World leaders were yesterday set to hold online crisis talks on the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced 3 billion people into lockdown and claimed more than 21,000 lives.
With the disease tearing around the globe at a terrifying pace, warnings are multiplying over its economic consequences, with experts saying it could cause more damage than the Great Depression.
Amid squabbling between the leaders of China and the US over who is to blame, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the world to act together to halt the menace.
Photo: AFP
“COVID-19 is threatening the whole of humanity,” Guterres said. “Global action and solidarity are crucial. Individual country responses are not going to be enough.”
The global lockdown — which also took in India’s huge population this week — tightened further yesterday when Russia announced it was grounding all international flights, while Moscow’s mayor ordered the closure of cafes, shops and parks.
Tokyo’s millions of citizens have been told to stay at home and tourism-dependent Thailand has shuttered its borders.
Economists say the restrictions imposed around the world could cause the biggest recession in modern history.
“The G20 economies will experience an unprecedented shock in the first half of this year and will contract in 2020 as a whole,” ratings agency Moody’s said.
The leaders of the G20 major economies were due to hold a virtual meeting later yesterday in the shadow of such dire predictions.
“As the world confronts the COVID-19 pandemic, and the challenges to healthcare systems and the global economy, we convene this extraordinary G20 summit to unite efforts towards a global response,” Saudi Arabian King Salman wrote on Twitter.
Saudi Arabia holds the rotating G20 presidency.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said richer nations needed to offer support to low and middle-income countries.
The devastating effect on poorer nations was laid bare when the Philippines announced that nine front-line doctors had died after contracting COVID-19.
Three large Manila hospitals this week said that they had reached capacity and would no longer accept new coronavirus cases.
Hundreds of medical staff are undergoing 14-day self-quarantines after suspected exposure, the hospitals said.
The death toll from the coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan, China, last year, continued to grow, with the US becoming the sixth nation to hit four figures.
Almost 1,050 people are now known to have died in the US, with nearly 70,000 infections, Johns Hopkins University data showed.
Globally, the number of infections is closing in on half a million.
The rocketing infection rate in the US has sparked a rush to buy weapons, gun store owners said, with customers panicking about societal breakdown.
“A lot of people are buying shotguns, handguns, AR-15 [semi-automatic rifles], everything,” said Tiffany Teasdale, who sells guns in Washington state. “A lot of people are scared that someone is going to break into their home ... to steal cash, their toilet paper, their bottled water, their food.”
About half of the US population is under lockdown, but US President Donald Trump said that he would decide soon whether unaffected parts of the nation could get back to work.
The White House has repeatedly lashed out at Beijing over the disease.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said that the G7 were united against China’s “disinformation” campaign.
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman had infuriated Washington by suggesting on Twitter that US troops had taken the coronavirus to Wuhan.
“Every one of the nations that were at that meeting this morning was deeply aware of the disinformation campaign that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in to try and deflect from what has really taken place,” Pompeo told reporters.
‘REGRETTABLE’: TPP lawmaker Vivian Huang said that ‘we will continue to support Chairman Ko and defend his innocence’ as he was transferred to a detention facility The Taipei District Court yesterday ruled that Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) be detained and held incommunicado over alleged corruption dating to his time as mayor of Taipei. The ruling reversed a decision by the court on Monday morning that Ko be released without bail. After prosecutors on Wednesday appealed the Monday decision, the High Court said that Ko had potentially been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Ko did not speak to reporters upon his arrival at the district court at about 9:10am yesterday to attend a procedural
Thirty Taiwanese firms, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), yesterday launched a silicon photonics industry alliance, aiming to accelerate the medium’s development and address the energy efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) devices like data centers. As the world is ushering in a new AI era with tremendous demand for computing power and algorithms, energy consumption is emerging as a critical issue, TSMC vice president of integrated interconnect and packaging business C.K. Hsu (徐國晉) told a media briefing in Taipei. To solve this issue, it is essential to introduce silicon photonics and copackaged optics (CPO)
The High Court yesterday overturned a Taipei District Court decision to release Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and sent the case back to the lower court. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Saturday questioned Ko amid a probe into alleged corruption involving the Core Pacific City development project during his time as Taipei mayor. Core Pacific City, also known as Living Mall (京華城購物中心), was a shopping mall in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) that has since been demolished. On Monday, the Taipei District Court granted a second motion by Ko’s attorney to release him without bail, a decision the prosecutors’ office appealed
GRAFT PROBE: Critics questioned Ko claiming he did not know about the Core Pacific floor area ratio issue until this year, citing a 2021 video in which he was asked about it Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was released without bail early yesterday, while his deputy during his tenure as Taipei mayor was detained and held incommunicado after being questioned since Friday over graft allegations related to a shopping center redevelopment project. Prosecutors on Saturday filed a request with the Taipei District Court to officially detain Ko and former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲) over allegations surrounding the redevelopment of Core Pacific City, also known as Living Mall (京華城購物中心). The court yesterday determined that the evidence provided by prosecutors was insufficient to justify the detention of Ko and ordered his
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