Wednesday 20 May 2020

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Volume 25 | Number 8263

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BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 06 SPORT | 12

QSL reveals

new

football

guidelines

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

QICCA reviews

civil responsibility

of patients,

medical crew

Ramadan Timing

Today's Iftar:6:17pm

Tomorrow's Imsak:03:11am

HIA deploys disinfectant robots and thermal screening helmets for post-COVID-19 travelTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad International Airport (HIA), has implemented the latest technologies to optimise passenger and employee safety in preparation for post-COVID-19 travel. The airport will be using robotics and advanced thermal screening helmets as part of the measures being introduced for the Post-COVID-19 era.

Engr. Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer at Hamad International Airport said: “HIA has adapted to the changes brought on by the spread of COVID-19 on the world, especially on the travel sector. Recovery plans have been put in place with priority given to the safety and comfort of travellers and employees. These plans include the use of the latest advanced technology to achieve the highest safety standards for the future travel experience.

Using the latest technology and tools, HIA will continue to conduct thermal screening and disinfection procedures for all staff and passengers. Travellers at HIA will be screened using thermal and temperature screening. The Smart Screening Helmet is a wearable intelligent device, which is portable, safe

and effective, and enables con-tactless temperature meas-urement. This helmet uses mul-tiple advanced technologies such as infrared thermal imaging, artificial intelligence and AR (augmented reality) display. It can also enable implementation of mobile deployment-based control scenarios.

HIA has also invested in dis-infectant robots, which are fully autonomous mobile devices emitting concentrated UV-C light, which are known to be effective in eliminating majority

of infectious microorganisms. The robots are being deployed in vulnerable high passenger flow areas to reduce the spread of pathogens.

All passengers will be pro-vided with hand sanitisers readily available at key loca-tions. The airport will continue to maintain 1.5M social dis-tancing across all passenger touch points around the airport, through floor markings, signage and distance seating. All HIA retail and food and beverage outlets will encourage cashless transactions through cards and

is considering introducing online or in-app purchases in the future.

Furthermore, HIA has invested in ultraviolet disin-fection tunnels that will be used to disinfect all checked-in pas-senger luggage (departing, arriving and transferring). The airport will also conduct regular disinfection of all baggage trolleys, and tubs.

The five-star airport is keen on the safety of its employees by emphasizing the use of masks and gloves and using a face mask detection system which

utilises artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies to automatically detect if everyone is wearing masks. The airport will continue cleaning and dis-infecting all high contact areas every 10-15 minutes, while making sure everyone has access to hand sanitisers.

HIA has always been at the forefront of technological trans-formation at airports, with an aim to enhance passenger expe-rience and improve operational excellence. HIA’s smart airport vision places passengers at the heart of its strategy.

National Response

Guarantees

Program extended

QNA — DOHA

In implementation of the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to support the private sector affected by the repercussions of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Prime Minister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani directed to extend the period of the National Response Guarantees Program, which provides guarantees to local banks by the Qatar Development Bank, to become interest-free for a full year instead of six months.

Also, H E the Prime Min-ister directed that the con-tracting and construction sector be included in the ben-eficiary sectors within the same controls and conditions.

Call for sighting

Shawwal crescent

QNA — DOHA

The Crescent Sighting Committee at the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs has called upon all Muslims in the State of Qatar to sight the crescent moon of Shawwal on Friday evening, the 29th Ramadan 1441 AH, corre-sponding to May 22, 2020.

In a statement issued yes-terday, the Committee asked the witnesses to head to the Committee’s headquarters in the Ministry of Endowment and Islamic Affairs’ building in Al Dafna to report their tes-timony. The Committee will meet immediately after the Maghreb prayer.

Government Communications Office rejects HRW allegationsQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar expressed its total rejection of the allegations included in the report issued by Human Rights Watch of an alleged coronavirus outbreak in Qatar’s Central Prison, affirming that this report is false.

The Government Commu-nications Office said in a statement issued yesterday that there have been 12 confirmed cases in the Central Prison and zero deaths. Those 12 patients were transferred immediately to a secure, purpose-built medical facility operated on-site by Hamad Medical Cor-poration where they have received, or continue to receive, first-class medical treatment.

Two cases reached the acute phase of the illness and were transferred to a designated off-site treatment centre where they received first-class healthcare before being trans-ferred back to the Central Prison once fully recovered.

The statement noted that the Human Rights Watch account is based on unfounded rumours and speculation from a small number of unverified interviews, amplifying false-hoods and irresponsibly redi-recting attention away from the ongoing health response.

Since mid-March, public health and security authorities have implemented strict control measures in the Central Prison to protect inmates and limit the

spread of the virus. Inmates have undergone regular health check-ups and a proactive testing pro-gramme has been carried out to monitor for new cases. Personal protective equipment such as

gloves and masks have been dis-tributed to all inmates, and per-sonnel and community spaces are sanitised on a regular basis, the Government Communica-tions Office underlined.

In April, Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani issued official pardons to over 500 inmates, considerably reducing Qatar’s prison popu-lation in response to the coro-navirus pandemic.

Qatar has regularly opened its prisons for inspection from the National Human Rights Committee and international organisations. In January 2019, a Special Rapporteur from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Qatar and inspected Qatar’s prison facil-ities. Qatar treats anyone detained in its prisons with respect and dignity in line with international standards, the statement added. �P2

Qatar Airways announces domestic US codeshare with American AirlinesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways announced yesterday that the first stage of the strategic partnership with American Airlines has begun with Qatar Airways placing its code on American Airlines’ domestic flights, strengthening connectivity and creating hundreds of new travel options for passengers.

The codeshare will be rolled out in phases over the next few weeks and once completed, will see Qatar Airways’ code placed on over 1,000 of American Air-lines’ domestic flights con-necting with Qatar Airway’s 10 US gateways. Flights are already available for sale, with the first codeshare flights having started recently on May 17, 2020.

The first phases of the code-share will see Qatar Airways’ passengers able to book travel on American Airlines’ extensive domestic connections via Chicago and Dallas to 200 cities

including Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Seattle, and San Fran-cisco. Additional cities, including destinations in Central America, and the Car-ibbean will be added, subject to government approvals.

Qatar Airways Chief Com-mercial Officer, Simon Talling-Smith said: “This codeshare is just the first step in renewing our long-term strategic partnership with American Airlines. The rollout of this domestic codeshare

demonstrates our airlines are confident about the future and during this difficult time we con-tinue to focus on how we can enhance the customer experience for our millions of passengers. As two of the strongest airlines in the world, I have no doubt that we will overcome the current challenge and be well posi-tioned to continue providing our passengers the reliable, safe and award-winning service that they have come to trust from us.” �P2

MoPH reports 735 COVID-19 recoveries in a single dayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health has recorded recovery of 735 people from COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the total number of recovery cases in Qatar to 5,634.

The Ministry has also announced 1,637 new confirmed cases of COVID-19. The total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar till now

stands at 35,606 and there are 29,957 active cases under treatment. So far, 15 people died from the coronavirus in Qatar. Ministry conducted 4,487 tests in last 24 hours taking the total tests done so far to 166,182 tests.

Also 24 cases were admitted to intensive care due to health complications yesterday, bringing the total number of cases receiving medical care in intensive care to 163 cases.

The Ministry said that the high number of cases among citizens and residents is due to the lack of compliance with precautionary measures, the most important of which is social distancing.

The Ministry of Health stated that Qatar has now entered the peak phase of the virus outbreak, which is witnessing a rise in the number of cases recorded daily, stressing the need to adhere to more than ever before the pre-ventive measures and social measures recommended.

The Ministry also stressed the importance for the elderly or those suffering from chronic diseases and their family members to follow strict methods and measures to reduce the chances of infection with the virus in the elderly and chronic disease groups and work to protect them from infection by refraining from social visits for the remainder of Ramadan and also on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr.

NEW RECOVERIES

ACTIVE CASES

TOTAL RECOVERIES

TOTAL DEATHS

735 29,957

5,63415

NEW CASES ANNOUNCED

1,637

COVID-19QATAR UPDATES ON 19 MAY 2020

The Smart Screening Helmet is a wearable intelligent and portable device enabling contactless temperature measurement. HIA's disinfectant robots are fully autonomous mobile devices emitting concentrated UV-C light. All passengers will be provided with hand sanitisers readily available at key locations.

UV RobotsSmart screening helmet

Human Rights Watch's report alleging coronavirus outbreak in Qatar’s Central Prison is based on unfounded rumours and speculation.

Inmates have undergone regular health check-ups.

Gloves and masks have been distributed to all prisoners and personnel and community spaces are sanitised on a regular basis.

The first phases of the codeshare will see Qatar Airways’ passengers able to book travel on American Airlines’ extensive domestic connections via Chicago and Dallas to 200 cities.

OFFICIAL NEWS

02 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020HOME

FAJR SUNRISE 03.21 am 04.47 am

W A L R U WA I S : 26o↗ 36o W A L K H O R : 27o↗ 39o W D U K H A N : 25o↗ 38o W WA K R A H : 25o↗ 37o W M E S A I E E D 25o↗ 37o W A B U S A M R A 23o↗ 42o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 02:13–16:29 LOW TIDE 10:09 – 22:36

Hot daytime with scattered clouds and chance of light rain

at places, mild by night.

Minimum Maximum27oC 41oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.30 am06.17 pm

ASR ISHA

02.56 pm07.47 pm

Qatar strongly condemns attack in AfghanistanDOHA: The State of Qatar has

voiced its strong condemnation

and denunciation of the attack

which took place in Takhar Prov-

ince in northern Afghanistan and

left deaths and two injuries. In a

statement issued yesterday, the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiter-

ated the firm position of the State

of Qatar on rejecting violence and

terrorism, regardless of motives and

reasons. The statement expressed

the State of Qatar’s condolences

to the families of the victims and

to the government and people of

Afghanistan, wishing the injured a

speedy recovery. — QNA

Qatari Diar: Pneumatic Waste Collection system launched in Lusail CityTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatari Diar has inaugurated Pneumatic Waste Collection (PWC) system in Lusail City offering environmentally-friendly waste disposal process to the residents of the city to ensure sustainability in the country.

The inauguration ceremony was attended by Assistant Undersecretary for General Services Affairs at the Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment, Engr. Ahmad Muhammad Al Sada; Head of Projects Delivery Sector in Qatari Diar, Engineer Fahd Al Jahrami; and Director of Infra-structure Services and Public Parks Department in Qatari Diar, Engineer Walid Al Sadi, said a release. The PWC is a smart services system based on a waste collection station with a capacity of 60 tonnes waste per day and a network of pipelines

inside the service tunnel (under-ground) with a length of 12 km connecting each of the marina buildings and footpath waste containers with the waste col-lection station.

There are 110 sub-connec-tions (underground) to pull waste from the Marina Towers (110 towers) and 135 waste con-tainers on the pedestrian walkways in the Marina area.

The system is controlled by a central control room to operate all parts of the system remotely by the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). The system automatically pulls waste from the towers and footpath waste containers in the marina area, and when it reaches the waste collection station, the waste is separated into recy-clable waste and non-recyclable waste.

The waste is then com-pressed and packed in con-tainers to transport it to desig-

nated places.Engr. Ahmed Mohamed Al

Sada, said: “We congratulate the Qatari Diar for implementing successfully the PWC system which is a pioneering system and a model for using the latest advanced smart technology to supports the national devel-opment strategy of Qatar and its sustainable development goals.” He said that the system imple-mented is one of the most effective and sustainable modern solutions in collecting waste around cities and

disposing of them in a way that is sound environmentally and economically feasible instead of disposing them by traditional methods.

“We are happy that this inte-grated system is implemented in Qatar by Qatari Diar to rep-resent one of the leading envi-ronmental solutions in the field of safe disposal of waste that is of great interest in the Ministry of Municipal and Environment,” said Al Sada.

Engineer Fahad Al Jahrami said: “The PWC system will solve

the waste disposal problem in a comprehensive and environ-mentally-friendly way by focusing on reducing waste as well as sorting it from the source to be recycled and returned to in the from a source of wealth rather than disposal.

He said the system is fully automatic, which is considered one of the latest methods of col-lecting and sorting waste in the world, and the Qatari Diar Company continues to develop the latest and best infrastructure systems for Lusail City.

A view of Lusail City.

Qatar sends urgent medical aid to four countries THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The State of Qatar represented by Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) has dispatched four shipments weighing 34 tonnes of urgent medical aid to four countries — Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and North Macedonia.

This came following the directive of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to support the efforts of friendly governments to confront COVID-19 epidemic, QFFD said in a tweet.

Each beneficiary country

will get 8.5 tonnes urgent medical aid which was sent by Qatar.

QFFD confirmed that the medical aid reached Afghan-istan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia.

In North Macedonia, the medical aid was received by

Macedonian Deputy Prime Min-ister, Deputy Minister of Health and Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of Qatar in Macedonia.

Qatar Fund for Devel-opment is a public institution committed on behalf of the State of Qatar to improving the

livelihood of communities around the world.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, H E Dr. Bisera Turkovic received the cargo plane carrying medical aid from the State of Qatar, as the first Arab country to send an aid plane to Bosnia and Herzegovina after COVID-19 pandemic.

“The State of Qatar has proven its true friendship with Bosnia and Herzegovina, true friends know the time of adversity, and on this occasion I thank on behalf of the State of

Bosnia and Herzegovina and all its citizens to Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Qatari people,” said Dr. Bisera Turkovic in a statement.

She said that generous assistance from the State of Qatar included a large number of health and preventive equipment.

To recall, before her appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dr. Bisera Turkovic held the position of Ambassador of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the State of Qatar.

Officials on the occasion of arrival of medical supplies from Qatar in Bosnia and Herzegovina (left) and Afghanistan.

QA announces

domestic US

codeshare with

American Airlines

FROM PAGE 1

American Airlines Senior Vice President of Network Strategy, Vasu Raja said: “We are pleased that we’ve reached this important milestone with Qatar Airways. We look forward to welcoming Qatar A i r w a y s p a s s e n g e r s throughout our domestic network as we continue to focus on the wellbeing of our customers, team members and the communities we serve during this uncertain time. This is just the beginning of a strong partnership and we have a very bright future ahead of us.”

Further expansion of the strategic partnership will include Qatar Airways placing its code on American’s inter-national flights to North, Central and South America and Europe, and American Airlines placing its code on Qatar Airways flights between the US and Qatar and beyond to a range of destinations in the Middle-East, Africa and Asia. Both airlines will also continue exploring the oppor-tunity for American Airlines to operate flights between the US and Qatar, along with a number of joint commercial and operational initiatives to further strengthen this renewed partnership.

Qatar Airways continues to operate approximately 150 scheduled flights per week to over 30 destinations. The airline recently announced plans to gradually rebuild its network in line with passenger demand evolution and the expected relaxation of entry restrictions around the world. By the end of June the airline plans to expand its network to 80 destinations. The national carrier of the State of Qatar has built a strong level of trust with passengers, governments, trade and airports as a reliable partner during this crisis. With its plans for expanding its network and strengthening airline partnerships, the airline is well positioned to continue delivering on its mission to the airline travellers can trust.

GCO rejects HRW

allegationsFROM PAGE 1

Qatar continues to combat coronavirus and has one of the lowest death rates in the world with 15 deaths recorded. To date, 4,899 patients have recovered and been released from hospital. The recovery figure is increasing by over 500 cases a day and is expected to increase further in the coming weeks, the statement stressed.

Since the start of the pan-demic, Qatar has made its pri-ority clear to protect the health and safety of all its citizens and residents by providing equal services to all, including those held in prisons, the statement concluded.

Minister of Public Health, H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari, representing the State of Qatar in the works of the 73rd World Health Assembly of WHO.

Qatar participates in WHO's World Health AssemblyQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar participated in the works of the 73rd World Health Assembly of the World Health Organi-zation (WHO).

Minister of Public Health H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari represented the State of Qatar in the assembly’s meeting, which was held via video con-ferencing, where Her Excellency presented a report on the latest developments of the situation of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in the State of Qatar.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, opened the World Health Assembly meeting, where global efforts to tackle COVID-19 were discussed.

In her speech, H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari reviewed the State of Qatar efforts to confront the pan-demic of COVID-19 through a work-based approach between all components of government and society.

She also highlighted actions taken in all sectors to protect members of society from the virus. H E the Minister at the meeting clarified the reasons for recording large numbers of cases infected with the virus in the State of

Qatar, due largely to the extensive tests and monitoring policy pursued by the State, which allowed the discovery of a large number of positive cases.

In contrast, Qatar witnessed very few deaths among patients with COVID-19, and 94 percent of cases in Qatar show mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, and 5 percent require hospitalization and only one percent enter intensive care units.

Factors contributing to the low death rate include the high proportion of young population in Qatar, the proactive screening and test program, and an effective and efficient healthcare system that diagnoses and treats patients early to reduce complications associated with the disease.

H E Dr. Al Kuwari said that despite our focus on COVID-19, patients suf-fering from other cases were not ignored, as the health care sector quickly trans-formed the way of providing health care services, as there is a set of virtual services that are provided to patients from their homes in a manner that guar-antees their comfort and safety.

On the other hand, H E the Minister of Health talked about the assistance provided by the State of Qatar to many countries amid this pandemic, out of its

international humanitarian role, upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The Minister said that H H the Amir directed all concerned authorities and institutions in Qatar to provide all pos-sible global support to the people and countries affected by the COVID-19 pan-demic. She added that Qatar Airways had moved about a million people from

several countries to their home coun-tries, in addition to returning thousands of passengers who were stranded due to the suspension of flights as a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus through charter flights.

H E the Minister noted that Qatar Fund For Development (QFFD) had pro-vided medical assistance to more than 20 countries.

Upon directives by Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, medical supplies weighing 34 tonnes have been dispatched to Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia.

03WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 HOME

Geriatric Urgent Care Centre set up for enhanced care for the elderlyFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Health authorities have taken a number of steps to ensure the safety of elderly in Qatar in collaboration with World Health Organisation (WHO) during COVID-19. This includes estab-lishing a Geriatric Urgent Care Centre to care for older patients with health emergencies, said Dr. Irfan Muneeb, Consultant Geriatrician, Rumeilah Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

“Global evidence indicates that older adults, especially those with chronic health con-ditions, are at higher risk of getting severely ill if they

contract the COVID-19. Our chairperson, Dr. Hannadi Al Hamad, recognised this earlier on in the course of this pandemic and started working on pro-viding safe and effective health services to the elderly in Qatar,” he told The Peninsula.

“The most significant step was to minimise in any form or shape for our elderly to come to health care facilities unless it was deemed necessary. The Department of Geriatrics embraced the concept of tele-health with the help of Health Information & Communications Technology department of HMC. The core aspect of the services remains the same but the service delivery was changed. The

service was also re-designed to provide innovative ways of service delivery,” he added.

Telehealth services include “National Helpline and Reas-surance Services” which is the dedicated Geriatric Helpline under the National Helpline 16000. It has the proactive calling out service named “Tel-ephone Reassurance Services”.

“In addition, the most important arm of the service which COVID-19 times have generated is the Geriatric Urgent Care Centre. This is for our elderly who have a health con-dition but at the same time they rightly don’t want to attend the main emergency department of the hospital. The Urgent Care

Centre takes on the patient for a focused assessment and they attend at a specified time of the day. They are examined, inves-tigated and a treatment plan is initiated,” said Dr. Muneeb.

