• Coronavirus: Why the Nordics Are Our Best Bet for Comparing Strategies

    Comparing the effectiveness of policies different countries employ to combat coronavirus is made difficult, if not meaningless, when comparing how different countries as different as South Korea, China, Italy, and the U.K., because we may find that the impression of how different interventions work is obscured by many other factors. From a scientific perspective, and in the absence of better models, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland – which are culturally, economically, politically and geographically similar – may, serendipitously, represent a powerful intervention trial. Currently, 15 million people here have been assigned to a lockdown, while a further 10 million have been asked to simply act responsibly. While it is too early to have definite answers about what works best, interesting insights can already be gleaned.

  • Denmark to Reopen Schools and Kindergartens Next Week

    Denmark’s government has announced plans to reopen kindergartens and schools up until age 10-11, as it takes the first steps in a gradual lifting of the country’s coronavirus lockdown.
    The Local reports that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that the government was opening schools for students up until class five first, because the requirement to care for them represented a greater burden on society.
    The opening of schools and services for the youngest means that some parents will have peace to.work undisturbed. We need that, because many tasks are left undone,” she said during a press conference.
    “I understand that there will be both parents and teachers who will be concerned about becoming infected. That is why children and adults should be outside as much as possible. There should also be more distance between the children when inside. There needs to be more cleanliness. And if you are the least ill, then you have to stay home.”
    The government said that adults, who on March 12 were asked to work from home if at all possible, could now start to return to their workplaces more often if they took care to “follow the general guidelines on appropriate behavior.”

  • U.K. Peak in Coronavirus Deaths Expected within a Week, According to Latest Telegraph Modelling

    The U.K. is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.
    Asley Kirk writes in The Telegraph that the peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.
    After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread.
    At this point in the pandemic, the UK has confirmed 6,159 coronavirus deaths - 786 of these being recorded yesterday.
    The country is said to be at least a week behind Spain and Italy, both of which have recorded over 10,000 deaths but are now seeing daily deaths decrease.

  • Botswana President Wants to Extend COVID-19 State of Emergency to Six Months

    Botswana’s president has proposed extending a state of emergency in the southern African country to last six months. President Mokgweetsi Masisi says the measure is needed because people are not complying with restrictions on movement to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Critics worry the plan, if initiated, would put too much power in the hands of the president.
    Mqondisi Dube writes for VOA that Botswana’s parliament will convene on Wednesday to deliberate on Masisi’s proposal.
    The president wants the state of emergency, declared last week in reaction to the outbreak of the coronavirus, to last six months.
    Initially, Masisi had announced a 28-day lockdown period after the southern African country recorded its first six coronavirus cases, including one death, last week.

  • How Will the Coronavirus Reshape Democracy and Governance Globally?

    The new coronavirus pandemic is not only wreaking destruction on public health and the global economy but disrupting democracy and governance worldwide. It has hit at a time when democracy was already under threat in many places, and it risks exacerbating democratic backsliding and authoritarian consolidation. Already, some governments have used the pandemic to expand executive power and restrict individual rights. Yet such actions are just the tip of the iceberg.
    Frances Z. Brown, Saskia Brechenmacher, and Thomas Carothers write for the Carnegie Endowment that the coronavirus will likely transform other pillars of democratic governance—such as electoral processes, civilian control of militaries, and civic mobilization—and potentially reset the terms of the global debate on the merits of authoritarianism versus democracy. The pandemic will almost certainly usher in broader effects on governance by overburdening countries’ basic governance functions, taxing their sociopolitical cohesion, exacerbating corruption, unsettling relations between national and local governments, and transforming the role of nonstate actors.

  • Authoritarian Regimes Seek to Take Advantage of the Coronavirus Pandemic

    The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating efforts among authoritarian governments as regimes tighten their grip at home while seizing the opportunity to advance their agenda abroad. Over the past several years, autocratic governments have become increasingly assertive in nature. James Lamond writes for the Center for American Progress that an illiberal and undemocratic model of governing—championed primarily by Russia and China—has appeared to gain currency, particularly as the United States and other democracies turn inward to deal with domestic challenges. As former NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen testified before the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2019, “Tyranny is once again awakening from its slumber.” This assertiveness does not stop at national borders; just last year, the U.S. Intelligence Community warned that “Russia and China seek to shape the international system and regional security dynamics and exert influence.”
    Beyond the serious implications for the citizens of each respective country, if this trend continues, it could lead to a dangerous new level of competition among world powers at exactly the time when they need to be working together to combat a global pandemic and other emerging threats.
    There are three clear trends of how authoritarian states have responded to COVID-19 in ways that could have ramifications that will last far beyond the pandemic response: consolidating power at home; seeking geopolitical advantage amid the crisis; and trying to weaken democracies from within.

  • Global COVID-19 Deaths Pass 70,000; More Nations Emerge as Hot Spots

    As the pace of new illnesses and deaths showed more signs of easing in European hot spots such as Italy and Spain, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) yesterday following his hospitalization yesterday. Led mainly by ongoing heavy activity in the United States and Europe, the global total climbed to 1,341,907 yesterday from 184 countries, including 74,169 deaths.The latest country to report its first case is South Sudan, which has a population of 11 million.

