16, March 2020

French Cameroun: National Assembly Speaker may be nation’s 6th coronavirus case ⁰

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has not been diagnosed with coronavirus. But needed to have been self-isolating at home in Yaoundé upon his return from France-a country that recently confirmed its coronavirus outbreak is “very worrying” and “deteriorating very fast”.

Supported by two men, the 80 year old speaker of the National Assembly, the Right Honourable Cavaye Yeguie Djibril arrived Yaoundé from his sick bed in France in a bid to keep his job and was seen today participating during deliberations in the Lower House alongside other members of parliament.

Visibly in very bad shape, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril’s body is now a colony of diseases and there are fears he might just be Cameroon’s 6^th coronavirus case.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that “We have just registered a 5th confirmed case in Yaoundé. He is a person returning from France. Like the others, he was immediately taken care of.” The development came hours after House Speaker Cavaye Djibril returned to Cameroon also from France.

The number of coronavirus cases in France where Cavaye Djibril spent the last two months doubled every three days and there were French citizens who were sick and who were in intensive care with the Francophone politician and that number runs into hundreds.

According to the latest official figures published on Sunday, France has had 127 coronavirus deaths and 5,423 confirmed cases.

That was a jump of 36 deaths and over 900 cases in 24 hours. More than 400 people have been hospitalised in a serious condition.

There is a real worry that the speed of the outbreak could saturate hospitals in France and this is something we absolutely want to avoid in Cameroon. This is also why Cavaye Djibril should have been told to remain at home.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

16, March 2020

After fleeing abroad, Chinese football teams rush home again to avoid virus ⁰

Most Chinese Super League (CSL) clubs fled abroad when the deadly coronavirus hit the country but they are now rushing back again as it takes hold elsewhere.

The national side is still training in Dubai — where many CSL teams also went in recent weeks — but they too are now making hasty arrangements to get home as soon as possible.

Wuhan Zall, from the city at the epicentre of the outbreak, had been training in Spain since late January but left at the weekend because of the worsening situation in Europe, now the focal point of the pandemic.

Wuhan will reportedly continue their chaotic pre-season preparations in Shenzhen. Wuhan itself is still in lockdown, despite virus numbers in China reducing.

The CSL season was supposed to begin on February 22 but was indefinitely postponed. It could start behind closed doors in May, according to reports.

Leo Baptistao, Wuhan’s Brazilian attacker, told Chinese media before departing Spain that the situation “has flipped”.

“We are more in danger (here). It now appears… better to leave,” he said.

Fabio Cannavaro’s CSL champions Guangzhou Evergrande, who were in Dubai, and runners-up Beijing Guoan are among the clubs that have recently returned to China.

Guangzhou R&F, coached by former Arsenal and Barcelona star Giovanni van Bronckhorst, on Monday became the latest club to say they were cutting short their Dubai training camp.

However, getting back to China is not straightforward because of flight disruptions and strict quarantine rules when coming home.

Wuhan Zall were stranded in Frankfurt, Germany on Sunday, according to Chinese media, and their current location was not immediately available.

The Beijing News reported that Li Tie’s national team were curtailing their stint in Dubai and had planned to fly back to the Chinese capital from Dubai.

However, their return is also becoming complicated, as Beijing authorities are now sending all international arrivals in the capital to quarantine facilities.

After declaring it had “basically” curbed the spread of the disease within the country, China is now worried about an influx of infections from other countries.

There have been more than 6,400 confirmed deaths globally from the coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan in December. Many prominent sports competitions across the globe have been halted.

Source: AFP

16, March 2020

Coronavirus leadership crisis: Is Trump presidency over? ⁰

The Trump administration’s response to the novel coronavirus has been characterized by misinformation, missteps and bureaucratic infighting. President Trump has tested negative for the coronavirus, but will he pass the leadership test as new cases of the highly-contagious respiratory disease pop up across the United States?

While Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus hitting the American shores and spreading throughout the country, he is certainly responsible for grave errors that critics say could even cost him his presidency.

“These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security,” Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at Ethics & Public Policy Center, wrote for The Atlantic.

President Trump has sent mixed messages on the outbreak in the US, going out of his way to deny evidence and brush aside the threat. He has also shrugged off blame for any mistakes his administration has made that have hampered efforts to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus that has killed dozens of people across the nation.

Since taking office, Trump has taken steps that experts have warned would prove disastrous during a public health crisis.He has shut down the National Security Council’s entire global health security unit, ignored an expert panel’s warning that the US is unprepared to deal with a pandemic and proposed budget cuts for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The most recent mistakes include the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, cutting personnel from pandemic preparedness,the decision to test too few people for the coronavirus and the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the CDC.

