The Latest: WHO leader: Europe still 'in the grip' of virus
The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
TOP OF THE HOUR:
— As economies stagger, pressures grow to ease virus lockdowns.
— WHO Europe chief warns the region is still “in the grip” of the coronavirus pandemic.
— Lithuania turns international airport into drive-in movie theater.
— Slovakia's new government gets approval amid virus outbreak.
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GENEVA — The head of the World Health Organization’s European office is warning the continent remains “in the grip” of the coronavirus pandemic even as about three-fourths of the region’s countries are easing restrictive measures.
Dr. Hans Kluge noted a reduction of cases in the region thanks to social distancing measures, adding: “We must monitor this positive development very closely.”
He said Italy, Britain, France, Germany and Spain still have high numbers of cases, and pointed to increases in cases in Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Of the 44 countries in WHO Europe’s region that have enacted domestic restrictions, 21 have already started easing those measures and another 11 plan to do so in the coming days, Kluge said.
“This virus is unforgiving. We must remain vigilant, persevere and be patient, ready to ramp up measures as and when needed,” he said. “COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon.
“The European region accounts for 46 percent of cases and 63 percent of deaths globally,” he added. “The region remains very much in the grip of this pandemic.”
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VILNIUS, Lithuania — For the time being, Vilnius International Airport is busy. Not with people heading for an exotic destination. But cinemagoers pack the tarmac in their cars to watch a movie while the grounded planes are parked in background.
A drive-in cinema has been set up at Lithuania’s main airport as part of the Aerocinema project that will run until the end of May. A silver screen has been stretched out outside gates 1-4, and some 150 cars with a maximum of two people per vehicle — except families — can watch a movie. Wednesday’s screening was the Oscar-winner South Korean film “Parasite.”
Each car pays 15 euros ($16) with proceeds going to the Vilnius International Film Festival that is behind the project.
“Going out onto an airport apron, which is usually only possible to access after check-in, is an exciting experience. I hope this would create a lifetime impression on our audience,” said Algirdas Ramaška, head of the film festival.
The Baltic country’s airspace has been closed commercial aviation and Lithuania’s three airports — including the Vilnius airport that served five million passengers last year — have been shut because of the pandemic.
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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia’s new government who has been facing the coronavirus pandemic as an immediate policy challenge has won a mandatory confidence vote in Parliament.
Of the 141 lawmakers present in the 150-seat Parliament, 93 voted to give confidence to the four-party coalition government that was sworn on March 21. Forty eight were against it.
The coalition is led by Prime Minister Igor Matovic, whose center-right Ordinary People captured 25% of the Feb. 29 vote after Matovic made fighting corruption the central plank of his election campaign.
The government adopted strict restrictive measures, including limits on movement and made wearing a face mask mandatory in public. The development of the outbreak has made it possible to start relaxing those restrictions.
The country had just over 4,500 cases of COVID-19, and 23 people died, according to government figures released on Thursday. The day-to-day increase of the positive cases was under 10 for the fifth straight day.
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LONDON — The British government acknowledges that it may miss a self-imposed goal of conducting 100,000 tests for coronavirus a day by Thursday, but insists it is on course to vastly expand the country’s testing capacity.
The government has been criticized for failing to catch most cases of COVID-19 and now says wide-scale testing will be key to controlling the virus and easing a nationwide lockdown.
Earlier this month it vowed to perform 100,000 tests a day by April 30. The number has been climbing steadily, but the highest daily total reached so far is 52,000.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said that “even if the target isn’t met today ... we’re well on our way to ramping this up.”
On Wednesday, the U.K.’s official death toll from the virus leap to more than 26,000 after deaths in nursing homes were added to the hospital total. The tally is the world’s third-highest, surpassed only by the United States and Italy.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who spent a week in hospital with the virus, is under pressure to reveal when and how the government will ease a nationwide lockdown that was imposed on March 23. The restrictions are due to last at least until May 7.
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MADRID — Spain’s coronavirus death toll stood Thursday at about 24,500 after an increase of 268 in the last 24 hours, or 57 less than the increase the day before.
The caseload is officially more than 213,000, although Spain is not counting untested infections or those that are becoming known through antibody tests, which mostly identify patients after they have passed the COVID-19 disease.
Business groups and opposition parties are winding up criticism of the Spanish government for the handling of the coronavirus crisis and the newly announced 4-step rollback of a strict confinement. They say measures have not been previously consulted and are not in line with the reality of shops, restaurants and hotels on the ground.
Adding to the pressure, official data released Thursday showed that the economy shrank 5.2% in the first quarter of the year, the worst figure since record keeping began in the 1970’s.
The government is set to announce Thursday specific measures that could include time slots for adults to come out for exercise and strolls. Transport Minister José Luis Abalos said the goal was to avoid an “explosive” amount of people from crowding streets and parks when the ban lifts on Saturday.
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JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s confirmed COVID-19 cases have surpassed 10,000.
The government reported nearly 350 new cases, bringing the country’s total over 10,000 with almost 800 deaths as of Thursday. The country also reported there are more than 1,500 patients who have recovered.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said that even though Indonesia is currently still in the mitigation phase, 2021 will be the recovery year for Indonesia.
