Tag Archives: caribbean

headline

Brazil’s Corona Death Toll Passes 4,000 a Day, Argentine Record, Astra Zenica Clots, World Stats

Covid crisis ‘out of control’, says expert as president Jair Bolsonaro continues to resist lockdown

A Covid-19 patient is put in an ambulance
A patient being taken by ambulance to a dedicated coronavirus hospital in Rio de Janeiro state on Tuesday. Brazil’s death toll has climbed to almost 337,000. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP
in Rio de Janeiro and agencies

Brazil’s coronavirus catastrophe has deepened further after more than 4,000 daily deaths were reported for the first time since the outbreak began in February last year.

At least 4,195 people were reported to have lost their lives on Tuesday, taking Brazil’s total death toll – the world’s second highest after the US – to nearly 337,000.

Brazil also reported 86,979 new infections. Experts fear a record 100,000 Brazilians could lose their lives this month alone if nothing is done.

“It’s a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control. It’s a biological Fukushima,” said Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian doctor and professor at Duke University in the US, who is closely tracking the virus.

Despite the growing crisis, Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to resist the idea of a lockdown and downplay the epidemic. “In which country aren’t people dying?” he said last week.

Brazil, which has 212 million citizens compared with the US’s 328 million, is expected to overtake the US weekly average for daily deaths in the coming days.

Many governors, mayors and judges are reopening parts of the economy despite lingering chaos in overcrowded hospitals and a collapsed healthcare system in several parts of the country. Local authorities nationwide claim that numbers of cases and hospitalisations are trending downward after a week of a partial shutdown.

Miguel Lago, the executive director of Brazil’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health officials, said reopening was a mistake that he feared would bring even higher death numbers, though he thought it unlikely to be reversed.

“The fact is the anti-lockdown narrative of President Jair Bolsonaro has won,” Lago said. “Mayors and governors are politically prohibited from beefing up social distancing policies because they know supporters of the president, including business leaders, will sabotage it.”

Bolsonaro, who has long dismissed the risks of the coronavirus, remains fully against lockdowns as damaging to the economy.

Covid-19 patients are using more than 90% of beds in intensive care units in most Brazilian states, though figures have stabilised over the past week. Still, hundreds of people are dying as they wait for care and basic supplies such as oxygen and sedatives are running out in several states.

Less than 3% of Brazil’s 210 million people have received both doses of coronavirus vaccines, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.

Over the weekend, supreme court justices started a tug of war about the reopening of religious buildings, which were closed by many local authorities despite a federal government decision to label them as essential services.

Some churches welcomed their faithful on Easter Sunday, but others were stopped by mayors and governors. Their reopening will be settled at the supreme court on Wednesday, but some local councils, such as Belo Horizonte, voted on Tuesday to keep religious buildings open.

Also on Tuesday, a Rio de Janeiro judge allowed schools to reopen as the mayor, Eduardo Paes, wanted. Hours later, the mayors of Campinas and Sorocaba, two of the most populous cities in São Paulo state, agreed to reopen business with a drive-through purchase system after a 10-day halt.

Professional football executives in São Paulo said they expected to play games this week after a 15-day interruption, promising local prosecutors they would follow stricter health protocols.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

=====================================================

Argentina reports record Covid-19 infection cases

Buenos Aires, Apr 7 (Prensa Latina) Argentina on Tuesday reported 20,870 Covid-19 cases in just 24 hours, the highest figure since the beginning of the pandemic in the country.
While new government restrictions are expected, Tuesday´s confirmed cases revealed a second coronavirus wave in the country, which already has more than two and a half million infected people since the so-called zero patient on March 6 2020.

Judging by long lines at several health centers, confirmed by Prensa Latina in a brief tour of several hospitals, new coronavirus cases are increasing, so authorities are appealing to social and collective awareness.

After President Alberto Fernández tested positive on Saturday, local authorities are concerned about all residents in the province of Buenos Aires infected.

=========================================================

Oxford/AstraZeneca jab could have causal link to rare blood clots, say UK experts

Evidence ‘consistent with causality’ but vaccination programme must continue, says drug safety specialist

A nurse prepares a dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
Use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine should continue but with measures to mitigate risk to women under 55, experts said. Photograph: Ulises Ruiz/AFP/Getty Images
Sarah Bosley
 Guardian  (UK)

Boris Johnson has sought to reassure people about the safety of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine as a trial in children was paused while regulators investigate rare reports of blood clots, largely in younger women.

