Headline News

2, April 2020

Record COVID-19 deaths in Europe as global cases surpass 900,000 ⁰

Spain and the United Kingdom have recorded their biggest one-day death tolls from the novel coronavirus, which has so far infected over 900,000 people across the world.

Spain on Wednesday recorded its highest daily death toll – another 864 people – while infections jumped to 102,136, up from 94,417.

The country, which has the second highest number of COVID-19 fatalities after Italy, has imposed a lockdown that brings economic activity to a virtual standstill.

The UK’s death toll also rose by 563 in 24 hours, a record jump that brought the number of patients who died in hospital to 2,352, the country’s Health Ministry announced.

The death toll in the United States has also exceeded 4,000 and the number of confirmed cases surpassed 200,000.

Also in Germany, the social distancing measures were extended through the end of the Easter holiday break (at least April 19), Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Wednesday following a call with state leaders.

“A pandemic doesn’t take a vacation,” Merkel said announcing the decision. The restrictions were initially due to end on April 5.

The decision was made shortly after the country confirmed 5,453 new cases, including 149 deaths. The figures increased Germany’s death toll to 909 and total cases to 77,558, according to the data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

Right now, at least 926,095 people have been infected by the deadly virus across the world, out of whom 46,252 have died, and 193,031 have recovered.

On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the coronavirus outbreak as the worst global crisis since World War II, warning that it could trigger conflicts around the world.

He said that the large magnitude of the crisis was due to “a disease that represents a threat to everybody in the world and… an economic impact that will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past.”

“A stronger and more effective response… is only possible in solidarity if everybody comes together and if we forget political games and understand that it is humankind that is at stake,” Guterres said.

Source: Presstv

1, April 2020

UK reports daily death toll of 563 in worst day of coronavirus crisis ⁰

Britain reported 563 daily coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, the first time the national toll has exceeded 500, bringing the total fatalities to 2,352, according to official figures.

“As of 5pm (1600 GMT) on 31 March, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 2,352 have sadly died,” the health ministry said on its official Twitter page.

Some 29,474 people have now tested positive, an increase of 4,324 over the previous day, it added.

Britain locked down last week in an attempt to combat the virus, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who himself has tested positive, warned that it would “get worse before it gets better”.

The virus has also hit the royal family, with Prince Charles only coming out of isolation on Tuesday after displaying mild symptoms of the disease.

On Wednesday he released a video message praising the “remarkable” state-run National Health Service. “None of us can say when this will end, but end it will,” he said.

“Until it does, let us all try and live with hope and, with faith in ourselves and each other, look forward to better times to come.”

Source:AFP

1, April 2020

African cardinal tests positive for coronavirus ⁰

Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo of Burkina Faso has tested positive for the coronavirus, his archdiocese announced Tuesday. He is the second cardinal known to have tested positive for the virus, which is now a global pandemic.

Ouédraogo, 75, has been admitted to a medical clinic in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou. He is “in good condition and his close collaborators are reported to be self-isolating,” a spokesman for Burkina Faso’s bishops’ conference, Fr. Paul Dah, told ACI Africa on March 31.

The cardinal is president of the African continental bishops’ conference, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM). He was elected to the post in July 2019. He has been Archbishop of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso for ten years, and was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2014.

Ouédraogo is the second bishop from Burkina Faso known to have contracted COVID-19, as countries across Africa implement lockdowns and restrictions to slow the spread of the virus across the continent.

Another Burkina Faso bishop, Archbishop Emeritus Séraphin François Rouamba of Koupela, tested positive for COVID-19 after being admitted to Our Lady of Peace clinic for urgent treatment on March 19.

The 78-year-old archbishop has since been transferred to another hospital and is reportedly in stable condition, according to a March 25 statement from Bishop Laurent Birfuore Dabire of Dori, Burkina Faso.

Burkina Faso has the largest documented coronavirus outbreak in West Africa, with 249 documented cases as of March 31, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

The coronavirus has spread throughout the African continent to 47 countries, according to the Africa Center for Disease Control. In North Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco each have more than 500 documented cases, and the South African government has reported more than 1,300.

Three Nigerian states began two-week mandatory lockdown this week to combat the spread of the virus, including Lagos, Africa’s most populous city with more than 20 million people.

Zimbabwe and Mauritius have also implemented national shut-downs, and the bishops in South Sudan and Zimbabwe have suspended public Masses.

Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, tested positive for coronavirus on March 30.

Other bishops in Italy, France, China, and the United States have also tested positive for COVID-19, and Bishop Angelo Moreschi, 67, died in the Italian city of Brescia on March 25 after contracting the coronavirus.

