COVID-19 news blurbs from around the world, 26 March 2020.
- Army Chief of Staff General James McConville confirms there are 288 confirmed coronavirus cases in the US Army, both civilians and soldiers. U.S. Army hospitals will be operational in New York next week.
- Chef Floyd Cardoz, who competed on Top Chef and operated successful restaurants in both India and New York, died of complications from coronavirus in New Jersey on Wednesday. He was 59.
- Ethiopia has pardoned more than 4,000 prisoners of minor crimes to help contain the spread of coronavirus.
- Germany, with a quarter of the population of the United States, is now testing 500,000 people a week for COVID-19. “The reason why Germany has so few deaths compared to the number of infected people can be explained by the fact that we carry out an extremely large number of laboratory diagnostic tests,” said Christian Drosten, who heads the Institute of Virology at Berlin’s Charite University Hospital.
- In a letter to U.S. governors, President Trump said he was planning “to publish new guidelines for state and local governments to use when making decisions about ‘maintaining, increasing or relaxing social distancing and other mitigation measures’ for the coronavirus epidemic.
- India announced a $22.6 billion economic stimulus plan to provide direct cash transfers and food security measures to millions of poor people affected by the nationwide lockdown.
- The public lockdown in Wuhan, China is slated to end on 08 April. On 23 January, China locked down Wuhan, home to 11 million people. No one was allowed in or out. Wuhan is the center of the Hubei province, which accounted for the majority of cases (67,801) and deaths (3,160) in China. Non-Wuhan residents of Hubei could begin moving about on Wednesday if they had a green QR code on their mobile phones.
The green code indicates they have no fever, are not a confirmed or suspected case, or a close contact of one. On April 8, the easing of restrictions will be extended to Wuhan, and residents with a green QR code will be able to leave the city and the province.
- There’s a COVID-19 Global Hackathon, designed “to build software solutions that drive social impact, with the aim of tackling some of the challenges related to the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.” Deadline: 9:00am PDT 30 March 2020
See 26 March 2020 issue of Coronavirus Memo from a News Hound