The prime minister urged the public to take the jab when it is offered, while scientists stressed the side-effects were extremely rare and the benefits of protection against coronavirus were great.

Some UK drug safety experts believe there could be a causal link between the AstraZeneca jab and rare blood clotting events including cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

But they said vaccination programmes must continue, with risk mitigation for women under 55. Doctors have already been alerted to CVST symptoms, which include headache, blurred vision and fainting.

Oxford University is running a trial in more than 200 children and young people aged six to 17 to see whether they could benefit from the AstraZeneca jabs. The trial was paused on Tuesday as a precautionary measure in response to investigations by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) in the UK and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), a university spokesperson said. The regulators are considering whether any action should be taken, with statements expected within days.

The Oxford spokesperson added: “While there are no safety concerns in the paediatric clinical trial, we await additional information from the MHRA on its review of rare cases of thrombosis/thrombocytopenia that have been reported in adults, before giving any further vaccinations in the trial.”

On a visit to the AstraZeneca manufacturing plant in Macclesfield, Cheshire, on Tuesday, Johnson said that getting the vaccine was “the key thing”. The jab has been given to more than 18 million UK adults with just 30 rare blood clotting cases reported, and seven deaths.

“The best thing people should do is look at what the MHRA say, our independent regulator – that’s why we have them, that’s why they are independent,” said Johnson, who has received a first dose of the vaccine himself. “Their advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab.”

Prof Saad Shakir, the director of the drug safety research unit (DSRU) at Southampton University, said on Tuesday that the evidence accumulated in Europe and the UK of links between the vaccine and the rare blood clots “is consistent with causality”.

While the dangers of coronavirus were so great that vaccination must not stop, he said, measures should be put in place to reduce any extra risk to women under the age of 55, who seemed to be most affected. The DRSU has shared its analysis with the regulators.

Earlier on Tuesday, the EMA denied it had already established a causal connection between the vaccine and the clots, after a senior official from the agency said there was a link. Marco Cavaleri, the EMA’s head of vaccines, had earlier told Italy’s Il Messaggero newspaper that in his opinion “we can say it now, it is clear there is a link with the vaccine … but we still do not know what causes this reaction”.

Across Europe, some countries have already decided to give the AstraZeneca jab only to older people – over-60 in Germany and over-55 in France – while in others, the use of the vaccine is still suspended.

The DSRU at Southampton University looked at cases of thrombosis (blood clotting inside the arteries) linked to thrombocytopenia (a reduction in blood platelets that usually causes bleeding but in rare cases results in clotting) and concluded that they were linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The events are very rare, however. In the UK, as of 24 March, 30 events had occurred resulting in seven deaths from 18.1m doses of vaccine, they said. In Germany, there was one event of cerebral venous thrombosis for every 46,512 women vaccinated and one female death associated with this condition for every 149,860 vaccine doses given to women of any age.

Even for younger people, the risk of death from Covid is higher. In the UK, according to the scientists, it has been calculated that 47,000 vaccines prevent one death from Covid among all people under 50.

Shakir says that all the cases now in the public domain occurred within four to 16 days of vaccination. “So, there is what we call a close temporal relationship, and they don’t seem to be events of Covid, which you get in the first two weeks after vaccination,” he said.

“The second thing is that there is a clear clinical description and similarities between the cases. The thromboses, lowering of the blood platelets, and various haematological changes. All of them are consistent with an event, which occurs very, very rarely, and certainly only with a drug called heparin.”

Heparin is a blood-thinning drug. Very occasionally, it causes a syndrome called HIT – heparin-induced trombocytopenia. A group of German scientists led by the clotting specialist Andreas Greinacher of the University of Greifswald has already pointed out that the blood clotting events reported after the AstraZeneca jab look very similar to HIT.

Shakir said the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe and effective. “It has protected millions of people from Covid-19 and will continue to do so around the world,” he said.

Many vaccines in widespread use have side-effects, he said. A flu vaccine can in rare cases cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, for instance, in which the body’s own immune system attacks the nerves and can cause paralysis. The answer is not to stop using the vaccine, but to mitigate the risk by assessing which people are most likely to get the side-effect, looking at any previous illnesses, medication use and their family history, for instance.

Regulators are now looking at this and also at any symptoms which might enable people experiencing the rare blood clots to be identified early and treated before their condition becomes too severe.

The MHRA said it was still considering the evidence. “People should continue to get their vaccine when invited to do so,” said Dr June Raine, its chief executive. “Our thorough and detailed review is ongoing into reports of very rare and specific types of blood clots with low platelets following the Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca. No decision has yet been made on any regulatory action.”