“In addition to that, we are continuing with our inpatient acute and long term Geriatric Services. I would also like to mention that we have increased capacity so that we can accom-modate and admit our elderly patients that return from abroad for special Geriatric and Rehabil-itation services. They can be brought straight to our dedicated quarantine facilities and ensuring that it allows us to offer care while we make preparations for care in home,” he said. All the

consultations by Geriatric Department are provided through a virtual format which is in two modes. One is the regular tele-phone consultation services. Second is the Face to Face Video Consultation. This is unique and this is the first Virtual Clinic that we have set in Department of Ger-iatrics across HMC.

“This video consultation is with the help of the Ministry of Public Health, who are sup-porting us with specialised software to conduct consul-tation with all the essential legality and confidentiality,” said Dr. Muneeb.

“We have two broad cate-gories of services that are pro-vided through these formats.

One is the regular and spe-cialized clinics and the other is the National Reassurance Services that are mentioned earlier. The clinics that are covered include General Geri-atric clinics, specialized memory clinic, falls clinic, ortho geriatric clinic and rapid access services,” he said.

In addition to the regular clinics Geriatric Department has the adhoc clinic which in pre COVID-19 times was called as walk in clinic.

Patient and families could come to this clinic anytime when they needed to attend due to clinical need. It also works in a virtual way either by tele-phone or video link.

Katara Hospitality hotels offer 50%discount, flexibility of stay till July 2021THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Katara Hospitality, a leading global hotel owner, developer and operator, based in Qatar, yesterday launched an exclusive offer, for Qatar's citizens and residents, of 50 percent discount with flexibility of stay until July 31, 2021, on advanced payment basis.

Guests can plan ahead of time and benefit from Katara Hospitality’s Rebound package with exclusive privileges at The Ritz-Carlton, Doha; Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Con-vention Hotel; Sharq Village & Spa, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel; Al Messila, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa; Movenpick Hotel Doha; Sealine, a Murwab Resort; Simaisma, a Murwab Resort; and The Avenue, a Murwab Hotel, through toll free number 800 8800.

The package includes a 50 percent discount, daily breakfast for two adults and two children, Internet service, welcome gifts, early check-in

and late check-out, depending on room availability. The package comes with limited booking window from now until June 30, 2020, with flexibility to stay until July 31, 2021.

Belal Al Kadry, General Manager of Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel, said: “As Sheraton Grand Doha is Qatar’s iconic hotel and the most recognizable social landmark in the country, we always seek to incorporate the heritage and local element into the experiences we put forth for our guests. We always say, ‘our heritage is your heritage.’ We aim to make the essence of our collaboration with Katara Hos-pitality come alive in parallel with Qatar’s local traditions.”

Yazan Latif, Hotel Manager of Sharq Village & Spa, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, said: “Katara Hospitality curates the ultimate ‘Rebound Package’ for our valued patrons as we are fully equipped to provide ‘Safe Stay-cations’. As safety takes center stage in the hospitality space

during this time, we are making sure not to compromise in the least in-service excellence and leaving our guests with indelible #RCMemories.”

Ahmad Al Abdalla, EAM at Sealine Beach, a Murwab Resort, said:” Sealine Beach Resort welcomes valuable guests and wish them a blessed Eid and invites all guests to enjoy staying at the resort with unforgettable memories. At SBR, we are looking after guests with care and with current sit-uation, our values had extended to provide the best services among with all safety measures and procedures.”

Sami Aawar, General Manager of Movenpick Hotel

Doha, said: “The current pan-demic has given a unique opportunity to people to connect with their near and dear ones in a way they have never done before. We hope to add to that same joy with our handcrafted rebound package designed to give our guests the vacation experience right here in the heart of Qatar so they can create cherished moments to last a lifetime and strengthen our ties as a responsible organ-ization with our community as a whole.’’

Shadi Kassem, General Manager of The Avenue, a Murwab Hotel:” We are glad to welcome guests from the local community in Qatar to enjoy the

Rebound Package which offers great benefits and flexibility for their stay.”

Christian Sack, General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Doha: “Here at The Ritz-Carlton, Doha we are honoured to collaborate all together to create a memorable experience for guests that can immerse in luxury with a special “Rebound Package” for nationals and res-idents of Qatar.”

Ziad Mallah, Hotel Manager, Al Messila, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, said:” Here at Al

Messila Resort & Spa, we have embraced the ‘new normal’. We are now ready and looking forward to welcome back our guests in our beautiful oasis with a 50 percent discount on our best available rates and other amazing benefits.”

Ali Ahmed, General Manager of Simaisma, a Murwab Resort, said: “We are looking forward to welcoming our guests back to Simaisma Resort which offers exclusive villas and chalets with beautiful views and complete privacy.”

A view of Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel.

MoCI lists businesses, activities exempted from closureTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) has decided to suspend all commercial activ-ities and services during Eid Al Fit holidays from May 19 to 30, 2020 except key sectors and activities following the State's preventive and precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The exceptions from the decision in food and consumer goods sector are outlets selling food products, consumer goods and subsidised supplies (hyper-markets, supermarkets and

groceries), fruits and vegetable shops, restaurants (allowed to operate by processing delivery orders only), confectionery shops and bakeries, the Ministry said in a tweet.

The exceptions in health sector are pharmacies and clinics (according to the deci-sions issued by the Ministry of Public Health in this regard).

Petrol stations and car maintenance workshops affil-iated with agencies are also exempted from the closure.

The exceptions from the decision in other sectors are industries in all industrial

areas, contracting and engi-neering companies (allowed to operate in construction sites along with affiliated engi-neering offices).

Maintenance companies (plumbing and electrical services) are among the exempted activities.

Financial institutions are also excepted from the decision, as per Qatar Central Bank’s circular.

Telecommunication com-panies, companies delivering orders through mobile apps, companies operating in hospi-tality, logistic services,

companies and firms operating in ports and airports are also exempted from the decision.

All other commercial activ-ities that haven’t been outlined in this decision shall be suspended.

All companies and com-mercial activities shall fully comply with the policies of MoCI; the Ministry of Adminis-trative Development, Labor and Social Affairs; and the Ministry of Public Health regarding the measures that should be taken in the workplace and staff housing, in order to protect employees and limit the spread

of the coronavirus.Any violation or breach of

what is stated in the above decision will subject perpe-trators to legal accountability. Authorities will ensure its implementation and apply its provisions.

This decision, which was issued on May 18, 2020, may be subject to amendments and updates according to the latest developments in this regard.

MoCI called on all citizens and residents to seek infor-mation only from official sources for the latest news and updates.

Plasma donations from recovered COVID-19 patients on the riseFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)’s Blood Transfusion services play a major role in COVID-19 convalescent plasma treatment programme. They are responsible for collection of plasma from patients who have recovered from the infection.

“Blood Transfusion service is participating in the program of using COVID-19 conva-lescent plasma for treatment of patients with severe COVID-19 infection only through collection of plasma from patients who have recovered from the infection,” said Sadika Al Mahmoudi, Medical Manager of Blood Donation Center.

“The actual administration of this plasma to severely affected patients is taken care of by the attending physicians in charge of treating those patients,” she told The Peninsula.

Until May 17, 91 patients have received plasma from 79 recovered donors and the team is seeing the number of

donations from recovered patients rise each week. Con-valescent plasma, the fluid in blood rich with antibodies post-illness, has proven effective in small studies to treat infectious diseases including Ebola and SARS.

HMC is using state-of-the-art treatment options for patients with COVID-19 who are currently under its care and one treatment uses the blood plasma of recovered COVID-19 patients. The plasma contains antibodies that have been shown to help improve immunity against COVID-19.

“The plasma therapy is showing promise as a treatment for COVID-19. It is also called convalescent plasma treatment and requires blood plasma donations from people who have recovered from COVID-19. We have started using plasma treatment at the Communicable Disease Center using plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19,” said Dr. Muna Al Maslamani, Medical Director, Communicable Disease Center in a television interview recently.

HMC launches online prenatal educational coursesQNA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporations (HMC)'s Women’s Wellness and Research Center (WWRC) has launched online educa-tional courses on pregnancy and childbirth, as part of efforts to continue prenatal education services while maintaining measures taken to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in Qatar, the most important of which is social distancing.

This initiative has been created by the patient edu-cation team and their family members at the center, where educational lectures presented in both Arabic and English are shared. Groups of 10 to 15 par-ticipants of pregnant women who share the same conditions of pregnancy. It featured lec-tures for this category of women including topics in areas of prenatal, childbirth and postpartum, including care for newborns, the program also includes an edu-cational session that is pre-sented to mothers after two weeks of birth and focuses on the postpartum period and provides support to new mothers.

Dr. Hilal Al-Rifai, Medical Director WWRC, said that although some measures had been taken to move patients away from medical facilities, such as a program of virtual educational courses on preg-nancy and childbirth, some services could only be pro-vided through the actual presence of patients in the hospital, stressing that the center takes all precautions and preventive measures to protect from exposure to the COVID-19 infection.

He said WWRC receives more than 300 new births per week. Specialised teams provide health care services to hundreds of women in the center’s internal clinics.

Ashghal launches infrastructure, road project in West SemaismaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced the commencement of the Roads and Infrastructure Project in West Semaisma (Package 1) which aims to develop internal streets in the area and improve local traffic safety as well as upgrade infrastructure facilities to respond to residents' needs and urban growth in the future.

The project is located east of Al Khor Road in Semaisma area, and is bordered by Semaisma West Street to the East and by Semaisma Road to the South. The implementation of upgrading works are divided into three geographical zones which will be carried out suc-cessively, and the duration of each phase will be one year while full completion of the project is scheduled for Q2, 2023.

Engr. Hamad Al Badr, Project Engineer in the Roads Projects Department at Ashghal, stated that the project offers services for 539 residential plots in West of Semaisma through the provision of upgraded infra-structure services and enhanced local streets to improve the traffic flow and provide connec-tivity to future public facilities

that will be established in the area, such as schools, mosques, commercial complexes and youth centres.

Engr. Al Badr added: “The project’s scope of works involves developing a road network with a total length of 20.5 km equipped with road safety fea-tures and street lighting as well as road signs and marks. The project also features a 14.5 km pedestrian and cycle track.

Furthermore, the project scope includes a 19-km-long foul sewer network, 36 km of surface and groundwater drainage network, and 7 km of Treated Sewerage Effluent (TSE) network. In addition, new

sewage pipelines will be pro-vided and connected with Qatar’s main sewage network. Construction works will also include an emergency flood area with a total capacity of 263,000 m3 to provide proper protection for the entire area against flooding and excess rainfall.

The Roads and Infra-structure in West Semaisma is being implemented by Iris Con-struction, at a cost of approxi-mately QR304.8m and is part of the New Subdivisions Program which is carried out by the Public Works Authority and includes a number of devel-opment projects across Qatar.

The package also includes daily breakfast for two adults and two children, Internet service, welcome gifts, early check-in and late check-out, depending on room availability. It comes with limited booking window from now until June 30, 2020.

04 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020HOME

Fifty One East, Sony Middle East & Africa unveil Eid gift selection THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Fifty One East and Sony Middle East & Africa are rolling out a range of gift ideas from Sony’s latest headphones, mirrorless cameras, sound bars and TVs during Eid Al Fitr this year.

All the products can be found at Modern Home on Salwa road and Fnac through their free home delivery service; in addition to other major retailers in town.

Sony WH-1000XM3 head-phones, industry leading noise cancelling headphones in the market, is what is needed to tune out the outside world and enjoy Eid to the fullest. It features an HD noise cancelling processor QN1 which cancels out transport noise and outside sound. With three auto mode-changes for the 1000XM3’s, users can hear music and nothing else. The head-phones are available at QR999.

Sony WF-1000XM3 truly wireless in-ear headphones brings a new generation head-phones with Sony’s Industry-leading noise cancellation.

With further improved HD noise cancelling processor QN1e chip and dual noise sensor Tech-nology, the WF-1000XM3 delivers exceptional noise can-celling performance, so users can hear outstanding sound quality. The award-winning in-ear headphones are available for QR699.

With Sony XB22 EXTRA BASS wireless speakers, users can feel the deep and punchy bass sound with the popular EXTRA BASS series of speakers from Sony for only QR279. The XB22 has dual passive radiators which work together with stereo full range speakers to enhance low-end

tones and give bass a boost, despite the compact size, so there is nothing to stop anyone from enjoying music to the maximum in any location at home.

Sony RX100 VII has definite appeal to those seeking a pocket sized integral-lens camera that incorporates a full range of imaging options rivalling pro-fessional cameras. It supports optical image stabilisation and an amazing 20fps continuous shooting burst rate. The numerous scene and drive modes offered, plus 4K video with motion video up to 1000 fps, also makes it an excellent video companion as well. The Exmor R CMOS sensor and DRAM memory create a super-speed data highway. The camera is available at QR5,099.

Sony Alpha 7III has incor-porated many of the features and improvements from the famed Sony Alpha 9 and Alpha 7RIII cameras. With unmatched image sensor, Sony Alpha 7III is at the forefront featuring 24.2MP back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS image sensor with increased sensitivity, out-standing resolution and an impressive 15-stops of dynamic range at low sensitivities.

By combining this sensor with a variety of impressive fea-tures including extreme AF cov-erage of 93 percent, fast shooting at up to 10 fps with either mechanical shutter or silent shooting, diverse 4K video capa-bilities and more, Sony has created a new tool that gives all types of creators — from enthu-siasts to professionals — the ability to capture content in new and different ways than they ever have before. This mirrorless camera is available at QR8,999.

A sleek 2.1ch soundbar, Sony HT-X9000F is a budget-friendly way to experience Dolby Atmos at home during Eid. Featuring Sony’s powerful vertical sur-round engine, this compact soundbar brings cinematic con-tents in 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray discs. HT-X9000F’s advanced digital signal processing converts any audio to immersive surround with just the click of a button on the remote. It has two Full HDMI inputs that support all audio formats, including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to listen to music wirelessly.

The soundbar is available at QR1,199 with a 12-month free subscription of Shahid VIP.

All the products can be found at Modern Home on Salwa Road and Fnac through their free home delivery service.

Mercedes-Benz GLE available at Nasser Bin Khaled AutomobilesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles, the Authorised General Distributor of Mercedes-Benz in Qatar, presents the Mercedes-Benz GLE at NBK Automo-biles — Mercedes-Benz showroom on Salwa Road.

The GLE is distinguished with its dynamism and assertiveness. It encap-sulates a distinctive view of the world. Its confident stature, refined lines with high beltline and powerfully styled wheel arches are designed to appeal to leaders rather than followers. Inspired by those who embark on a new journey every day.

Imposing proportions and forceful, confident styling make the GLE a striking addition to the Mercedes-Benz lineup. The GLE features striking pro-portions and dramatic bodystyle, ensuring the imposing nature of the GLE lives on. The front section is par-ticularly eye-catching with its dramatic air intakes, twin-louvre grille, and

wraparound full LED headlamps. Power domes on the bonnet further emphasizes the car’s dynamic, pur-poseful character.

In a familiar position, above it all. Supreme comfort abounds in the interior of the GLE, which affords a

generous feeling of space with its high-quality appointments and materials. And wherever the trip may take you, the GLE keeps you in touch with an even wider world.

The elegance of GLE is reflected in every last detail. From soft Nappa

leather to the warm grain of the fine wood trim. Aesthetically pleasing and intelligently thought-out spaciousness. Thanks to variable seats, you can use the rear space as you please. Quality and comfort — inextricably linked.

Performance and effortless supe-riority: Depending on model, up to six DYNAMIC SELECT modes can be called up using the Controller on the centre console. “Comfort” mode allows par-ticularly balanced and efficient driving. In conjunction with the AIRMATIC package, “Sport” mode offers a more agile and dynamic configuration of the suspension. “Individual” mode allows the driver to vary individual settings to suit their taste.

The intuitively controlled touchpad with multitouch sensor system con-nects you to everyone. It recognizes simple gestures, your handwriting and even letters and numbers. Ideal for using the COMAND Online control and display system to easily control navi-gation, telephone, audio, video,

Internet and many other functions while on the move. Information is shown in high-resolution and in color on the 20.3 cm Media Display. The touchpad is part of the optional COMAND Online system.

Thanks to its high sitting position typical of an off-roader, the GLE offers you the very best in comfort the moment you get in. It also comes with electrically adjustable front seats fitted as standard, providing optimum support and excellent comfort on long journeys.

Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles has built its success by establishing solid, longstanding relationships with its customers, and its wide product offering which appeals to all. As a brand name, Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles is deeply asso-ciated with a history of premium quality service and market lead-ership. The company promises to not only meet customer expectations, but to exceed them.

The GLE is distinguished with its dynamism and assertiveness. It encapsulates a distinctive view of the world.

Qatar Charity provides food assistance to university students in SudanTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Some 5,000 students at the International University of Africa in Sudan benefited from the food aid provided by Qatar Charity as part its ‘Feed a Fasting Person’ project.

The students, who are living at the university’s housing due to the closure of airports caused by the coro-navirus outbreak, expressed their appreciation and thanks to the benefactors and donors from the State of Qatar for pro-viding them with the food baskets, which help them meet their food needs, especially in light of challenging current situations.

The director of Qatar Char-ity’s office in Sudan, Hussein Karmash, said the “Feed a Fasting Person” is one of the very important projects of

Qatar Charity to benefit the needy such as the orphans, persons with special needs, and students.

This Ramadan, Qatar Charity targeted 24,475 bene-ficiaries at a cost of QR660,793.

Kermash revealed that some 172,234 persons benefited from the “Feed a Fasting Person” project implemented by Qatar Charity’s office in Sudan at a cost of QR2,390,432 during the past five years.

A worker unloading a truck filled with food aid provided by Qatar Charity as part of ‘Feed a Fasting Person’ project in Sudan.

Working hours at health centers during Eid Al Fitr holidayQNA — DOHA

The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has announced the new working hours at the health centers during the Eid Al Fitr holiday, from May 19 to 28.

The main health centers in Doha, including Al Rayyan, Abu Baker Al Siddiq, Mesaimeer, Umm Ghuwailina, West Bay, Madinat Khalifa, Airport, and Omar bin Khatab health centers will remain open from 7am to 11pm. Dental services at these centers will be available from 7am to 10pm.

As for the health centers outside Doha, Al Wakra Health Center will remain open from 7am to 11pm. Dental services will be available from 7am to 10pm. Al Khor Health Center will be operating from 7am to 11 pm, and will provide dental services in two shifts, from 7am to 2pm, and from 4pm to 10pm.

Meanwhile, working hours at Al Ruwais Health Center will be from 7am to 11pm, and the dental services will be only available in the morning shift from 7am to 2pm.

Al Shahaniya Health Center will be open from 7am to 11pm and will offer dental services from 7am to 10pm. Al Jumailiya Health Center will provide an on-call service 24 hours.

Health centers that will close during Eid Al Fitr holiday include Qatar University HC, Leghwairiya HC, Al Daayen HC, Abu Nakhla HC, Al Thumama HC, Al Waab HC, Al Karaana HC, Al Wajbah HC and Al Kaaban HC (except for the urgent cases unit which will operate around the clock).

