But “you were connecting people to low-wage jobs, and now you have displaced them. … What I am hopeful of is that we not just solve for criminal justice, but what’s required to get economic and social justice.”

It is complex, to be sure. Tension over police treatment of blacks has simmered through good economic times and bad. But for the economy, the course of the pandemic and the financial fallout highlights how little has changed over a decade of growth that seemed to hold out at least the possibility of progress on narrowing racial economic divides.

Median family income growth finally started rising in 2015, but median family income for blacks remains about 61% that of whites. In Minneapolis, it is even lower at about 44%.

A 2009-2020 bull market for stocks and rising home values have done little to improve overall wealth among African Americans, who comprise around 13% of the U.S. population but account for 4.2% of household net worth, according to Federal Reserve data. The figure in 1989 was 3.8%.

For Hispanics, it is even worse, with more than 18% of the U.S. population holding just 3.1% of household wealth.

(Graphic: Race gaps persist – )

‘NO PROGRESS’

Both groups have suffered an outsized blow from layoffs triggered by business closures meant to control the spread of the coronavirus and the crash in demand among consumers holed up

at home.

According to federal data from February to April, Hispanic employment fell by more than 25%. For blacks, the figure was 17.6%, more modest but still above the 15.5% for whites.

It is part of a “last-hired, first-fired” dynamic familiar to labor economists and considered one of the reasons behind the lack of progress in narrowing wealth and income gaps. In this case, it is also driven by the skewed nature of the coronavirus economic shock, which hit hardest among lower-paid service jobs in the restaurant and hospitality industry where minorities form a larger share of the workforce.

The shock has been no different in Minnesota from in parts of the Deep South, according to a Reuters comparison of federal employment data by race alongside demographic information on unemployment claimants submitted by the state in April.

African Americans made up about 5.7% of Minnesota’s employed workforce in 2019 but more than 8% of those who filed for unemployment in April.

Still predominantly white, with a self-effacing culture captured by writer Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” former radio show, the demographics around Minneapolis, the state’s largest city, have shifted quickly in recent decades. It

has for example opened itself to refugees from Somalia. The city is now about 20% black and 10% Hispanic.

Minnesota’s rural areas voted heavily in 2016 for Republican Donald Trump, while the state as a whole went for Democrat Hillary Clinton owing to strong support in the Minneapolis area.

That city is also home to a healthy list of large U.S. companies, many of them homegrown national brands like Target Corp, that are known for their civic boosterism and support for efforts like the one spearheaded by CEI’s Black.

The question now is whether the dislocation caused by the coronavirus, rising joblessness and the death of Floyd prompts lasting change.

Those firms will be central to deciding the pace of the economic recovery, and the nature of the jobs available in the economy that emerges.

After the last recovery did so little to change wealth and income dynamics, and the coronavirus showed the gulf between workers who were buffered from the crisis and those who were not, Black said it was time to think about the nature of the labor market that will emerge from here.

Many of the jobs “will not come back. Do we train people for tech jobs? Automation-resilient jobs?” she said. Over the last decade, “we made no progress.”

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Dan Burns and Peter Cooney)

Where U.S. coronavirus cases are on the rise

By Chris Canipe and Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – Several southern U.S. states reported sharp increases in COVID-19 infections, with Alabama, South Carolina and Virginia all seeing new cases rise 35% or more in the week ended May 31 compared with the prior week, according to a Reuters analysis.

South Carolina health officials said they expected more increases in the future due to a lack of social distancing and mask-wearing at protests triggered by the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minnesota.

“If people don’t follow current recommendations for social distancing and avoiding crowds of any kind, we can anticipate seeing increased numbers,” the South Carolina health department said in a statement to Reuters.

Graphic: Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S.

South Carolina said the recent rise in its new cases, which have been going up for three weeks, was in part due to the completion of testing in the state’s 194 nursing homes.

Alabama’s health department attributed the state’s steady increase in cases since early May to community transmission, clusters of outbreaks, and more testing.

Virginia officials were not immediately available for comment.

Nationally, new COVID-19 cases fell for a fifth straight week, down 4.7% last week compared with a 0.8% drop the prior week, according to the Reuters analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

As all 50 states have partially reopened, cases are rising in 17 states compared with 20 in the prior week. (For an interactive graphic, click here)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended states wait for their daily number of new COVID-19 cases to fall for 14 days before easing social distancing restrictions.

Thirteen states have met the criteria for the week ended May 31, compared with 14 states and the District of Columbia the prior week, the analysis showed. Pennsylvania and New York lead with seven straight weeks of declines, and new cases are also falling in New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

(Graphic: World-focused tracker with country-by-country interactive, )

(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Factbox: China’s numerous diplomatic disputes

BEIJING (Reuters) – China is engaged in diplomatic disputes on numerous fronts, from acrimony with the United States to a backlash over its clampdown on Hong Kong, a border dispute with India and criticism over its handling of the novel coronavirus.