Widodo asked the regional leaders in Indonesia to prepare a strategy for the recovery phase; road maps to the stages that will be carried out after the COVID-19 ends.
“With these various scenarios, we will prepare mitigation measures for both health mitigation and economic impact mitigation. And at the same time also prepare recovery steps if the spread of COVID-19 is already under our control,” Widodo said.
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BERLIN — Germany’s health minister has warned against significantly relaxing restrictions imposed to curb coronavirus infections, saying this could “recklessly” endanger the country’s achievements in fighting the pandemic.
In an op-ed Thursday for daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jens Spahn welcomed the public debate over loosening the lockdown. But he said that “especially because Germany has so far come through this crisis better than others it would be reckless to endanger this hard-won joint achievement.”
Germany has recorded almost 162,000 cases of COVID-19 and 6,467 deaths so far, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That is about a quarter the number of deaths recorded in Britain and France, which have a similar number of confirmed cases.
Spahn said the government wanted to take “small steps, rather than risk a big step back.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel is holding talks with the governors of Germany’s 16 states Thursday to discuss the impact that existing measures have had on slowing the spread of the virus. Germany recently allowed stores to reopen and some students to return to school, but officials dampened expectations than any major loosening of the lockdown.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Amnesty International has urged Malaysia not use the current virus lockdown to round up immigrants living in the country illegally.
Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob was reported by national news agency Bernama as saying Wednesday that immigrants without any documentation found in eight areas placed under a full lockdown would be taken away once the lockdown ends. It appears to contrast an earlier government move to encourage these immigrants to seek virus testing and health care without recrimination.
Amnesty’s Malaysian chapter says sending the migrants to detention, where centers are known for being overcrowded and filthy, will expose them to increased risk of contracting the virus and could accelerate the spread of the disease. It said in a statement Thursday that the move was “outrageous” and unjustifiable in a time of pandemic.
Malaysia, which has 5,945 infections and 100 deaths, has imposed a partial lockdown until May 12. Eight areas with viral clusters, including places with a heavy migrant population, are under a full lockdown with residents barred from leaving home.
Amnesty voiced concerns that minority Muslim Rohingya refugees could be detained and face the risk of being deported back to Myanmar. Rather than locking them up, Amnesty said authorities should seek to process migrant claims.
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LONDON — Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is partnering with the University of Oxford to make and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine that is now being tested — a move that would make it possible to quickly offer vaccinations globally if it works.
The agreement announced Thursday will be finalized in the coming weeks.
The university’s Jenner Institute began human trials last week.
John Bell, a professor of medicine at Oxford, told the BBC he hoped that some results from a human trial of the vaccine would be available by the middle of June.
He says the challenge would be to manufacture at scale after regulatory approval.
Bell says “we also want to make sure that the rest of the world will be ready to make this vaccine at scale so that it gets to populations in developing countries, for example, where the need is very great.’’
Dozens of vaccines are currently in development. The World Health Organization estimates it will take 12 to 18 months to actually find one that works.
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ANKARA, Turkey — A second Turkish military plane took off from an air base near Ankara carrying more medical aid to the United States which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said Thursday the cargo plane is carrying a second batch of protective equipment, including masks, hazmat suits and disinfectants, as part of Turkish efforts to the United States as it grapples with the outbreak. Turkey also dispatched a plane with medical supplies on Tuesday.
A message attached to the boxes of supplies read: “From Turkey to the United States with love,” according to the private DHA news agency.
Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, Selim Yavuz Kiran and the US Ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield, were at a military airbase to see the plane off.
Separately, a Turkish military plane carrying medical supplies, including masks and disinfectants, also left for South Africa late on Wednesday, Anadolu reported.
Turkish officials say the country has donated medical supplies to a total of 55 countries — including Britain, Italy and Spain.
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MOSCOW — Russia’s coronavirus caseload surpassed 100,000 on Thursday, with the number of deaths exceeding 1,000.
Russian health officials reported a record daily spike of 7,099 new confirmed cases on Thursday morning, which brought the country’s total to 106,498. The number of infections is likely to be much higher, as not everyone is being tested and many carry the disease without exhibiting any symptoms.
The vast majority of Russian regions have been on lockdown since late March, with people ordered to stay at home and only essential businesses, such as grocery shops, pharmacies and banks, operating.
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin extended the lockdown until May 11 and tasked the government with putting together a plan for gradually reopening the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that the timeline for the reopening will be contingent on how the outbreak continues to unfold.
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BRUSSELS — The European Union’s asylum agency says that the number of asylum applications in Europe plummeted by almost half last month as measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus kicked in.
The European Asylum Support Office said Thursday that just 34,737 applications for asylum were lodged in the 31 European countries it collects data for in March, a 43% drop over the previous month.
It said that “just before the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe, applications had increased compared to the same period in 2019, with 65 300 applications lodged in January and 61 100 in February.”
To halt the spread of the coronavirus, many European Union countries have temporarily closed parts of their borders, making it increasingly difficult for migrants to enter without authorization.
Greece, a main entry point for people seeking refuge or better lives in Europe, suspended all asylum applications for a month at the beginning of March after Turkey began waving migrants through to their common border.
Nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Colombia and Venezuela continue to file the most asylum applications.
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