UK's Royal Mint making coronavirus protective gear for health staff


LONDON (Reuters) - The Royal Mint, the world’s largest maker and supplier of coins, said on Friday it has started manufacturing visors for Britain’s medical staff to protect them from coronavirus.


FILE PHOTO: Medical staff with a patient at the back of an ambulance outside St Thomas's hospital as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in London, Britain, March 26, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Engineers at the Mint created the visors after finding a basic design online and developing medically approved prototypes within 48 hours at their production site in Wales.

The first visors are already in use at a hospital in Wales and mass production will start on Saturday morning, with several hundred coming on the first day and increasing numbers after that.

The Mint says it can produce thousands of visors per day if it can get enough parts and is now appealing to manufacturers across the UK to help it source enough clear plastic, which is currently in short supply.


The simple design comprises a clear plastic shield which covers the worker’s face, held in place by a piece of elastic.

Britain’s publicly funded national health service, the NHS, has received much public support during the coronavirus outbreak, with government health authorities adopting the slogan “Stay Home, Protect The NHS, Save Lives”.

People all over the country took to their balconies and doorsteps on Thursday evening to applaud health workers who are battling the spread of the coronavirus.

“My sister works for the NHS and it really focuses your mind on the challenges they are facing,” said Leighton John, director of operations at the Royal Mint.


“We set our engineers the task of developing essential medical equipment which could be easily made on site – within seven hours they’d created a medical visor, and within 48 hours it was approved for mass manufacture,” John said.

As the virus sweeps the country, the Mint is the latest in a number of companies taking on new operations as part of a nationwide effort to support the NHS.

Vacuum cleaner company Dyson was recruited to supply hospitals with 10,000 medical ventilators designed at breakneck speed ahead of an expected surge of cases, and outsourcer Capita announced on Friday it was working with the government to provide coronavirus testing sites.

EU says Britain had chance to join ventilator procurement scheme

BREXIT ISOLATIONIST NATIONALISM LIKE TRUMPISM

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain was given a chance to participate in a European Union scheme to buy ventilators to fight the coronavirus, the EU said on Friday, after London said it had not joined because it missed the invitation in an e-mail mixup.


A graphic representation of CoVent ventilator attached to a hospital bed, designed by Dyson, is seen attached to a hospital bed, in this undated handout image. DYSON/Handout via REUTERS

The EU launched a joint procurement procedure on March 17 to buy ventilators on behalf of 25 members states, in a bid to cut prices and reduce competition among EU nations seeking the machines which help coronavirus patients breathe and are in short supply.

Britain, which is entitled to participate in such schemes under an 11-month transition deal since leaving the EU in January, did not join it.

That attracted criticism at home from opponents who accused the government of prioritizing “Brexit over breathing” - so determined to act independently of the bloc that it would risk public health in the coronavirus crisis.

A British government spokesman said on Thursday London had not rejected the scheme deliberately, but had stayed out because it missed the invitation, due to an e-mail mixup. Britain would consider joining such joint procurement schemes in the future.

However, an EU spokesman said on Friday British officials had attended several meetings at which the scheme was discussed, and Britain had been given a chance to say if it wanted to be included.

Schemes to buy ventilators and other medical gear were “discussed several times in the meetings of the health security committee where the UK participated,” the spokesman said.


“Member states and the UK had the opportunity to signal their interest to participate in any joint procurement” at the meetings and via an EU communication system, he said.

The EU is analyzing offers received on Thursday on the procurement for ventilators, the EU spokesman said.

Offers were also received this week for an earlier EU procurement for face masks, gloves and visors for medical staff launched a month ago. If contracts are signed, goods could be received in coming weeks.

UK says working at pace on ventilator production plan

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said it was working fast on plans to build more ventilators to help handle the coronavirus outbreak, hoping manufacturers can build larger amounts and do so more speedily.

“The prime minister spoke to a dozen of the companies involved to thank them for all their work so far and to discuss ways that the Government could support them to build ventilators more quickly and in greater quantities for the frontline in the coming weeks,” Boris Johnson’s Downing Street office said.

Some companies are also working on new designs.

“Any new orders are all dependent on machines passing regulatory tests, but the Government, manufacturers and regulators are working at pace to drive this work forward,” the government said.

FOUR GRAMMY AWARDS WINNER 2020 BILLIE EILISH 

World's worst air adds to Serbian capital's coronavirus woes

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Belgrade’s residents on Friday isolated themselves not only from coronavirus but also from acrid smoke, which defied strong winds to transform the Serbian capital into the city with the world’s most polluted air.