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said Friday when asked whether he took responsibility for the inadequate number of COVID-19 tests in the US. He instead blamed the testing failures on “rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,acknowledged in congressional testimony early in the week that America is still not providing adequate testing for the coronavirus.

“The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. I think it should be, but we’re not,”Fauci said.

Trump on Friday declared an emergency, unblocking tens of billions of dollars in federal aid. The administration has also negotiated a spending bill with Congress to provide assistance to the economy during the crisis.

Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus

However, the measure has proven too little too late. States across the country have largely been left on their own as they struggle to help their citizens.

For weeks, Trump and his team had had been too preoccupied by the potential political damage of an outbreak in an election year to acknowledge the true scale of the disaster. The president repeatedly contradicted health officials, claiming that the virus was contained in the US when it was actually spreading. He had also called the outbreak a Democratic “hoax” designed to hurt his reelection chances.

“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped oversee the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration, told The Washington Post.

“To the extent that there’s someone to blame here, the blame is on poor, chaotic management from the White House and failure to acknowledge the big picture,” said Konyndyk, who is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

So far none of President Trump’s disastrous policy decisions have caught up on him like his failure on the coronavirus. He has largely escaped the fallout from his trade war with China because the US economy was strong. He walked away from a critical global climate accord relatively unharmed because global warming happens slowly.

“But now, in the face of a global health threat that is immediate and all around us—and requires, more than anything, a coordinated global response—Trump finds that his errors are flying back in his face like clown pies almost every time he opens his mouth,” wrote Michael Hirsh for the Foreign Policy magazine.

“All the defining attributes of his presidency—his ‘America First’ arrogance, his us-versus-them pettiness toward the rest of the world, his obvious desire for American self-isolation—are suddenly working against him. Trump had very little credibility before; it appears to be all but shot now,” Hirsh said.

Financial markets have suffered their worst losses since the 1987 stock market crash, wiping out nearly three years of economic gains. As the pandemic threatens to derail the US economy, reports say President Trump grows more worried about his reelection chances.

“The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over,” Wehner argued in his piece.

Culled from Presstv

16, March 2020

COVID-19 Outbreak: South Africa closes border to all citizens from high-risk countries ⁰

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday said South African would close its borders from Wednesday to all foreigners from countries highly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Visas will be refused to anyone who has visited a high-risk country in the last 20 days, and 35 of the country’s 53 land ports will also be shut as of Monday.

“We are imposing a travel ban on foreign nationals from high-risk countries such as Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and China from 18 March 2020,” Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation.

The president also announced the closure of schools for around three weeks from Wednesday.

Public gatherings of more than 100 people will be been banned and mass celebrations cancelled to limit contact.

“Given the scale and the speed at which the virus is spreading, it is now clear that no country is immune from the disease or will be spared its severe impact,” said Ramaphosa, who declared a “national state of disaster”.

To date 61 people in South Africa have tested positive for novel coronavirus — the second-highest number of cases in Africa after Egypt, which has reported 110 so far.

The number of infections more than doubled over the weekend with 37 new cases announced.

Around 50 of South Africa’s coronavirus patients had recently traveled abroad.

Most came from Europe, the new epicenter of the virus, while others had returned from the United States and the Middle East.

But Ramaphosa suggested the latest confirmed cases had contracted the virus in South Africa.

“Initially, it was people who had traveled out of the country, especially from Italy,” he said.

“It is concerning that we are now dealing with internal transmission of the virus.”

Sub-Saharan Africa has so far escaped the worst of the pandemic, which has infected more than 160,000 people worldwide and killed over 6,000.

The region has recorded just over 100 cases in more than 20 countries, almost all of which were imported from the West.

But numbers have been creeping up fast, prompting several African leaders to roll out measures to limit infections.

Kenya blocked entry to all except citizens and residents on Sunday as the number of confirmed cases rose to three.

Governments across the continent have banned public gatherings, shut schools and restricted travel from areas hit by the pandemic.

South Africa’s new measures are bad news for tourism, which is a major foreign exchange earner and contributes to 10 percent of GDP.

The industry already suffered a blow after Beijing blocked overseas tours from China, where coronavirus was first detected in December.

“These losses are still going to increase,” Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane warned last week, when travel bans had not yet been implemented.

“Whatever happens, the truth of this situation is the virus will have a negative impact on the tourism sector.”

