₦airaland Forum

Teaser4:
You're a m0ron and a libertad....stay away from CNN on that gotv

I own an Explora

beamtopola:
The media are just instigating fear on the populace. Most especially cnn just to get click bait and insult Trump

Trump has Fox new, which is owned by a Republican and CNN is owned by a Democrat. Trump didn't listen to intelligence chief when they briefed him on the virus in January and he did nothing even called the virus a hoax, blamed Obama, blamed impeachment.
Followed what the media said about Obama during the Ebola even though he handled the virus very very well.

Man stop supporting shit.

sapeleboi:
15 percent was remove from my salary

Awaritse staff

NaijaRoyalty:
some people no dey reason before dem talk

Iswr

Ctnd

Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, known internationally for roles in Slumdog Millionaire and Jurassic Park, has died at 53.

Khan died in a hospital in India's western city of Mumbai, his PR agency has confirmed.

In 2018 Khan posted on Twitter to say that he was diagnosed with an endocrine tumour. He later underwent treatment in a London hospital.

The US governor of Kentucky has apologised to a resident named Tupac Shakur for assuming he recently applied for unemployment benefits under that name as a prank.

"We had somebody apply for unemployment for Tupac Shakur. [They] may have thought they were being funny," said Andy Beshear at a press briefing.

But the man, who shares his name with the best-selling American rapper who died in 1996, is actually named Tupac Malik Shakur.

"I'm really embarrassed. That's just my name," Shakur told local paper the Lexington Herald-Leader. He said he had applied for unemployment on 13 March, as the virus forced millions of Americans out of work.

"I've been struggling for like the last month to figure out how to pay the bills," said Shakur.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has blasted members of parliament for allocating themselves a total of 10bn Ugandan shillings ($2.6m; £2m) to raise awareness on coronavirus.

The president said it was "morally reprehensible" for the MPs to allocate themselves the money, instead of funding district committees created for that purpose.

President Museveni said he would write to the Auditor General to investigate MPs who had already spent the money to buy relief items for their constituents.

Uganda has so far confirmed 79 cases of coronavirus. The country is on a lockdown that ends on 5 May.

The Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 seasons will not resume after France banned all sporting events, including behind closed doors, until September.

"The 2019-2020 season of professional sports, especially that of football, will not be able to resume," French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told parliament on Tuesday.

French football's governing body had hoped to resume the football season in June, following its indefinite suspension in March

preciousele:
BIG BROS QUADFIRE, I SALUTE U SIR! I AND MY HOUSEHOLD APPRECIATE UR KINDNESS U RE D REASON FOR THIS... I want to give out small token of recharge card to a family here, pls drop ur no i will choose. Thx

08145513482 even if its 100 naira please God bless you IJN

The richest man in China opened his own Twitter account last month, in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak. So far, every one of his posts has been devoted to his unrivalled campaign to deliver medical supplies to almost every country around the world.

"One world, one fight!" Jack Ma enthused in one of his first messages. "Together, we can do this!" he cheered in another.

The billionaire entrepreneur is the driving force behind a widespread operation to ship medical supplies to more than 150 countries so far, sending face masks and ventilators to many places that have been elbowed out of the global brawl over life-saving equipment.

But Ma's critics and even some of his supporters aren't sure what he's getting himself into. Has this bold venture into global philanthropy unveiled him as the friendly face of China's Communist Party? Or is he an independent player who is being used by the Party for propaganda purposes? He appears to be following China's diplomatic rules, particularly when choosing which countries should benefit from his donations, but his growing clout might put him in the crosshairs of the jealous leaders at the top of China's political pyramid.

Other tech billionaires have pledged more money to fight the effects of the virus - Twitter's Jack Dorsey is giving $1bn (£0.8bn) to the cause. Candid, a US-based philanthropy watchdog that tracks private charitable donations, puts Alibaba 12th on a list of private Covid-19 donors. But that list doesn't include shipments of vital supplies, which some countries might consider to be more important than money at this stage in the global outbreak.

The world's top coronavirus financial donors
How Alibaba compares to the top five

Source: candid.org on 24/04/2020
No one else other than the effervescent Ma is capable of dispatching supplies directly to those who need them. Starting in March, the Jack Ma foundation and the related Alibaba foundation began airlifting supplies to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and even to politically sensitive areas including Iran, Israel, Russia and the US.

Ma has also donated millions to coronavirus vaccine research and a handbook of medical expertise from doctors in his native Zhejiang province has been translated from Chinese into 16 languages. But it's the medical shipments that have been making headlines, setting Ma apart.