Source: Catholic News Agency

1, April 2020

Coronavirus: Fake manufacturers of chloroquine nabbed in Bafoussam ⁰

A group of fake chloroquine manufacturers has been caught in the West regional headquarters of Bafoussam in Cameroon by the country’s forces of law and order.

The group, which wants to cash in on the desperation of the population, got to work once there were rumors that Chloroquine could help in the curing of people affected by the deadly Coronavirus.

As Chloroquine gets tested in the Western world, Cameroon’s fake drug manufacturers have decided to make hay while the sun shines by setting up shops and establishing marketing networks for their illegally produced medications.

The Coronavirus is spreading death and destruction across the world and anything that can bring some hope and reduce fear is very much welcome, especially in a third world country like Cameroon which lacks state-of-the-art laboratories and world-class law enforcement agents who can discourage irresponsible behavior.

With the dismantling of this group of dangerous crooks who are passing off as chemists and pharmacists, ordinary citizens in Cameroon must understand that the only place wherein they can get genuine medication remains government approved pharmacies and the medication should be consumed only when prescribed by a certified medical practitioner.

Currently, the insidious Coronavirus is rolling into many Cameroonian cities and town and many Cameroonians do not know where to turn to when it comes to obtaining medication.

So far, there is no definitive cure for the Coronavirus pandemic. Preventive measures remain the only steps that can help any society to check the spread of the pandemic.

National governments and the World Health Organization have issued guidelines which must be strictly followed by every citizen if the virus has to be booted out of this beautiful planet.

Rita Akana and edited by Dr Joachim Arrey

1, April 2020

Where is President Paul Biya? Cameroon Concord News to put up an obituary announcement on him ⁰

Cameroon’s coronavirus problem is much greater than the Biya regime is acknowledging. The true number of cases is far greater than the tally from the Minister of Public Health. Senior CPDM officials are sick not only with the coronavirus but are HIV positive. More signs of uncontrolled infection in the cities of Douala, Yaoundé and Bafoussam have emerged and there are fears things are getting out of control.

Medics in the rural areas particularly in war ravaged Southern Cameroons have been incessantly flashing out signals to the World Health Organization that Southern Cameroons may run out of cemetery space if something is not done and done in a hurry. Last week, the Ministry of Public Health announced that some of the COVID-19 patients were recovering but Cameroon Intelligence Report sources in Douala and Yaoundé have all hinted that the deaths have started coming so fast.

A senior opposition figure in Yaoundé who hails from the Far North Region contacted by this reporter recently asks, reluctantly, whether both French and British Southern Cameroonians should in fact be relieved, because apparently even when a nation faces unrelenting misery—accelerated by the politics and policies of its government—it doesn’t necessarily break down as fast as Paul Biya’s Cameroon.

Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate have turned Cameroon into a criminal wasteland, with French Cameroun political gangs in tricked-out. A nurse at the Yaoundé General hospital who spoke to our undercover reporter revealed that some senior army officials have secretly collected ventilators from the hospital citing orders from the presidency of the republic. And like the policy against the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram and Ambazonia Restoration Forces, the Biya Francophone regime is erecting roadblocks to prevent people fleeing the rural areas from bringing the coronavirus with them to Yaoundé. These efforts at containment will of course fail and coronavirus will definitely find its way to Mvomeka’a where the 87 year old President Biya is self-isolating!

Apart from Biya’s failed leadership, the CPDM government is another palaver. Many Cameroonians would celebrate its passing, and even its die-hard supporters are now seeing signs that the coronavirus is catalysing changes that Biya and his Francophone Beti-Ewondo acolytes resisted long ago.

Given how many people are dying now in Yaoundé and Douala and with Biya helpless and quarantined at his Mvomeka’a palace, it would be grotesque to think of coronavirus as a lucky break for Cameroonians in support of regime change. With COVID-19, the deep bench of the so-called CPDM Political Bureau and the House of Senate will be depleted.

National Assembly Speaker, Cavaye Djibril has blatantly refused to announce that he had contracted the coronavirus. He is 80 years old and a chief Biya acolyte to whom he speaks regularly and in person.

However, the center of all speculation is President Paul Biya himself. The dictator doesn’t appear in public often, even in the best of times, and you’d have to be fairly lucky to spot him in Yaoundé—except on a few occasions where his appearance is so customary that an absence would make Cameroonian allies and enemies, wonder if an illness must have felled him.

The world is already in the middle of the coronavirus season and Biya is yet to make a televise statement to the Cameroonian people. State radio and television recently reported that the Head of State has created a special fund to combat the virus. But rumours about Biya do not die so easily in Cameroon. Why can’t President Biya just give his speech from his sitting room at the Mvomeka’a palace? Is this not the ideal opportunity to discuss how the funds provided will be disbursed to fight the spread of COVID-19? Is this not also a good opportunity for Mr. Biya to speak of the process of renewal that Cameroon will have to undertake to Emergence 2035?

