The environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg, has challenged “the myth” that children are not affected by the virus and can’t spread it.
Speaking to CNN, the 17-year-old activist urged children to stick to physical distancing rules.
She said:
It’s sort of a myth right now that children are not being being affected by this virus. And that is very wrong. Children both do get this disease and they also spread it on to others so. So we need to be very careful that this misinformation, that it doesn’t affect children, becomes mainstream. We need to make sure that people understand that this affects children.
Thunberg went into isolation in March after displaying mild symptoms of coronavirus. She said:
Many people don’t even notice that they have symptoms and then they might spread the virus without even knowing it. We young people have a very big responsibility because we we might not experience the symptoms as as bad as many others. So we have to be extra careful, because our actions can be the difference between life and death for many others.
She also expressed hope that the crisis would mean that politicians and the public now follows the warnings of scientists. She said:
More people are starting to realise that we are actually depending on science, and that we need to listen to scientists and experts. I really hope that stays for other crises, such as the climate crisis and the environmental crisis, that we understand that we have to listen to the scientists.
Nearly a quarter of a billion people across 47 African countries will catch coronavirus over the next year, but the result will be fewer severe cases and deaths than in the US and Europe, new research predicts.
A model by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional office for Africa, published in the BMJ Global Health, predicts a lower rate of transmission and viral spread across the continent than elsewhere, resulting in up to 190,000 deaths. But the authors warn the associated rise in hospital admissions, care needs and “huge impact” on services such as immunisation and maternity, will overwhelm already stretched health services.
About one in four (22%) of the one billion people in the countries measured would be infected in the first year of the pandemic, the model suggests. However the disease is likely to linger for longer – possibly for several years.
Aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster after coronavirus was detected for the first time in the sprawling camps that host about one million Rohingya refugees.
The camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, which are more densely populated than some of the world’s busiest cities, have been under lockdown since 14 March, in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading.
On Thursday, the UN confirmed that an ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person had tested positive for Covid-19. “Both patients are in isolation and contact tracing is underway,” the UN’s refugee agency said in a statement.
Like many children across the world sent home from school, youngsters in Turkey were encouraged to draw pictures of rainbows and place them in windows to cheer up the country in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Orders to teachers from some local education boards to stop because the rainbows were part of a “plot” to turn children gay were met with surprise.
Instead of boosting morale, the lockdown rainbows have become yet another symbol of division, the latest cultural battleground in a country highly polarised along political and religious lines.
“Unfortunately this sort of anti-LGBTQ mentality is widespread amongst policy makers even if ordinary people don’t see a connection between children’s drawings and gay rights,” said Meral Gülsen, a representative for teachers union Eğitim Sen.
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Global report: Trump threat to cut trade ties over Covid-19 branded ‘lunacy’ by Chinese media
An escalation of rhetoric between Donald Trump and China over the coronavirus pandemic has sparked concerns that a trade deal between the nations is in peril, as Chinese state media dismissed as “lunacy” a suggestion by the US president that he could “cut off relations with Beijing.
The US president said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain Covid-19 in an interview with Fox Business news. Trump said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.
Asked what measures he intended to take against China, he said: “There are many things we could do … We could cut off the whole relationship.”
“Now, if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500bn,” Trump said, referring to estimated US annual imports from China, which he has previously referred to as lost money.
The state-backed Global Times responded with an editorial titled “Trump turns up election strategy nonsense with China ‘cut-off’ threat”.
“The very idea should not come as a surprise for those who remember when Trump speculated if disinfectants could be used on humans ‘by injection’ to wipe out the novel coronavirus [Covid-19],” it said.
“Such lunacy is a clear byproduct, first and foremost, of the proverbial anxiety that the US has suffered from since China began its global ascension,” it said on Friday. “Trump seems insane right now or may have some psychological problems,” another editorial wrote.
The escalating row between the two countries came as China marked one month with no deaths from Covid-19 and just four newly confirmed cases in the 24 hours to Friday.
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