Specialized clinics in Leabaib HC and the Airport HC will provide services from 7am to 2pm and from 4pm to 10pm. The ENT clinics in Leabaib HC and Mesaimeer HC will be open from 7am to 2pm and from 4pm to 10pm.

Dermatology clinics will be operating in Leabaib HC from 7am to 2pm and from 4pm to 10pm. Premarital Clinics will work at Airport HC on Monday, May 25 from 4pm to 10pm, and in Al Rayyan HC on Tuesday, May 26, from 7am to 2pm.

The Health Centers receiving urgent cases daily 24 hours are Abu Baker Al Siddiq, Muaither, Al Shahaniya, Rawdat Al Khail, Gharrafat Al Rayyan, Al Ruwais, and Al Kaaban.

The Health Centers desig-nated for examining and keeping suspected cases of infection with coronavirus (COVID-19) in quarantine include Muaither HC, Rawdat Al Khail HC, Gharraft Al Rayyan HC, daily throughout the week 24 hours, and in Umm Salal HC daily from 7am to 11pm.

The Community Call Center will operate continu-ously from 7am to 11pm. The medicine delivery service will stop on Sunday and Monday, May 24, and May 25 and will resume work on Tuesday, May 26.

New law to protect children in offing, QF webinar toldTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar is working toward devel-oping a new child protection law which will strengthen its capacity to monitor abuse aimed at children, a webinar organised by Qatar Foundation’s Doha International Family Institute (DIFI) has been told.

The institute’s 4th Annual Family Policy Forum, titled 'Domestic Violence against Children in the State of Qatar', was held on the International Day of Families and saw speakers highlight international best practices in child protection, how to address gaps in safe-guarding the youngest members of society, and the most important measures that must be taken to address domestic violence against children.

With participants including family policy experts, researchers, and decision-makers from Qatar, the event saw Najat Al Abdullah, Director of the Family Affairs Department at the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs, say: “We are currently looking into establishing a new law to protect children, which will constitute a comprehensive legal framework for monitoring cases of violence against children in Qatar.

“Once it is completed, approved, and issued, it will

constitute a major achievement in the field of child protection in Qatar.”

Mrs. Al Abdullah highlighted the role played by various ele-ments within the Ministry that contribute to reducing the threat of domestic violence against children, through measures such as Qatar’s Family Law, Social Security Law, and Law of People with Special Needs.

She also emphasised the importance of the programmes, plans and events implemented by the Ministry, together with its partners, to provide an inte-grated system that supports the emotional and mental wellbeing of children in Qatar.

Aisha Sultan, a researcher at DIFI, told the online forum that the role of the family in dealing with domestic violence starts from the decision to have children — a decision that must take into account the family’s psychological and economic sit-uation, to avoid any future chal-lenges that may affect the upbringing of children

“Parents learn modern edu-cation methods, consider the child’s personality, and adopt a method of containment and acceptance as an alternative to bullying, all of which contribute to reducing domestic violence,” she said, adding that laws and policies have a role in creating a culture and imposing restric-tions that deter acts of violence against children.

She also emphasised the importance of creating a database documenting reported cases of violence against children, saying: “It is necessary to provide a database that includes all numbers and sta-tistics concerning cases of vio-lence that are reported in Qatar, because this will support researchers in the field of family and child studies produce research that evaluates the sit-uation and helps to limit such cases.”

Sajeda Attari, Child Pro-tection Specialist, Unicef, also participated in the webinar — moderated by Professor Ahmed

Aref, Senior Researcher, DIFI —and outlined the most important measures that she believes Arab countries should take to combat domestic violence against children. “Obstacles that prevent countries from implementing child rights laws that have already been ratified must be removed,” she said.

“It is also necessary to address any social values and norms that permit violence against children work to create safe environments that protect children outside the home, and strengthening the economic sit-uation that families face, all of which will help to reduce cases of violence against children”.

Attari also said that pro-viding hard data and evidence

regarding reported cases of vio-lence enables countries to “accurately assess the reality”, rather than focusing only on “exceptional” cases of violence.

Speakers also included Hanadi Al Shafei, Head of the Human Rights Treaties Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who addressed the legal dimensions of the rat-ification of human rights agree-ments by Qatar and the Con-vention on the Rights of the Child; and Bandar Al Khalifa, Legal Consultant at the Center for Protection and Social Reha-bilitation, who spoke about the need to have “clear mecha-nisms” to protect children from risks.

Participants during the DIFI 4th Annual Family Policy Forum.

"We are currently looking into establishing a new law to protect children, which will constitute a comprehensive legal framework for monitoring cases of violence against children in Qatar," said Najat Al Abdullah, Director of the Family Affairs Department at MADLSA.

Some 172,234 people have benefited from the “Feed a Fasting Person” project implemented by Qatar Charity's Sudan office at a cost of QR2,390,432 during the past five years, a QC representative in Sudan said.

05WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 HOME

QCDC releases 10th edition of Career GuideTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Career Development Center (QCDC) has unveiled the 10th edition of its Career Guide magazine, which celebrates a decade of career guidance and professional devel-opment.

The magazine features a wealth of infor-mation, advice, inspirational interviews, and articles to help young people explore their potential, develop their skills, and choose the academic and career path that suits the needs and dynamics of the Qatari job market.

The 45-page bilingual English-Arabic issue features over 15 sections, including high-lights of QCDC’s activities, special reports, and exclusive interviews with Qatari youth who have excelled in their careers.

As part of its efforts to further engage youth, all content can be accessed through QCDC’s website and the Career Guide appli-cation, the first free interactive app for a mag-azine published by Qatar Foundation.

The app offers a unique interactive expe-rience that enables users to access the latest career news in Qatar and around the world, including the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play.

Abdullah Al Mansoori, QCDC Director, said: “We are proud to publish the 10th issue of the Career Guide, in which we chose to celebrate innovation, one of the most in-demand skills of the 21st century in today’s labor market.

“Countries that will succeed in instilling

a culture of innovation among their youth will occupy a leading position in the future. Because creativity fuels innovation, you will find in this guide a variety of topics that will inspire you to be creative and motivate you to explore your untapped skills.”

Elaborating on what this edition offers, he said: “The Career Guide has become a ref-erence for professional knowledge, advice, and career guidance. We urge youth to take advantage of the rich information the mag-azine provides – especially in light of these exceptional circumstances amid the outbreak of COVID-19 – to learn from the experience of other professionals to better assess their career options, and to choose the track that aligns best with their skills and aspirations.”

The release of the new issue coincides with a series of unprecedented measures taken in the context of the pandemic out-break, which has forced many countries to shut their borders and impose emergency measures that have affected the lives of bil-lions of people and had an impact on busi-nesses around the world. To keep pace with this changing landscape, the latest issue of

the Career Guide offers tips on remote working, and how to efficiently manage time to stay productive. Students may also take advantage of this isolation period to browse the online learning sites outlined in the issue and find information on the importance of distance education.

In a rapidly changing world, the guide pro-vides an overview of emerging technologies that will impact various industries and pro-fessions in the future and offers learning material to guide youth during the different stages of their academic and professional career. The magazine sheds light on the efforts of Qatar Science & Technology Park, part of Qatar Foundation Research, Development and Innovation, in supporting innovation and encouraging entrepreneurs to launch suc-cessful businesses that contribute to the devel-opment of a knowledge-based economy.

The new issue features interviews with successful individuals in various fields, including Ramzan Rashid Al Nuaimi, Cre-ative Director at Al Jazeera Media Network, who takes readers on a journey into the world of visual identity; and Qatari writer Buthaina Al-Janahi, who discusses the Qalam Hebr project launched in 2018 to help youth develop creative writing skills.

The 10th edition also sheds light on Qatar’s promising tourism industry. With Qatar being well-equipped to become a leading tourist destination, the industry can create job opportunities for thousands of youth, while promoting economic diversification.

For QF’s GU-Q seniors, foreign service degrees are first step in rebuilding post-pandemic world

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

As the pandemic continues to change expec-tations of a once far more certain future, students from the Class of 2020 at QF partner Georgetown University in Qatar are drawing respect and praise for meeting the challenges with unshakable courage and resilience, and beginning the next chapter of their lives with an impressive record of achievement.

The significance of these efforts was cap-tured by Sarah Muteb Al-Mutoteh, the 2020 senior class speaker at Tropaia, the univer-sity’s virtual celebrations of four years of aca-demic success. “The fact that you’re here today, means that you’ve grown and sur-vived, and that is something, powerful, and beautiful, and worth celebrating.”

Sarah was also an award winner at Tropai, inducted into several honor societies and recognized for achieving cum laude aca-demic Latin honor for a degree in Interna-tional Politics that began with advice from her father, the former Kuwaiti ambassador to Qatar, to pursue studies in a field that inspired her. Sarah also honed her profes-sional skills through internships at Weill Cornell Medicine, WISE, and Qatar Foun-dation. Speaking on the role of higher edu-cation in a crisis, she said: “Georgetown has prepared us for life.”

Joining Sarah at the digital Tropaia event was Ghanim Mohamed Alyafei, whose move from a public school in Doha to the diverse international student body at GU-Q was a game changer. “With five or six different per-spectives in class, I learned a lot just from the group discussions.” And he did learn, taking part in internships, business compe-titions, and finishing school magna cum laude, with great honor. “The effects on the economy are being felt heavily all over the world, even more so in our region with the impact on energy markets. As an

International Economics major, I believe this is our time to shine.”

One of the bright stars shining at Tropaia was Noor Rajab Al-Esmail, who won the Dean’s Medal for having the highest scho-lastic average. Noor was drawn to a BSFS degree in International Economics because it combined her love for math and science, with her love for the liberal arts. And in the program, she excelled, balancing moth-erhood and academics to earn the distinction of summa cum laude, the highest academic honor accorded to graduating seniors.

Noor also honed her research skills through an honors senior thesis and credits the mentorship of her professors for pushing her to focus on the process of creating schol-arship. Her advice to new students is “Put yourself out there. Don’t be afraid to try something new or to take risks.” For Noor, the risks have paid off, and she now has plans to enroll in graduate school in the future.

International Politics major Wesley Chen enrolled at Georgetown and quickly worked to set himself apart, gaining induction into several honor societies and garnering a magna cum laude academic honor at the end of his studies. As an undergrad, he wrote an honors thesis exam-ining the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China and pursued

an American Bar Foundation fellowship, which is only awarded to four recipients annually. He plans to enroll in law school next, but says, “I haven’t ruled out graduate school just yet.”

This year’s International Economics Outstanding Student Award was awarded to Nadine El-Dehaibi, whose achievements include the highest academic honors, summa cum laude, as well as Honors in the Major. The prize-winning economics student was also an editor of The Geor-getown Gazette. “I’ve always loved English!” is her simple explanation, a passion that served her well as a class teaching assistant and tutor in the GU-Q writing center. “Developing my writing skills gave me an advantage in writing my thesis, and led me to discover a love for teaching.”

The transformative journey of higher education changed the future of Interna-tional Politics major and Education Above All Youth Advocate, Ousman Camara. It also changed the futures of 200 boys and girls in The Gambia when he organized a fund-raiser to rebuild his mud brick primary school into a concrete structure with elec-tricity and running water. He also launched a non-profit initiative called Educate A Gen-eration to scale his efforts across the country to change even more.

A photo collage of Georgetown University in Qatar 2020 seniors.

VCUarts Qatar’s new Summer Program for High School Students offers a taste of university lifeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

VCUarts Qatar is gearing up to launch a unique online summer program exclusively for high school students who would like to explore the opportunities that higher education in art and design, would bring them.

The Summer Program for High School Students 2020 – which runs from July 1 to July 30 this year – is specifically tailored to provide an overview of the academic degree courses offered by the university. Furthermore, students will be able to design the program according to their needs and preferences.

What sets this year’s program apart from VCUarts Qatar’s pre-vious summer programs is that it will be led by VCUarts Qatar alumni who have a post-graduate degree. The department chair of

each specialization will also take part with online introductions to each speciality.

Additionally, participants will be able to engage with leading industry professionals who will further explain the careers – and transferable skills – that a major in art and design would open doors to.

The course will consist of three phases. The week-long first phase – an introduction or foun-dation module – aims to provide an overview of art and design.

The second phase extends over two weeks, during which participants can choose from four pathways; each pathway will provide a deeper understanding of one the four majors or aca-demic programs – graphic design, painting and printmaking, fashion design and interior design – that the university offers.

Following this, participants can opt for an additional one-week workshop that will teach them the fundamentals of devel-oping a portfolio of their work – an indispensable skill for those applying for higher studies, or eventually, a job.

Aysha Alkooheji, Community

and Continuing Education Program Manager, at VCUarts Qatar, noted how the program aims to be a microcosm of VCUarts Qatar’s four-year degree programs.

She said: “VCUarts Qatar is keen to bridge our strong com-munity outreach, to academics; the

Summer Program for High School Students 2020 is a perfect spring-board for this. This online course is live, interactive, and scheduled to run for three hours each day.

“By participating in the program, students will gain clarity on the scope and appli-cation of each of the four aca-demic specializations. What’s more, they will also have the chance to discuss the future pros-pects of studying art and design – a question which often weighs on students’ and parents’ minds – with industry experts.”

Alkooheji also added that these courses establish tech-nology-based learning as an indispensable part of the future of higher education – a reality reinforced by the ongoing pandemic.

“VCUarts Qatar’s plans to adopt virtual learning platforms

have been expedited by the current health crisis,” Alkooheji said.

“Participating in a three-to-four week course such as the Summer Program for High School Students 2020, will give students a feel of what will even-tually become the new normal when it comes to studies and work – remote engagement.

“Irrespective of whether edu-cation continues online, follows a hybrid model, or returns to on-campus classrooms, online learning – in one form or the other – is here to stay. And VCUarts Qatar is delighted to offer students an opportunity to benefit from it.”

VCUarts Qatar will make arrangements for registered stu-dents to collect the appropriate course material from specific retail outlets in Qatar or to arrange to have the materials delivered.

Unique online program will give participants a chance to explore higher education opportunities in art and design.

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Al Mana Co., dealer of Nissan in Qatar, announced the recall of Nissan Pathfinder Models of 2002-2005, due to a possible defect in the passenger airbag. The recall campaign comes within the framework of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry’s (MoCI) continuous efforts to protect consumers and ensure that dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs.

The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will com-municate with customers to ensure that they carried out the nec-essary repairs. The Ministry urged all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, which processes complaints, inquires and suggestions.

Nissan Pathfinder modelsof 2002-2005 recalled

Students from the Class of 2020 at Qatar Foundation (QF) partner Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) are drawing respect and praise for meeting the challenges with unshakable courage and resilience, and beginning the next chapter of their lives with an impressive record of achievement.

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Museums (QM) yesterday announced the launch of an expanded Culture Pass programme, which offers added support to teachers and students in Qatar. The addition of two new tiers, Culture Pass Teachers and Culture Pass Students, gives members access to Qatar Museums’ educational services, workshop opportunities, and an array of exciting creative online programming – all of which are free of charge.

These Culture Pass initia-tives create opportunities for teachers and students to expe-rience the best educational information, resources, and programmes. The benefits have been expertly curated to offer exciting, and semi-exclusive access to Qatar Museums cul-tural experiences, masterpiece collections, and one-of-a-kind educational events.

Khalod Abdulzaiz Almannai, Deputy Director of Learning and Outreach, com-mented: “We are delighted to announce the new tiers to our Culture Pass programme, helping showcase the best Qatar Museums has to offer the community. The programme is a testament to our ongoing commitment to enhancing and enriching the Qatar’s educa-tional landscape. Under the guidance of our Chairperson H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. We’ve curated a selection of additional benefits for Culture Pass Teachers, and Culture Pass Students, that we know this particular demographic will love and use.”

The new Culture Pass Teachers tier will offer teachers unique educational training opportunities and the chance to expand their cultural knowledge. They will be given access to one Culture Pass arranged tour, one Culture Pass organized workshop and will

also be given the opportunity to attend Exhibition Training Tours, Local Artists’ Work-shops, the Teachers Teaching Teachers Programme, and invitations to be part of the Teachers’ Council and the Executive Teachers’ Council.

Supporting this pro-gramme of events and activ-ities are a range of discounts at many restaurants and cafes in Qatar. Culture Pass Teachers’ members will enjoy a 10 percent discount at QM gift shops, IN-Q online, and Cass Art Qatar. They will also receive a discount to QM ticketed exhibitions.

Culture Pass Students, open to students between the ages of 16 to 25, will offer greater access to the wide programme of events provided by QM. This membership enables them to register for development plat-forms such as MIA Infinite Pro-gramme, invites them to apply to the QM Internship Pro-gramme and volunteering opportunities with the Public Programme’s Team. They will also benefit from priority reg-istration to Student Arts Work-shops and Artists Talks.

Culture Pass Students’ members will also receive the same 10 percent discounts at QMs gift shops (physical and digital) and will enjoy compli-mentary access to one Culture Pass tour and 1 Culture Pass workshop. Culture Pass Teachers and Culture Pass Stu-dents can be registered for via https://www.qm.org.qa/en/cul-turepass starting May 18, 2020.

The original free Culture Pass Basic membership, which is hugely popular with over 20,000 members, will remain available for Qatari Nationals, residents and visitors to many core benefits. Teachers and Students who currently hold or are part of a Culture Pass Mem-bership are eligible to apply for Culture Pass Teachers and Culture Pass Students.

QM launches two new Culture Pass educational membership tiers

Bicycle a preferred choice

06 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 MIDDLE EAST

A man arranging bicycles as the bicycle riding rate increased due to the measures taken as part of the novel coronavirus pandemic, in Baghdad, yesterday. Citizens do not use public transportations and started using bicycles across the city.

Secret Iran-US deal leads Kadhimi to power in IraqANATOLIA — BAGHDAD

A “behind-the-scenes deal” between the US and Iran has paved the way for the designation of Mustafa Al Kadhimi as Iraq’s new prime minister, according to the London-based Middle East Eye (MEE).

As part of the deal, Tehran agreed to support Al Kadhimi, a former director of the Iraqi National Intelli-gence Service, on condition that Washington would stop freezing some of its assets in Europe, MEE said.

Kadhimi’s designation was strongly rejected by pro-Iranian Kataib Hezbollah, a Shia militia, and several political leaders.

Nevertheless, other Shia political factions affiliated with Iran gave green light to his nomination after Iran ordered them to stand by Al Kadhimi in return for some relieving from US sanctions which impose a heavy burden on the Iranian economy, MEE quoted senior Iraqi political sources as saying.

Al Kadhimi and his cabinet won a vote of confi-dence in the Iraqi parliament on May 7 to succeed the resigned government of Adel Abdul Mahdi.

Al Kadhimi managed to

form a new government after two former prime ministers-designate, Mohammad Allawi and Adnan Al Zurfi, failed to garner support.

Iraq has been roiled by mass protests since early October erupted against poor living conditions and cor-ruption, forcing Abdul-Mahdi to resign.

At least 600 Iraqis have been killed and hundreds have been injured and arrested, with some subjected to torture, since demonstra-tions began October 1, according to global rights g r o u p A m n e s t y International.