=======================================================

The US has given 168,592,075 jabs to people as of April 7, Reuters reports.

The tally is an increase of more than a million compared to 5 April, as the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now distributed 219,194,215 jabs, including Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines.

==================================================

WORLD STATS

Coronavirus Cases:

133,101,401

Deaths:

2,888,757

Recovered:

107,350,645
ACTIVE CASES
22,861,999
Currently Infected Patients

22,762,376 (99.6%)

in Mild Condition

99,623 (0.4%)

Serious or Critical
Highlighted in green
= all cases have recovered from the infection
Highlighted in grey
= all cases have had an outcome (there are no active cases)

[back to top ↑]

Latest News

April 7 (GMT)

Updates

  • 969 new cases and 7 new deaths in Libya [source]
  • 1,205 new cases and 7 new deaths in Oman [source]
  • 14,910 new cases and 638 new deaths in Poland [source]
  • 8,294 new cases and 374 new deaths in Russia [source]
  • 4,675 new cases and 603 new deaths in Mexico [source]

 

 

The post Brazil’s Corona Death Toll Passes 4,000 a Day, Argentine Record, Astra Zenica Clots, World Stats appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

China Tries to Counter Xinjiang Backlash With … a Movie Musical?

A Chinese government propaganda sign with slogans reading “Forever following the Party” and “China’s ethnicities, one family” in Aksu, Xinjiang, last month.
Credit…Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

By Amy Qin

The movie is part of Beijing’s wide-ranging new propaganda campaign to push back on sanctions and criticism of its oppression of the Uyghurs.
In one scene, Uyghur women are seen dancing in a rousing Bollywood style face-off with a group of Uyghur men. In another, a Kazakh man serenades a group of friends with a traditional two-stringed lute while sitting in a yurt.

Welcome to “The Wings of Songs,” a state-backed musical that is the latest addition to China’s propaganda campaign to defend its policies in Xinjiang. The campaign has intensified in recent weeks as Western politicians and rights groups have accused Beijing of subjecting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang to forced labor and genocide.

The film, which debuted in Chinese cinemas last week, offers a glimpse of the alternate vision of Xinjiang that China’s ruling Communist Party is pushing to audiences at home and abroad. Far from being oppressed, the musical seems to say, the Uyghurs and other minorities are singing and dancing happily in colorful dress, a flashy take on a tired Chinese stereotype about the region’s minorities that Uyghur rights activists quickly denounced.

“The notion that Uyghurs can sing and dance so therefore there is no genocide — that’s just not going to work,” said Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American lawyer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. “Genocide can take place in any beautiful place.”

In the wake of Western sanctions, the Chinese government has responded with a fresh wave of Xinjiang propaganda across a wide spectrum. The approach ranges from portraying a sanitized, feel-good version of life in Xinjiang — as in the example of the musical — to deploying Chinese officials on social media sites to attack Beijing’s critics. To reinforce its message, the party is emphasizing that its efforts have rooted out the perceived threat of violent terrorism.

In the government’s telling, Xinjiang is now a peaceful place where Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, live in harmony alongside the region’s Muslim ethnic minorities, just like the “seeds of a pomegranate.” It’s a place where the government has successfully emancipated women from the shackles of extremist thinking. And the region’s ethnic minorities are portrayed as grateful for the government’s efforts.

Outside the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang, in 2019.
Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

The musical takes the narrative to a new cringe-inducing level. It tells the story of three young men, a Uyghur, a Kazakh and a Han Chinese, who come together to pursue their musical dreams.

The movie depicts Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim region in China’s far west, as scrubbed free of Islamic influence. Young Uyghur men are clean-shaven and seen chugging beers, free of the beards and abstinence from alcohol that the authorities see as signs of religious extremism. Uyghur women are seen without traditional head scarves.

The Uyghurs and other Central Asian ethnic minorities, seen through this lens, are also portrayed as fully assimilated into the mainstream. They are fluent in Chinese, with few, if any, hints of their native languages. They get along well with the Han Chinese ethnic majority, with no sense of the long-simmering resentment among Uyghurs and other minorities over systematic discrimination.

The narrative presents a picture starkly different from the reality on the ground, in which the authorities maintain tight control using a dense network of surveillance cameras and police posts, and have detained many Uyghurs and other Muslims in mass internment camps and prisons. As of Monday, the film had brought in a dismal $109,000 at the box office, according to Maoyan, a company that tracks ticket sales.