More than half the tourists that visited South Africa from overseas in December came from Europe, according to government statistics, followed by the US and Asia.

Source: Presstv

15, March 2020

French Cameroun Politics: Ailing Cavaye Djibril unable to walk ⁰

Supported by two men, the speaker of the National Assembly, the Right Honourable Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has arrived Yaounde from his sick bed in France in a bid to keep his job.

It was about 8:30pm on Saturday, March 14, 2020 when the Air France flight carrying the Speaker of the National Assembly landed at the Yaounde Nsimalen International Airport.

Visibly in very bad shape, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril whose body is now a colony of disease was supported by two men to allow him take a seat on board a vehicle amid ovation from some CPDM comedians to his Yaounde residence.

Cavaye Djibril has been absent since the opening of the session on March 10^th 2020 but could make his appearance in the lower house on Monday the 16^th of March for a solemn ceremony that could see him reelected as speaker.

The Biya acolyte has been a member of Cameroon’s National Assembly for 47 years and was re-elected for a new five-year term in the recent twin poll. However, his future as president of the National Assembly is shrouded in uncertainty.

He reportedly left his hospital bed in France despite still being in a precarious state of health to be present in Yaounde for the election of the National Assembly bureau scheduled for next week.

It now remains to be seen whether the Head of State, Paul Biya, National President of the ruling CPDM party, will renew his confidence in him.

Culled from Cameroun Info.Net

15, March 2020

Coronavirus Outbreak: The Holy Father leaves Vatican City to pray in one of Rome’s basilica ⁰

Pope Francis left Vatican City on Sunday to pray in one of Rome’s cathedrals for victims of the coronavirus pandemic, the Vatican said.

The 83-year-old pontiff first visited Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica and then walked “on foot, as if on a pilgrimage” to the San Marcello al Corso church, the Vatican said in a statement.

The statement said Pope Francis selected the church because it holds a “miraculous crucifix which, in 1522, was carried in procession through the districts of the city” to mark the end of the Great Plague.

The pope prayed for “the end of the pandemic that affects Italy and the world, imploring for the healing of the many sick, and remembering the many victims,” the Vatican said.

Italy on Sunday recorded 368 new deaths from the virus, its highest one-day increase to date, taking the total to 1,809 — the most outside China.

The statement said Pope Francis returned to the Vatican about 90 minutes after leaving.

Source: AFP

15, March 2020

Deprived of football, players try to fill the ‘big void’ ⁰

Mowing the lawn, playing football with your dog, turning on the TV… footballers around Europe are struggling to fill the “big void” created by the coronavirus shutdown.

Many are writing about the unfamiliar experience on social media. Some have already come to the conclusion that “there is nothing to do”.

Real Madrid players, forced into quarantine by a case of coronavirus in the club’s basketball squad, have been training at home, where most of them already had facilities and equipment.

Captain Sergio Ramos posted a video on Instagram showing him sprinting on a treadmill.

Marco Asensio, who suffered a knee injury last summer, posted a video showing that he was continuing his recovery programme in his garden.

But even for sportsmen used to working out, there is a limit.

“I’m here, in my garden, there’s nothing to do,” French striker Karim Benzema said in a video on social media where he appeared alongside his dog, earning him a comparison with Will Smith in the post-apocalyptic film “I am legend”.

Fabien Causeur, a Real Madrid basketball guard, has launched a live video channel to show his quarantine challenge.

He has been taking on athletes and celebrities in three-minute simultaneous excercise including Thibaut Courtois, the Real Madrid goalkeeper, and NBA star and former Real Madrid teammate Luka Doncic.

At Barcelona, players are following a “specific and personalised” programme set by the club which is monitoring their efforts remotely using biometric tags.

Luis Suarez had been a step ahead of Ramos, posting a video of himself trudging on a treadmill last week.

In Italy, Juventus midfielder Douglas Costa filmed himself practising his dribbling in his back garden with his dog struggling to fill the role of defender.

– Chopped wood –

Alexis Sanchez, on loan to Inter Milan, has two golden retrievers and a much bigger garden but he comfortably outplayed them in a video he put up online. He also posted photos of himself topless, gathering chopped wood.

Jessica Melena, the wife of Ciro Immobile posted a cookery video on Instagram, showing the Lazio striker waving a spatula and mixing a cake while she coached him.

Immobile posted his own video in which he juggled furry toys with his feet.

Napoli’s Belgian forward Dries Mertens posted pictures of a work out with a huge bottle of red wine.