Rocket attack

targets Baghdad’s

Green Zone

AP — BAGHDAD

A rocket struck Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of Iraq’s government, early yesterday morning, according to an Iraqi military statement, the first attack on the area since a new prime minister was sworn in earlier this month.

The Katyusha rocket hit an empty house, causing minor damages. The Green Zone is where government buildings and foreign embassies are located. A preliminary inves-tigation indicated the rocket was launched from the nearby Al Idrisi neighborhood on Pal-estine Street, the statement said.

An Iraqi official said the rocket had struck near the US Embassy, without elaborating. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Previous attacks have fre-quently targeted the US presence in Iraq, including the embassy and Iraqi bases hosting American troops. The US has blamed Kataib Hez-bollah, an Iraqi militia group backed by Iran, of perpetrating the attacks.

The new administration of Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, who came to power earlier this month, is preparing for a strategic dialogue with Washington, expected to take place next month. The talks will touch on security and eco-nomic cooperation between both countries.

REUTERS — GAZA CITY

In a wooden shack in the Gaza Strip, a 13-year-old girl holds classes for neigh-bourhood children who have missed out on their studies since schools were closed in March due to the novel coro-navirus crisis.

Only 20 people have tested positive for the virus in the Hamas Islamist-run Pales-tinian enclave, where

cross-border traffic has long been limited by Israel and Egypt and those entering Gaza in recent months have gone into quarantine.

Fajr Hmaid, who hopes to become a professional teacher one day, provides English, Arabic and math lessons to a class that has grown from four pupils to 15.

“I wanted to bring them here and teach them, this is my talent,” Hmaid said, wearing

a white head-covering. “I have one girl in first grade. If she is absent from school for a period of time, she will forget how to grab the pen and how to write.”

Gaza teachers have also been giving lessons online during the health crisis.

Fajr’s father, Bandar Hmaid, said he was fine with the role his daughter has taken on. “I said okay—but don’t make noise,” he said.

Palestinian school girl Fajr Hmaid, 13, teaches her neighbours’ children an Arabic language lesson as schools are shut due to the coronavirus disease restrictions, at her family house in Gaza City, yesterday.

Gaza girl teaches neighbourhood children during school closure

Iran reports more than2,100 new virus casesAFP — TEHRAN

Iran yesterday reported no new coronavirus deaths in nearly a third of its provinces for 24 hours but said there were more than another 2,100 cases of infection nationwide.

The virus spread rapidly to all 31 of Iran’s provinces soon after the country’s first cases — two deaths in the holy city of Qom —were announced three months ago.“Ten provinces have reported zero deaths in the past 24 hours and six others only one,” said health ministry s p o k e s m a n K i a n o u s h Jahanpour.

The southwestern province of Khuzestan was still classified as “red” — the highest level on the country’s colour-coded risk scale, he said. But the situation was “stable” in most other provinces, Jahanpour told a tel-evised news conference.

Khuzestan was currently the only province still classified as red, he added.

The official had warned in previous days of a deteriorating situation in the provinces of Lorestan, North Khorasan, Kerman, Sistan and Baluchistan and Kermanshah.

Yesterday, he said 62 fatal-ities in the past 24 hours had taken the overall death toll in the country’s outbreak to 7,199.

Another 2,111 new infec-tions were confirmed over the same period, he said, raising the total caseload to 124,603.

More than 97,170 of those hospitalised with the virus had recovered and been dis-charged, he added. Experts both at home and abroad have voiced scepticism about Iran’s official figures, saying the real toll could be much higher.

Iran’s fuel shipments to Venezuela face US threat

ANATOLIA — TEHRAN

In a symbolic defiance to US sanctions, Iran has sent fuel shipments to Venezuela in a move that seems to be fraught with danger.

Five Iranian super-tankers carrying gasoline and other similar products, estimated to be worth $45.5m, have sailed towards Venezuela, an ally of Tehran and adversary of Washington.

The tankers embarked on the long journey to Venezuela from Iran’s coastal city of Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf region and traveled around the Arabian Peninsula through the Suez Canal before entering the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, according to data gathered from the ship’s Automatic Identification System (AIS), which helps in tracking the movement of vessels.

The first Iranian tanker is expected to reach the Vene-zuelan shores on May 25.

The fuel shipments were dispatched upon a request from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose country has been facing acute shortage of gasoline at its refineries.

According to media reports, Tehran will receive at least nine tonnes of gold in exchange for supplying gasoline to Venezuela. The Latin country is said to hold some 70 tonnes of gold, which has become a valuable asset for the country battling economic woes. The networking between Tehran and Caracas, however, has not gone down well with Washington, which reportedly deployed a fleet of warships in the Caribbean waters.

A senior official in Wash-ington said in statements last week that the US was consid-ering measures in response to Iran’s shipment of fuel to Venezuela.

Iran, for its part, warned that any “pirate-like” action by the US Navy against the Iranian fuel shipments to Ven-ezuela would trigger a “harsh response”, reported Iran’s Nour News Agency.

The Iranian Foreign Min-istry also warned the US against what Tehran termed a “foolish action” against Iranian oil tankers, and stressed that there were no legal constraint to trade between Iran and Venezuela.

Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque to reopen after Eid holidayAFP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque will reopen to worshippers after the Eid holiday, a statement from its governing body said yesterday, two months after closing due to the coronavirus.

“The council decided to lift the suspension on worshippers entering the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque after the Eid Al Fitr holiday,” a statement from the Waqf organisation said,

referring to the three-day holiday expected to begin this weekend.

Islam’s third holiest site was closed in late March for the first time in more than 50 years as part of measures across the globe to stem the spread of the new coronavirus.

The mosque’s director, Omar Al Kiswani, said he hoped for no restrictions on the number of worshippers but said the governing body would

announce the exact “mecha-nisms and measures later.”

He said the details would be worked out to “ensure we are not subjected to criticism on the pretext we have broken health rules.”

The mosque compound, which lies in Jerusalem’s Old City, has often been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Known to Muslims as the Haram Al Sharif, the mosque compound is under the custodianship of

neighbouring Jordan which con-trolled the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, up until its occu-pation by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967.

With the number of COVID-19 cases declining, in recent days both Israel and the Palestinian territories have eased restrictions.

The Western Wall, the holiest site at which Jews are permitted to pray, is one of the outer walls of the Al Aqsa

mosque compound.It was closed by Israeli

authorities but reopened earlier this month, though with only 300 people allowed at a time.

In total, Israel has recorded 16,650 coronavirus infections in its population of nine million and 277 deaths. On the Pales-tinian side, fewer than 400 cases have been confirmed in the West Bank and Gaza — which have a combined popu-lation of more than 4.5 million.

Israel's 70% of virus cases came from US, study saysANATOLIA — TEL AVIV

More than 70% of those in Israel who contracted the novel coronavirus were infected by a strain that originated in the US, according to a study published by Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Adi Stern of the School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology at the univer-sity’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences told the Jerusalem Post that Israelis who came from the US created trans-mission chains.

Researchers at the uni-versity compared the genomic sequences of local patients to around 4,700 genomic sequences taken from around

the world before reaching the conclusion.

The results of the study came as Israel confirmed four more fatalities from the coro-navirus, bringing the country’s death toll to 276.

The Health Ministry said 22 more cases were registered in the country over the past 24 hours, raising the total to 16,643.

It said 52 patients remain in critical condition while 13,252 have recovered from the virus.

After originating in Wuhan, China last December, COVID-19 has spread to at least 188 countries and regions, with Europe and the US currently the worst hit.

Iran’s judiciary sentences couple to death over money laundering and gold hoardREUTERS — DUBAI

An Iranian couple has been sentenced to death for having smuggled hard currency and laundering $200m of money, as well as having been found with a stash of gold at their home, the judiciary spokesman said yesterday.

Gholamhossein Esmaili spoke about Vahid Behzadi and his wife Najva Lasheidai, both in their early 40s but whose case had not previously been given a high profile, in a tele-vised news conference.

Without giving any further details about the pair or their background, Esmaili said they had been sentenced to death on charges “including disrupting

the Islamic Republic’s exchange and gold market”.

“They have smuggled hard currency and laundered around $200m,” he said. “Also around 100kg of gold and over 24,700 gold coins were found and seized in the couple’s home.” He said the couple could appeal the verdict within 20 days.

With the economy deteri-orating due to the effects of sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak, Iran’s hardline judi-ciary has been waging a cam-paign against corruption at a state and private level that they say is further eroding prosperity.

Separately, Esmaili said two Iranian lawmakers had been sentenced to 61 months in jail

each on charges of “disrupting the country’s car market”.

Lawmakers Fereydoun Ahmadi and Mohammad Azizi both were linked to a financial corruption case at one of Iran’s two major car manufacturing companies, he said. Neither lawmaker has commented pub-licly about the case.

In the past years, the judi-ciary has jailed several officials, including the brother of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, for financial crimes.

Hardline critics say state corruption has grown to extraordinary levels since prag-matist Rouhani was first elected in 2013. The government has dismissed the claim as politi-cally motivated.

As part of the deal, Tehran agreed to support Al Kadhimi, a former director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, on condition that Washington would stop freezing some of its assets in Europe, London-based Middle East Eye (MEE) reported.

07WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 AFRICA

Libyan army defeats Haftar militias near Tunisian borderANATOLIA — TRIPOLI

The Libyan army has captured two towns near Tunisian border from eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar’s militias.

The capture of the two towns was announced by the media office of the gov-ernment-led Burkan Al Ghadab (Volcano of Rage) Operation.

“Our heroic forces have entered the towns of Badr and Tij amid welcome from their residents,” the media office said in a statement on Facebook yes-terday. No further details were available.

Libya-based February TV aired a video showing the deployment of Libyan military vehicles in the town of Badr after taking it from Haftar’s militias.

On Monday, the Libyan army retook the strategic Al Watiya airbase south of Tripoli, which had been under Haftar’s control for about six years.

The Libyan government has been under attack by Haftar’s forces since April 2019, with

more than 1,000 killed in the violence. It launched Operation Peace Storm on March 26 to counter attacks on the capital.

Following the ouster of late ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya’s government was founded in 2015 under a UN-led political deal.

Meanwhile, Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Al Sarraj praised the country’s retaking of the Al Watiya airbase from militias loyal to renegade general Khalifa Haftar.

“We proudly announce the liberation of Al Watiya military base from the grip of criminal militias,” Al Sarraj who is also the Commander in Chief of the Libyan army, said in a

statement.He went on to say: “Today’s

victory does not mark the end of the battle. Rather, it brings us closer to the big day of victory by liberating all cities and regions and permanently elim-inating the Haftar-led project of domination and tyranny.”

The Libyan army said the Al Watiya airbase would become active once the entire sur-rounding areas were secured and that it would contribute to the liberation of other southern areas, including Tarhouna city.

Prime Minister Fayez Al Sarraj expressed his dissatis-faction over the European Union’s policy towards crimes against civilians in his country.

Al Sarraj spoke with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell about the matter over the phone, according to a statement from the Prime Ministry.

He said he was dissatisfied with the EU for not taking a more precise and effective

stance on the matter. Emphasizing that the crimes

in question were systematically committed and violated inter-national law, Al Sarraj said they are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The two men also discussed the latest situation in Libya.

At least 30 civilians, including women and children, have been killed in attacks on Tripoli by militias loyal to ren-egade commander Khalifa Haftar since the beginning of May. It launched Operation Peace Storm on March 26 to counter attacks on the capital.

The military spokesman of Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), Mohammed Kanunu, inspecting the airbase after army retook Al Watiya airbase occupied by warlord Khalifa Haftar’s militias within ‘Volcano of Rage’ Operation in Tripoli, Libya, yesterday.

Mozambique elite policemen on trial for murder of poll observerAFP — MAPUTO

Six members of Mozambique’s elite police unit have gone on trial for the murder of a prom-inent election observer in a case that has gripped the southern African nation.

Anastacio Matavele, 58, was shot dead at the wheel of his car in the city of Xai-Xai shortly before nationwide elections last October.

Over the past week, half a dozen elite police officers have testified in court in the southern province of Gaza, four of whom have confessed to taking part in a plot to murder him.

The trial is unprecedented in a country where murders and abductions of members of civil society, opposition politicians and journalists have become routine since 2015 yet are typ-ically sidelined for lack of evidence.

The remarkable case only came to light because the attackers had a car accident as they fled the scene.

One of the alleged trigger men, policeman Martins Wiliamo, died in the smash along with a second suspect, and a third was arrested.

Two other policemen were arrested a few weeks later, as well as a teacher who owned the vehicle used for the crime.

Two of the officers have confessed their involvement but have fingered fellow policeman Agapito Matavele as the ringleader.

Matavele, who has the same family name as the victim but was not related to him, is on the run.

Extraordinary details have emerged of a Mob-style hit that left the victim’s car riddled with 13 bullet holes.

“I drove the car alongside the victim’s car and the order to fire came from the back seat,” Assistant Inspector Edson Silica, 34, the driver on the day of the murder, told the court.

“Agapito and Martins Wiliamo lowered the windows and started shooting at point-blank range.”

Silica, a police officer for 13 years, said Agapito Matavele knew the details of the mission.

As for h imsel f , he maintained that he was only told minutes before the crime that they were going to “assault an old

man with a lot of money”. Officer Euclidio Mapulasse,

who was later arrested, said he had been on the back seat, sitting between the alleged shooters.

“I was in the middle seat. There was no way I could open fire,” Mapulasse said.

“The ones who opened fire were Agapito and Martins Wiliamo.”

The remaining defendants deny any involvement.

The assassination sparked an outcry, for it occurred in the runup to crucial elections troubled by violence and accu-sations of fraud.

Just months earlier, Pres-ident Filipe Nyusi and the oppo-sition Renamo party signed a truce aimed at halting fighting that had flared 27 years after a civil war that killed an esti-mated million people.

The Election Commission awarded victory to Nyusi and his Frelimo party, which has been in power since inde-pendence from Portugal in 1975.

In the coming days, rela-tives of the deceased election observer and the two agents who died in the accident will testify.

A security man stands at the main gate of Computer Village, the largest Information and Communications Technology accessories market in African continent, to prevent access to the market in compliance with the extended lockdown by the government as measures to curb the spread of COVID 19, in Lagos, Nigeria, yesterday. Nigeria’s government on Monday extended a lockdown on the northern region of Kano after it became a hotspot for new infections.

Sudan to appeal US ruling to pay for embassy attacksANATOLIA — KHARTOUM

The Sudanese government said yesterday it will appeal a verdict by the US Supreme Court to pay millions of dollars in punitive damages to victims of 1998 terrorist attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

On Monday, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision in 2017 that Khartoum was immune from litigation in addition to about $6bn in compensatory damages.

The new ruling reinstates about $826m out of a total $4.3bn in punitive damages to victims of the twin attacks, in which more than 220 people were killed.

Relatives of the victims sued Sudan in US courts seeking $4.3bn in punitive damages.

Monday’s ruling applies only to claims brought by US nationals, members of the US military, and employees of the US government or embassy contractors.

In a statement, the Sudanese Justice Ministry said the court ruling will not stop Khartoum from seeking to reach a settlement with families of the victims and normalize relations with Washington.

“Sudan’s Government will remain engaged in negotiations with the United States to settle the issue of the bombing of its embassies in Nairobi and Dar Al Salaam in 1998, and to work to fully normalize relations between the two countries in order to completely free the Sudanese people from one of the heaviest legacies of the defunct regime,” it said.

Last month, Sudan said it has reached a settlement deal with the families of 17 US sailors killed in an attack on US Navy warship USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000.

Sudan has been seeking to lift its name from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism, which blocks Khartoum from being reinte-grated in the global financial system.

Washington placed Khartoum on the list in 1993 over allega-tions that the government was supporting terrorism, in particular attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.

Virus fight just one front against epidemics in AfricaAFP — LAGOS

African nations grappling to contain coronavirus are scram-bling to stop the outbreak worsening the impact of other killer diseases.

Across the continent, coun-tries regularly face surges from a raft of diseases that flourish in the humid weather and prey on weak health systems. Malaria strikes down hundreds of thousands each year, typhoid, measles and cholera are endemic to many areas, tuberculosis and HIV are particularly prevalent in southern Africa and the “men-ingitis belt” stretches from Senegal to Ethiopia.

Some countries like Nigeria or Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are especially susceptible and were already facing a constant battle on many fronts -- even before the arrival of coronavirus.

In these volatile nations, factors from neglected healthcare facilities to rapid population growth, growing numbers flocking to cities, and climate change have combined to make the situation worse.

In Nigeria, Lassa fever, a haemorrhagic disease mainly spread by rats, has since January killed 200 people from around 5,000 infections —a

figure that grows higher each year. In DRC, Lassa fever’s far more deadly cousin Ebola has killed 3,000 since an outbreak started in August 2018 and new infections have stopped offi-cials from declaring the crisis over. Since January 2019 over 6,000 children across the country of 85 million have died from measles and 50,000 have fallen ill with it this year alone, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says.

The World Health Organ-ization (WHO) and other aid groups have sounded repeated alarms about the impact the coronavirus crisis could have on the fight against other dis-eases. Malaria deaths could double if measures like mos-quito nets are neglected, polio could roar back if vaccination programmes are halted, AIDS and tuberculosis fatalities could reach a million if anti-retroviral therapies are disrupted.

Years of vaccination cam-paigns have helped to bring some of the deadliest diseases under control — but there are fears that added burdens from coronavirus and challenges of social distancing could interrupt these efforts. In Nigeria’s chaotic megacity of Lagos, where around 20 million

people live crammed together, immunisation rates have reached up to 90 percent thanks to wide-spread pushes to boost awareness. But those major successes risk being lost.

“Many medical facilities have closed down, people are afraid to go to the hospitals, and some of the regular vaccination activities are disturbed,” Dr. Anisur Rahman Siddique, who heads Unicef’s immunisation programmes in Nigeria, said.

“We need to keep on checking,” he said, pointing especially to a possible rise in measles. Officials in numerous countries have warned that a

focus on tackling coronavirus could rob attention from other pressing threats. A lawmaker in Angola called on the gov-ernment to step up sanitation and fumigation in poor neigh-bourhoods to maintain the fight against malaria. Niger’s health minister, Illiassou Mainassara, has promised to distribute eight million mosquito nets and provide preventative treatments to over four million children this year.

Nigeria, one of the last coun-tries in the world to report wild poliovirus infections along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, was set to be declared officially free of the scourge in June after three

years without a case. WHO says that 2,500 of its

staff and personnel from partner organisations are still continuing surveillance for any outbreaks of polio in Africa’s most pop-ulous nation. But the “hard choice” was made to halt door-to-door vaccination campaigns that had already been hit by insecurity in the north of the country.

But what can be seen as a weakness could actually turn out to be a strength — and the expe-rience of coping with these recurring epidemics could give countries a boost in handling coronavirus.

“Our heroic forces have entered the towns of Badr and Tij amid welcome from their residents,” the media office of the government-led Burkan Al Ghadab (Volcano of Rage) Operation said in a statement on Facebook.

Tunisia launches

virus-tracking

mobile app

AFP — TUNIS

Tunisia yesterday launched a contact-tracing mobile phone app that identifies and alerts users who may have had contact with others infected with the new coronavirus.

The E7mi application, available on Android and awaiting validation for Apple’s iOS, was developed by a Tunisian start-up specialised in digital marketing tools for foreign companies, the health ministry said.