"He has the ability and the money and the lifting power to get a Chinese supply plane out of Hangzhou to land in Addis Ababa, or wherever it needs to go," explains Ma's biographer, Duncan Clark. "This is logistics; this is what his company, his people and his province are all about."

A friendly face
Jack Ma is famous for being the charismatic English teacher who went on to create China's biggest technology company. Alibaba is now known as the "Amazon of the East". Ma started the company inside his tiny apartment in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou, in the centre of China's factory belt, back in 1999. Alibaba has since grown to become one of the dominant players in the world's second largest economy, with key stakes in China's online, banking and entertainment worlds. Ma himself is worth more than $40bn.

Officially, he stepped down as Alibaba's chairman in 2018. He said he was going to focus on philanthropy. But Ma retained a permanent seat on Alibaba's board. Coupled with his wealth and fame, he remains one of the most powerful men in China.

It appears that Ma's donations are following Party guidelines: there is no evidence that any of the Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation donations have gone to countries that have formal ties with Taiwan, China's neighbour and diplomatic rival. Ma announced on Twitter that he was donating to 22 countries in Latin America. States that side with Taiwan but who have also called for medical supplies - from Honduras to Haiti - are among the few dozen countries that do not appear to be on the list of 150 countries. The foundations repeatedly refused to provide a detailed list of countries that have received donations, explaining that "at this moment in time, we are not sharing this level of detail".

The Chinese doctor who tried to warn about coronavirus
Diary of a life in locked-down Wuhan
However, the donations that have been delivered have certainly generated a lot of goodwill. With the exception of problematic deliveries to Cuba and Eritrea, all of the foundations' shipments dispatched from China appear to have been gratefully received. That success is giving Ma even more positive attention than usual. China's state media has been mentioning Ma almost as often as the country's autocratic leader, Xi Jinping.

AFP
So far...
Over 150 countries
have received donations from Jack Ma, including about:

120.4m face masks

4,105,000 testing kits

3,704 ventilators

Source: Alizila
It's an uncomfortable comparison. As Ma soaks up praise, Xi faces persistent questions about how he handled the early stages of the virus and where, exactly, the outbreak began.

The Chinese government has dispatched medical teams and donations of supplies to a large number of hard-hit countries, particularly in Europe and South-East Asia. However, those efforts have sometimes fallen flat. China's been accused of sending faulty supplies to several countries. In some cases, the tests it sent were being misused but in others, low-quality supplies went unused and the donations backfired.

Why China's claims of success raise eyebrows
China and the virus that threatens everything
In contrast, Jack Ma's shipments have only boosted his reputation.

"It's fair to say that Ma's donation was universally celebrated across Africa," says Eric Olander, managing editor of the China Africa Project website and podcast. Ma pledged to visit all countries in Africa and has been a frequent visitor since his retirement.

"What happens to the materials once they land in a country is up to the host government, so any complaints about how Nigeria's materials were distributed are indeed a domestic Nigerian issue," Olander adds. "But with respect to the donation itself, the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, called it a "shot in the arm" and pretty much everyone saw it for what it was which was: delivering badly-needed materials to a region of the world that nobody else is either willing or capable of helping at that scale."

Walking the tightrope
But is Ma risking a backlash from Beijing? Xi Jinping isn't known as someone who likes to share the spotlight and his government has certainly targeted famous faces before. In recent years, the country's top actress, a celebrated news anchor and several other billionaire entrepreneurs have all "disappeared" for long periods. Some, including the news anchor, end up serving prison sentences. Others re-emerge from detention, chastened and pledging their allegiance to the Party.

"There's a rumour that [Jack Ma] stepped down in 2018 from being the chairman of the Alibaba Group because he was seen as a homegrown entrepreneur whose popularity would eclipse that of the Communist Party," explains Ashley Feng, research associate at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC. Indeed, Ma surprised many when he suddenly announced his retirement in 2018. He has denied persistent rumours that Beijing forced him out of his position.

Duncan Clark, Ma's biographer, is also aware of reports that Ma was nudged away from Alibaba following a key incident in January 2017. The Chinese billionaire met with then-President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, ostensibly to discuss Sino-US trade. The Chinese president didn't meet with Trump until months later.

"There was a lot of speculation of time that Jack Ma had moved too fast," Clark says. "So, I think there's lessons learned from both sides on the need to try to coordinate."