In France, Strasbourg midfielder Adrien Thomasson, was looking ahead to another empty week.

“We’ll have nothing to do, in the middle of the season, it’s never happened before. Our habits have been turned upside down,” he said.

Thomasson is a ski fan but as other sports are also at a standstill that leaves a “big void” for this ski lover.

“I’m going to watch series, movies, it’s going to be really limited.”

Television is also the refuge for James Lea Siliki, a Rennes midfielder, who tweeted the times of a couple of French quiz shows. Later he admitted a passion for a French TV karaoke show adding “I’ll spare you my voice”.

Romain Thomas, a defender at Angers, said his daily routine involved jogging, gardening and watching French reality TV.

He said he has talked to team-mates.

“We said to each other: ‘Look, it’s a beautiful day, it’s time to mow’. So I mowed the lawn in the garden, it gives me time to think about something else.”

Source: AFP

15, March 2020

Southern Cameroons War: 4th year with new wave of violence ⁰

The war in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia has entered its fourth year and a new wave of violence is looming for thousands of civilians in Ground Zero and French speaking Cameroon citizens living around the areas bordering West Cameroon.

Over the last year, the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé has seen its grip on the Southern Cameroons territory weakened and President Biya’s position as head of state threatened. All that remains of the Cameroon government in Southern Cameroons is cornered in Buea and Bamenda where two Francophone governors are still posing as administrators with legitimate authority.

And yet in those two cities, a consortium of Ambazonia Restoration Forces showing no regard to the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon are consolidating power, and looking set for a showdown with the Cameroon government army and its French backer. The Cameroon government army says it is responding to an increase in attacks from Ambazonia separatists in the West Region.

After a string of victories against the Cameroon government military, the Ambazonian Vice President Dabney Yerima said recently that Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces now control all border crossings into the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

There are reports that Ambazonia Self Defense groups and armed militia sponsored by the ruling CPDM party have engaged in the same kind of repression that sparked the uprising against the Biya French Cameroun rule four years ago.

Armed militia groups with strong ties to the Cameroon government army have been accused of being behind the assassinations of several well known religious figures, including a cream of Roman Catholic priests and an American missionary.

Thousands of Southern Cameroons civilians have died in Cameroon government army attacks on towns and villages over the past four years, and some 35,000 civilians have fled their homes in to the bushes to escape the fighting.

Southern Cameroons is now home to more than 20 different armed Ambazonia groups and thousands of Cameroon government army soldiers battling for control in a war that has displaced more than half a million people to neighboring Nigeria and to other parts of French Cameroun. Aid groups on the ground have also witnessed numerous attacks from the Cameroon government army.

Our senior intelligence officer in the chief city of the West Region in Cameroon hinted that there is a huge sense of panic now in Mbouda, Baffoussam and Dschang as more Cameroon government security posts come under attack from Ambazonia fighters.

Health facilities in Southern Cameroons have been forced to close and people are dying or suffering in acute pain because they cannot get the treatment they need in places like Akwaya, Menchum, Bui, Ndian, Batibo and Ndop.

Human Rights Watch reported that it is the beleaguered Southern Cameroons civilians who are finding themselves under attack on all fronts. Charities and Aid organizations are at risk of falling foul of the Yaoundé imposed law if they send aid into Southern Cameroons and many aid workers have been caught up in the fighting.

Celebrations to mark World Women’s Day saw the worst bombing ever since the war started with Ambazonia Restoration Forces targeting the Francophone governor of the North West, Lele Afrique.

Many in Southern Cameroons now fear any Cameroon government offensive. An international conference in Washington DC that was to discuss the armed conflict in Southern Cameroons was put on hold following the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The UN has warned that continued Cameroon government military assault on Southern Cameroons would create a difficult humanitarian catastrophe in the Sub Saharan region.

Southern Cameroons political elites serving with the ruling CPDM government in Yaoundé are too scared now to speak out against the leadership pattern of the 87 year old President Biya. Any Southern Cameroons prominent figure that speaks against the atrocities being committed by the Cameroon government army soldiers in Southern Cameroons is libeled a secessionist and a criminal.

Receiving a pat on the back earlier this month, the Russian Ambassador to Cameroon supported the Yaounde regime’s handling of the crisis in Southern Cameroons and condemned aid groups helping Southern Cameroons civilians caught in the fighting.

Southern Cameroonians living in Ground Zero are confused and afraid of what will happen next. In many ways, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has successfully entered its fourth year of war much as it did in the first. Extreme violence and crimes against humanity plagues the entire territory.