Like the French StopCovid application, E7mi -- Arabic for “protect” —is not based on contact-tracing technology developed by Apple or Google.

If a user tests positive for COVID-19, Tunisia’s Observ-atory of Emerging Diseases (ONME) contacts other users whose telephones have been detected close to the infected user’s device.

“We started in March when we heard about the TraceTogether app in Sin-gapore, but we wanted to do something suitable for Tunisia,” said Akil Agati, head of the Wizz Labs start-up behind the app.

Users “will not report themselves infected, to avoid false alarms, and users who have been notified of being in contact with a sick person will also receive a phone call from the ONME so there can be follow-up,” he said.

“We have been faster than many other countries” in launching such an app, he added.

Tunisia’s health ministry approved E7mi after three weeks of testing.

Nigeria impounds UK aircraft for violating virus ban

ANATOLIA — LAGOS

Nigerian authorities said they have impounded a British aircraft for violating corona-virus lockdown restrictions.

Flair Aviation, a UK-based company, was given the approval only for humani-tarian operations but they were caught conducting com-mercial flights, according to Sirika Hadi, Nigeria’s federal minister of aviation.

‘’The craft is impounded, crew being interrogated. There shall be maximum penalty. Wrong time to try our resolve! Flag of Nigeria,’’ Hadi said in a Twitter post on Sunday.

Several countries across the world have imposed travel bans to curb COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

With a population of nearly 200 million, the West African country has confirmed 5,959 virus cases, with 182 deaths and 1,594 recoveries.

QU stands side by side with all research and health institutions in the State of Qatar to address the threat of the emerging coronavirus.

08 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

QATAR has been taking all precautionary and preventive measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The country has set up special facil-ities for treating people infected with the virus and has taken several unprecedented measures to stem the spread of the virus among the community.

Now, Hamad International Airport (HIA) and the country’s flag carrier, Qatar Airways, have come out with new procedures and initiatives to make air travel safe and secure for passengers.

HIA will be using robotics and advanced thermal screening helmets as part of the measures being intro-duced for the post-COVID-19 era. The Smart Screening Helmet is a wearable intelligent device -- a portable, safe and effective gadget -- enabling contactless temperature measurement. The helmet uses multiple advanced tech-nologies such as infrared thermal imaging, artificial intel-ligence and AR (augmented reality) display. It can also enable implementation of mobile deployment-based control scenarios. HIA has also invested in disinfectant robots, which are fully autonomous mobile devices emitting concentrated UV-C light, which are known to be effective in eliminating majority of infectious microorganisms. The robots are being deployed in vulnerable high passenger flow areas to reduce the spread of pathogens.

Engr. Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer at Hamad International Airport, said: “HIA has adapted to the changes brought on by the spread of COVID-19 on the world, especially on the travel sector. Recovery plans have been put in place with priority given to the safety and comfort of travellers and employees. These plans include the use of the latest advanced technology to achieve the highest safety standards for the future travel experience.”

Onboard Qatar Airways flights, all cabin crew will be wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) suits and the airline has modified service that reduces inter-actions between passengers and crew while in flight. Cabin crew will be wearing safety goggles, masks and gloves to provide even greater reassurance to customers in addition to enhanced hygienic measures already in place. Hand sanitisers will be available throughout the HIA and galleys of every Qatar Airways flights. The airline has applied new standards and protocols in every aspect of its operation including serving food onboard.

It will be a different experience for travellers passing through Qatar’s international airport and while on board the award-winning five-star airline’s flights. As the airport and the airline are gearing up for receiving passengers in the post-COVID-19 era, Qatar is leaving no stone unturned to ensure safety of air travellers, setting new standards and benchmarks for international travel, which will offer travellers a worry-free and pleasureful journey as it was before.

Safety first for air travel

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Quote of the day

If the World Health Organization does not commit

to major substantive improvements within the

next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of

United States funding to the WHO permanent and

reconsider our membership in the organisation.

Donald Trump, US President

Biomedical Research Center is witnessing focused research efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

QNA — DOHA

Qatar University (QU) has emerged as one of the fore-front institutions in scientific research to address the coro-navirus pandemic, in part-nership with many educa-tional and health institutions in the country and abroad.

It is relying on an advanced research structure, which has been established over the past years in accordance with the visions and strategies that align with the contents of the Qatar National Vision 2030.

These efforts embody Qatar University strategy (2018-2022), which includes scientific research among its main goals. This goal encom-passes clear strategic aims, the most important of which is providing support for research, development and creativity in selected research fields that are compatible with national research priorities, community needs and future aspirations at the economic and social levels.

QU has started to enhance its global presence in the field of scientific research since the implementation of its first strategy for the period (2010-2013). It coordinated plans and efforts to become the fastest growing research institution in the Middle East thanks to its expertise and personnel in various disciplines, in addition to its facilities that caters to local needs and priorities in a number of areas, especially the health field.

The inclusion of medical education in the University’s academic program accel-erated its efforts in the field of medical research that addresses local challenges. Although these programs are new, the research witnessed continuous growth in quantity and quality. Thus, the University became an important partner for the health sector in the country and an active member in dealing with health chal-lenges, including the current coronavirus crisis.

Professor Mariam Al Ali Al Maadeed, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, in a statement to Qatar News Agency (QNA), said that QU stands side by side with all research and health institutions in the State of Qatar to address the threat of the emerging coronavirus (COVID-19).

She explained that the QU has taken a number of precau-tionary decisions for the safety of its employees. At the same time it is making efforts to support the research process and researchers in colleges and the research sector to develop methodologies and

outputs of scientific research and to promote active partici-pation with all state institu-tions in order to protect the Qatari community.

Al Maadeed stated that the research facilities are making continuous efforts to carry out research projects related to the COVID-19 pandemic, while the Research and Graduate Studies office of the Vice Pres-ident launched two research grants in this field.

Last April, QU launched an Emergency Response Grant (ERG) aimed at supporting new and early investigations, which form the basis for more advanced research. This grant follows a short timeline to accelerate the launch of projects funded due to the nature of the current situation.

QU’s ERG discusses in its first year 2020 the novel coro-navirus (COVID-19), which is part of an international research effort to deal with the emerging virus and support

rapid scientific research initiatives.

The main objectives of the grant were to create research teams dedicated to this type of virus and study it from dif-ferent perspectives, such as incubation period, stages, shapes, and strains, contrib-uting to promoting awareness and appropriate protection plans, and shedding light on the role of Qatar University in addressing emerging global concerns.

Open researches by faculty and students and researchers from the local community discuss several pathways, the most important of which are basic molecular research, clinical research, social behav-ioral research, epidemiology, infectious disease, public health, and engineering e-health.

In May 2020, QU launched a new grant (CD-ER) to stim-ulate development and inno-vation to respond to emer-gencies. This grant aims to enable researchers to move their ideas to the next step and demonstrate commercial potential, based on the recent (COVID-19) context and the current high demand for inno-vative solutions.

The grant to stimulate development and innovation opens a specific version related to the current global crisis to enable the devel-opment of prototypes, proc-esses and innovative platforms.

The Vice President told QNA that the current circum-stances have provided the University with a high research and educational skill and deepened its connection with the issues of the country and society, stressing that the QU is confident that these grants will help attract distin-guished research skills.

Along with grants, the Uni-versity’s academic and research facilities such as the Biomedical Research Center (QUBRC) are witnessing focused research efforts to tackle the coronavirus pan-demic, drawing on cumulative experiences in global research to tackle infectious diseases.

Coronavirus occupied an important space in the center’s research, before the discovery of COVID-19 pandemic due to the seriousness of the virus, and caused the outbreak of diseases at different stages and years, such as: SARS syndrome in 2003 and MERS in 2012.

For her part, Director of the QUBRC at Qatar University Professor Asma Al-Thani told QNA that the center has a lab that meets Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) laboratories that provide safety factors when dealing with or treating infec-tious, self or exotic factors transmitted by inhalation and can cause serious illness, including the novel COVID-19.

The researchers of the center, in cooperation with researchers from inside and outside the university, are conducting many research and studies on novel viruses, including ‘a detailed analysis of exported COVID-19 cases’ which is carried out in cooper-ation with the College of Med-icine at Qatar University and Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health. The center has also a study on ‘using digital simu-lation technology to test the ability of some inhibitors to stop COVID-19 binding to its cellular receptors’.

The center has an important research experience on the coronavirus, and perhaps one of the most important studies published by the center in this context is ‘study on the complete structure of the coronavirus spike protein (viral thorn) its pre-bonding form with cel-lular receptors, published on March 2, 2016.

Dr. Hadi Yassine, from the QUBRC at QU, in cooperation with an international research team, was able to record a sci-entific breakthrough at the

time to confront the corona-virus, by identifying low-reso-lution structure of coronavi-ruses spike trimer; a protein that enables the virus to enter host cells.

The study was published in Journal Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific magazines. HKU1-CoV is one of six coronaviruses that infect humans and it falls into the same group like SARS- and MERS-CoV (betacoronaviruses).

In addition to the previous studies, the QUBRC is under-taking a ‘Study of the genetics evolution of seasonal and zoonotic coronavirus that infects humans’, a research being made in collaboration with Hamad bin Khalifa Uni-versity; and ‘Study the evo-lution of the coronavirus (MERS) that causes respiratory syndrome in humans and camels in the Middle East’ held by the Biomedical Research Center, Hamad Medical Cor-poration (HMC) and Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).

The center published a comparative study for the Prevalence of Anti-MERS Coronavirus Antibodies in High- and Low-Risk Groups in Qatar, in cooperation with the MoPH.

In turn, the College of Medicine at QU is making double efforts towards fighting the coronavirus in the framework of its role as an academic and research body.

Researchers and experts at the college, in cooperation with local and external agencies, have carried out a number of research projects, including a research project that examines how the virus affects a patient with cancer, with the aim of revealing indi-cators and signs that will help doctors make the right decision, and choose the appropriate treatment for a cancer patient who is infected with the COVID-19.

A scientific team at the college is also working on a research project focusing on the ELISA serum screening test for the coronavirus (COVID-19) and the devel-opment of a possible vaccine. The aim is to accelerate the development of a rapid internal serologic test to detect the COVID-19.

The prototype for the test is serum diagnosis based on the ELISA serum screening test method (a test that measures and detects the presence of certain antibodies in the blood). The science of serology diagnostic testing is part of capacity building at QU and aims to develop a rapid sero-logic diagnostic test to check for coronavirus infection (COVID-19) when supply chain failures occur.

Qatar University outlines intensive research efforts to address coronavirus

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09WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 OPINION

How virus combined with oral bacteria

Oral bacteria exist in the oral cavity because of the favourable environment char-acterized by low pH. Such an environment thus provides a clinical environment for the bacteria to grow, and lack of oral health can result in more advanced caries in the mouth. Some clinical trials and sys-tematic reviews that have been conducted have shown the existence of different types of bacteria in the oral cavity, which facilitate oral infections if oral health is not maintained.

A randomized controlled multicenter trial Keller., et al. that investigated the full mouth infection with a focus on the use of probiotic sup-plements to reduce the infec-tions indicated that dental caries results from poor oral hygiene in the mouth, which creates a favourable condition

or environment for the aci-duric strains of bacteria, such as mutants streptococci that occur due to increased use of carbohydrates and low sal-ivary flows that result in a prolonged period of low levels of pH, which favors the har-boring and overgrowth and aciduric or acid-tolerating species of bacteria, such as Streptococcus mutans. Another placebo randomized controlled trial that was con-ducted among patients with gingivitis indicated that in human saliva, the proportion of oral bacteria is high. The clinical trial indicated that such bacteria are common with the majority of the microbes, such as Lactoba-cillus species growing in the human oral cavity in which they cause the development of gingivitis and related dental health problems. Thus, the combination of viruses and oral bacterial species in the oral cavities influences oral health conditions. The viral-bacterial interactions exist in the oral cavity, and they occupy the same niche; therefore, their potential interaction in enhancing indi-vidual wellness or disease emergence.

A research conducted by Almand, Moore and Jaykus investigated human infections with a focus on the combi-nation or interaction of viruses with bacteria in the same niches. The research revealed that the combination or interactions of viruses and bacteria increase infections through their collaboration. It

also indicated that viruses and bacteria combine directly in a way that they help each other to penetrate the host cells. The penetration facilitates bac-terial pathogenesis as a result of viral infections, which may increase the risks for infec-tious diseases in the oral cavity. The research thus reflects that viruses and bac-teria exist in a similar niche within the oral cavity, and they collaborate in promoting wellness or disease status in the host cells.

Clinical research by Laheij., et al. indicated that in oral care practices, such as in dentistry, viruses and strains of bacteria cooperate and enhance cross-transmission of infections due to lack of oral health like hygiene pro-cedures. The research dis-closed that the combination of these microorganisms, specif-ically in the oral cavity, facili-tates cross-transmission of healthcare-associated infec-tions, which are mainly acquired through direct contact with blood and saliva of the infected people. Such transmission is also common in people with the corona-virus. Two clinical types of research that have examined the recent cases of corona-virus, mainly the Covid-19 virus, support cross-trans-

mission of the infections by being in direct contact with the blood and saliva of the infected people. The research demonstrated that the unaf-fected individuals, including dental practitioners in oral care settings, are at higher

risks for COVID-19 infections when they come into direct contact with contaminated sharp devices or saliva and other fluids of the affected patients. Similarly, a more recent clinical research that investigated the implications of COVID-19 infections in clinical oral care showed that the virus is mainly trans-mitted through respiratory droplets and direct contact with fluids of infected people (Ather., et al. 2020). As a con-sequence, the virus may combine with other respi-ratory bacteria and cause healthcare-acquired infec-tions that affect the wellness and quality of life of the com-munity or individuals.

Ghinai., et al. explained that coronavirus and other bacteria in the host cells combine in the oral tissues and cause viral and bacterial-associated infections, like res-piratory infections, which are transferred to non-affected individuals through direct contact with the infected persons or by being in contact with objects contaminated with the infections. Such infections can occur during hospital admissions, which occur between the affected patients and service pro-viders. Therefore, removing the viruses and bacteria from

the oral cavity may reduce the transmission of infections to healthy people. Zhang., et al. discussed that current control with a focus on improving oral health through the use of appropriate measures, such as the use of antibiotics and pro-biotics as well as prebiotic supplements might assist in promoting oral health.

Removal of viruses in the oral cavity

The use of antiviral products has been found to be effective in removing harmful viruses in the oral cavity. Clinical research by Asai and Nakashima indicated that the removal of pathogenic viruses in the oral activity through antiviral compounds is a sig-nificant process to prevent and reduce cases of viral infections in the cavities. Sim-ilarly, Peng., et al. showed in the findings that viral removal with the use of an anti-retraction handpiece is more effective in reducing disease infection. The authors shared that an anti-retraction hand-piece with well-designed anti-reflux valves anti-retractive valves are the most strongly recommended method as the preventive measure for cross trans-mission of infectious viral dis-eases. The method is mainly applicable for the removal of the COVID-19 virus during oral care practice, including a dental procedure to prevent the growth of virus-causing infections in the setting. Anti-viral agents are very effective in the removal of virus-causing pathogens in oral

health care because they are cytotoxic and have antiviral-active nucleosides, which make them the potential agents to remove bacteria in the oral cavity. The natural products, such as resveratrol,

curcumin, and indolocarba-zoles, are more effective in removing viruses like HIV and HSVs in oral cavities. These products have a significant role in different pathways. For instance, curcumin, a natural polyphenol compound obtained from the medicinal plant known as the Curcuma longa Linn, acts by downregu-lating the transcription of Human papilloma virus by inhibiting the activator protein 1. Such inhibition pre-vents the viral replication and prevents viruses from growing in the cavities; hence preventing their multipli-cation and spread of infections.

Additionally, removing the main source of viruses that cause viral infections in oral activity also assists in elimi-nating harmful pathogens.

Individuals with viral-related infections can use Chlorhexidine to remove the mains sources of viruses in the oral cavity. Chlorhexidine assists in improving oral health by eliminating infection-causing viral microbes in the oral cavity of people with infectious dis-eases. Further, maintaining oral hygiene help sin removing viruses in the oral cavity. Existing research indi-cates that daily use of fluoride and brushing of teeth daily with appropriate kinds of toothpaste or use of tradi-tional stick method assists in removing viruses in the oral cavities.

Good oral hygiene (Good toothbrush, use of sewak

(miswak) a traditional stick toothbrush and its importance in cleaning teeth Good oral hygiene with the use of a good toothbrush and sewak or miswak (Figure 1) is effective in removing viruses in the mouth. A study by Fukuda., et al. examined the use of the chewing stick and the use of toothbrushes to determine oral hygiene status among primary school children aged 12 years old. The study aimed to examine whether the use of traditional sticks and tooth-brushes remove viruses in the mouth as a way of promoting oral health among primary school children. The study results thus disclosed that despite that, children indi-cated poor hygiene with the use of chewing sticks com-pared with toothbrushes; both methods were useful in improving the status of oral health. The study revealed that daily use of good tooth-brushes and kinds of tooth-paste with one brush improves oral health status in children, which reflects that frequent use of toothbrushes and chewing sticks remove viral-causing pathogens in the oral cavity. The chewing sticks are the most recom-mended traditional methods to use in rural communities because they are readily available and cost-effective for all populations.

In addition to the daily use of toothbrushes and chewing sticks, sewak or miswak method has also been found to be useful in removing the accumulation of viruses in the oral cavity. Saha., et al. con-ducted a descriptive cross-sectional study to examine the efficiency of using miswak as an oral health method to reduce cases of gingivitis in Muslim school children aged between 12 years and 15 years from residential and nonresi-dential institutions in Lucknow city. The status of oral hygiene was assessed after the utilization of miswak to clean their teeth. The results on the use of miswak were compared with the out-comes of students who used toothbrushes and those who combined the two methods of kinds of toothpaste and tooth-brush. The study exhibited better improvement in gingi-vitis conditions among users of miswak compared to stu-dents who used toothbrushes and kinds of toothpaste to brush their teeth. The authors concluded that miswak has strong efficacy in improving and maintaining oral health status than with the use of toothbrushes. The method assists in removing virus-causing pathogens for perio-dontal and dental caries.

Therefore, from a personal point of view, the reviewed articles on the use of tooth-brushes and toothpaste, as well as miswak, provide val-uable information on the efficacy of the methods in removing the accumulation of viruses that cause infections in the oral cavity. Although miswak is more effective than the use of toothbrushes and toothpaste, both methods are useful for viral removal to improve oral health and to maintain oral hygiene status in the cavities. Other natural products, which include the use of floss and mouth-rinsing, have been found to be effective in preventing and reducing the number of viruses that accumulate in the oral cavities. It is well estab-lished that flossing and the use of mouthwash have an indispensable role for effective oral health routine and to prevent oral infections, such as chronic periodontitis and gingivitis. The practices help in removing viral plagues and in controlling their accu-mulation and growth in the oral cavities. As such, using appropriate flossing and mouth-rinsing products has significant clinical benefits in preventing and reducing viral infections in the cavities.

