PARIS: France was under a new virus lockdown on Friday, as the resurgent pandemic hit new heights in the United States with a daily record of more than 90,000 cases, just days before the presidential election.
From midnight, France’s 65 million people were largely confined to their homes, needing written statements to leave, in the latest drastic measure to curb a disease that has infected more than 44.5 million people worldwide and killed nearly 1.2 million.
As lockdowns return, oil prices dropped on fears of a slowdown in demand but tech giants Facebook, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet reported strong quarterly earnings, reflecting the economic shifts caused by the global outbreak.
And in the latest bleak warning, the UN’s biodiversity panel said future pandemics could be more frequent, deadly and economically damaging.
The United States, where the coronavirus has overshadowed President Donald Trump’s November 3 re-election bid, announced 91,295 new cases in 24 hours, surging past the 90,000-mark for the first time to a total of almost nine million.
In the French capital Paris, some medics voiced fears that steady traffic and appreciable numbers of people on public transport showed the public was not taking the lockdown as seriously a second time round.
“Crossing Paris this morning looked more like an ordinary day than the first day of a lockdown,” the director of Paris hospitals Martin Hirsch wrote on Twitter.
“We don’t have the choice, we are obliged to live, do our shopping and behave as if it is normal even if there are some safety measures,” said Fabrice Angelique, 18, buying headphones at a books and electronics store in Paris.
Although there were some scenes of people stocking up on essentials, the president of the Intermarche chain, Thierry Cotillard denied there had been any “hysteria” in supermarkets.
According to a poll by Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting for France Info and Le Figaro, seven out of 10 people in France are in favor of the new lockdown, which is scheduled to last a month with bars and restaurants closed until at least December and travel between regions limited.
Factories and building sites will remain open, as will creches and schools — although children aged six and up must wear masks in class.
President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the second wave “will probably be more difficult and deadly than the first” in a country that has already seen 36,000 deaths.
But he insisted this lockdown would be less severe than measures imposed during the first wave in March-April.
Europe is again the epicenter of the pandemic according to the World Health Organization.
Nottingham became the latest of a swathe of cities across central and northern England to enter the highest tier of local restrictions Friday, with the 2.4 million residents of Leeds set to follow next week.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered a lighter round of shutdowns from Monday, closing bars, cafes and restaurants, as well as theaters, operas and cinemas.
Spain’s parliament on Thursday approved a six-month extension of a state of emergency, which was declared on Sunday for an initial two weeks.
Sweden, known for its light-touch approach, recorded its highest number of infections for the second day in a row, prompting a warning for people in the capital and the more densely populated south to avoid social interaction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had no plans to introduce a sweeping lockdown, even as the country saw record tolls with reports of ambulance queues at hospitals and medical shortages.
But the Vatican said Pope Francis would resume a remote, live-streamed version of his weekly general audiences with the public, “in order to avoid any possible future risk to the health of the participants.”
EU leaders held a video summit on the crisis, according to European sources the first in a series of such calls to improve coordination.
The European Central Bank meanwhile pledged to bolster its pandemic stimulus in December.
The economic recovery is “losing momentum more rapidly than expected” after the partial rebound seen in the summer, ECB president Christine Lagarde said after a virtual meeting of the 25-member governing council.
But forecasts now show eurozone powerhouse Germany shrinking less than previously expected this year, at 5.5 percent, followed by a 4.4 percent rebound in 2021.
“With the tough and decisive measures we have taken... we have a real chance to achieve this growth,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said.
Amongst the welter of bad news, the UN biodiversity panel warned future pandemics could be even worse, adding that they posed an “existential threat” to humanity.
The authors of a special report on biodiversity and pandemics said habitat destruction and insatiable consumption made animal-borne diseases far more likely to make the jump to people in future.