The Air Visual API website, which compiles data from ground sensors worldwide, ranked the Serbian capital temporarily at the top of its global index of cities with the worst air pollution.

Belgrade’s pollution level later fell to fourth, behind Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, Zagreb in Croatia, and Chiang Mai in Thailand.

Local researchers say that domestic heating and industry, including decades-old coal-fired power plants which provide most of Serbia’s energy, emit almost three-quarters of the country’s polluting air particles.

In January hundreds of protesters took to Belgrade’s streets demanding the government tackle severe air pollution throughout the European Union candidate country.

In a statement, Ne Davimo Beograd (Let’s Not Drown Belgrade), a local rights and environment watchdog, said that the main cause of the latest pollution could be a smouldering fire at the sprawling Vinca landfill, about 20 km (12 miles) east of the city center.


Radomir Lazovic, one of the organization’s leading activists, said that air pollution could aggravate the condition of people with pulmonary diseases, which are particularly susceptible to coronavirus infection.

“According to estimates ... (by doctors), there are around 1 million of these people in Serbia,” Lazovic told Reuters.

In a statement, the ministry for environmental protection said that along with small heating plants and domestic heating, dust was the main contributor to most recent pollution.


“After melting of snow and drying of the surface (soil), a strong wind led to re-emission of the (dust) particles into ... the lower layers of atmosphere,” the ministry said.

So far, the coronavirus infection in Serbia has sickened 528 and killed eight people.

Officials from Belgrade’s waste disposal company and city hall who are responsible for the landfill could not immediately be reached for comment.

Poll finds Russians split over allowing Putin to extend rule

MARCH 27, 2020 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is sharply divided over a constitutional change that would allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule until 2036, an opinion poll published on Friday has found.

The poll by the Levada Centre found 6% of 1,624 people of different ages polled across Russia from March 19-25 said they were unable to answer the questions posed, while 47% opposed the measure and 48% supported it.

Putin, 67, who has dominated the Russian political landscape as president or prime minister for two decades, maintains a high approval rating, although his trust rating has been sliding and hit a six-year low in February.

The Moscow-based Levada Centre said 30% were categorically against the reform, with 17% inclined to oppose it, compared with 23% staunchly in favor and 25% inclined to support it.

The proposed change, part of a package of reforms that has already been approved by parliament and Russia’s Constitutional Court, would reset Putin’s presidential term tally to zero, allowing him to serve two more back-to-back six year terms.

Billboards urging Russians to take part in the nationwide vote have already gone up in many Russian towns and cities, but the nationwide vote scheduled for April 22 has been postponed because of the coronavirus crisis and no new date has been set.

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Spain's cabinet blocks employers using coronavirus as a pretext for layoffs
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s cabinet has approved measures to prevent employers from taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to lay off workers, labour minister Yolanda Diaz said on Friday.
“In our country nobody can take advantage of this health crisis, you can’t use COVID-19 to fire people,” Diaz said after an extraordinary cabinet meeting held on Friday.

Cannabis street prices surge under coronavirus lockdown in FranceLIBÉRER LA MAUVAISE HERBE

Caroline Pailliez, Mourad Guichard

PARIS/ORLEANS, France (Reuters) - The street price of cannabis in French cities has surged after tight border controls imposed as part of a nationwide lockdown to slow the coronavirus outbreak disrupted the flow of illegal narcotics and drug gangs hiked their rates.

Cannabis use is outlawed in France but the country has one of Europe’s highest consumption rates. Most cannabis resin that enters France comes from Morocco via Spain. Marijuana, or grass, is typically imported from the Netherlands.

“The price of a 100 gram bar of resin went from 280 euros to 500 euros in a week in Marseille,” said Yann Bastiere, a senior police union official who works with counter-narcotics investigators.

He said similar trends were observed in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, and Rennes in the northwest.

France imposed its lockdown on March 17 and joined other European states like Spain, Austria and Germany in tightening national border controls. A day later, the EU closed the Schengen area’s external borders to third-country citizens.

“France can no longer get its cannabis supplies,” said organized crime expert Thierry Colombie. “With the halt in exports from Morocco, we’re seeing prices go up in France as supply falls and dealers charge a premium.”