  • Coronavirus: There’s No One Perfect Model of the Disease

    The world is gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the spread of a virus called SARS-CoV-2. Since the emergence of this new virus, mathematical modelling has been at the forefront of policy decision-making around the disease. Different models depict different scenarios. Do these seemingly differing findings mean that one model is more accurate than the other? And if so, which one is correct? In truth, credible models developed by respectable research teams are mathematically sound and elegantly answer their posed questions using appropriate data. So more importantly than answering the question “which one is correct?” — we need to understand the differences between the different models and discuss why they come to seemingly different conclusions.

  • How to Protect Privacy When Aggregating Location Data to Fight COVID-19

    As governments, the private sector, NGOs, and others mobilize to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen calls to use location information—typically drawn from GPS and cell tower data—to inform public health efforts. Compared to using individualized location data for contact tracing—as many governments around the world are already doing—deriving public health insights from aggregated location data poses far fewer privacy and other civil liberties risks such as restrictions on freedom of expression and association. However, even “aggregated” location data comes with potential pitfalls.

  • Why China's Coronavirus Lies Don't Matter If It Plays the Long Information Game

    The world will never be the same after COVID-19 –but Mark Payumo writes that this will not be because people sheltered in place and reacquainted themselves with traditional family bonding, but because China opened a new front in information warfare. “This front is global in scale and one that Beijing has laid the groundwork for a decade prior to the pandemic,” he writes. “As it unravels, it underscores one fact that we already know: that the world, especially truly-functioning West democracies, continues to fail in responding to Chinese global statecraft that may threaten civil liberties as we know it.”

  • Understanding SARS-CoV-2 and the Drugs that Might Lessen Its Power

    The interconnectedness of the modern world has been a boon for SARS-CoV-2. Without planes, trains and automobiles the virus would never have got this far, this fast. Just a few months ago it took its first steps into a human host somewhere in or around Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei. As of this week it had caused over 120,000 diagnosed cases of covid-19, from Tromsø to Buenos Aires, Alberta to Auckland, with most infections continuing to go undiagnosed.
    But interconnectedness may be its downfall, too, the Economist writes. Scientists around the world are focusing their attention on its genome and the 27 proteins that it is known to produce, seeking to deepen their understanding and find ways to stop it in its tracks. The resulting plethora of activity has resulted in the posting of over 300 papers on Medrxiv, a repository for medical-research work that has not yet been formally peer-reviewed and published, since February 1st, and the depositing of hundreds of genome sequences in public databases. (For more coverage of covid-19 see our coronavirus hub.)

  • Solving the Ventilator Shortage with Windshield Wiper Parts

    Hospitals across Texas had an estimated 3,730 ventilators in 2009 during the H1N1 pandemic, according to research published in 2017. That supply is enough to handle patient needs during mild to moderate pandemic scenarios. However, during a more severe scenario, statewide projected demand would top 10,000 ventilators, the research found, far exceeding 2009 resources. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are building a new type of ventilator made of cheap, widely available materials to help fill the demand created by the spread of COVID-19 for these critical devices that help patients breathe.

  • Engineers Develop 3-D-Printed Ventilator Splitters

    In response to a pressing need for more ventilators to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients, a team led by Johns Hopkins University engineers is developing and prototyping a 3D-printed splitter that will allow a single ventilator to treat multiple patients. Though medical professionals have expressed concerns about the safety and effectiveness of sharing ventilators, the team has designed this tool to address those concerns. Their prototype, developed in response to the urgent need for more ventilators to treat patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by COVID-19, aims to address concerns about cross-contamination and correctly managing air flow to patients.

  • Tiger at Bronx Zoo Tests Positive for COVID-19

    A four-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for the coronavirus.
    The tiger, named Nadia, is believed to be the first known case of an animal infected with COVID-19 in the United States.
    The BBC reports that the Bronx Zoo, in New York City, says the test result was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa.
    Nadia, along with six other big cats, is thought to have been infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper. The cats started showing symptoms, including a dry cough, late last month after exposure to the employee, who has not been identified.
    The pandemic has been driven by human-to-human transmission, but the infection of Nadia raises new questions about human-to-animal transmission.

  • Coronavirus Can Stay on Face Masks for up to a Week, Study Finds

    The coronavirus  that causes COVID-19 can adhere to stainless steel and plastic surfaces for up to four days, and to the outer layer of a face mask for a week, according to a study by researchers from the University of Hong Kong (HKU).
    Simone McCarthy writes in the South China Morning Post that the team also found that common household disinfectants, including bleach, were effective in “killing” the virus.
    The report, published in medical journal The Lancet on Thursday, adds to a growing body of research about the stability of Sars-CoV-2 – as the coronavirus is formally known – and what can be done to prevent its transmission.
    “Sars-CoV-2 can be highly stable in a favorable environment, but it is also susceptible to standard disinfection methods,” said the researchers, who included, from HKU’s school of public health, Leo Poon Lit-man, head of the public health laboratory sciences division, and Malik Peiris, a clinical and public health virologist.