Last week, hundreds protested in the city of London, the cradle of the Southern Cameroons Problem against the British Monarchy for its deliberate silence on the genocide going on in Southern Cameroons.

The London protest represented the first Southern Cameroons peaceful demonstration in an event that was attended by Her Majesty the Queen and it came despite little or no action from the Commonwealth.

The Biya Francophone regime reportedly arrested hundreds of formally cleared Ambazonian fighters and civilians with a track record of unarmed opposition activity. This approach led by the Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji has further hampered the Cameroon government’s efforts to retain control over Southern Cameroons.

As long as President Biya remains in power, the situation in Southern Cameroons will not improve. Southern Cameroons refugees and the internally displaced will not return for fear of joblessness, homelessness and arbitrary arrest. The fighting will continue.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

15, March 2020

Coronavirus taking toll on diplomacy at UN ⁰

The spread of the new coronavirus around the world is also taking a toll on international diplomacy at the United Nations (UN) in New York, where mandatory social distancing has caused major disruptions to routine work.

Restrictions at the UN headquarters in downtown Manhattan include mandatory work from home for the majority of the 3,000 employees, and reduced physical participation for diplomats at the Security Council. Several sessions of the Council in the coming week have also been canceled.

The UN Secretariat oversees nearly 100,000 peace-keeping forces at conflict zones around the world, and employees and diplomats routinely discuss a wide variety of world issues at small and large meetings. Significantly reduced staff at the UN offices would therefore translate to sweeping disruptions to work.

“Everything gets a bit more complicated,” said one diplomat working from home, according to AFP, which did not reveal the diplomat’s name.

“We come, but there are fewer and fewer meetings, and consensus is going to be more difficult to achieve,” said one ambassador, whose name was also not mentioned.

On Thursday, a Philippine diplomat tested positive for the new virus, becoming the first case of infection in the UN community and prompting the closing of the Philippines’ mission.

A day later, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres canceled a trip to Africa and required all non-essential employees to telework until April 12.

“The United Nations is facing one of the biggest challenges in our history,” Guterres wrote in a letter to all UN employees obtained by AFP, adding that the virus was having “a major impact on us and our work.”

UN chief says declaration of coronavirus pandemic is call to action

Diplomatic delegations at the 15-member Security Council should include no more than three people. And a recent attempt to hold a meeting of the Council by teleconference also failed due to technological shortcomings.

Self-service in the cafeterias in the building has also been recently banned.

The near-empty hallways of the vast complex have the feel of a “ghost town,” according to one guard at a checkpoint in the building.

The new virus from the coronavirus family first emerged in China’s Wuhan City in December last year. Since then, it has spread across the world, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global pandemic.

Source: Presstv

15, March 2020

Doors slam shut across borderless Europe as coronavirus spreads ⁰

Europe’s cherished Schengen network of open internal borders is on the brink of collapse as more and more countries shut their doors in a frantic effort to stave off the coronavirus pandemic, even as experts warn such tactics will delay its spread – but not halt it.

At his daily briefing on the coronavirus emergency on Friday, Luca Zaia, the governor of Italy’s Veneto region, one of Europe’s worst-hit, told reporters that Europe’s borderless zone was “disappearing as we speak”.

“Schengen no longer exists, it will be remembered only in the history books,” Zaia said, pointing to the long lines of traffic stuck at Italy’s northeastern border, where Austrian officials have reintroduced stringent controls.

With Italy reporting the most virus cases and deaths anywhere in the world except China, the pandemic is increasingly wearing on the EU’s cherished core principle, which envisions a border-free Europe where citizens can freely live, work and travel.

Austria became the first country to impose drastic curbs on travel from Italy on Wednesday, urgently reinstalling border checkpoints in the exact spots where they had been dismantled back in 1997 when the country joined the Schengen Area.

All travellers seeking to cross the Brennero border from Italy are now required to present health certificates proving they have not contracted the COVID-19 virus – a measure that has slowed traffic on the busy Alpine crossing to a near standstill.

Since then, Slovenia and Switzerland, which also border Italy, have imposed similar curbs. But several other EU nations – including Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus – have announced restrictions that go far beyond travellers from Italy.

“Most of the cases that have been propagating the coronavirus epidemic in Poland are imported cases,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters as he announced the closure of his country’s borders with all its neighbours starting at midnight on Saturday.

“We don’t want the coronavirus to head our way in droves.”

‘Uncharted territory’

The successive border closures came as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday that Europe had become the pandemic’s current “epicenter” after reporting more cases and deaths than the rest of world combined, excluding China.