Colombie said an estimated 70% of cannabis resin sold on French streets was trafficked from Morocco, through Spain and over the Pyrenees. Much of the rest is shipped via Belgium and Holland.
SUPERMARKET CAR PARKS

In a flat in central Orleans, filled with the pungent aroma of hashish, one user said prices on the street leapt after Macron announced the lockdown and left France’s 67 million people only 16 hours to prepare.

Smoking his last joint before needing to source more, Cedric, who requested anonymity because recreational drug use is illegal in France, said that hours before the lockdown, the price of a gram of cannabis had doubled.

His dealer said he was demanding an extra 200 euros per 100 gram brick and would turn to locally-grown weed if the lockdown persisted.

“But I’m going to have to be able to get to their place,” said the small-time dealer, who earns up to 3,000 euros a month selling drugs, referring to the heightened police checks. “It’s going to be a nightmare.”

Dealers were having to be more creative in reaching their buyers, he said. Supermarket car parks were popular, with grocery shopping allowed under the lockdown rules. Others were dressing up as a joggers, with daily exercise still permitted.

Some police sources have privately expressed concerns that a prolonged scarcity of cannabis could fan trouble in France’s restless city suburbs and prisons.

Rivalries between drug gangs could escalate, while a fragile social peace in the deprived zones risked being tested once users were unable to get drugs.

“The shortage of drugs on the streets could lead to public disorder in the high-rise suburbs,” said Colombie, echoing the police fears. “We could be on the cusp of real trouble.”

BELLA CIAO

'Like wartime' - Philippine doctors overwhelmed by coronavirus delugeKaren Lema

MANILA (Reuters) - Private hospitals in the Philippines capital Manila have stopped accepting coronavirus patients in the face of surging numbers of sufferers and people seeking tests, the hospitals said.



FILE PHOTO: A man wearing a protective mask on his neck walks past closed shops in an empty street following the lockdown in the Philippine capital to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Manila, Philippines, March 24, 2020. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez/File Photo

The Philippines has reported relatively fewer infections than many other countries in Southeast Asia, but medical experts say a lack of testing has meant that the scale of the epidemic has gone undetected.

“It’s like wartime,” said Eugenio Ramos, a doctor and head of The Medical City, a Manila private hospital, which was among the first to turn away coronavirus patients.

It has attended to more than 1,000 people who feared they had coronavirus and is currently treating more than 100 suspected coronavirus patients, 14 in intensive care.

“More and more are coming, a lot of scared people, some of them already in their advanced stage,” Ramos said this week - adding that facilities were so stretched that many who should be in the intensive care unit were just being intubated with breathing tubes to keep them alive.

The scenes are akin to those in hospitals in countries that have been overwhelmed by coronavirus cases, but comes less than three weeks since the country of 107 million reported its first case of local transmission.

The Philippines has reported 803 cases and 54 deaths. Malaysia, with the highest number of infections in Southeast Asia at 2,161, has had 26 deaths.

The situation in the Philippines is similar to that in Indonesia, the region’s most populous country, where there is an even higher ratio of deaths to detected cases - an indicator for doctors that the number of infections may be much higher.

Former Health Minister Esperanza Cabral said the reported infection rate was probably just the tip of the iceberg, given the Philippines has so far only tested 2,147 people.

“We cannot gauge the extent of the outbreak until we have tested about 10,000 to 20,000 people,” Cabral told Reuters.

Testing in the Philippines is to be ramped up with the arrival of 100,000 test kits from China.

Modeling from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford suggests the number of infections in the Philippines may already be higher than 11,000.

LOCKDOWN

The Philippines took drastic measures to contain the spread after its first domestic case on March 7, becoming the third country after China and Italy to put its people under home quarantine, suspend transport, work and commercial activity.

But the health system is weak.

The Philippines, which on average sends 19,000 trained nurses overseas each year, has 10 beds and 14 doctors per 10,000 people, according to data from the World Health Organization. Italy has more than 40 doctors and 30 beds per 10,000 people.

An emergency ward worker who spoke to Reuters described patients waiting up to six hours to be seen and inexperienced staff treating critical patients due to manpower shortages.

Nine medical workers have died, and hundreds more have been quarantined for being close to sufferers.

The University of Santo Tomas hospital has 530 staff quarantined. The Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center said it had insufficient testing kits and protective gear and could not take more coronavirus patients.