Use of other oral health products to remove accumu-lation of viruses in the mouth Natural products, including flossing and mouth-rinse with Chlorhexidine, have shown significant benefits in viral removal in the oral cavities. This is evident in a rand-omized, double-blind, three-way crossover clinical trial that investigated the efficacy of using Dental Floss and 0.12% Chlorhexidine Glu-conate Mouthrinse in addition to toothbrushing. The study aimed to uncover the effec-tiveness of the flossing and mouth-rinsing in reducing the accumulation of viral plaques and gingival inflammation. The study found that when dental flossing and mouth-rinse with the use of Chlo-rhexidine Gluconate as an adjunct to toothbrushing has string efficacy in reducing gingival inflammation and plaque accumulations than the use of toothbrush alone. The study revealed that the use of such a method assists in improving fresh breath while reducing and preventing the presence of viruses that cause the early formation of plagues in the oral cavity.

Such results are sup-ported in a recent cross-sec-tional descriptive study by Kayombo and Mumghamba that examined oral hygiene practices with the use of toothbrushes, dental flossing, tongue cleaning, gum bleeding when brushing teeth, and the presence of halitosis and hard deposits on the teeth. The study was con-ducted among four hundred workers working in different work stations, including offices, garages, schools, shops, and factories. Based on the quantitative data col-lected, the study found that flossing, mouth rinsing, tongue cleaning, and brushing teeth daily with fre-quent changes in tooth-brushes reduces the inci-dences of halitosis and gum bleeding. The study illus-trated that such oral health practices are closely asso-ciated with the removal of pathogen-causing microbes, which improves people’s socialization, wellness, and quality of life. Further, flossing and mouth rinse for help in preventing the accu-mulation of virus that increase the risks for perio-dontitis and gingivitis. This is supported in a cross�sec-tional study that utilized the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 2011 � 2014. The study investigated the use of dental flossing, inter-dental cleaning and its efficacy in preventing and reducing cases of periodon-titis. The study showed that dental flossing frequently and for approximately 2 to 4 days per week has clinical benefits in reducing the prevalence of periodontitis. The results of the study demonstrated that frequent flossing enhances the removal of inter-proximal plaques, which may help in mitigating the initi-ation and progression of oral diseases.

From the findings and information from the reviewed studies and clinical research, it can be concluded that maintaining oral hygiene by adopting appropriate measures, such as daily brushing of teeth with the toothpaste and changing the toothbrushes daily, dental flossing, and use of Chlorhex-idine Gluconate mouth rinse is effective for viral removal in the oral cavities. Such measures prevent the growth and accumulation of infec-tions-causing pathogens in oral cavities, hence pre-venting the onset of viral and bacterial infections. As a con-sequence, recommendations on the best measures to undertake to improve oral health and oral hygiene are necessary to improve wellness and quality of life.

Recommendation on the importance of oral health to combat coronavirus

The use of antiviral products has been found to be effective in removing harmful viruses in the oral cavity. Clinical research by Asai and Nakashima indicated that the removal of pathogenic viruses in the oral activity through antiviral compounds is a significant process to prevent and reduce cases of viral infections in the cavities.

Maintaining oral hygiene by adopting appropriate measures, such as daily brushing of teeth with the toothpaste and changing the toothbrushes daily, dental flossing, and use of Chlorhexidine Gluconate mouth rinse is effective for viral removal in the oral cavities. Such measures prevent the growth and accumulation of infections-causing pathogens in oral cavities, hence preventing the onset of viral and bacterial infections

Miswak, the traditional teeth-cleaning twig made from a tree, has natural antibacterial qualities.

NAJAT ABDRABBO ALYAFEI

Head of Oral Public Health Operations, Primary Health Care Corporation, Doha, Qatar. Published: April 13, 2020 in EC Dental Science (ECDE) journal (https://www.ecronicon.com/ecde/ECDE-19-01413.php)

10 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020ASIA

India and Bangladeshevacuate millionsahead of cycloneAFP — KOLKATA

Millions of people were being moved to safety yesterday as one of the fiercest cyclones in decades barrelled towards India and Bangladesh, with evacu-ation plans complicated by coronavirus precautions.

Both countries are under various stages of lockdown because of the disease, with infections still surging.

Authorities in Bangladesh planned to evacuate 2.2 million people, fearing cyclone Amphon will be more destructive than Sidr in 2007, when 3,500 people died, mostly from rising seas swamping low-lying areas.

Junior Disaster Management Minister Enamur Rahman said the number of shelters had been doubled to ensure social dis-tancing, and everyone would be made to wear facemasks.

“We are also keeping sep-arate isolation rooms in the shelters for any infected patients,” he said.

But the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) aid group said

coastal dwellers faced “an impossible choice” of braving the cyclone by staying put, or risking being infected with coronavirus in a shelter.

CRS’ Snigdha Chakraborty warned of “grim days ahead” as limited access to safe water and health facilities take their toll on locals whose livelihoods have already been devastated by the pandemic.

Yesterday Amphon was still several hundred kilometres out

to sea in the Bay of Bengal, packing winds of up to 235kmph and gusts of 255kmph.

It was expected to make landfall today afternoon or early evening.

In India, weather office Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra told local media that Amphon would be the most powerful weather system since a super-cyclone in 1999 killed 10,000 people in the eastern state of Odisha.

West Bengal state official Manturam Pakhira said more than 200,000 people were being evacuated from coastal districts and the Sundarbans, a vast mangrove forest area.

“Authorities are also sup-plying masks and sanitisers and making arrangements so that they can maintain safe distance from each other,” he said.

In Odisha, relief commis-sioner Pradeep Kumar Jena said that 20,000 people had been evacuated, with 600 disaster response teams standing by.

“We will evacuate more people depending on the

situation. No one will be allowed to stay in huts with thatched roofs in coastal areas,” Jena said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was praying for everyone’s safety after chairing a virtual meeting on preparations on Monday.

Although not predicted to be on the direct path of the storm, south-eastern Bang-ladesh is home to almost a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, most living in

vast camps of shacks.The first coronavirus cases

were reported there last week, and by Tuesday there were six confirmed cases.

The UN said emergency items such as food, tarpaulins and water purification tablets had been stockpiled.

Bangladesh’s coast, home to 30 million people, and India’s east are regularly battered by cyclones that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands

of people in recent decades.A typhoon, tornadoes and

flooding killed 139,000 in Bang-ladesh in 1991, while in 2008 Cyclone Nargis left 138,000 people dead or missing in Myanmar.

While the storms’ frequency and intensity have increased — blamed partly on climate change — deaths have fallen thanks to faster evacuations, better forecasting and more shelters.

A scientist at India Meteorological Department Earth System Science Organisation, points to a section of the screen showing the position of the Cyclone Amphon to media people at his office in Kolkata, yesterday.

India to help

migrant workers

leave cities, but

infections mount

REUTERS — NEW DELHI

India will run more special trains and buses to allow millions of distressed migrant workers to leave big cities, the federal government said yesterday, as concerns grew in some states over rising infections from those returning home.

Workers are walking long distances to their homes in the countryside ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a vast lockdown in March to control the spread of coronavirus, shutting down all public transport.

After initially trying to keep them in their cities of employment, authorities are now helping them get home.

The federal home ministry said it was working with states to run special trains and buses, and set up rest stops for those on foot.

The move came as India’s confirmed cases surged past 100,000 yesterday, out-stripping China, where the virus emerged late last year.

The concern is that migrants, who are leaving coronavirus hotspots such as Mumbai, New Delhi and Ahmedabad, could be carrying the virus into the hinterland.

Since early May, around 70 percent of all coronavirus cases in the densely populated eastern state of Bihar have been linked to migrant workers, the state’s top health official, Sanjay Kumar, said.

South Asia scrambles to bring home crisis-hit diasporaREUTERS — NEW DELHI/KOCHI/KATHMANDU

South Asian nations are scram-bling to repatriate hundreds of thousands of migrants stuck abroad without work due to the coronavirus crisis — a huge challenge that risks sparking social unrest and spreading COVID-19, labour experts and researchers say.

About 40 million South Asians work overseas, mainly in the oil-rich Gulf, sending vital remittances back home. But economic fallout from the pan-demic means many could be jobless for a long time, putting pressure on their home coun-tries to step in.

Along with India, which is

carrying out one of the world’s biggest repatriation missions, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are rushing to establish quarantine centres and allocate emergency funds for the homecomers.

Receiving so many of them at once threatens to overwhelm fragile public health systems and a dwindling jobs market in the region, which is home to a fifth of the world’s population.

“You have a whole lot of people who are unemployed, who cannot be absorbed in the economic system... and at the same time governmental sub-sidies and aid or benefits may not be reaching all of them,” said Nilanjan Ghosh, a Director at the New Delhi-based

Observer Research Foundation (ORF) think-tank.

“The ultimate result is going to be conflict — in all forms. That is the biggest risk,” he said, highlighting the possibility of food riots.

Besides migrant workers, regional governments are working to repatriate students with expired visas and vul-nerable citizens such as pregnant women who have been stranded overseas due to travel bans and closed borders.

India put commercial jets, military aircraft and naval warships into action earlier this month to bring back nearly a million Indians from neighbouring countries, the Middle East, Singapore, Britain

and the United States.Nepali officials said they

expected as many as 400,000 migrant workers back — about 100,000 of them immediately — mainly from the Gulf and Malaysia after its lockdown is likely relaxed on June 2.

Such mass movements of people have raised concerns about the risk of increased coronavirus infections in the region, which has about 179,000 confirmed cases, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

“All efforts must be made to ensure that... community trans-mission, which is certainly a risk, must be avoided,” said Shabarinath Nair, South Asia migration specialist at the

International Labour Organi-zation (ILO).

Indians returning home will be screened at the airport for COVID-19 symptoms before they depart and only those who show no signs of the illness will be allowed to board their flights.

Once they land, they will be quarantined in hotels, college hostels and empty houses for two weeks, the government has said.

Sandhya Sitoula, a Kath-mandu-based advocate on migrants’ rights, said Nepal needed two million testing kits and more quarantine facilities for workers who come back as there were currently only enough to house 10,000 new people.

People wearing face masks walk through a shopping district in central yesterday. Almost 100 people have died and 7,000 cases of COVID-19 have been detected in Australia.

Students in Australia return to schoolREUTERS — SYDNEY

Children in Australia’s most populated state will return to school full-time next week, a major step towards normalising life amid the coronavirus pandemic, as the nation yesterday recorded its 100th fatality from the disease.

While a grim milestone, Aus-tralia’s death toll remains well below the fatalities reported in North America, Europe and other parts of Asia despite the Pacific country’s earlier exposure to the pandemic.

The 100th fatality was a 93-year-old woman from a care home outside Sydney, the origin of 19 deaths, local media reported.

The directive from New South

Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian to reopen schools full-time lifts childcare responsibil-ities for the parents and carers of around 800,000 children in public schools as Australia seeks to stem a surge in unemployment and restart the economy.

“From now on, we don’t ever want to see a situation where all schools are closed,” Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney, although she cautioned that individual, temporary closures were likely to contain future outbreaks.

The decision caught the state’s teachers union by sur-prise, with Teachers Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos saying it “caused a lot of concern, frustration and anger among teachers and principals.”

Sri Lanka threatens to leave

international organisationsAP — COLOMBO

Sri Lanka’s President said yesterday that he will withdraw the country from any interna-tional organisation that contin-uously “targets” the military with allegations of human rights violations during its long civil war.

Speaking at an event marking the 11th anniversary of the defeat of ethnic Tamil rebels during the 26-year war, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said as a former mil-itary officer he was aware of the sacrifices made by soldiers, and he will not allow attempts to dis-credit their dignity.

Sri Lanka in March withdrew from a joint reso-lution at the UN Human Rights Council in which it pledged to investigate allegations of human rights violations against

both the military and the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels.

Yesterday’s ceremony was only attended by officials because of restrictions against large gatherings during the coronavirus outbreak.

“In a situation where even leaders of powerful countries have emphatically stated that they would not allow any action against their war heroes, in a small country like ours where our war heroes have sacrificed so much, I will not allow anyone to exert undue pressure on them or harass them,” Rajapaksa said.

“If any international body or organization continuously targets our country and our war heroes, using baseless allega-tions, I will also not hesitate to withdraw Sri Lanka from such bodies or organisations.”

Australia watchdog suggests news boycott of Google and FacebookAFP — SYDNEY

Australia’s competition watchdog suggested yesterday that local media could organise a “collective boycott” of Google and Facebook to force the tech giants to pay for news they put on their platforms.

The radical idea was among a series of possible bargaining tools put forward by the Aus-tralian Competition and Con-sumer Commission (ACCC) as it considers a mandatory code of conduct for the tech firms.

Other mechanisms laid out in a 33-page “Concepts Paper” included bilateral negotiations between Australian media organisations and the two tech behemoths and collective bar-gaining involving all the coun-try’s news companies.

But acknowledging the global reach and immense power of Google and Facebook, it said an “alternative bar-gaining framework” could be needed if direct negotiations fail.

“A collective boycott, or the threat of a collective boycott, may encourage each of Google and Facebook to offer news media businesses more appro-priate remuneration for the use of their content,” it said.

In a process being closely watched across the world, Aus-tralia last month announced plans to force major Internet firms to share advertising rev-enues earned from news content featured in their services.

While the initial targets of the anti-trust move involved a

range of tech firms, including Twitter and Verizon Media, the ACCC said Tuesday it was nar-rowing its focus to Google and Facebook.

“Facebook and Google were the digital platforms currently benefitting from a significant imbalance in bargaining power in their commercial negotia-tions with Australian news media businesses,” it said.

The ACCC is tasked with drawing up a “code of conduct” for payments and addressing other competition concerns with the tech titans.

Its concept paper posed a series of questions about what kind of news should be com-pensated and how best to determine its value, and gave stakeholders until June 5 to submit recommendations.

8 virus cases among returnees from Malaysia: Myanmar

REUTERS — YANGON

Myanmar authorities said yesterday said they have found eight coronavirus cases among scores of people who returned from Malaysia, where the authorities have recently been detaining undocumented migrants.

Myanmar officials said the new cases were detected in five different places from among 120 people who flew home from Malaysia this month. “All of them are in quarantine,” Ministry of Health spokesman Than Naing Soe said.

Myanmar has reported 191 cases of the coronavirus and six people have died.

Malaysian immigration authorities detained more than 1,800 migrants in at least two raids as part of its efforts to contain the spread of the coro-navirus, officials there said.

Amphon was still several hundred kilometres out to sea in the Bay of Bengal, packing winds of up to 235kmph and gusts of 255kmph. The cyclone was expected to make landfall today afternoon or early evening.

11WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 ASIA

Beijing says Trump ‘shirking responsibility’ to WHOAFP — BEIJING

Beijing yesterday accused Donald Trump of smearing China and shirking American responsibilities to the World Health Organization (WHO), after the US president threatened to pull out of the UN health body.

The American leader has been locked in a bitter war of words with Beijing, alleging it covered up the initial outbreak in central China late last year before the disease spread glo-bally, causing economic devas-tation and claiming lives across the planet.

Trump on Monday called the WHO a “puppet of China”

before tweeting a letter he had sent to the organisation’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus threatening to make permanent a temporary freeze on funding from the US.

China in response accused Trump of trying to “smear China” and “shirk responsi-bility and bargain over its international obligations to the WHO”, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at

a regular press briefing yesterday.

“The US leader’s open letter you mentioned is full of hints, ‘perhaps’, and ‘maybes’, and tries to use specious methods to mislead the public, and achieve the goals of smearing China’s anti-virus efforts, and shirk responsibility for the United States’ own insufficient response,” Zhao said.

“The US tries to use China as an issue to shirk responsi-bility and bargain over its inter-national obligations to the WHO. This is a miscalculation and the US has picked the wrong target.”

More than 317,000 people have died of COVID-19 out of

nearly 4.8 million infections worldwide, and governments are scrambling to contain the virus while seeking ways to resuscitate their hammered economies.

Zhao added that the US was attempting to deflect from its own “insufficient pre-vention and control” against the virus.

With more fatalities and cases in the United States than any other country by far, under-pressure Trump has blamed the WHO for not doing enough to combat its initial spread.

“The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China,”

Trump’s letter read. China urges the US to “stop

shifting the blame” and instead focus on containing the virus, Zhao said at a regular press conference.

On Monday, the WHO said it would launch an independent review of the response to the coronavirus pandemic, and Chinese President Xi Jinping said China supports a “compre-hensive evaluation” of the global response to the pandemic after it has been brought under control.

Governments including the US and Australia had previously called for an investigation into the origins of the virus.

But Zhao said yesterday that

the draft motion currently under discussion at the World Health Assembly is “completely different from the so-called ‘independent international inquiry’ into the pandemic pre-viously mentioned by Australia”.

He added that Australia should be willing to “change its ways” and “completely abandon its political manipulation of the pandemic”.

Beijing has furiously denied US allegations that it played down the threat, and Xi reit-erated at the WHO’s World Health Assembly on Monday that his nation had been “open, transparent and responsible” during the crisis.

UN says civilian casualties by Taliban, Afghan forces risingAP — KABUL

The United Nations yesterday called for an immediate reduction of violence in Afghanistan, warning that civilian casualties at the hands of both the Taliban and Afghan security forces are on the increase. The UN mission also expressed concern about stepped-up attacks and brutality of the IS militants.

A horrific attack last week at a maternity hospital in the Afghan capital has not been claimed by any group, but the United States said it bears all the hallmarks of Afghanistan’s IS affiliate — targeting the country’s minority Shias in a neighbourhood of Kabul that IS militants have repeatedly attacked in the past.

The Taliban denied involvement in the maternity hospital attack, which killed 24 people, including two infants and several new mothers.

The UN report blamed the Taliban for killing or injuring a total of 208 civilians last month and also said that operations by Afghan forces in April had killed or injured 172 civilians. Civilians are often caught in the crossfire of the fighting and Afghan forces say they are targeting the insur-gents, not civilians, in anti-mil-itant operations.

Taliban spokesman Zabi-hullah Muhahed disputed the UN figures in a tweet and

blamed “blind airstrikes and artillery fire by US and internal forces” for the casualties.

“Parties have committed to finding a peaceful solution and should protect the lives of all Afghans and not jeopardize people’s hope for an end to the war,” said Deborah Lyons, the UN chief’s special represent-ative to Afghanistan.

She added that “intra-Afghan peace negotiations need to start as soon as possible.”

The UN’s call for an end to violence comes as Washing-ton’s special peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, began another round of talks with the Taliban to press them to start talking to the newly reconciled Afghan political leadership in Kabul and implement an immediate reduction in vio-lence, said the US State Department.

Khalilzad, who is the architect of a US-Taliban deal signed in February, has been trying to salvage the agreement and jump-start intra-Afghan negotiations between the Taliban and Kabul government.

A p o w e r - s h a r i n g agreement on Sunday between President Ashraf Ghani and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah raised expectations that the next round of the US-Taliban peace deal, which calls for negotia-tions between the Taliban and Afghan leaders, can start.

China urged the US to “stop shifting the blame” and instead focus on containing the virus.

COVID-19 patients testing positive after recovery aren’t infectious: StudyBLOOMBERG — SEOUL

Patients who test positive for the coronavirus weeks after recovering from COVID-19 probably aren’t capable of transmitting the infection, research from South Korea shows.