A watchtower at a high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp on the outskirts of Hotan, Xinjiang, in 2019.
Credit…Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 

Chinese officials initially denied the existence of the region’s internment camps. Then they described the facilities as “boarding schools” in which attendance was completely voluntary.

Now, the government is increasingly adopting a more combative approach, seeking to justify its policies as necessary to combat terrorism and separatism in the region.

Chinese officials and state media outlets have pushed the government’s narrative about its policies in Xinjiang in part by spreading alternative narratives — including disinformation — on American social networks like Twitter and Facebook. This approach reached an all-time high last year, according to a report published last week by researchers at the International Cyber Policy Center of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI.

The social media campaign is centered on Chinese diplomats on Twitter, state-owned media accounts, pro-Communist Party influencers and bots, the institute’s researchers found. The accounts send messages often aimed at spreading disinformation about Uyghurs who have spoken out, and to smear researchers, journalists, and organizations working on Xinjiang issues.

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who was not involved in the ASPI report, called China’s Xinjiang offensive the biggest international propaganda campaign on a single topic that she had seen in her 25 years of researching the Chinese propaganda system.

“It’s shrill and dogmatic, it’s increasingly aggressive,” she said in emailed comments. “And it will keep on going, whether it is effective or not.”

In a statement, Twitter said it had suspended a number of the accounts cited by the ASPI researchers. Facebook said in a statement that it had recently removed a malicious hacker group that had been targeting the Uyghur diaspora. Both companies began labeling the accounts of state-affiliated media outlets last year.

The party has also asserted that it needed to take firm action after a spate of deadly attacks rocked the region some years ago. Critics say that the extent of the violence remains unclear, but also that such unrest did not justify the sweeping, indiscriminate scope of the detentions.

Last week, the government played up a claim that it had uncovered a plot by Uyghur intellectuals to sow ethnic hatred. CGTN, an international arm of China’s state broadcaster, released a documentary on Friday that accused the scholars of writing textbooks that were full of “blood, violence, terrorism and separatism.”

A Uyghur child doing his Chinese homework at a bus stop in Hotan, Xinjiang, in 2019.
Credit…Giulia Marchi for The New York Times

The books had been approved for use in elementary and middle schools in Xinjiang for more than a decade. Then in 2016, shortly before the crackdown started, they were suddenly deemed subversive.

The documentary accuses the intellectuals of having distorted historical facts, citing, for example, the inclusion of a historical photo of Ehmetjan Qasim, a leader of a short-lived independent state in Xinjiang in the late 1940s.

“It’s just absurd,” said Kamalturk Yalqun, whose father, Yalqun Rozi, a prominent Uyghur scholar, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018 for attempted subversion for his involvement with the textbooks. He said that a photo of Mr. Rozi shown in the film was the first time he had seen his father in five years.

“China is just trying to come up with any way they can think of to dehumanize Uyghurs and make these textbooks look like dangerous materials,” he said by phone from Boston. “My father was not an extremist but just a scholar trying to do his job well.”

Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.

The post China Tries to Counter Xinjiang Backlash With … a Movie Musical? appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

SKN Native Shot and Killed in St. Croix

A native from St. Kitts and Nevis who resided in St. Croix lost his life Saturday evening after he was shot April 1.

Deron Dixon who resided in Little Princess St. Croix told police that as he left his residence to head to work at approximately 5:00 a.m. on April 1, heard gunfire and realized he had been injured.

He said he saw a white vehicle leaving the area, but did not know who shot him. According to the Virgin Island’s Consortium he sustained multiple gunshot wounds about his body and was transported to the Juan F. Hospital for treatment.

He died Saturday at around 11:00 p.m. he was 35-years-old

The post SKN Native Shot and Killed in St. Croix appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

Biden: All American Adults Can Get Vaccinated from April 19

President Biden plans to announce Tuesday that he is moving up his target for all American adults to become eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine by almost two weeks to April 19, according to a White House official.

Biden is also expected to announce that the United States has administered 150 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, the official confirmed, putting the president on track to meet or exceed his goal of administering 200 million doses in his first 100 days in office.

CNN first reported Biden’s planned announcements on Tuesday. The president is scheduled to visit a vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday afternoon before returning to the White House to give remarks on the state of vaccinations.

Biden said during his first prime-time address last month that he would urge states to make all adults eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine by May 1. Biden previously said 90 percent of adults would be eligible by April 19.

The new target comes as the U.S. is steadily ramping up the amount of daily vaccinations. The Biden administration announced over the weekend that the U.S. hit 4 million doses in a 24-hour period for the first time.