After his last meeting with the US ambassador to Cameroon, speculation has been rampant. Surely, say the rumours, Biya is dead—or he is self-isolating! These rumours aside, the perception of distance has made Mr. Biya, already a distant figure without charisma or warmth, seem superannuated and out of touch. We understand Biya is in a febrile delirium in Mvomeka’a but if he does not show up seven days after this editorial, Cameroon Concord News Group shall put up an obituary announcement on him.

What is keeping the ruling CPDM gang in power now is the simple fact that the whole Cameroonian nation French and British Southern Cameroons are suffering together and it is evidently clear that Biya deliberately weakened all state institutions and tribal zed the army making them unhealthy enough to rival his leadership, even in this diminished state. Today, police commissioners, army captains are dying of COVID-19, just as poor civilians too!

Coronavirus has exposed and confirmed the incompetence and malignance of the Biya regime, at the same time it has crippled the forces for change headed by Prof. Maurice Kamto. Popular protests in the streets of Douala and Yaounde simply cannot happen as long as the manpower for those protests remains sequestered at home, and as long as morale is utterly depleted by the task of burying one’s loved ones. Regime change in Yaoundé might have to wait. At least the coronavirus pandemic will eventually end, and with its end, change is one more thing to look forward to.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

1, April 2020

Trump warns US headed for ‘painful two weeks’ in fight against coronavirus ⁰

President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned of a “very painful” two weeks as the United States wrestles with a coronavirus surge that the White House warns could kill as many as 240,000 Americans.

“This is going to be a very painful, a very, very painful two weeks,” Trump told a press conference at the White House.

Trump described the pandemic as “a plague”.

“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” he said.

White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx displayed charts demonstrating data and modeling that showed an enormous jump in deaths to a range of 100,000 to 240,000 people from the virus in the coming months.

Trump said 2.2 million people could have died, according to the modeling, if no mitigation efforts had been put into place.

He cited those high projections when announcing on Sunday that he planned to extend the federal guidelines rather than pursuing his earlier stated desire to get the US economy moving again by Easter on April 12.

“There’s no magic bullet. There’s no magic vaccine or therapy. It’s just behaviors: Each of our behaviors translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic over the next 30 days,” Birx told reporters, predicting a peak in deaths in the coming two weeks.

Vice President Mike Pence said the mitigation efforts were having an impact. “We have reason to believe that it’s working,” Pence said of the guidelines. “Do not be discouraged.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has said previously that the pandemic could kill between 100,000 and 200,000 people in the United States, said all efforts were being made to make those numbers lower.

“We’re doing everything we can,” he said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

1, April 2020

French Cameroun: Violating COVID-19 Restrictions Can Get You Arrested ⁰

Police in Cameroon have begun arresting people who defy measures put in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which has so far has infected 139 people in the central African state. Police are sealing shops that exceed maximum numbers for customers, impounding vehicles that carry too many passengers, and this week arrested more than 50 prostitutes for sneaking into hotels used to isolate suspected cases.

Jean Claude Tsila, the top government official in Mfoundi Division, the administrative unit where Yaounde is located, said he was appalled to learn that people who have been isolated in hotels on suspicion of being carriers of COVID-19 are receiving nocturnal visitors.

Tsila said he ordered the arrest of 50 prostitutes, as well as 13 women and 6 men who sneaked into hotels to meet their spouses.

“We discovered that people put in quarantine were conniving with hotel agents [workers] to smuggle women into the hotel to sleep with them. We have arrested some of them. We have to work together to stop this virus,” he said.

Tsila said he ordered all of the arrested persons to be put in isolation, while the police have been instructed to find unauthorized hotel visitors who have been on the run.

Authorities in Cameroon recently isolated more than 500 citizens and 70 foreigners in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus. All of those quarantined flew into the central African state on March 17th and 18th before the government closed the borders and suspended issuance of visas until further notice.

However, 150 of those quarantined escaped from their hotels. The government is searching for them, as well as another 186 people who returned home from France and Italy on March 17 and refused to be isolated.

Enforcing social distancing

Despite government warnings, officials say a majority of Cameroonians are not taking coronavirus seriously, and authorities are taking steps to enforce social distancing rules.

Troops have shut down stores for allowing in too many customers, closed markets for not respecting hygiene norms, and stopped buses that carried too many passengers.

Close to 400 taxis were ordered off the road in Yaounde alone for transporting more than the maximum three passengers per vehicle.

Taxi drivers union leader Ernest Verla said drivers will respect the restrictions if the government gives them subsidies, increases taxi fares or reduces fuel prices.