Following are some of the main points of contention between China and other countries:

UNITED STATES

From disputes over trade and technology, to U.S. criticism over the coronavirus outbreak and China’s accusation of U.S. backing for protests in Hong Kong, ties between the world’s two biggest economies are at their lowest point in decades.

HONG KONG

China’s plan to impose national security legislation on Hong Kong provoked U.S. retaliation and disapproval from other Western capitals. The city’s former colonial ruler Britain said it would offer extended visa rights to British national overseas (BNO) passport holders from Hong Kong.

CORONAVIRUS

Several countries, including the United States and Australia, have called for China to be held to account for its early handling of the coronavirus, which emerged late last year in the city of Wuhan. China has also faced criticism for what some have characterized as heavy-handed “virus diplomacy”.

TAIWAN

China has stepped up diplomatic and military pressure on Chinese-claimed but democratically ruled Taiwan, trying to coax it into accepting Chinese rule. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, re-elected by a landslide in January, has rejected that, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide its future.

INDIA

China and India are engaged in the most serious military standoff on their disputed border since 2017, with soldiers in the remote Ladakh region accusing each other of encroachment.

XINJIANG

China has been criticized in Washington and elsewhere over its treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims in its western Xinjiang region. Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation calling for sanctions on officials responsible for the oppression of Uighurs.

HUAWEI

The United States has raised security concerns over equipment provided by Chinese telecoms gear giant Huawei, warning that allies that use it in their networks risked being cut off from valuable intelligence-sharing feeds. Last month, the United States moved to block global chip supplies to Huawei, which denies that its equipment poses a security risk.

CANADA

Ties have been strained since Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the firm’s founder, in late 2018. Soon after, China detained two Canadians and blocked imports of some canola seed. Meng lost a court ruling last month in her fight against extradition to the United States.

EUROPEAN UNION

EU foreign ministers agreed last week to toughen their strategy on China to counter its increasingly assertive diplomacy against a backdrop of concern about Hong Kong. The bloc has been frustrated over market access for its companies in China, which has sought to block an EU report alleging that China was spreading disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, according to diplomatic sources.

AUSTRALIA

China last month imposed tariffs on barley imports from Australia, the latest escalation between them. Relations soured in 2018 when Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network, and China has been angered by Australia’s call for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus.

SOUTH CHINA SEA

China has overlapping claims in the energy-rich South China Sea, which is also an important trade route, with the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan. The United States has accused China of taking advantage of the distraction of the coronavirus to advance its presence in the waters.

(Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Robert Birsel)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Scientists hunt pandemic hotspots

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic may be waning. For vaccine developers, that could be a problem.

Scientists in Europe and the United States say the relative success of draconian lockdown and social distancing policies means virus transmission rates may be at such low levels in some places that there is not enough disease circulating to truly test potential vaccines.

They may need to look further afield, to pandemic hotspots in Africa and Latin America, to get convincing results.

Rich world lockdowns hit remittances

Carlos Sosa, a Salvadoran waiter in New York, used to send up to $500 a month back home to his mother to help pay for her medical bills and food. After the coronavirus hit and he lost his job in early March, Sosa has burnt through his savings and the wire transfers have stopped.

Lockdowns imposed by wealthy nations and the jolt those restrictions have delivered to their economies are severing a vital lifeline for many often vulnerable people around the world: the billions of dollars in remittances sent home by relatives working abroad.

Emirates sees four years to full resumption

Emirates’ outgoing president, Tim Clark, said it could take the Dubai-based airline up to four years to resume flying to its entire network. Emirates, which flew to 157 destinations in 83 countries before the pandemic, grounded passenger flights in March and has since operated few, limited services.

“I think probably by the year 2022/23, 2023/24 we will see things coming back to some degree of normality,” Clark said in a webcast interview with aviation consultant John Strickland.

Future of tourism

Sri Lanka plans a limited reopening of its tourism sector on Aug. 1, according to the head of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau. Small groups of tourists will be allowed to enter with a certificate from their governments or a reputable agency stating they were free of COVID-19.

They would be tested on arrival in Sri Lanka, would have to stay in approved five-star hotels with strict safety measures, and would be allowed to visit sites including national parks and beaches.

(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Nick Tattersall; Edited by Nick Macfie)

Between two storms: Caribbean braces for hurricanes in coronavirus era

By Sarah Marsh and Rodrigo Campos

HAVANA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ken Hutton is worried Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas where he lives is far from rebuilt after being devastated by Hurricane Dorian last year yet he is bracing for another hurricane season in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The business consultant feels lucky to have survived Dorian, which tore the hurricane shutters off his house and sucked out the windows.

Yet there is still no running water or power in his area – he relies on a generator and a well – and many of the organizations that had been helping to rebuild suspended work because of the pandemic.