"Jack Ma represents a sort of entrepreneurial soft power," Clark adds. "That also creates challenges though, because the government is quite jealous or nervous of non-Party actors taking that kind of role."

Technically, Ma isn't a Communist outsider: China's wealthiest capitalist has actually been a member of the Communist Party since the 1980s, when he was a university student.

But Ma's always had a tricky relationship with the Party, famously saying that Alibaba's attitude towards the Party was to "be in love with it but not to marry it".


Even if Ma and the foundations connected to him are making decisions without Beijing's advance blessing, the Chinese government has certainly done what it can to capitalise on Ma's generosity. Chinese ambassadors are frequently on hand at airport ceremonies to receive the medical supplies shipped over by Ma, from Sierra Leone to Cambodia.

China has also used Ma's largesse in its critiques of the United States. "The State Department said Taiwan is a true friend as it donated 2 million masks," the Chinese Foreign Ministry tweeted in early April. "Wonder if @StateDept has any comment on Jack Ma's donation of 1 million masks and 500k testing kits as well as Chinese companies' and provinces' assistance?"

Perhaps Ma can rise above what's happened to so many others who ran afoul of the Party. China might just need a popular global Chinese figure so much that Ma has done what no one else can: make himself indispensable.

"Here's the one key takeaway from all that happened with Jack Ma and Africa: he said he would do something and it got done," explains Eric Olander. "That is an incredibly powerful optic in a place where foreigners often come, make big promises and often fail to deliver. So, the huge Covid-19 donation that he did fit within that pattern. He said he would do it and mere weeks later, those masks were in the hands of healthcare workers."

Duncan Clark argues that Ma already had a seat at China's high table because of Alibaba's economic heft. However, his first-name familiarity with world leaders makes him even more valuable to Beijing as China tries to repair its battered image.

"He has demonstrated the ability, with multiple IPOs under his belt, and multiple friendships overseas, to win friends and influence people. He's the Dale Carnegie of China and that certainly, we've seen that that's irritated some in the Chinese government but now it's almost an all hands on deck situation," Clark says.

There's no doubt that China's wider reputation is benefiting from the charitable work of Ma and other wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs. Andrew Grabois from Candid, the philanthropic watchdog that's been measuring global donations in relation to Covid-19, says that the private donations coming from China are impossible to ignore.

"They're taking a leadership role, the kind of thing that used to be done by the United States," he says. "The most obvious past example is the response to Ebola, the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The US sent in doctors and everything to West Africa to help contain that virus before it left West Africa."

Chinese donors are taking on that role with this virus.

"They are projecting soft power beyond their borders, going into areas, providing aid, monetary aid and expertise," Grabois adds.

So, it's not the right time for Beijing to stand in Jack Ma's way.

"You know, this is a major crisis for the world right now," Duncan Clark concludes. "But obviously, it's also a crisis for China's relationship with the rest of the world. So they need anybody who can help dampen down some of these those pressures."

Lipscomb:
I hope the Singapore know the consequences of this fake news... if Kim Jong un is still alive.

Its Hong Kong Bruv

Dreambeat:
Ofcourse they were. Trust the media ( CNN and its likes) to twist his words.

If Buhari was to be sarcastic would you like it. President ain't elected to be Sarcastic. Someone that blames Obama for the Virus.
Trump is one of the many failures of Democracy

President Donald Trump has said that his comments suggesting disinfectants could help treat coronavirus were "sarcastic".

During a signing for a new coronavirus aid bill on Friday, Trump said that he "was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen".

Trump then said that disinfectants on the hands "could have a very good effect".

Asked if he was encouraging their use, the president replied "of course not".

His comments have been heavily criticised by doctors and experts.

We should stress that disinfectants are hazardous substances and can be poisonous if ingested. Even external exposure can be dangerous to the skin, eyes and respiratory system.

blowjohn:
What he means is that Bill Gates and melinda are enmeshed in population control campaigns

The only reason Bill Gates does this is to avoid paying to much Tax and of you check his history b4 he started Philanthropy the US Congress was about to pass Anti Trust Law on his company

Pop superstar Beyonce is to donate $6m (£4.9m) to help support coronavirus relief efforts.

Beyonce's foundation BeyGood announced the donation in a statement, saying the money would be donated to small community organisations as well as mental health services across US cities.

Queen Bey - as she is often referred to by her fans - also called out the disproportionate impact the virus has on black Americans.

"Black Americans disproportionately belong to essential parts of the workforce that do not have the luxury of working from home, and African-American communities at large have been severely affected in this crisis," she said in an Instagram video.

