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Post by Admin on Feb 29, 2020 20:23:12 GMT
President Donald Trump authorized the expansion of travel restrictions against Iran and the new recommendation that Americans refrain from visiting regions of Italy and South Korea impacted by the coronavirus. Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday detailed the heightened travel warnings in a press conference from the White House. “First, the president authorized action today to add additional travel restrictions on Iran. … Iran is already under a travel ban, but we’re are expanding existing travel restrictions to include any foreign national who has visited Iran within the last 14 days,” Pence said. “We are going to increase, to the highest level advisory — which is Level 4 — advising Americans: Do not travel to specific regions in Italy and South Korea,” he added. “We are urging Americans to not travel to the areas in Italy and the areas in South Korea that are most affected by the coronavirus.” The president, meanwhile, said he will meet with some of the globe’s largest pharmaceutical companies on Monday on efforts to develop a vaccine for the novel illness. He and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar added that the administration’s early action to clamp down on travel has helped keep the virus’s risk to everyday Americans low. “We moved very early. That was one of the decisions we made that really turned out to be a lifesaver, in a sense. A big lifesaver,” Trump said. “I want to say that China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down ... If you read, Tim Cook of Apple said that they’re now in full operation again in China.” The weekend presser comes shortly after Washington state confirmed the first death in the U.S. from the virus, and less than 24 hours after Trump categorized the criticism of his administration’s response to the disease as a new “hoax” cooked up by Democrats in an effort to attack him. The president also sought to clarify his use of the word “hoax” at Friday’s rally. “The ‘hoax’ was used with respect to Democrats and what they were saying,” Trump said. “It was a ‘hoax,’ what they were saying.” The news conference also follows the worst week for U.S. markets since the financial crisis, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 down 12.36% and 11.49% since the opening bell on Monday. Both major stock indexes fell into what’s known on Wall Street as a correction, a slide of 10% or more from a recent 52-week high. Corrections often signal that investors have realized equities are overpriced, that there’s a new and previously unknown threat to the market, or both. Investors say that the rapid spread of coronavirus, formally labeled COVID-19, has scared many that the illness could eventually weigh on U.S. economic growth, manufacturing and exports.
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Post by Admin on Mar 5, 2020 18:24:35 GMT
As South Korea battles a snowballing number of Covid-19 cases, the government is letting people know if they were in the vicinity of a patient. But the volume of information has led to some awkward moments and now there is as much fear of social stigma as of illness, as Hyung Eun Kim of BBC News Korean reports. As I sit at home, my phone beeps alarmingly with emergency alerts. "A 43-year-old man, resident of Nowon district, tested positive for coronavirus," it says. "He was at his work in Mapo district attending a sexual harassment class. He contracted the virus from the instructor of the class." A series of alerts then chronicle where the men had been, including a bar in the area until 11:03 at night. These alerts arrive all day, every day, telling you where an infected person has been - and when. You can also look up the information on the Ministry of Health and Welfare website. No names or addresses are given, but some people are still managing to connect the dots and identify people. The public has even decided two of the infected were having an affair. And, even if patients are not outright identified, they're facing judgement - or ridicule - online. One recent alert concerned a woman, aged 27, who works at the Samsung plant in Gumi. It said that at 11:30 at night on 18 February she visited her boyfriend, who had attended the gathering of religious sect Shincheonji, the single biggest source of infections in the country. City mayor Jang Se-yong further revealed on Facebook that her surname was Cha. Panicked Gumi residents commented on his post: "Tell us the name of her apartment building." "Please do not spread my personal information," the woman later wrote on Facebook. "I am so sorry for my family and friends who would get hurt, and it's too hard for me psychologically, more than (physical pain)."