“We are still in no position to be ready for another hurricane,” he told Reuters Tuesday. Already, the Caribbean has been hit by two tropical storms before the official start of the hurricane season on June 1, one of which started right over the Bahamas, Hutton added.

“There are lots of people walking around here now with post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said.

Hurricane Dorian caused $3.4 billion in damages – more than a quarter of the annual output of the Bahamas or the equivalent of the United States losing the combined outputs of California, Texas and Florida, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

Across the Caribbean, island nations are now facing the double whammy of a hurricane season forecast to be more active than usual combined with a pandemic that has already drained public coffers and leveled tourism, one of its top earners.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week forecast 13-19 named storms this year, following 18 named storms last year and 15 in 2018, both above the average of 12.

But the Caribbean has used up much of the fiscal buffers it would usually have readied to respond to hurricane season, Caribbean Development Bank President Warren Smith said.

Countries have tapped typical sources of external emergency financing, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to respond to the coronavirus crisis, further limiting their funding options.

Meanwhile, new health protocols for hurricane season prep comes at an added cost. The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) has revised guidelines to prevent the virus’ spread, including social distancing, personal protective equipment and hand cleaning facilities in shelters, said CDEMA head Elizabeth Riley.

“We can’t put as many people into a shelter (with social distancing), which means we must have many more shelters available,” St Lucia Prime Minister Allen Chastanet told Reuters.

ECONOMIC STORM

Caribbean nations have had to absorb the high costs of managing virus outbreaks even as they have lost revenue from the stop in tourism caused by border closures and lockdowns, while also being forced to provide a welfare safety net to more people.

The economic outlook does not look set to improve any time soon, with the Caribbean facing a regional contraction of 6.2 % according to the IMF.

“Small island states rely heavily on tourism and remittances. Both are now at a standstill,” United Nations head Antonio Guterres said on Thursday. “Households that had a secure income are at imminent risk of poverty and hunger.”

He added that alleviating “crushing” debt “must be extended to all developing and middle-income countries” that request forbearance as they lose access to their main financial markets.

But it is not all doom and gloom. In Cuba, a meme went viral on social media in recent weeks appearing to present a duel for television airtime between the country’s chief epidemiologist and its most renowned weatherman as they cover the two crises.

The weatherman, Jose Rubiera, told Reuters much of what happens will depend on each storm’s route.

“One single hurricane can be devastating whereas you can have many that don’t hit,” he said. “It’s all very relative, but the one rule of thumb is to always be well prepared.”

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana and Rodrigo Campos in New York; Additional Reporting by Sarah Peter in Castries, St Lucia, Nelson Acosta in Havana and Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Aurora Ellis)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now 5-29-20

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Hospitals slash use of hydroxychloroquine

U.S. hospitals said they have pulled way back on the use of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a COVID-19 treatment, after several studies suggested it is not effective and may pose significant risks.

Early hopes for the drug were based in part on lab tests and its anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties. But its efficacy has so far failed to pan out in human trials, and at least two studies suggest it may increase the risk of death.

China plans to extend flight curbs

Chinese civil aviation authorities plan to extend until June 30 their curbs on international flights to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the U.S. embassy in Beijing said in a travel advisory on Friday.

China has drastically cut such flights since March to allay concerns over infections brought by arriving passengers. A so-called “Five One” policy allows mainland carriers to fly just one flight a week on one route to any country and foreign airlines to operate just one flight a week to China.

Washington has accused Beijing of making it impossible for U.S. airlines to resume service to China.

Fighting misinformation

It’s not just U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweets that are being fact-checked.

Twitter has also flagged a tweet written in March by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian that suggested the U.S. military brought the novel coronavirus to China, posting a blue exclamation mark under it with a comment urging readers to check the facts about COVID-19.

Clicking on the link directed readers to a page with the headline, “WHO says evidence suggests COVID-19 originated in animals and was not produced in a lab”.

Closed climbing season

Nepal’s Sherpa guides, famed for being the backbone of mountain expeditions in the Himalayas, have also found their livelihood hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

Many have returned to their villages, hiking officials say, as climbing and trekking activities have been suspended since March, and some are looking ahead with hope to the less popular autumn climbing season, which lasts from September to November.

Friday is the anniversary of the day Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa, and New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary became the first people to climb the 8,850-metre (29,035-foot) high Mount Everest in 1953.

(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Nick Tattersall; Editing by Frances Kerry)

New York’s Cuomo says businesses can turn away people not wearing masks

(Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would sign an executive order on Thursday authorizing businesses to deny entry to anyone who does not wear a mask or face covering, stressing masks were critical to preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“We’re giving the store owners the right to say if you’re not wearing a mask, you can’t come in. That store owner has a right to protect themselves, that store owner has a right to protect the other patrons in that store,” Cuomo told a daily briefing.

(reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)