Scientists from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 COVID-19 survivors who had tested positive for the corona-virus after their illness had apparently resolved, as indicated by a previous negative test result. The so-called re-positive patients weren’t found to have spread any lingering infection, and virus samples collected from them couldn’t be grown in culture, indicating the patients were shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles.

The findings, reported late Monday, are a positive sign for regions looking to open up as

more patients recover from the pandemic that has sickened at least 4.8 million people. The emerging evidence from South Korea suggests those who have recovered from COVID-19 present no risk of spreading the coronavirus when physical dis-tancing measures are relaxed.

The results mean health authorities in South Korea will no longer consider people infectious after recovering from the illness. Research last month showed that so-called PCR tests for the coronavirus’s nucleic acid can’t distinguish between dead and viable virus particles, potentially giving the wrong impression that someone who tests positive for the virus remains infectious.

South Korean authorities said that under revised protocols, people should no longer be required to test negative for the virus before returning to work or school after they have recovered

from their illness and completed their period of isolation.

“Under the new protocols, no additional tests are required for cases that have been dis-charged from isolation,” the

Korean CDC said in a report. The agency said it will now refer to “re-positive” cases as “PCR re-detected after discharge from isolation.”

Some coronavirus patients

have tested positive again for the virus up to 82 days after becoming infection. Almost all of the cases for which blood tests were taken had antibodies against the virus.

A worker sprays disinfectant in a classroom at a high school in Seoul, yesterday.

Malaysia oppn leader says current government is ‘fearful’BLOOMBERG — KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said it’s “very unlikely” the current government will last until the next election, even as his coalition lacks a simple majority in parliament.

“If the current government actually had the confidence, they would have conducted the affairs of parliament in a more usual manner,” Anwar said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Haslinda Amin.

“They did not.”“And clearly they were

fearful of the success — of pos-sibility of success — of the vote of no confidence. So the issue of the legitimacy of the gov-ernment is in question now,” he added.

Meanwhile, his Pakatan Harapan coalition will focus on ensuring its 107 lawmakers, of the total 222, remain intact, he added. The country is set to hold its next election before or in September 2023.

Malaysia avoided a

challenge to Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin during the first parliamentary sitting since he took power, scheduling only a single day to accommodate a formal speech from the king. That left no time for the oppo-sition to start a motion of no confidence against Muhyiddin, who rose to power in March after a weeklong political crisis.

In yesterday interview, Anwar avoided answering whether he would be the oppo-sition coalition’s choice for prime minister instead of

former leader Mahathir Mohamad. “It’s not about per-sonalities here,” he said.

Anwar has long waited to take the reins as prime minister from Mahathir, both in the 1990s and again after the pair joined forces for a shock election win in 2018 on an anti-corruption platform.

Disagreement over a timeline for the transition helped bring down the coalition in February, with Mahathir’s abrupt resignation setting off a power struggle that saw

Muhyiddin emerge as the sur-prise victor.

Longtime rivals Anwar and Mahathir have since reunited, releasing a joint statement on May 9 to say “it’s time” to restore the election mandate they won in 2018.

The truce looks fragile: Although Anwar is the formal leader of the coalition, he skipped a briefing Mahathir held after the parliament’s sitting in which the former premier spoke on behalf of the bloc.

Philippine govtreleases over18,000 inmatessince March 17ANATOLIA — ANKARA

Over 18,000 prisoners have been released over the past two months in the Philippines, the island nation’s top court said.

The Supreme Court of the Philippines in a statement said that 18,355 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), or prisoners, were released between March 17 and May 15, 2020.

The court held 795 video-conferencing hearings of cases of PDLs from May 4 to 15, 2020, it added.

There have been reports of deaths allegedly due to COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, among prisoners.

However, the Bureau of Corrections, which manages prisons, has offered no expla-nation so far.

According to the Philip-pines health department, 205 new infections were detected today, taking the national tally of confirmed virus cases to 12,718.

The death toll has risen to 831 after seven more patients succumbed to the virus.

Some 2,729 patients, meanwhile, have recovered from the illness and released from medical facilities thus far.

Jakarta extends lockdown measures till June 4AGENCIES— JAKARTA

Indonesia’s capital city Jakarta yesterday extended its large-scale social curbs until June 4, maintaining restrictions that limited public transportation and gatherings in a bid to contain the spread of the coro-navirus.

Indonesia has allowed regional health authorities to impose their own measures if the health ministry finds suffi-cient evidence of a rise in coro-navirus cases.

“The more people stay at home, the less transmission there is,” Jakarta governor, Anies Baswedan, said in a video conference. “These could be the final (restrictions), if we’re disciplined.”

He cited people leaving their houses at dusk and night during the holy month of Ramadan as the reason behind the extension.

Jakarta has also shut its schools and most shops and malls have chosen to close.

The city of about 10 million

people has recorded 6,155 coro-navirus infections and 470 deaths.

Indonesia has reported 18,496 virus infections and 1,221 fatalities so far, the highest death toll in Southeast Asia.

Also yesterday, Indonesian government urged Saudi Arabia to announce a final decision and end speculation on whether the annual Islamic Hajj pil-grimage will be canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Police officers stop a number of vehicles passing at the entrance to the Merak Port in Cilegon, Banten, Indonesia, yesterday.

Seven soldiers dead in Pakistan militant attacksREUTERS — QUETTA

Militants killed seven Pakistani soldiers in two attacks in the country’s mineral-rich south-western province of Balo-chistan, the military said yesterday.

Balochistan is at the centre of the $60bn China Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of Beijing’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure project.

But separatist, militants and ethnic violence afflicts the impoverished province, fuelling concern about the security of projects such as a planned energy link from western China to Pakistan’s southern port of Gwadar.

Six of the soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device as they were returning late on Monday night from a routine patrol to their camp in Pir Ghaib in the Mach district of Balochistan, the mil-itary’s media wing said in a statement.

Another soldier was killed during an exchange of fire with militants in the Mand area of Kech district, it said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Balochistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan.

Mineral-rich Balochistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces, but its roughly seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.

Thousands of paramilitary troops carry out security checks and help police in maintaining law and order in restive parts of Pakistan.

12 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020EUROPE

Defections rob Macron party of parliamentary majorityAFP — PARIS

Left-leaning lawmakers defected yesterday to rob Pres-ident Emmanuel Macron’s party of its outright majority in France’s National Assembly in a symbolic but non-paralysing setback for the embattled reformist leader.

Seventeen members of Macron’s La Republique En Marche (LREM) party said they had formed a new political grouping named “Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity” (EDS) to pursue greener policies, “modernise” the political system, and reduce social inequalities.

“After COVID-19, nothing will be like before,” they said in a statement and insisted: “we can do more and better in the National Assembly.”

The 577-member assembly is the lower house of par-liament, but has the final say on most legislation over the upper house or Senate.

Macron’s then brand-new LREM took 308 seats in 2017 elections that saw the centrist leader swept to power from relative obscurity.

Lawmakers have quit the party at a trickle since then, and it was finally left with 288 seats yesterday — one fewer than the 289 required for an outright majority.

The governing party insisted that yesterday’s loss was not “cataclysmic”, as it could continue to rely on smaller, allied parties for a voting majority in the assembly.

Macron’s popularity has zigzagged as he has fought a succession of political battles starting with the so-called “yellow vest” rebellion of 2018-2019 that was sparked by wide-spread anger against a leader seen by critics as the president of the rich and out of touch with ordinary people.

That was followed early this year by France’s longest

continuous transport strike over the former investment banker’s plans to reform the country’s pension system.

This month, an opinion poll showed only about a third of French people had confidence in Macron to manage the coun-try’s problems.

This came as the country looked to Macron to spearhead the fight against the corona-virus outbreak that has seen the economy tank in spite of several billions of euros in gov-ernment interventions to prop up businesses and save jobs.

One of the vice-presidents of the new EDS grouping is Cedric Villani, who opted to stand as an independent can-didate for Paris mayor in March local elections after Macron chose someone else to rep-resent the party.

Villani denied yesterday that any “rebellion” was at play.

In its declaration, the EDS listed 15 priorities that included

“reindustr ial is ing” the economy, seeking “real trans-parency” in politics and boosting a public health system

caught ill-prepared for the coronavirus crisis.

Two-thirds of the group’s members are women.

Former La Republique En Marche party members of parliament and co-presidents of the newly-formed parliamentary group ‘Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity’, Paula Forteza (right) and Matthieu Orphelin speak to journalists, in Paris, yesterday.

Seventeen members of Macron’s La Republique En Marche party said they had formed a new political grouping named ‘Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity’ to pursue greener policies, ‘modernise’ the political system, and reduce social inequalities.

Spain lifts ban on flights from Italy, but tourism still off cardsREUTERS — MADRID

Spain lifted yesterday a ban on direct flights and ships from Italy but retained a block on cruise ships and a quarantine for inbound travellers as a survey showed the coronavirus outbreak had also put locals off travelling.

A reduced death rate from COVID-19 has encouraged Spain, with the world’s fourth highest number of infections, to

begin easing one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.

But the tourism-dependent economy is likely to have to wait until late June to welcome hol-idaymakers back.

Madrid surprised its European partners by intro-ducing a two-week quarantine last week. Flights from Italy had been blocked since March 11.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is preparing to ask par-liament to extend until late June

a state of emergency which has helped limit infections but also brought unprecedented restric-tions on borders and movement, causing huge economic damage.

The Bank of Spain forecasts the economy could contract between 9.5 percent-12.4 percent in 2020.

The pandemic has become Spaniards’ biggest worry, and most of them plan to change habits when they are free to move, according to a poll by the

government’s Centre for Socio-logical Studies released yes-terday. Just 14 percent of those surveyed said they planned to travel abroad when the lockdown is lifted. Big purchases are on hold — only 4.2 percent were thinking about buying a new car and 3.4 percent a house.

Restaurants will have to coax back the 30 percent of people who said they preferred not eat outside their homes.

While the poll reported 48.4

percent of Spaniards do not trust the government, it showed 75 percent want to leave criticism aside for now and back authorities.

At the peak of the outbreak, Spain was losing hundreds of citizens a day as stretched hos-pitals and care homes struggled to treat patients, but on Monday it reported the lowest overnight death toll in two months, 59, up to a total of 27,709 deaths, with 250,000 cases.

France reports fewer virus deaths, but uptick in cases

REUTERS — PARIS

France reported a small dip in the daily tally of new corona-virus deaths on Monday, though it also saw a slight uptick in confirmed cases, a week after authorities started easing lockdown restrictions.

France’s death toll is the fourth highest worldwide, after the United States, Britain and Italy, and its health ministry, announcing the latest figures, urged people to remain cau-tious and to respect social dis-tancing rules.

It reported 131 further fatalities over the past 24 hours from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, or a slowing increase of 0.5 percent, bringing the total death tally to 28,239.

A surge in fatalities in retirement homes pushed up France’s daily death toll to 483 on Sunday. But over the last 24 hours, those homes only reg-istered eight new deaths.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is still active,” the ministry said.

The number of new con-firmed cases of the virus rose by 492, or 0.3 percent, the ministry said, as fears of a second wave of infections linger in France, where junior high schools are now reo-pening their doors in some regions.

On Sunday it had seen only 120 new coronavirus cases, or a daily increase of 0.1 percent.

The number of people in intensive care with COVID-19 infection declined by 4.3 percent to 1,998, below the 2,000 threshold for the first time since March 22.

The number of people in hospitals fell to 19,015 from 19,361 on Sunday.

MPs in UK flay‘inadequate’ virustesting by govtAFP — LONDON

British lawmakers yesterday heaped fresh pressure on the government for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, calling its testing regime “inadequate” in the early stages.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for his initial response to the global pandemic, and has faced weeks of pressure about the availability of tests for the virus.

The country has seen 34,796 deaths — the second-highest toll in the world behind the United States — and 246,406 cases, according to the latest figures.

But despite a recent surge in daily tests and the expansion of eligibility, MPs on a parlia-mentary committee said: “Testing capacity has been inadequate for most of the pandemic so far.”

“Capacity was not increased early enough or boldly enough. Capacity drove strategy, rather than strategy driving capacity,” they said in a 19-page letter to Johnson.

The findings by the House of Commons science and

technology committee come after six sessions of evidence involving scientists, public health experts and government advisers, which also looked at other countries’ responses to the virus.

On Sunday, Britain carried out 100,678 tests for coronavirus, but only 1,215 tests were per-formed on March 10 — just two weeks before a nationwide lockdown was ordered and as cases spiked.

MPs said there was “con-sensus... that testing capacity has been too low”.

Reacting to the report, work and pensions minister Therese Coffey told the BBC: “The capacity is there.”

The government has come under sustained pressure about the spread of the virus in care homes, and the testing of frontline health and social care workers. Official data published last week indicated that more than 12,500 deaths of care home residents were linked to the virus.

The committee said aban-doning community testing on March 12 left care home residents and workers unable to get tests

“at a time when the spread of the virus was at its most rampant”.

The Guardian yesterday cited an unpublished government study that said temporary workers transmitted the virus between care homes.

Ministers have previously claimed to have “thrown a pro-tective ring around care homes”.

The committee said a failure by government body Public Health England to publish its testing policy was “unacceptable for a decision that may have had such significant consequences”, it added.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who maintains care homes were a government pri-ority, on April 2 announced that 100,000 tests a day would be conducted by the end of that month.

MPs said that was “more of a personal initiative by the sec-retary of state” than a decision based on public health or scien-tific advice. But they suggested that having that capacity could have given the government “more options” at an earlier stage of the pandemic.

Lack of testing capacity was

also a factor for the decision to stop contact tracing on March 12, the committee said.

Hancock has made an army of contact tracers a key part of a new approach to tackling the spread of the virus, alongside wider community testing and the roll out of a smartphone app.

He announced on Monday that 21,000 contact tracers have been recruited, and testing has been expanded to include eve-ryone aged five and over with symptoms. A new target of 200,000 tests per day has been set for the end of this month.

Commuters at Waterloo station during the morning rush hour, in London, yesterday.

German court limits power of spy agency’s overseas buggingREUTERS — KARLSRUHE

Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled yesterday that the surveillance of telephones and Internet traffic of foreign nationals abroad by the BND intelligence agency violates parts of the constitution.

It is the first time the court, acting on complaints from foreign journalists and Reporters Without Borders press freedom watchdog, has ruled that the BND is subject to Germany’s constitution for its activities abroad. The ruling said that telephone and internet sur-veillance of foreigners abroad by the BND violated the freedom of the press and right to privacy in telecommunications enshrined in the country’s constitution, or Basic Law.

“The German state authority is bound by the fundamental rights of the Basic Law, not only within the German territory,” said the court, adding further safeguards and oversight are required.

The complainants were mostly journalists reporting on human rights violations in conflict zones and in authoritarian states who were concerned about legal provisions allowing the BND to collect, store and analyse data via telecoms monitoring abroad.

Reporters Without Borders has argued that existing rules put informants in danger.

“We hope to strengthen source protection internationally in the digital space,” Christian Mihr, director of Reporters Without Borders, Germany, told Inforadio just before the ruling.

‘Children with COVID-19 may be less contagious than adults’REUTERS — LONDON

There are tentative signs that children may not spread the novel coronavirus as much as adults, two top epidemiologists said yesterday, though they cautioned that the bad news was that human immunity may not last that long.

As Europe and the United States start to return to work after lockdowns imposed to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, world leaders are trying to work out when it is safe for children and students to get back to their studies.

Dr Rosalind Eggo, an infec-tious disease modeller at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said she had seen some indications from research that children may not

spread the novel coronavirus as much as adults.

“There are hints that children are less infectious but it is not certain,” Eggo, who sits on a panel that advises the British government about trans-mission of COVID-19 among children and within schools, told the science committee of the House of Lords, the second chamber of Britain’s parliament. Eggo said that for children who show no sign of being infected it was very difficult to tell how contagious they were, though she said there was a little bit of evidence starting to appear that there may be a lower possibility of infection from them.

“We need more studies to really pin this down as it is so important,” Eggo said.

She said that her research

had shown that there was a much lower level of sympto-matic infection in those under 20 years-old — perhaps as little as 20 percent of infections showing clinical symptoms.

“We think that children are less likely to get it so far but it is not certain,” she said.

“We are very certain that children are less likely to have severe outcomes.” Eggo could not immediately be reached for further comment on the research she was referring to. John Edmunds, a member of Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told the same science committee hearing that it was striking how children did not seem to play much of a role in spreading the novel coronavirus.

“It is unusual that children

don’t seem to play much of a role in transmission because for most respiratory viruses and bacteria they play a central role, but in this they don’t seem to,” said Edmunds, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“There is only one docu-mented outbreak associated with a school — which is amazing; you would normally expect most of the outbreaks to be associated with schools but yet in global literature there is only one documented study,” Edmunds said, citing a study of a French secondary school.

He said that, broadly, the evidence of transmission from asymptomatic individuals — which may be about 30 or 40 percent of adults — was not clear.

13WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020 EUROPE / AMERICAS

Russian PM recovers from coronavirus as infection rates slowAFP — MOSCOW

Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin returned to his duties yesterday after recovering from the coronavirus, as officials said the crisis was easing despite total infections approaching 300,000.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree reinstating Mishustin as the head of gov-ernment, nearly three weeks after the prime minister announced on television he had tested positive for coronavirus.

Mishustin checked himself into hospital and his deputy was named interim prime minister, but he continued to participate in meetings via video-link wearing a suit and tie.

The 54-year-old former tax chief was appointed prime min-ister in a surprise government shake-up earlier this year but had little time to make an impact before the coronavirus pan-demic hit.

After resuming his full duties, Mishustin appeared with other senior officials in a televised video-conference with Putin, who congratulated him on beating the virus.

“The last few tests, the doctors tell me, were negative, so you can get fully back to work, although you were already working despite the disease,” Putin said.

Mishustin’s reinstatement came after health officials reported 9,263 new infections in Russia over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 299,941, the second-highest after the United States.

He was just one of several Russian officials to have been infected, including the ministers of culture, education and con-struction, as well as Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Yesterday’s tally saw new

cases fall below 10,000 for the fourth day in a row, after Mon-day’s count saw new infections under 9,000 for the first time since the beginning of May.

Putin repeated that the crisis was easing in Russia, telling offi-cials: “In the last two-three days, even yesterday, the situation has been changing as needed, in the right direction.” Authorities have credited a nationwide lockdown and widespread testing over the past two months for slowing the rate of new infections.

The Kremlin last week eased nationwide anti-virus measures imposed in March and parts of the country have been gradually lifting lockdown orders.

Moscow, where most of Rus-sia’s cases have been reported, remains on strict lockdown until the end of May, with residents only allowed to leave their homes for brief trips to a shop, to walk dogs or to travel to essential jobs with a permit.

The number of coronavirus deaths recorded in Russia has been much lower than in coun-tries with similar rates of infection, with a total of 2,837 fatalities as of yesterday.

Critics have accused author-ities of under-reporting deaths to downplay the scale of the crisis in Russia.

Officials say they are only

counting deaths directly caused by the virus — unlike many countries who count nearly all deaths of those infected — and say Russia was able to better prepare for the pandemic as it came later to the country.

Putin on yesterday urged officials to ensure economic measures put in place to assist Russians and medical workers were being properly imple-mented, after medics com-plained that promised bonuses for working during the pan-demic were not being paid.