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Post by Admin on Mar 6, 2020 6:40:07 GMT
The coronavirus epidemic, which was first detected in Wuhan, China, is having a rapidly intensifying political impact on neighboring countries. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been harshly criticized for his government’s handling of a cruise-ship outbreak that has resulted in at least six deaths and seven hundred infections. In South Korea, which has reported thirty-five deaths and more than fifty-six hundred infections—the highest number after China—the virus is threatening the Presidency of Moon Jae-in. This matters because of who Moon is and what his Presidency means for South Koreans. In 2017, Moon, a former human-rights lawyer and Democratic Party candidate, was elected in an emergency election following the impeachment and removal of President Park Geun-hye, a conservative who is now serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence for abuse of power and corruption. Public anger, which culminated in massive street protests by millions of Koreans, had roots in the 2014 sinking of the ferry M.V. Sewol, in which nearly three hundred teen-agers drowned. The accident revealed fundamental failures in the Korean governmental system and neglect by the head of state, who was absent in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The National Assembly held hearings to investigate President Park’s whereabouts during what they called “the golden time” when lives might have been saved. During his campaign, Moon pledged that a President and the Blue House must serve as the “control tower” during national disasters. That promise now haunts his Presidency. On January 26th, three days after China’s lockdown on Wuhan, the Korean Medical Association, the country’s largest association of doctors, urged the government to temporarily bar entry to all travellers arriving from mainland China. Moon’s government did not heed that warning. Instead, it donated a million and a half face masks to China. Moon’s defenders point out that the World Health Organization does not recommend a travel ban for virus prevention, but Dr. Choi Jae-wook, professor of Preventive Medicine at Koryo University and the chairman of the K.M.A.’s scientific-verification committee, told me that countries must adapt when facing a potential pandemic. “In South Korea, there were fewer than ten infected back then and they had all come through China,” Dr. Choi said. “At the time, there were seventy thousand people coming from China per day. Sure, they can check for any sign of fever at the airport, but many show no symptoms, and some get sick only afterward. The foremost priority for any infectious disease is to stop contagion, and the most basic solution in this case was a restriction.” Four days later, on January 30th, the W.H.O. declared a global health emergency, and several countries, including the United States and Australia, placed a temporary ban on travellers from China. Other nearby countries, including Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Singapore, quickly did so as well. As of today, more than seventy nations have imposed a temporary ban. In South Korea, Moon faced his “control-tower” moment, the brief “golden-time” window when his response might have limited the country’s outbreak. He declined to impose a full travel ban. Japanese Prime Minister Abe declined as well. Both leaders had plans in place for spring summit visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping. China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, and Chinese make up about half of the seventeen million tourists who visit the country annually. On February 4th, five days after the W.H.O. declared an emergency, South Korea enacted a limited ban, which barred entry by any foreigners who had visited China’s Hubei Province in the previous two weeks. (Due to China’s lockdown of the province, no one was travelling in and out of Hubei anyway.) Moon’s critics dismissed the limited step as an empty gesture to placate Koreans demanding a full ban. On February 13th, as the official count of infections in China approached sixty thousand, Moon announced that the virus had been contained in South Korea and predicted it would “disappear before long.” He urged Koreans to return to their normal lives. A week later, on February 20th, in a thirty-minute phone call with Xi, Moon pledged South Korea’s unending support for China’s fight against the coronavirus, saying that “China’s difficulties are our difficulties” and reconfirming the upcoming summit with the Chinese President. That same day, Moon and his wife hosted a chapaguri party (the instant noodle combination made famous by the Oscar-winning film “Parasite”) at the Blue House for the film’s director and cast; photos of the festivity circulated widely on social media. By that afternoon, the number of infections in South Korea had doubled from fifty-one to a hundred and four, and the first covid-19-related death in the country was reported. Within thirty-six hours, five more Koreans died from the virus, and the number of infections grew to more than six hundred. On February 23rd, Moon finally raised the coronavirus alert to the highest level and declared a voluntary lockdown of affected cities and provinces, but the virus had already spread across the entire country. In a speech, Moon blamed the outbreak in South Korea on members of Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a religious group widely considered to be a cult, whose adherents make up more than half of those infected with