“They [the government] did not reduce the price of fuel, we are struggling, things are not moving and we are unable to make it. It is more than us. When you put [buy] fuel for 10 000 [francs] you are unable to work [raise] 3 000,” said Verla.

Cameroon’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on February 9. Since then, confirmed cases have increased to 139, with six deaths reported.

Source: VOA

1, April 2020

Yaounde reports 51 new coronavirus infections ⁰

Cameroon has registered 51 new infections of the novel coronavirus, bringing the total to 193, Cameroonian Minister of Public Health Manaouda Malachie said in a tweet Tuesday morning.

According to the minister, these 51 new cases were diagnosed out of a total of 94 travelers quarantined in hotels in Yaounde, the Cameroonian capital. Twenty-four of them have tested negative, while 19 have a questionable result and will need to be tested again.

This is a new record of daily growth in the number of infections in Cameroon after 40 new cases were reported on a single day last Sunday.

Cameroon is now one of the countries most affected by COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa. The country currently has 193 confirmed cases, including six deaths and “a dozen” of cured, according to the health minister.

Most of the cases are in Yaounde and Douala, the country’s economic hub. Western city of Bafoussam and southwestern city of Limbe also have a few patients.

Source: Xinhuanet

1, April 2020

Coronavirus: Discipline Courage will take us through the Pandemic ⁰

The world is facing a colossal crisis. Its biggest crisis in living memory and the future is bleak. The health and economic consequences are seismic. More than 41,494 people have died so far and these numbers are growing daily and alarmingly according to figures released by Johns Hopkins University. The experts say the peak of this pandemic is two weeks away.

Frightening!! Fear and apprehension have taken the place of calmness and confidence. Ghost towns, self-isolation and quarantine are now a norm in the world. Vibrant communities have been reduced to graveyards with little or no movement or people as all non-essential activities have ceased. The tension and anxiety in the air can be touched. Life isn’t the same and it will never be the same. Yesterday, Cameroon Concord News Group reported that over the last week, three members of the Southern Cameroons community in the UK have died due to the coronavirus. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families. Now, the penny has dropped that this is not a foreign illness; this is within our communities and families.

So far, the major economies have announced over $4.5 trillion in stimulus packages. These are astonishing and unprecedented figures. The approach from these governments is one of doing all they can to overcome this crisis. Millions of people have lost their jobs and millions more face uncertain futures. In the midst of this bleakness and uncertainty, Cameroon Concord News Group believes that there is hope for the future. If it’s bleak and uncertain now, so was it during many generations of the past. The great Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us with these words “people wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.” These unsettling times should give us hope for the future. No great advancements have come from settled generations.

History reminds us that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, about one-third of the world’s population at the time, and killed an estimated 50 million. Looking at such figures, we must count ourselves fortunate to be living in the 21st century with unbelievable advances in medicine and technology. Cameroon Concord News Group trusts that as deadly as the coronavirus is, we shall emerge victorious from this pandemic just as our ancestors did with primeval medical standards over a century ago. The journey is uncomfortable and dreary but we shall conquer.

Cameroon Concord News Group recommends that its readers who are going through challenging and uncertain futures utilise these next few months for meditation and reflection. We believe that it’s only through calmness of body; mind and spirit could one tap into his inner powers. This too shall pass. To come out on the other side as winners, we need to cultivate courage within ourselves. Discipline courage is the resolution to be thoughtful and focused in the face of adversity. Discipline courage gives us great clarity on our dreams and requires fortitude. It’s not easy but we must develop this discipline if we are to emerge from this pandemic strong. We need discipline courage to analyse our lives and make the changes necessary for self-growth after the storm.

The history of the human race is a record of human challenges and victories. Our generation is no different. Europe and the United States have somehow emerged as the hub of this pandemic. For some of us living within these borders, the aftermath will undoubtedly challenge our foundations. Cameroon Concord News Group opines that we cultivate compassion and solidarity as companions of discipline courage. We of this media outlet believe fervently that with these qualities, victory will be ours and success will be yours in the years after this pandemic.

Isong Asu

London Bureau Chief

31, March 2020

Former Olympique de Marseille president Pape Diouf dies of coronavirus aged 68 ⁰

He is the latest victim of the coronavirus outbreak. The former president of Olympique de Marseille (OM) Pape Diouf died after being hit by Covid-19. His death has been confirmed by RTS, Senegal’s public television channel. He was 68 years old.

Hospitalized in Dakar, where he was under respiratory assistance, Pape Diouf was to be repatriated from Dakar to Nice by medical plane but his condition deteriorated, the plane could not take off and he died on Senegalese soil.

A former journalist, players’ agent and then head of OM from 2005 to 2009, Diouf had notably contributed to building the 2010 French championship team after 17 years without a title for OM.

By Haggai Fung Achuo