COVID-19 Monitor

Last Updated:October 15, 2020

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The key tool to a safe opening is not social distancing (Washington Post) Published on: May 18, 2020 | Category: Global Response

Many places, including South Korea and Hong Kong, have avoided lockdowns entirely and are now returning to something like normal conditions. Even when Hong Kong, where I live, got a second wave, we never went into lockdown, and now new cases are at nearly zero.
Contact isolation is more effective than lockdowns and also less economically disruptive.
The person with the positive test result and all of those contacts are then required to move temporarily into a government-run, hygienic, isolated environment — probably in a hotel or similar setting — until they can be ruled out as infectious.

How businesses should balance risk and opportunity during the coronavirus crisis (Fortune) Published on: May 18, 2020 | Category: Leadership

Peter Schwartz has spent five decades studying the balance between risk and opportunity.
But never before has he seen a risk scenario as unpredictable and confusing as the coronavirus crisis.
“Something that is really risky has two features,” says Hersh Shefrin, a professor at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business and a leading expert in behavioral finance. “The first is that the consequences induce a sense of dread. Second, there’s a great deal of uncertainty, so we don’t feel we have control.”
“Everybody wants to know what’s next,” says Webb, the founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute, a management consulting firm. “They haven’t been in a position before where they’re having to make 1,000 decisions a day without any clear understanding of what’s coming.”

Transit workers are paying a heavy price during the pandemic (Washington Post) Published on: May 17, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Leadership

The covid-19 deaths were piling up so fast that New York City bus driver Danny Cruz began to worry that no one understood the toll the virus was taking on his fellow transit workers.
By Cruz’s count, 129 New York City transit workers have died of covid-19.
Across the country, an estimated 430,000 public transit workers, including train operators and bus drivers like Cruz, have kept systems operating, moving essential workers such as doctors, nurses and first responders who have been hailed as heroes.

COVID-19: 3 years jail for not wearing masks in Qatar (Gulf News) Published on: May 17, 2020 | Category: Global Response

Qatar on Sunday began enforcing the world’s toughest penalties of up to three years’ imprisonment for failing to wear masks in public, as it battles one of the world’s highest coronavirus infection rates.
More than 30,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the tiny Gulf country – 1.1 per cent of the 2.75 million population – although just 15 people have died.
Authorities in Chad have made it an offence to be unmasked in public, on pain of 15 days in prison. In Morocco similar rules can see violators jailed for three months and fined up to 1,300 dirhams ($130).

China’s once-resilient tech economy starting to crack under pressure from coronavirus economic carnage (SCMP) Published on: May 17, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

In the first quarter of 2020, the number of Chinese recruitment postings across all industries fell 22.6 per cent compared with the same period last year.
A survey found that 5.4 per cent of tech firms experienced job cuts while 12.9 per cent have reduced contractors, interns and part-time employees.

As new coronavirus cases remain low, China reopens schools, domestic flights (Global News) Published on: May 17, 2020 | Category: Global Response

China on Sunday reported five new cases of the novel coronavirus, as the commercial hub of Shanghai announced the restart of some schools and domestic flights.
In Shanghai, students retain the option of continuing to follow classes online rather than facing virus testing and social distancing measures at schools.
China now has the capacity to perform 1.5 million nucleic acid tests per day, National Health Commission Guo Yanhong told reporters Saturday.

Coronavirus Vaccine Front-Runners Emerge, Rollouts Weighed (WSJ) Published on: May 17, 2020 | Category: Global Response, Leadership

Of more than 100 vaccines in development globally, at least eight have started testing in humans, including candidates from Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc.
At the same time, pharmaceutical giants like Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca PLC and Sanofi are building capacity to make hundreds of millions of doses of their own or their partners’ vaccines.
Some, like vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, are based on relatively new technologies that haven’t been approved previously.

Canada’s ‘inevitable’ second wave of COVID-19 will expose surveillance blindspots: experts (CTV News) Published on: May 16, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business

No one knows when a fresh surge of COVID-19 cases will emerge in Canada, but experts agree numbers are poised to rise and could very well explode in surveillance blindspots.
A “tried and true” principle with any respiratory virus is that infection risk is lower outside and in larger spaces where germs can dissipate, says Dr. Camille Lemieux, medical lead for the COVID-19 assessment centre at Toronto’s Western Hospital.
A Canadian resurgence is very likely to start among younger adults who resume social activities, suggesting they’re more likely to risk exposure and will have been largely shielded from infection.

U.S. Secret Service: “Massive Fraud” Against State Unemployment Insurance Programs (KrebsOnSecurity) Published on: May 16, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Economic Impact

A well-organized Nigerian crime ring is exploiting the COVID-19 crisis by committing large-scale fraud against multiple state unemployment insurance programs, with potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new alert issued by the U.S. Secret Service.
A memo seen by KrebsOnSecurity that the Secret Service circulated to field offices around the United States on Thursday says the ring has been filing unemployment claims in different states using Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to identity theft victims, and that “a substantial amount of the fraudulent benefits submitted have used PII from first responders, government personnel and school employees.”
The primary state targeted so far is Washington, although there is also evidence of attacks in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Florida.

China hits back after Jason Kenney says the country is due for a ‘great reckoning’ (CBC) Published on: May 16, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Global Response

The Chinese consulate in Calgary is hitting back against recent criticisms levied by Premier Jason Kenney, suggesting Alberta’s premier is fighting with “slander and stigma.”
On Wednesday, Kenney sharply criticized China’s handling of the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, warning the country would soon face a “great reckoning” for how it handled the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Canada’s initial response to the outbreak seemed to begin to thaw those relations, and Canada’s ambassador to China Dominic Barton said in February that his top priority was seeking a reset between the two nations.

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