covid-19. “The before and after situations of the group infection among the Shincheonji followers, which is occurring at a huge scale, presents completely different circumstances,” Moon said. In January, the group had held several large services in Daegu, South Korea’s fourth-largest city. Attendees included members who had recently visited the group’s branch in Wuhan, China, and the virus appears to have spread among participants. Three years after Moon campaigned on a promise of governing more effectively during an emergency than Park, the incumbent’s response to one has resembled that of his predecessor. After the ferry disaster, Park blamed the tragedy on the ship’s owner, a founder of a different religious group also considered a cult. After the Park administration issued an arrest warrant for the ferry owner, he went into hiding. Eventually, he was found dead, an apparent suicide. On March 1st, the city of Seoul, whose mayor, like Moon, is a member of the Democratic Party, asked prosecutors to charge Lee Man-hee, the founder of the Shincheonji Church, and the religious group’s other leaders for murder for their alleged role in spreading covid-19. That afternoon, Lee held a press conference, got down on his knees, bowed twice, and apologized for the group’s role in the outbreak, which he said was accidental. The city of Daegu’s 2.4 million residents now live under quarantine. Across the country, schools have been on break and were due to restart this week, but the government ordered them to be closed for an additional three weeks. When Lee Chang-min, a forty-year-old junior-high math teacher in Daegu, saw that his eight-year-old daughter had a fever, he drove her to a screening site. When they arrived, they waited in a long line of cars and were handed a test kit through a window. After his daughter completed the test, Lee drove home. It was his family’s only trip outside their home since the quarantine began on February 18th.
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Post by Admin on Mar 15, 2020 23:16:46 GMT
South Korea reported more recoveries from the Covid-19 coronavirus than new infections on Saturday for the second day in a row, as a downward trend in daily cases raised hopes that Asia’s biggest epidemic outside China may be slowing. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) recorded 107 new coronavirus cases on Saturday compared with 110 a day earlier, taking the national tally to 8,086. In contrast, 204 patients were released from hospitals where they had been isolated for treatment. For the second day in a row, the daily number of recovered people exceeded that of new confirmed cases since South Korea’s first patient was confirmed on Jan 20. With the latest figures, South Korea has continued to see a steady drop in the number of new cases, raising hopes that the outbreak may be slowing in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Of the latest 107 cases, 62 were from the hard-hit southeastern city of Daegu where a fringe Christian church at the centre of the epidemic is located, while 15 and 13 were in Gyeonggi and Seoul, respectively. - REUTERS
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Post by Admin on May 12, 2020 19:12:51 GMT
As South Korea grapples with a new spike in coronavirus infections thought to be linked to nightspots in Seoul, including several popular with gay men, it’s also seeing rising homophobia that’s making it difficult for sexual minorities to come forward for diagnostic tests. The first confirmed patient in the new coronavirus cluster was a 29-year-old man who visited five nightclubs and bars in Seoul’s Itaewon entertainment neighborhood in a single night before testing positive for the virus last Wednesday. Further investigation has since found more than 100 infections that appear linked to the nightspots. A Christian church-founded newspaper, Kookmin Ilbo, reported last week that the places the man visited in Itaewon on May 2 included a gay club. The report was followed by a flood of anti-gay slurs on social media that included blaming the man and those at the club for endangering the country’s fight against the pandemic. Views on sexual minorities in South Korea have gradually improved in recent years, but anti-gay sentiments still run deep in the conservative country. Same-sex marriages aren’t legal and there are no prominent openly gay politicians or business executives, though some have risen to stardom in the entertainment world. Activist groups have criticized the Kookmin Ilbo report, saying that it was irrelevant that some of the nightspots the man went to were popular with gay people and the newspaper should not have disclosed it. It’s not even known how big role the man played in the new outbreak, with officials saying that local infections in Itaewon may have already begun before he contracted the illness. Authorities have been trying to track down and test thousands of people who may have come in contact with those infected, a process activist say has been made more difficult now that there is a sexual stigma attached to the new outbreak. Lee Jong-geol, general director of the gay rights advocacy group Chingusai, said dozens of sexual minorities who had recently visited Itaewon clubs called his office and expressed worry about being outed or disadvantaged at work if they are placed under quarantine. While there have been no reports hate crimes or physical attacks linked to the fresh surge of homophobia, Lee said “anxiety and fear have flared inside of sexual minority communities.”
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