"This virus is killing black people at an alarmingly high rate here in America. Please protect yourself, we are one family and we need you."

US President Donald Trump has been lambasted by the medical community after suggesting research into whether coronavirus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into the body.

He also appeared to propose irradiating patients' bodies with UV light, an idea dismissed by a doctor at the briefing.

Another of his officials had moments earlier said sunlight and disinfectant were known to kill the infection.

Disinfectants are hazardous substances and can be poisonous if ingested.

Even external exposure can be dangerous to the skin, eyes and respiratory system.

What did President Trump say?
During Thursday's White House coronavirus task force briefing, an official presented the results of US government research that indicated coronavirus appeared to weaken more quickly when exposed to sunlight and heat.

The study also showed bleach could kill the virus in saliva or respiratory fluids within five minutes and isopropyl alcohol could kill it even more quickly.

William Bryan, acting head of the US Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, outlined the findings at the news conference.

The fake health advice you should ignore
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Coronavirus: How bad information goes viral
Coronavirus job losses and 'the millennial curse'
While noting the research should be treated with caution, Mr Trump suggested further research in that area.

"So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous - whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light," the president said, turning to Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response co-ordinator, "and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it.

"And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting," the president continued.

"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?

"So it'd be interesting to check that."

Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what."

'What I fear the most is not being able to survive'
The new house rules of my life under lockdown
Watch: False claims by politicians debunked
He turned again to Dr Birx and asked if she had ever heard of using "the heat and the light" to treat coronavirus.

"Not as a treatment," Dr Birx said. "I mean, certainly, fever is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But I've not seen heat or light."

"I think it's a great thing to look at," Mr Trump said.

Disinfectants don't work inside the body
Analysis by Rachel Schraer, BBC health reporter

Using a disinfectant can kill viruses on surfaces. It's a very good idea to keep clean the things you touch, using products with anti-microbial properties - for example, substances with a high alcohol content.

There is also some evidence that, in general, viruses on surfaces die more quickly when directly exposed to sunlight. But we don't know how much or how long they have to be exposed for UV light to have an effect, so you're far safer just washing your hands and surfaces and trying not to touch your face.

Crucially, this is only about infected objects and surfaces - not about what happens once the virus is inside your body.

One of the main ways of catching the virus is by breathing in droplets expelled by an infected person, mainly by sneezing and coughing. The virus very quickly begins to multiply and spread, eventually reaching the lungs.

Not only does consuming or injecting disinfectant risk poisoning and death, it's not even likely to be effective.

Equally, by the time the virus has taken hold inside your body, no amount of UV light on your skin is going to make a difference.

And since UV radiation damages the skin, using it to kill the virus could be a case of - to borrow a well-worn phrase - the cure being worse than the disease.

What's the reaction been to Trump's comments?
Doctors warned the president's idea could have fatal results.

Pulmonologist Dr Vin Gupta told NBC News: "This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it's dangerous.

"It's a common method that people utilise when they want to kill themselves."

Kashif Mahmood, a doctor in Charleston, West Virginia, tweeted: "As a physician, I can't recommend injecting disinfectant into the lungs or using UV radiation inside the body to treat Covid-19.

"Don't take medical advice from Trump."

John Balmes, a pulmonologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, warned that even breathing fumes from bleach could cause severe health problems.

He told Bloomberg News: "Inhaling chlorine bleach would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs. The airway and lungs are not made to be exposed to even an aerosol of disinfectant.

"Not even a low dilution of bleach or isopropyl alcohol is safe. It's a totally ridiculous concept."

Mr Trump has previously hyped a malaria medication, hydroxycloroquine, as a possible treatment for coronavirus, though he has stopped touting that drug recently.

This week a study of coronavirus patients in a US government-run hospital for military veterans found more deaths among those treated with hydroxychloroquine than those treated with standard care.

Reacting to the president's remarks on Thursday evening, Joe Biden, his likely Democratic challenger in November's White House election, tweeted: "UV light? Injecting disinfectant? Here's an idea, Mr President: more tests. Now. And protective equipment for actual medical professionals."

Image Copyright @drjudymelinek@DRJUDYMELINEK
Report
What's the US government's advice?
Only this week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans to be careful with cleaning products as sales of household disinfectants soar amid the pandemic.

"Calls to poison centres increased sharply at the beginning of March 2020 for exposures to both cleaners and disinfectants," found the agency's weekly morbidity and mortality report.

