April 21 coronavirus news

British doctor Katie Sanderson says there are some “very, very significant gaps” in the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) for treating coronavirus patients.

Referencing a Doctors' Association UK survey with more than 1,100 responses in 250 settings, Sanderson told BBC radio that 38% of doctors had no eye protection, 38% who need FFP3 masks do not have access to them and 47% do not have access to long sleeve gowns.

Sanderson, who works as a junior doctor in north London, also said the government should provide reassurance to families of medical workers that they won’t face financial ruin if the health worker dies at work.

“All of us are more or less worried about dying as a result of being infected with coronavirus at work,” Sanderson said, adding that for migrant families, there is the extra stress of their visa situation.

What happens when you're nearly three years into the middle of a 8,700-mile hike, you've given up your home, you have no money -- and then coronavirus stops the world in its tracks?

That was the dilemma facing Christian Lewis when his quest to walk every twist and turn of the British coastline to raise money for charity was suddenly derailed by the arrival of the pandemic.

Lewis began his journey from Swansea in South Wales, in the summer of 2017 with just $12 in his pocket. Picking up a companion -- a dog named Jet -- along the way, he arrived on the remote Scottish Shetland islands in March just as the UK was placed under restrictions.

With no home to go to and only a flimsy tent for protection in one of the most northerly and windswept parts of the country, he could've been in trouble.

Instead, thanks to the kindness of complete strangers, he's found himself in arguably one of the best places on the planet to sit out the crisis -- a cottage on a tiny island all to himself.

Some Shetlanders lent him a boat to go to the island, and a local fisherman brings Lewis deliveries of water. He makes the occasional boat trip to the mainland for other supplies, but mostly forages for his food.

"I can walk down now, and I'll have a whole plate full of mussels if I want them, so I've got no worries there," he said.

Read more here:

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Story by Tamara Hardingham-Gill and video by Temujin Doran

A 12-year-old girl in India, who embarked on a 200-mile journey home on foot during the nationwide coronavirus lockdown, died just an hour away from her house, according to local officials.

Jamlo Madkam worked in chili fields in Perur village, in the southern state of Telangana. The nationwide lockdown was supposed to end on April 14 -- but was extended until May.

On April 15, Madkam and 11 others, including her brother-in-law, began the journey to their home state of Chattisgarh in central India. They decided to walk home because they were out of work, and weren't sure when the lockdown would end, said Dr B R Pujari, the chief medical health officer of Madkam's home district.

Three days later, she died before she could make it home.

The remaining 11 migrant workers have been quarantined at a government facility for 14 days, and their samples have been sent for testing. Madkam's postmortem report showed that she did not have coronavirus.

The nationwide lockdown has been in place since March 25, and will continue through May 3. 

Once the lockdown came into effect, thousands of workers attempted to walk home as they were left without work and a means of transport to travel back home. 

Virgin Australia has collapsed into administration, one day after billionaire founder Richard Branson made a last-ditch appeal for government support for the country's second biggest airline.

The carrier is the industry's latest casualty as the coronavirus pandemic continues to eliminate global demand for travel.

The company said today that it had entered voluntary administration as it looked for money to revive its business, and that it eventually hoped to "emerge stronger on the other side of this crisis."

Virgin Australia is the first major airline in Asia Pacific to succumb to the loss of business from the pandemic, which has caused carriers to rip up their flight schedules, ground planes and put staff on unpaid leave. Last month, UK budget carrier Flybe also collapsed, saying its financial challenges were too great to withstand in the context of the pandemic.

For now, the Brisbane-based carrier plans to continue operating all scheduled flights, "which are helping to transport essential workers, maintain important freight corridors, and return Australians home," the airline said in a filing posted on the Australian stock exchange.

Read more here.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte took to Facebook Monday night to reassure Italians about plans to reopen the economy -- but also to warn that the country needed to stay vigilant.

The government is finalizing plans to gradually reopen the country's economy starting May 4, he said.

Conte warned that it needed to be a slow process, because "reopening everything right away will be irresponsible and would increase the curve of contagion."

He warned that the progress made to flatten the curve cannot be sacrificed to appease public opinion or disgruntled companies.

The gradual reopening would follow a structured plan instead of relying on "improvisation," to both keep the risk of contagion low and to ease the burden on the health care system, he said.

Here's what that means: The plan must be detail-oriented and meticulous to reduce risk, Conte said. For instance, it must include not only safety protocol within workplaces, but guidelines for public and private transportation, and how to control density and social distancing.

Russia officially reported 5,642 new cases on Tuesday morning, bringing the national total to 52,763, according to the country’s coronavirus response headquarters. 

Another 51 patients died overnight, bringing Russia's coronavirus death toll to 456, the report added.

Virus spreads to regions: Moscow is still leading in new cases but health officials warned on Monday that Russia’s regions are lagging two to three weeks behind the country’s capital. President Vladimir Putin warned on Monday that the peak "is still ahead."

NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts and ambulance services, is exploring whether protective gowns can be reused amid a shortage, its deputy chief executive, Saffron Cordery, said in a statement on Monday.

Cordery said National Health Service trusts -- organizational units within the English NHS -- are "sharing stocks when they can, and are exploring whether some gowns can be washed and used more than once."

PPE delivery: The UK is still waiting for a large shipment of personal protective equipment, including 400,000 gowns, from Turkey that the government said would arrive Sunday but has been delayed. It has also received 140,000 medical gowns from Myanmar, according to UK government minister Simon Clarke.

The UK Parliament will resume today with lawmakers being asked to approve a new "hybrid" system which will limit the number of people allowed in the House of Commons at any one time.

If approved, the new measures will begin on Wednesday.

Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said it will be a "temporary measure" to ensure the government is being held to account during the coronavirus restrictions.

The proposed model would allow a maximum 50 members of parliament to be present in the chamber at one time under social distancing measures. In addition, a further 120 members will be able to join via video link.

In a video message posted online, Hoyle said the changes are designed to allow lawmakers to do what everyone else is being asked to do -- stay home.

"It will be an historic moment in our 700-year history to have MPs contributing to prime minister’s questions, urgent questions and statements via video link from the safety of their homes and offices," he said.

Singapore confirmed 1,111 new cases of the novel coronavirus today, the vast majority of whom are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.

Only 20 cases were Singaporean citizens or permanent residents, according to the health ministry.

Less than a month ago, the city-state was being hailed as one of the countries that had got its coronavirus response right. But then the second wave hit, hard.

Since March 17, Singapore's number of confirmed coronavirus cases grew from 266 to at least 9,125, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

What went wrong? The answer appears to lie in clusters of cases among migrant workers living in cramped dormitories, and an underestimation of the speed at which those infections could spread through a city where lockdown measures had not been put in place.

Many of these workers are from South Asia, and appear to have been overlooked in the initial wave of testing. Now, multiple dormitories have been quarantined and the government is ramping up testing for all workers.

This post was updated to include the latest number of total cases.

Read more about the migrant workers and Singapore's second wave here:

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