Roughly a dozen states have already made anyone aged 16 and older eligible to sign up and receive a coronavirus vaccine, and more states are likely to do so in the coming days as vaccine supplies steadily become more available. Biden’s announcement is likely to put pressure on states that have moved more slowly to open up vaccine appointments to a wider swath of adults.

Biden has repeatedly set achievable goals in his effort to address the pandemic, like his initial target of administering 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine in his first 100 days in office, which some health experts regarded as not aggressive enough. Biden doubled that goal to 200 million shots late last month as his administration worked to ramp up production of vaccines.

While Biden expects all adults to be eligible to receive vaccines in 13 days, it will take longer for states and cities to actually administer them to the public. The Biden administration is also grappling with how to address vaccine hesitancy and convince those wary of inoculations to receive them so that the U.S. population can reach herd immunity.

The Biden administration is spending $10 billion to expand access to vaccines and increase uptake in underserved communities. Last week, Vice President Harris announced a new grassroots network tasked with boosting confidence in vaccines in their communities.

Biden has said he expects Americans to return to some degree of normal life by July 4.

Despite the positive vaccine news, the U.S. is still in the grip of the pandemic, with cases and hospitalizations rising again after weeks of decline. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky made an emotional appeal to the public last week to not let their guard down or ignore public health guidance as the U.S. grapples with a new surge of the virus and dangerous variants.

The post Biden: All American Adults Can Get Vaccinated from April 19 appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

Bermuda COVID-19 Cases Top 1,400

Photo: CMC

Bermuda has recorded 108 new COVID-19 cases for the second time inside a week with 18 people now in hospital, four of them in critical care, health officials announced.

Saturday’s total, taking the island’s number of cases to 1,400, came from two days of testing. There are now 630 active cases. More than 200,000 tests have been carried out.

Of those in the hospital, the mean age of all cases is 60 with the youngest in the 20-29-year-old age group and the oldest being over 80.

None of the people in the hospital is fully immunized, officials said. Bermuda Health Minister Kim Wilson said: “Our hospitalized COVID-19 patients are rising, and that is very disturbing.

“We need to all make sure that we are doing our best to stop the spread and stay in our bubbles.

“There are quite a number of clusters of cases identified by the case management team. This very much reflects the contagious nature of the UK variant.”

The latest results are from testing that took place on Wednesday, with 70 positive out of 1,865 test results received, and testing on Thursday when there were 38 positive out of 1,474.

Twenty-two of the new cases are classified as local transmission with known contact as they are associated with known cases.

The additional 86 new cases are classified as under investigation. These cases are among residents with no currently identified link to other known cases or history of travel in the past 14 days.

Twelve people have died from the virus.

The post Bermuda COVID-19 Cases Top 1,400 appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

SKN: RBC Completes Sale of EC Banking Operations

by Chester Robards

 

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has divested itself of its Eastern Caribbean banking operations, having gotten clearance by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank to move ahead with the sale.

The sale of those operations in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines closed last Thursday.

“This sale has RBC selling its Eastern Caribbean banking operations to a consortium of regional banks comprised of 1st National Bank of St. Lucia, Antigua Commercial Bank, Bank of Dominica, Bank of Montserrat, and The Bank of Nevis,” the RBC revealed in a statement last week.

RBC’s Head of Caribbean Banking Rob Johnston said in the statement that the sale of this portfolio of business will allow the company to streamline its investments and resources in other jurisdictions in the Caribbean.

“This transaction will allow RBC to align investments and resources into markets where our vision for being the Caribbean’s digitally-enabled relationship bank can be executed most successfully,” said Johnston.

“The sale of our Eastern Caribbean banking operations to indigenous banks is also a critical step forward in strengthening the domestic financial services sectors in each of the countries and territories involved. This will help create a stronger climate for further growth, development and prosperity.”

According to RBC, its regional presence now comprises 3,000 employees across 41 branches and offices in Aruba, The Bahamas, Barbados, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

RBC executives have time and again expressed that they remain committed to continuing banking services in The Bahamas, while more and more, Canadian banks are lessening their footprint in the Caribbean.

Canadian bank CIBC announced two years ago its interest in selling a majority stake in its Caribbean arm, CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank Limited, to GNB Financial Group Limited. However, that transaction was not approved by regulators.

Both Scotiabank and RBC have shrunk their operations in The Bahamas over time, especially their operations in the Family Islands.