More than 22,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed across Europe, and nearly 1,500 people with the virus have died on the continent – most of them in Italy.

While the virus is spreading across the continent, the rushed actions taken by individual states are highlighting the lack of a coordinated approach to fighting the coronavirus – not least among the European Union’s 27 member states.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has recommended coordinated health screenings at the borders as a way to address infections, rather than border closures.

“We’ve seen travel bans and controls being put in place in a number of member states,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters on Friday. “Certain controls may be justified, but general travel bans are not seen as being the most effective by the World Health Organization. Moreover, they have a strong social and economic impact. They disrupt people’s lives and business across the borders.”

To avoid a patchwork of national policies that are ineffective and cause economic harm, “any measure that is taken must be proportionate” and coordinated with Brussels, she said, suggesting that preliminary checks for signs of infection could be done at the Schengen Area’s borders, both internal and external.

“Member states, especially neighbouring ones, need to work very closely together,” Von der Leyen said. “In this way, and it’s the only way, we can make sure that our citizens receive the healthcare that they need immediately, wherever they are.”

But Von der Leyen’s commission, along with other EU institutions, has a very limited role to play in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. It polices the Schengen Area’s rules, but individual countries are responsible for their own health and public safety policies.

In a sign of the EU’s limited power, the Danish government also announced late Friday that it was closing all of its borders – land, sea and air – to travellers. Denmark consulted with neighbouring countries prior to the announcement but not with EU officials.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a news conference as he announced the travel ban. “I know that the overall list of measures is very extreme and will be seen as very extreme, but I am convinced that it’s worth it.”

‘Foreign disease’

In many ways, the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated divisions that first came to the fore in 2015, when eastern and central European states closed their borders to migrants and thwarted EU efforts to implement migrant quotas across the bloc.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country has also banned travel from Italy, has made an explicit link between the two crises.

“We are fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus – there is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement,” Orban told Hungarian media on Friday.

“Our experience is that foreigners brought in the disease, and that it is spreading among foreigners,” he added, in remarks that mirrored US President Donald Trump’s description of the coronavirus as a “foreign disease”.

Trump’s decision on Wednesday to slap a 30-day travel ban on people coming from the Schengen Area has stunned and angered EU officials, who were not consulted prior to the move.

“Instead of tending to the problems of his country, and to a virus that knows no borders, he thinks that he can fight it like people that have a different citizenship than American,” said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

Though it has stepped up monitoring travellers for signs of infection, Germany has so far refused to close its borders. Spain and Italy have also opted to keep borders open, even as they place their own populations under lockdown.

“This virus cares not for borders, be they internal or external,” said Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday as he said his country planned to declare a nationwide state of emergency.

‘Turn off the source’

French President Emmanuel Macron has also been critical of EU members that have unilaterally closed their borders, calling such moves counter-productive and pleading instead for coordination across the bloc. He has stressed the importance of scientific evidence, rather than ideology or political expediency, in guiding the world’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

But just as governments are divided over how to tackle the novel virus, so is the scientific community.

In justifying Trump’s travel ban, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top official on infectious diseases at the US National Institute of Health, noted that 70 percent of new infections could be traced to Europe.

“It was pretty compelling that we needed to turn off the source from that region,” he told a congressional panel on Thursday.

Internal blockades have proved their effectiveness in China, where the virus first originated, said Sterghios Moschos, a virologist at Northumbria University in the UK. Appearing on the FRANCE 24 Debate show, Moschos noted that the blockade of Hubei province “stopped in its tracks the transmission intensity”, thereby sparing other parts of the country.

Other medical experts are doubtful that the Chinese model would prove useful now that the disease has spread across the globe and is being passed through so-called community transmission – among people who haven’t travelled overseas.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led a World Health Organization team in China as the COVID-19 disease was surging last month, said countries might gain in the short term by limiting travel, but that overall “it doesn’t help to restrict movement”.

Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson and medical doctor currently involved in the virus response, echoed the concerns about the false comfort of closing borders as a delaying tactic.

“You divert a lot of resources when you are focused on closing borders, rather than focusing on protecting your health workers, preparing your health systems and enhancing your disease surveillance,” she told The Intercept.

Even Britain, which was initially exempt from Trump’s travel ban, has expressed scepticism about its effectiveness.

“With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here,” Finance Minister Rishi Sunak told BBC radio on Friday.

He added: “The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans are going to have a material effect on the spread of the infection.”

Source: France 24