France back in coronavirus lockdown as US surges to daily record
https://arab.news/9egd5
France back in coronavirus lockdown as US surges to daily record
- From midnight, France’s 65 million people were largely confined to their homes, needing written statements to leave
- President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the second wave “will probably be more difficult and deadly than the first”
Displaced Sudanese escape RSF siege in southern Kordofan
- Some women haul water from a single well, pouring it into plastic buckets to cook, wash, and clean with, while others wait in a long line outside a makeshift health clinic, little more than a large canvas tent
GEDAREF, Sudan: When paramilitary Rapid Support Force fighters closed in on the Sudanese border town and oil field of Heglig, paraplegic Dowa Hamed could only cling to her husband’s back as they fled, “like a child,” she said
Now, the 25-year-old mother of five — paralyzed from the waist down — lies shell-shocked on a cot in the Abu Al-Naga displacement camp, a dusty transit center just outside the eastern city of Gedaref, nearly 800 km from home.
But her family’s actual journey was much longer, crossing the South Sudan border twice and passing from one group of fighters to another, as they ran for their lives with their children in tow alongside hundreds of others.
“We fled with nothing,” Hamed said. “Only the clothes on our backs.”
Hamed and her family are among tens of thousands of people recently uprooted by fighting in southern Kordofan — the latest front in the war between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces that erupted in April 2023.
Since capturing the army’s last stronghold in Darfur in October, the RSF and their allies have pushed deeper into neighboring Kordofan, an oil-rich agricultural region divided into three states: West, North, and South.
In recent weeks, the paramilitary group has consolidated control over West Kordofan, seized Heglig — home to Sudan’s largest oil field — and tightened its siege on Kadugli and Dilling in South Kordofan, where hundreds of thousands now face mass starvation.
On the night of Dec. 7, the inhabitants of Heglig — many of them the families of oil technicians, engineers, and soldiers stationed at the field — got word that an attack would happen at dawn.
“We ran on foot, barefoot, without proper clothes,” said Hiyam Al-Hajj, 29, a mother of 10 who says she had to leave her mother and six siblings behind as she ran around 30 km to the border.
“The RSF chased us to the border. The South Sudan army told them we were in their country and they would not hand us over,” she said.
They were sheltered in South Sudan’s Unity State, but barely fed.
“Those who had money could feed their children,” Al-Hajj said. “Those who did not went hungry.”
They spent nearly four weeks on the move, trekking long distances on foot and spending nights out in the open, sleeping on the bare ground.
“We were hungry,” she said. “But we did not feel the hunger; all we cared about was our safety.”
Eventually, authorities in South Sudan put them in large trucks that carried them back across the border to army-controlled territory, where they could head east, away from the front lines.
Hamed, who was paralyzed during childbirth, said that “during the truck rides, my body ached with every movement.”
But not everyone made it to Gedaref.
Between the canvas tents of the Abu Al-Naga camp, 14-year-old Sarah is struggling to care for her little brother alone.
In South Sudan, their parents had put them on one of the trucks, “then they said the truck was full and promised they would get on the next one.”
But weeks on, the siblings have received no word as to where their mother and father might be.
Inside the tents, children and mothers sleep on the ground, huddled together for warmth, while outside, children dart across the cracked soil, dust clinging to their bare feet.
According to camp director Ali Yehia Ahmed, 240 families, or around 1,200 people, are now taking refuge at Abu Al-Naga.
“The camp’s space is very small,” Ahmed said, adding that food was in increasingly short supply.
Food is distributed from a single point, forcing families to wait for limited rations.
Some women haul water from a single well, pouring it into plastic buckets to cook, wash, and clean with, while others wait in a long line outside a makeshift health clinic, little more than a large canvas tent.
Asia Abdelrahman Hussein, the minister of social welfare and development of Gedaref State, said shelter was one of the most urgent needs, especially during the winter months.
“The shelters are not enough. We need support from other organizations to provide safe housing and adequate shelter,” she said.
In one of the tents, Sawsan Othman Moussa, 27, said how she had been forced to flee three times since fighting broke out in Dilling.
Now, though she might be safe, “every tent is cramped, medicine is scarce, and during cold nights, we suffer.”