The post SKN: RBC Completes Sale of EC Banking Operations appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

Tourism Back On: March Busiest for Bahamas During Pandemic

by Paige McCartney

In the Bahamas, March was the busiest month for visitor arrivals since the start of COVID-19 travel restrictions, with early indications showing that approximately 60,000 tourists visiting based on the number of health visas sold.

Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D’Aguilar confirmed yesterday that the number of visas required to enter the country has nearly doubled since the peak in December.

“If I go back and look at the health visas that were purchased by visitors, when we first started in November, there were about 14,000 visitors that came in and then in December when Christmas came along, there were about 32,000. Then in January, it obviously dipped back down to 21,000 but it was more than November. Then in February, it was 28,000 – February was 28 days, it was probably as good as December was. Then in March, we jumped to 60,000 visitors. March was a bump. I think a lot of persons were on Spring Break,” D’Aguilar told Guardian Business.

“You know, I always said that as more and more Americans get the vaccine, they will become more emboldened to travel. March is always traditionally a good month for us anyway. It still is probably well below 50 percent of what we used to get.”

D’Aguilar said the upcoming second week in April could be equally as busy, as the residual effects of the Easter and Spring Break travel period linger.

Vice President of Marketing & Commercial Development for Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD) Jan Knowles said initial indications from travel through Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) last month show the largest uptick in foot traffic.

“The month of March has been the busiest month since the pandemic began and this Easter weekend has been busy. While the numbers do not compare to Easter of 2019, we are grateful for the strong start to April and hope that the current positive trend will continue,” she told Guardian Business yesterday.

“Both domestic and international travel were busy. We were very pleased to welcome an encouraging number of visitors.”

Ahead of the four-day holiday weekend, NAD stated it was anticipating an uptick in foot traffic through the airport after seeing incremental monthly increases in domestic traffic since November 2020, when the tourism sector fully reopened.

While there was a lull in travelers during the month of February compared to January, Knowles said there has been month-over-month growth in travelers through the main gateway, which airport and tourism officials hope will continue during the rest of the year.

“During March, NAD had nonstop flights from 21 markets. Nine of those 21 markets had daily or near-daily service for the month. It is anticipated that April will have nonstop flights from 23 markets, with American Airlines adding flights from Washington, DC; JetBlue adding flights from New Jersey and United Airlines reintroducing its Denver flight,” Knowles said in a press release issued before the Easter holiday weekend.

The most recent data available showed that total visitor arrivals to The Bahamas during the month of February totaled 23,619 – the majority of which came via air.

The number is significantly lower than the 687,200 arrivals in the same period last year. Still, Knowles said, The Bahamas is gaining momentum.

“There has also been month-over-month increases in international travelers for November, December and January. The airport experienced a slight downturn in international passengers during February compared to January, however March has shown the type of positive upward trend that we hope can continue throughout 2021,” she said.

There were just below 350,000 visitors that traveled through LPIA for the entire first quarter of 2020 – just before the country’s borders were closed to commercial flights, compared to the approximate 482,000 during the same period a year prior.

The post Tourism Back On: March Busiest for Bahamas During Pandemic appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

Associated Press World View: Chauvin Trial, N. Korea No to Olympics, Baylor Wins Title, More

April 6, 2021

Alternate text

The Minneapolis police chief has said that a former officer charged in the death of George Floyd violated department policy when he pinned Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.

The AP explains that the issue of neck restraints is key to the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin.

President Joe Biden is promoting his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan directly to Americans.

Also this morning:

  • North Korea says it won’t send athletes to the Tokyo Olympics.
  • Baylor beats Gonzaga to take NCAA title.
  • In Myanmar, online markets raise funds for protests.

MIKE CORDER

The Associated Press

The Hague, Netherlands

The Rundown

I'm an image

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis police chief who called George Floyd’s death “murder” soon after it happened testified that Officer Derek Chauvin had clearly violated department policy when he……Read More

I'm an image

WASHINGTON (AP) — With an appeal to think big, President Joe Biden is promoting his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan directly to Americans, summoning public support to push past the Republicans… …Read More

I'm an image

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 18-year U.S. Capitol Police veteran killed in the line of duty is being remembered as a man with a sense of humor who loved baseball and golf and was most proud of one… …Read More

I'm an image

CHICAGO (AP) — A critical factor for jurors to consider at a former Minneapolis police officer’s trial in George Floyd’s death is whether he violated the department’s policy on neck restraints… …Read More