The US Food and Drug Administration has warned against ingesting disinfectants, citing the sale of bogus miracle cures that contain bleach and purport to treat everything from autism to Aids and hepatitis.

The agency's website says: "The FDA has received reports of consumers who have suffered from severe vomiting, severe diarrhoea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration, and acute liver failure after drinking these products."

Last week a federal judge secured a temporary injunction against one organisation, known as the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, for marketing a product equivalent to industrial bleach as a remedy for coronavirus.

JKisOK:
Coronavirus could die in sunlight within minutes, the US Department of Homeland Security revealed Thursday. New research from the DHS Science and Technology directorate found that high humidity, temperatures, and sunlight kills the virus in saliva droplets on non-porous surfaces and in the air. “Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have in killing the virus on surfaces and in the air,” said DHS Science and Technology Advisor Bill Bryan.
“We’ve seen a similar effect as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favourable to the virus.” The game-changing findings of the joint effort between the DHS’s Science and Technology directorate and Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force was revealed at Thursday’s White House press briefing. The virus dies quickest in the presence of direct sunlight, and it survives best in indoor conditions, the study found.

There is need to be extra careful to properly disinfect areas that aren’t exposed to direct sunlight, particularly within indoor spaces, according to Bryan. “I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes, isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds,” said Bryan. “And that’s with no manipulation. If you rub it, it goes away even faster,” he added. DHS and the White House coronavirus task force will continue to look at how the virus in saliva and how it reacts to other disinfectants.

Although “summer-like conditions” will lead to a decrease in virus transmissions, Bryan said Americans aren’t yet in the clear to return back to normal outings. “It would be irresponsible to say the summer will kill the virus and it’s a free for all and people ignore guidance,” Bryan said. “That’s not the case.” The DHS findings that coronavirus could die in sunlight, Trump made sure to point out he had made a similar observation earlier.

“I once mentioned that maybe it does go away with light,” he said at Thursday’s briefing. “Maybe the fake news didn’t like the suggestion that it goes away with light.

https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/04/light-relief-coronavirus-dies-in-sunlight-says-homeland-security/

Not a cure it only reduces transmission

psucc:
That's Africans has a natural vaccine as heat here is high, that's if the news is true.

There is always a way out.

Bill and Melinda Gates will go in shame. But I don't trust our almajiri leaders.

It doesn't say if you have the virus and you are exposed to sunlight it dies.

As lockdown continues to have a huge impact on peoples’ lives across the world, tensions are rising in the USA, with protests starting to form against statewide lockdown orders.

Trump has appeared to encourage protestors in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota who have gathered to protest against stay-at-home orders which are designed to stop the spread of Covid-19.

But a protester in Huntington Beach in California seems to have missed the point slightly.
A man was photographed protesting the lockdown with a sign that reas: “COVID-19 IS A LIE”.

So far, so strange.

Yet people couldn’t help but notice that he was dressed in head-to-toe protective gear.
A slightly strange choice of outfit for someone who apparently believes that Covid-19 is a lie, right? You really couldn’t make it up.


It’s obviously distressing that people believe this deadly pandemic is a hoax. But it’s hardly surprising seeing as Trump has frequently fanned the flames of conspiracy theories to his own benefit. Many of the supporters photographed over the weekend made clear they were Trump supporters, so his words clearly hold a lot of sway with them.

To add another layer of ridiculousness to this protester’s getup, the rest of the text on his sign (excluding the letters in bold capitals) is so small that you’d need to be pretty close to him to read it.


Obviously lots of people on social media saw the funny side in a man wearing head-to-toe protective gear brandishing this sign.
There were tweets, lots of tweets…

Dreal1247:
Can anything good out of Billed and Melinda Gates. Immunizing other people's children without immunizing their own children. Always prophesying doom for Africa to intimidate and force their will on the people. We reject them.

What are you saying

"Covid-19 anywhere is Covid-19 everywhere," Melinda Gates said as she called for global co-operation to beat the pandemic.

The philanthropist was speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 Live after President Donald Trump announced the US would stop funding the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - the second-largest funder of the WHO - has pledged a further $150m (£120m) to fight Covid-19, but she said they did not expect a vaccine to be available for 18 months.

Gates also said:

Her family had predicted a pandemic, making preparations including storing food, but had "hoped we would never see it in our lifetime"
When they saw the Wuhan data, she and Bill said - "Oh my gosh, this is actually happening"
"There are no tools, nothing we can do specifically, no drugs or vaccine. It is a disease we are all in together"
The UK has shown leadership by funding research because "the vaccine is the way to go"
De-funding the WHO now makes "no sense".