He also called this week for more effort to help the emerging hotspot of Dagestan in Russia’s

North Caucasus, after a top official this weekend said nearly 700 people may have died from the virus in the region, including 40 medics.

Dagestan’s biggest celebrity, Mixed Martial Arts fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, appealed to residents to follow containment rules as his father was put on a ventilator after catching the coronavirus.

The undefeated UFC light-weight champion took to Instagram late Monday to urge people in the southern Russian region to be “disciplined” and to “listen to our doctors” during the epidemic.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin takes part in a video conference call, in Moscow, yesterday.

WHO states agree to independent probe of virus responseAFP — GENEVA

World Health Organisation member states agreed yesterday to an independent probe into the UN agency’s coronavirus response as US criticism mounted over its handling of the pandemic.

Countries taking part in the WHO’s annual assembly, being held virtually for the first time, adopted a resolution by con-sensus urging a joint response to the crisis.

The resolution, tabled by the European Union, called for an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of the international response to the pandemic, which has so far infected more than 4.8 million people and killed over 318,000.

It said the investigation should include a probe of “the actions of WHO and their

time-lines pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The United States did not dis-associate itself from the con-sensus as some had feared after Washington chastised the WHO on the first day of the assembly on Monday and lashed out further against China over its role in the outbreak.

US President Donald Trump threatened late Monday to pull the United States out of the WHO, accusing it of botching the global coronavirus response and of being a “puppet of China”.

His comments, which drew a harsh rebuke from Beijing, came after his health secretary Alex Azar earlier in the day insisted the WHO’s “failure” to obtain and provide vital infor-mation on COVID-19 had proved deadly.

“We must be frank about one

of the primary reasons this out-break spun out of control: there was a failure by this organisation to obtain the information that the world needed, and that failure cost many lives,” Azar said in a video address to the WHO’s assembly.

He demanded an inde-pendent review of “every aspect” of the UN health agency’s response to the pandemic.

While WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday welcomed the call for a review, he insisted there was no need for a dramatic overhaul of the organisation.

What the global community needs to do, he said, is to “strengthen, implement and finance the systems and organi-sations it has — including WHO.” Trump has been locked in a bitter spat with Beijing, alleging it

covered up the initial outbreak in China late last year before the disease unleashed death and eco-nomic devastation across the planet. With more fatalities and cases in the United States than any other country by far, the under-pressure US president has blamed the WHO for not doing enough to combat its initial spread.

Trump had already sus-pended US funding to the UN body, and after his White House comments on Monday, he tweeted a letter he had sent to Tedros threatening to make that freeze permanent and withdraw from the organisation.

This is turn prompted a harsh reaction from Beijing which said yesterday that Washington was “shirking responsibility”.

On the sidelines of the esca-lating row, the EU yesterday

stepped up its support for the WHO.

“This is the time for solidarity, not the time for finger-pointing or for undermining multilateral cooperation,” EU foreign affairs spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson told reporters in Brussels.

Yesterday’s resolution at the WHO assembly — which is not binding and mentioned no coun-tries by name — also called for nations to commit to ensuring “transparent, equitable and timely access” to any treatments or vaccines developed against COVID-19. And it addressed the controversial issue of the origin of the virus, which first emerged in China late last year, urging the WHO to help investigate “the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population”.

Hungary rejects

EU court ruling on

asylum-seekers

held at borderREUTERS — BUDAPEST

Hungary will not accept a ruling by the European Union’s top court that four asylum-seekers stuck in a transit zone on the Hungarian-Serbian border should be released, a security aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban said yesterday.

The Court of Justice of the European Union reviewed the case of two Afghan and two Iranian nationals who arrived in Hungary from Serbia in late 2018 and early 2019 and applied for asylum from the Roszke transit zone on the border.

Their applications were rejected by Hungary, which ordered them to return to Serbia, but Belgrade would not admit them. The EU court ruled last week that the asylum-seekers had effectively been detained in the transit zone camp on the border and that a local court should release them immediately.

“The government does not accept the ruling of the EU’s top court...about the transit zones,” Gyorgy Bakondi said, according to a government statement.

Bakondi said the transit zones were a part of Hungary’s system of border protection and migrants currently stuck on the Balkans route posed a “public health threat” amid the coronavirus outbreak.

He said Hungary would use all legal means to get the EU ruling reviewed. A government spokesman did not say what concrete steps the government would take but said the ruling unacceptable “in a political sense”.

Nationalist Orban, one of the most vocal opponents of immigration into Europe, won a third term in power in 2018 on a strong anti-immigration agenda which he has pushed ever since the 2015 migration crisis.

Half of Chile Senateand four ministersplaced in quarantineAFP — SANTIAGO

Around half of Chile’s 50-member senate and four ministers have been placed in quarantine after coming into contact with at least three colleagues infected with the novel coronavirus, officials said on Monday, as jobless protesters in a poor area of Santiago clashed with police to demand food aid.

Finance Minister Ignacio Briones and Chief of Staff Felipe Ward both wrote on Twitter that they had tested negative for the virus but were in quarantine until a second test is conducted.

Briones said he was tested on Friday, due to his “regular contact with” infected senator Jorge Pizarro on the Senate finance committee, and has since begun “preventative

quarantine.” The ministers of the interior and social devel-opment are also in isolation.

At the end of last week, around 20 legislators began iso-lation after meeting with Pizarro and another infected senator. Last Wednesday, Chile recorded a 60 percent spike in daily coronavirus cases despite a month and a half of prevent-ative measures, including a selective lockdown.

Last week, the government imposed a total lockdown on the capital Santiago, which has recorded more than 80 percent of the country’s 46,000 cases. There had also been 478 deaths as of Monday.

Violence broke out Monday in El Bosque, a crowded, poor area on the outskirts of San-tiago, as angry people wielding sticks erected barricades and threw rocks at riot police, who

fought back with tear gas and water cannon.

“It is not because of the quarantine. It is aid, food, what people are asking for right now,” Veronica Abarca, who

lives in El Bosque, said.The protests came one day

after the government of Pres-ident Sebastian Pinera said it would distribute 2.5 million packages of food to the poorest

people in Chile. Last month, the government said it would hand out vouchers worth around $300 each to some 4.5 million low-income people, but the money was never distributed.

A woman is detained after shouting slogans against riot police at a poor neighbourhood where people are protesting the lack of help from the government during a general quarantine imposed due to a surge in fresh coronavirus cases, in Santiago, Chile.

Czech Republic sees biggest rise in new virus casesREUTERS — PRAGUE

The Czech Republic reported yesterday its biggest daily rise in new coronavirus cases in four weeks, at a time when it is relaxing most of its restrictions on business and movement.

The health ministry, reporting data for Monday, said there had been 111 new cases, taking the overall total to 8,604 cases as of yesterday afternoon.

It also reported three new

deaths, putting the toll from the virus in the central European country at 301.

Monday’s rise in new cases was partly due to an outbreak reported by state-owned coal miner OKD at its Darkov mine near the eastern town of Karvina, close to the Polish border, health authorities reported. The Moravia-Silesia regional hygienic authority said 82 employees had tested positive for the corona-virus by Monday. It was not clear

whether all these cases were logged among the nationwide figure for Monday.

“At the moment the problem is only the Karvina region, it is not a reason for concern for the whole country,” epidemiologist Rastislav Madar, head of a coro-navirus group at the Health Min-istry, told Czech Radio.

The government closed schools, shops and borders soon after the outbreak started in March. But it is eager to reopen

the economy and has relaxed many of the restrictions, including on shops, cinemas, the-atres and outdoor pubs and dining places.

Some restrictions on cross-border travel have also been opened and the government plans, from next Monday, to allow indoor dining at restau-rants, let hotels open, relax rules for wearing face masks and allow younger children to return to school.

Suriname readies to vote despite virusAFP — PARAMARIBO

The tiny South American nation of Suriname holds legislative elections next week despite the coronavirus pandemic, and amid corruption scandals and tough economic times.

Some 380,000 registered voters will cast ballots on May 25 to elect the 51-member national assembly, with safety measures in place to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19.

Suriname, a Dutch-speaking country on the northeast shoulder of South America, has had very few coronavirus cases and only one death.

But while the last of its first 10 cases was reported at the end of March, Health Minister Antoine Elias said that an 11th case, a Brazilian, tested positive on Saturday.

The Brazilian allegedly entered the country illegally alongside eight other men, who are all being held in quarantine.

Mishustin’s reinstatement came after health officials reported 9,263 new infections in Russia over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 299,941, the second-highest after the United States. He was just one of several Russian officials to have been infected, including the ministers of culture, education and construction, as well as Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

14 WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2020AMERICAS

Virus deadliest in NYC’s black, Latino neighbourhoodsREUTERS — NEW YORK

Some New York City neigh-bourhoods have seen death rates from the novel corona-virus nearly 15 times higher than others, according to data released by New York City’s health department on Monday, showing the disproportionate toll taken on poor commu-nities.

The data shows for the first time a breakdown on the number of deaths in each of the city’s more than 60 ZIP codes.

The highest death rate was seen on the edge of Brooklyn in a neighbourhood dominated by a large subsidised-housing development called Starrett City.

Civic leaders had been pushing for the more granular data, which they said would show stark racial and eco-nomic disparities after New York City became the heart of one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world in March and April.

In the wealthy, mostly white enclave of Gramercy Park in Manhattan, the rate is 31 deaths per 100,000 resi-dents, the data shows. A long subway ride away in Far Rockaway in the borough of Queens, which is more than 40 percent black and 25 percent Latino or Hispanic, the death rate is nearly 15 times higher: 444 deaths per 100,000 residents.

“It’s really heartbreaking and it should tug at the moral conscience of the city,” Mark Levine, chairman of the City Council’s health committee, said in an interview.

“We knew we had dra-matic inequality. This, in

graphic form, shows it’s even greater than maybe many of us feared.”

Poor black and Latino New Yorkers are much more likely to do low-paid, essential jobs that cannot be done remotely, putting them at higher risk of exposure, Levine said. They are also more likely than rich, white New Yorkers to live in smaller, more crowded apartments.

Due to inequalities in access to healthcare, they are also more likely to have underlying health conditions, such as diabetes or hyper-tension, Levine said.

The city had been releasing a daily update of cases of

COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, by ZIP code, but only gave a breakdown of

deaths for each of the city’s five boroughs.

The coronavirus has killed

at least 20,800 people in the city so far, according to health department data.

Few people are seen at Times Square in New York City amid pandemic lockdown measures that have been extended until June 13.

Canada, US to extend travel ban; Trump muses about cattle blockREUTERS — OTTAWA

Canada and the United States have agreed to extend a ban on non-essential travel between the two nations by another 30 days as part of the fight against the coronavirus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday.

US and Canadian officials had said last week it was likely the measure would be rolled over until June 21.

“This is an important decision that will keep people in both of our countries safe,” Trudeau told reporters. The ban, initially introduced in mid-March, had already been extended in April until May 21.

US officials were not imme-diately available for comment.

Bilateral relations have steadily improved since a low point in June 2018, when US President Donald Trump

accused Trudeau of being weak after a Group of Seven summit.

Trump though said on Tuesday that Washington should consider terminating trade deals under which it imports cattle as it looks to help domestic producers. A new free trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico comes into effect on July 1. Canadian officials were not immediately available for

comment. Canada exported $2.75bn worth of beef in 2018, 74 percent of it to the United States, according to the Canadian Cattlemen’s Associ-ation lobby group.

The temporary ban on non-essential travel does not cover trade across a border that stretches 8,891km. Canada sends 75 percent of all goods exports to the United States.

Trudeau said Canada’s 10

provinces had made it clear they wanted the measures to be rolled over. When non-essential travel restarted, Canada would need “to have strong measures in place”, he said, but gave no details.

Canada’s total death toll from the outbreak edged up by less than 1 percent to 5,857 from 5,805 on Monday, easily the lowest daily increase since the crisis started, official data showed.

Texas reopening despite rise in new coronavirus casesAFP — HOUSTON

Restaurants in Texas have been serving diners for more than two weeks, though at just 25 percent of capacity, and many other businesses will open their doors this week.

But some worry that the Lone Star State is playing with fire, given the steady rise in coronavirus cases.

Republican governor Greg Abbott lifted stay-at-home orders on May 1 and began a phased reopening, putting him at odds with the Democratic mayors of some of the state’s largest cities.

“Today, tomorrow, and every day going forward is one step closer to medical discov-eries that can treat and protect people from COVID-19,” Abbott said Monday in announcing the second phase of his reopening plan.

“But until that day comes, our focus is keeping Texans safe while restoring their ability to get back to work, open their busi-nesses, pay their bills, and put food on their tables.”

Restaurants were allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity on May 1 along with non-essential retail stores, movie theaters, museums and libraries.

Barber shops, nail salons and tanning salons were given the green light to open a week later as long as they enforced social

distancing. On Friday, restau-rants will be allowed to increase to 50 percent capacity.

So can bowling alleys, bingo halls and skating rinks.

The reopening comes despite a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases in Texas.

A total of 49,215 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Texas and there have been 1,352 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

On Saturday, the state reported 1,801 new cases, a one-day high since the pan-demic began, many of them stemming from an outbreak at a meat-packing plant in Amarillo in the northern panhandle.

Abbott delayed the reo-pening measures for a week in Amarillo, El Paso and several other areas but is pushing ahead elsewhere in the sprawling southern state with a population of nearly 30 million.

More than 2.5 million Texans have filed for unem-ployment since March 14, and Abbott has cited the economic carnage in pushing for a speedy reopening of the state.

“Unemployment numbers are too high and unacceptable,” the governor said.

“What we intend to do to lower the unemployment rate even more is to continue this process of opening up Texas,” he said.

“The best thing that we can do is to continue to open up.” Anna Tauzin, an executive with the Texas Restaurant Associ-ation, welcomed the governor’s move to increase restaurant capacity, but warned that it may not be enough to save many establishments.

“It wasn’t sustainable at 25 percent,” Tauzin said.

“It’s not sustainable at 50. It’s not at 75.

“Even if we were going to go back to 100 percent right now, there’s still a lot of issues,” including consumer confidence, she said.

“Some guests are not com-fortable going out right now,” Tauzin said.

“A lot of people have lost their jobs and so don’t have that disposable income that they had before.”

“There’s a great number of restaurants, especially inde-pendent restaurants, that will not survive.” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Abbott’s reopening plan, while a “popular thing,” may be premature.

“We must continue to remain vigilant even as restric-tions are being lifted,” Turner said.

“I probably would choose a different pace than what (Abbott) has chosen,” the Houston mayor said.

“Now, my only hope and prayer is that several weeks from now we are not going to see a spike occur.”

Pete Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said an increase in the number of virus

cases was all but certain.“The big question is how

serious an increase we can expect,” Hotez said.

“My worry is that potentially we could see a big surge in Texas, including Houston, starting later in the summer.

“Metrics show that we should not relax social dis-tancing until June,” he said.

“But we already opened it up in May so that’s a potential concern, that we could lose ground.”

Hotez said the groundwork had not been laid for a reo-pening of the state.

“We do not have the prep-aration at the public health level,” he said.

“We do not have adequate testing in the workplace. We do not have an adequate level of contact tracers.”

Members of Texas National Guard wait for people to drive up for COVID-19 tests, in El Paso, Texas.

US Senate panel

backs Trump

nominee Ratcliffe

to be top US spy

REUTERS — WASHINGTON

The US Senate Intelligence Committee voted along party lines yesterday to back Pres-ident Donald Trump’s nomi-nation of Republican Repre-sentative John Ratcliffe to be director of national intelli-gence.

The committee said the vote was 8-7, along partly lines, with Trump’s fellow Repub-licans backing the nominee and committee Democrats opposed.

His confirmation vote in the full Senate is expected to be close. Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 53-to-47-seat majority and rarely break from the president, but Ratcliffe has not won over Democrats. No floor vote has been scheduled. It could take place as soon as this week, depending on how soon Republican leaders determine whether they have the 51 votes needed for confirmation.

Trump first said he would nominate Ratcliffe, a member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, to be director of national intelligence last year. The nomination did not go forward amid questions about his lack of experience and partisan reputation, but the Republican president nomi-nated him again this year.

Senator Marco Rubio, acting chairman of the Intelli-gence Committee, said he looked forward to voting for Ratcliffe’s confirmation.

Separately, Rubio told reporters yesterday that he had received a waiver that allowed him to remain chairman of the Senate’s Small Business Com-mittee while temporarily leading the intelligence panel.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Monday that Rubio would serve as acting intelligence chairman after his fellow Republican, Senator Richard Burr, said he would step aside during a federal investigation of his stock trades.

Biden hires Chávez granddaughter to help on Latino outreachAP — WASHINGTON

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is bringing on the granddaughter of civil rights leader César Chávez as a senior adviser to help with Latino outreach and building out its operation in the states.

Some Latino leaders have criticized the Biden campaign, saying it’s not doing enough to reach out to the key demo-graphic group.

The new adviser, Julie Chavez Rodriguez (pictured), previously worked as co-national political director on California Senator Kamala Har-ris’s presidential campaign and was her California state director before that.

She also served in the Obama administration, over-seeing the White House’s engagement with Latino, veteran, youth, education, labor and progressive leaders.

She’s joining Cristóbal Alex,

a former president of the Latino Victory Fund, who serves as Biden’s senior adviser for issues involving Hispanic voters.

Biden is viewed with scep-ticism by some Latinos for his ties to deportation policies d u r i n g t h e O b a m a administration.

He struggled with Latino outreach throughout the Dem-ocratic presidential primary, facing pro-immigration pro-testers, and last November his most senior Latina aide quit the campaign after reportedly raising concerns that the cam-paign hadn’t focused enough on Latino voters.

Indeed, Latino voters strongly sided with Bernie Sanders during the Democratic

primary. But the Biden cam-paign has ramped up its out-reach to Latinos in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Biden held an online event with the League of United Latin American Cit-izens at which he focused on the poor conditions experienced by workers at meatpacking plants, many of whom, he noted, are black or Latino.

His campaign is reportedly working on a multimillion-dollar outreach plan focused on Latino men.

And this month, Biden also spoke with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she was named to a unity task force aimed at bridging the gap between Biden and Sanders supporters.

Nicaragua reports more pneumonia

deaths, some tied to COVID-19REUTERS — MANAGUA

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Monday that 309 people have died of pneumonia since January in the Central American country, 87 more people than in the same period last year, but that only some deaths were linked to the coronavirus.

Nicaraguan authorities have reported only eight deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and 25 total cases of infection. Health workers have cast doubt on these figures, noting that hospital wards are packed with patients suffering res-piratory problems and that Ortega’s government has not imposed strict measures to contain the outbreak.

Health authorities have not publicly said how many COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Nicaragua, and Ortega did not detail how many of the pneumonia deaths could be tied to the coronavirus.

“Some of them have to do with the pandemic, there are many deaths due to pneumonia as well,” he said on national television. He did not address the cause for the rise in pneumonia, which can produce symptoms similar to the coronavirus.

The data shows for the first time a breakdown on the number of deaths in each of the city’s more than 60 ZIP codes. The highest death rate was seen on the edge of Brooklyn in a neighbourhood dominated by a large subsidised housing development called Starrett City.