FILE PHOTO: A soldier waits for health workers to board a free shuttle service following the suspension of mass transportation to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, March 20, 2020. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez/File Photo

Under pressure from 11 private hospitals, the government has now dedicated three public hospitals to serve as special COVID-19 treatment centers - but they themselves are also under strain.

“We have every reason to be scared,” the private hospitals said in a letter appealing for help.

The head of the emergency department of St. Luke’s Medical Centre, Richard Enecilla, said it had received 120 possible coronavirus-related patients in one day, and made them line up on the hospital driveway to limit exposure.

“The way it exploded caught a lot us off-guard,” he told Reuters. “The volume of cases went up and our capacity to serve went down at the same time.”


Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty, Matthew Tostevin and Alex Richardson

Russian aid to Italy leaves EU exposed
AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT

BRUSSELS/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s military planeloads of aid to Italy to combat the spread of coronavirus have exposed the European Union’s failure to provide swift help to a member in crisis and handed President Vladimir Putin a publicity coup at home and abroad.

Italy has been thankful for the Russian decontamination units and army medical staff sent over the past four days, contrasting it with a piecemeal response by EU states.

But senior EU and NATO diplomats and officials see the assistance less as generosity and more as a geopolitical move asserting Russian power and extending influence.

“The Italians made a general request for assistance and the Russians are sending military doctors and military equipment by military planes,” a senior EU diplomat said.

“That sends a signal.”

Russian gas imports help fuel Italy’s power plants and Rome has long called for a relaxation of EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The penalties have been repeatedly renewed while Moscow backed separatists elsewhere in Ukraine.

Rome denies the aid signals a merging of geopolitical interests.

“There are no new geopolitical scenarios to trace, there is a country that needs help and other countries that are helping us,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio was quoted as saying by Italy’s Il Corriere della Sera newspaper on Thursday.

“It is not a question of a Cold War, it is a question of reality, or realpolitik, you call it what you like.”

‘FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE’

Russia has flown at least 15 flights to Italy using military transport planes with truck-based disinfection units. Eight medical brigades and another 100 personnel include some of its most advanced nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops.

“France has given us 2 million masks, Germany has sent us a few dozen ventilators. (Prime Minister Guiseppe) Conte requested and obtained some planes from Russia that brought 180 doctors, nurses, ventilators and masks,” Italy’s government commissioner for the coronavirus emergency, Domenico Arcuri, told RAI on Sunday.

Russia’s government and its delegation to NATO have published multiple videos of trucks on their way to Bergamo, the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus crisis, on their Twitter accounts while Russian state media showed Italy’s foreign minister personally welcoming the first Russian plane.

Labeled “From Russia with Love”, planes and trucks bore giant stickers showing heart-shaped Russian and Italian flags next to one another.

By contrast, NATO airlifts of urgent medical supplies to European allies have not grabbed public attention. The European Union has faced delays obtaining face masks and other protective gear while EU governments have closed borders to one another.

NATO militaries are active flying sick patients to hospitals, delivering beds and repatriating citizens, although NATO has not deployed its own biological protection units.


FILE PHOTO: Russian military specialists board a transport plane heading to Italy, hit by the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a military airdrome in Moscow region, Russia March 22, 2020. Russian Defence Ministry/Alexey Ereshko/Handout via REUTERS

“This is a big success story for Putin. I think the Italians have fallen into a trap,” said a senior NATO diplomat, although he noted that Italy was now receiving more support directly from the alliance. Spain has also requested direct NATO help.

Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Center, noted China and Cuba were also sending medical aid to Italy. “For countries that would like to see the existing world order revised in their favor, the pandemic is an opportunity,” he said.

SANCTIONS RELIEF

The EU and NATO have long accused the Kremlin of using a mix of soft power, covert action and computer hackers to try to destabilize the West by exploiting divisions in society.

Last week, an EU internal document seen by Reuters accused Russian media of deploying a “significant disinformation campaign” against the West to worsen the impact of the coronavirus. Moscow denied any such plan.

While not mentioning Russia by name, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in his blog this week that the EU needed to be more aware of “a struggle for influence through spinning and the politics of generosity”.

Russia is subject to European Union sanctions on its banking, financial and energy sectors and all 27 governments must agree to renew them every six months.

When asked if Russia expected Italy to return the favor by trying to get EU sanctions lifted, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the notion as absurd.

“We’re not talking about any conditions or calculations or hopes here,” he said on Monday. “Italy is really in need of much more wide scale help and what Russia does is manageable.”

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