South Africa says it is succeeding in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, with a nationwide lockdown showing signs of containing the disease, for now. More than 2,000 Covid-19 cases have been confirmed there.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has announced a 14-day extension of the lockdown in the capital Abuja, Lagos and Ogun states.

Ugandan opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, says he has partnered with an American businessman to airlift Africans out of China, where they have been facing harrassment after racist rumours suggested they were spreading the virus.

Sudan's capital Khartoum will go on a three-week lockdown from Saturday.

In Kenya, dozens of people were arrested over Easter after they were found drinking in bars and flouting strict measures to curtail the spread of the virus.

The International Monetary Fund has approved immediate debt service relief for 19 African countries for an initial period of six months to enable them to channel financial resources towards dealing with the pandemic.

The government of Eswatini, the southern African country formerly known as Swaziland, has denied media reports that its leader King Mswati III has contracted Covid-19.

It us from BBC

China could temporarily freeze debt repayments by African nations to free up cash for those countries to tackle the coronavirus outbreaks, reports the Reuters news agency.

China is a major creditor to African economies, having lent them billions of dollars over the last two decades.

"The origin of Africa's debt problem is complex, and the debt profile of each country varies," China's foreign ministry told Reuters.

"We are aware that some countries and international organisations have called for debt relief programmes for African countries, and we are willing to study the possibility of it jointly with the international community."

China is a member of the G20 group of economies, which meets this week. The group is expected to make an agreement on debt relief for the world’s poorest nations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are also pushing for debt relief to help poor countries during the virus.

Some countries have said they are passing their peak of infections and deaths, and are considering lifting restrictions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued six criteria for countries considering relaxing their lockdowns.

Transmission should be controlled
Health system capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact
Outbreak risks are minimised in special settings like health facilities and nursing homes
Preventive measures are in place in workplaces, schools and other places where it’s essential for people to go
Importation risks are managed
Communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to adjust to the “new norm”.
These are basically the lessons learned from China and South Korea on how to best emerge from lockdown/restrictions and on what needs to be in place to avoid a second wave of infections.

Hardly any nation ticks all the boxes at the moment.

However, China says it has a good handle on the situation - with nearly all new infections being imported from other countries.

Also, South Korea - which didn't go into full lockdown but had some restrictions including school closures - has been testing widely since the start of the outbreak. So, the country has a decent handle on cases and control of transmission.

Countries such as New Zealand could also reach this point soon.

Ultimately though, this is just an advice, and countries will make their own decisions based on their own risk assessments.

A village in Indonesia has reportedly taken to using volunteers dressed as ghosts to try to scare people into social distancing over the coronavirus.

Kepuh village, on Java Island, started deploying the patrols at night last month.

In Indonesian folklore, ghostly figures known as "pocong" are said to represent the trapped souls of the dead.

Indonesia so far has about 4,500 cases and 400 confirmed virus deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

But there are fears, according to experts, that the true scale of the infection across the country is much worse.

According to Reuters news agency staff who travelled to see the pocong in action, the unusual tactic initially had the opposite effect to that intended - with people coming out to try to spot the volunteers.

Indonesia grapples with fear of a hidden virus surge
But locals say matters have improved since the team began deploying unexpectedly.

"Since the pocong appeared, parents and children have not left their homes," resident Karno Supadmo told Reuters. "And people will not gather or stay on the streets after evening prayers."

Anjar Panca, keeper at a local mosque, told the Jakarta Post the initiative worked because it reminded residents of the potential deadly effects of the disease.

The initiative was organised by the head of the village's youth group in co-ordination with local police.

"We wanted to be different and create a deterrent effect because pocong are spooky and scary," Anjar Pancaningtyas, head of the youth group, told Reuters.


The pocong campaign comes after this unusual virus-themed headwear was spotted on officials in India
Indonesia's president Joko Widodo has not yet implemented a national lockdown, despite fears the country's healthcare system could be overwhelmed without tougher measures.

"Residents still lack awareness about how to curb the spread of Covid-19 disease," the head of Kepuh village told Reuters. "They want to live like normal so it is very difficult for them to follow the instruction to stay at home."

Although unconventional, this is not the only unusual measure that has been used to try to raise awareness of the disease's dangers around the world.

In India, police have been spotted wearing virus-shaped helmets as a way to highlight the risks.