I'm an image

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Heck, everyone’s entitled to an off night. But that beatdown Baylor put on undefeated Gonzaga with the national title on the line — nobody saw that coming. The… …Read More

OTHER TOP STORIES

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A North Korean website says the country will not participate in the Tokyo Olympics because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Sports in DPR Korea…Read More

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s future and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fate wound through court and political circles on Tuesday, as the country’s president wei…Read More

VIENNA (AP) — Efforts to bring the United States back into the 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear program are to step up a gear on Tuesday as Iran and the five world powers rem…Read More

BANGKOK (AP) — With security forces in Myanmar having shot dead at least 570 protesters and bystanders in the past two months, many of the country’s residents see ventur…Read More

The post Associated Press World View: Chauvin Trial, N. Korea No to Olympics, Baylor Wins Title, More appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

ECLAC Head Lauds IMF Help Fighting COVID in Developing Nations

The Executive Director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena says a “Concerted international action and solidarity are the only means to confront and overcome the COVID-19 crisis.”

“A truly multilateral and global response to the pandemic must extend the benefits of this initiative to all developing countries, irrespective of their level of income, including to middle-income countries (MICs).”

She was commenting after praising US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, for a new issue of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which the G-20 recently approved, and the re-allocation of excess SDRs to low-income countries (LICs), such as those in the Caribbean.

She said MICs represent 75 per cent of the world’s population, and roughly 30 percent of global aggregate demand.

More importantly, Bárcena said MICs account for 96 per cent of developing country public debt, excluding China and India.

“Their success in confronting COVID-19 is central for global recovery and financial stability,” she said. “Developing countries have, without doubt, borne the brunt of the social and economic impact of the current crisis.

“The increases in poverty and extreme poverty rates, the number job losses and declines in per capital income have been unprecedented,” she added. “These impacts are not only concentrated in LICs, but also affect MICs.”

Bárcena said Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been the most impacted region in the world in terms of real gross domestic product (GDP) contraction (-7.7 percent for 2020).

She said this has been accompanied by the closure of more than 2.7 million firms, and the rise in number of jobless persons to 44.1 million, and in the number of people living in poverty from 185.5 to 209 million people, reaching 33.7 percent of the total population.

The ECLAC chief said that extreme poverty has increased by 8 million to 78 million people, and that, by the end of 2020, the level of per capita GDP equalled that of 2010, stating that it is “another ‘lost decade’ by any measure.”

She said the effects of the pandemic and the policies implemented in response have increased the liquidity needs of developing countries, including those of LAC.

At the same time, she said fiscal emergency measures to contain the decline in output have led to rising debt levels, “which -if not carefully monitored- may jeopardize the recovery and countries’ capacity to build forward better.”

Bárcena said LAC is the most indebted region in the developing world, stating that the debt of the general government in 2020 reached 79.3 per cent of GDP.

She said the external debt service stood at 57 per cent relative to exports of goods and services, according to IMF 2020 data.

In contrast to developed economies, Bárcena said: “LAC – as the rest of developing economies – face enormous obstacle to create the policy space to substantially increase their debt levels without jeopardizing their credit ratings, exchange rate stability, or even their international reserve positions.”

She said the bulk of the global counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal measures to combat the pandemic – amounting US$12 and US$7 trillion dollars in 2020 (24 percent of world GDP)- were implemented by developed countries.

“A new and significant issue and reallocation of SDRs is the most effective and expedient manner to guarantee enough liquidity for developing economies, and provide the required policy space to confront the effects of the pandemic,” Bárcena said.

“Linking the creation of new international resources with financial transfers to developing countries to attend their development requirements is a long-standing demand,” she added. “Now it is more relevant than ever – indispensable for placing the Sustainable Development Goals, within developing countries’ reach.”

Bárcena said Access to SDRs is an “indefeasible right of all IMF members,” stating that “SDRs do not generate additional debt nor do they require conditionalities.

“Also, they are not subject to the fastidious negotiations of quota increases or borrowing arrangements,” she said. “A new SDR issue would strengthen the IMF’s ‘fire power’ (currently at roughly US$ 800 billion dollars, a third of the estimated financing needs of developing countries) and provide greater incentive for all countries to participate in this initiative.”

Bárcena said the IMF’s financial support for COVID-19 represents barely 12 per cent of its lending capacity.

“A new issue of 500 billion SDR, requiring the approval of 85 per cent of the voting power of IMF board of governors, would generate que equivalent of US$56 billion dollars in additional reserves for Latin American and Caribbean countries,” she said. “This would benefit some of the most indebted economies in the region.

“Since any new issue of SDRs would be allocated mainly to developed countries, roughly 60 percent of the total, a mechanism must be put in place for the voluntary reallocation of excess SDRs from developed to developing countries,” she urged.

“A mechanism to pool SDRs within the existing multilateral facilities and their reallocation to strengthen the financial capacity of Regional Financial Arrangements (RFAs) and other regional financial institutions should receive serious consideration as a means to increase liquidity and put SDRs at the service of economic and social development,” Bárcena adde

The post ECLAC Head Lauds IMF Help Fighting COVID in Developing Nations appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

South America Remains a Hot COVID Region

Bogota, Colombia (CNN) More than 100 days since the first Covid-19 vaccinations in Latin America, the pandemic is still dangerously resurging in some areas.

The region’s recent battle with the coronavirus remains marked by disparities, with some countries boasting of positive vaccination trends while hospitals in neighboring nations collapse under waves of new cases.

Particularly worrying are high Covid-1 mortality rates in Brazil, Peru, Chile and Paraguay — a likely sign that local health systems are being stretched beyond their capacity.

“Mortality increases when this happens because patients have difficulty finding the care they need, and health workers are overburdened by tending to too many people at once,” said Dr. Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, last week.

Even in countries with robust vaccine rollouts, equal access to the life-saving shots is far from the norm, and health officials here worry that a new wave of the pandemic is gaining momentum from contagious new variants and too often a relaxed governmental approach towards imposing social distancing.

A race between vaccines and fast-spreading variants

Brazil is, by far, the most affected country in the region at the moment.

The locally identified P.1 variant is believed to be more contagious than the original coronavirus, and March alone saw over 66,000 new Covid-related deaths — more than double the toll of any other month since the beginning of the pandemic.

Brazil is breaking Covid-19 records. See what some hospitals look like 01:08

Meanwhile, despite solid vaccination infrastructure, Brazil’s coronavirus vaccination campaign is proceeding at a slow rate with little over 10% of the total population having received the first vaccine dose, according to data from each state health departments.

Intensive care units in 25 of 27 Brazilian states are over 80% capacity, yet some states, like Rio de Janeiro, have decided to reopen schools anyway, urged on the country’s anti-lockdown President Jair Bolsonaro.

Several Latin American countries have shut their borders with Brazil to try to curb the spread of the virus. Neighboring Uruguay has even prioritized vaccinations in the areas bordering Brazil, in hopes of creating a “vaccine wall” that the virus cannot penetrate.

For some, winter is coming

Until this week, Chile had been a vaccination fairytale in South America.

The Andean country begun vaccination comparatively early, in December, and rapidly gained steam thanks to copious supplies of vaccines from Chinese manufacturers.

At the moment, Chile is third in the world for percentage of vaccinated population — ahead of the United States.

But despite this success, Chile recorded new record increases of cases for two days in a row last week — an ominous development that has prompted authorities to close the borders to both foreigners and Chilean nationals to try to limit the contagion.

Chile’s much-lauded vaccination campaign has not been able to stop a rise in new cases

Particularly worrying is the fact that, Chile and its neighbors Argentina and Uruguay are heading towards colder temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere. Covid-19 thrives in winter conditions both because the virus itself is more stable and contagious in lower temperatures, and because people tend to spend more time indoor in winter months.

Chilean and Argentinian authorities are preparing for new virus outbreaks in the coming weeks.

Politics and public health

Meanwhile, Peru called for a total lockdown last week, allowing only one person per household to leave home for essential business, to limit the impact of a third wave of the virus.

Fellow Andean nation Ecuador is in dire straits too, last week declaring a state of emergency in eight different provinces due to a surge of Covid hospitalizations. And nearby Bolivia, like Uruguay, is closing its borders with Brazil.

In Peru, the third wave of the virus is in full swing and numbers for new cases are growing fast: In March, the country recorded more cases than in any other month since the beginning of the pandemic, with the exception of August 2020 — the peak of the first wave.

According to an analysis by John Hopkins University, Peru has the second highest mortality rate in the world, only behind Mexico. Meanwhile, its vaccine rollout has been glacial, with only a few thousand doses administered each day. At current rates, it would take Peru more than a decade to reach herd immunity through vaccination.

Yet despite efforts to keep people at home, both Peru and Ecuador are hoping to put the past year’s political upsets behind them with new presidential elections this week — which means mass gatherings across the country. Despite the resurgent virus, neither government has called to postpone the vote.

The post South America Remains a Hot COVID Region appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.