China hits back, in words and aid pledges, as America goes at it alone.
The World Health Organization’s annual meeting, which concluded on Tuesday, was dominated by feuding as the United States escalated threats of isolationism and China bit back against criticism.
In Beijing, a foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, criticized the United States’ position at a news briefing on Tuesday, after more accusations of Chinese obfuscation flew.
“The United States has made a miscalculation and found the wrong target when it picks on China, shirks its responsibilities and bargains on how to fulfill its international obligations to the World Health Organization,” Mr. Zhao told reporters.
On Tuesday morning, a World Health Organization spokeswoman said that the agency had no immediate comment on the letter, but expected to have “more clarity” later in the day, according to the news agency Reuters.
The organization agreed to launch a probe into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and adopted a resolution, brought by the European Union on behalf of more than 100 countries including Australia, China and Japan. Officials seated in the Geneva meeting room, spaced at an appropriate distance, applauded as it was passed.
The resolution calls for an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” into the international response to the virus, including by the W.H.O. President Trump had been insisting that the health agency investigate the origins of the virus and whether it was created in a Chinese lab. Scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS.
In a statement, the United States praised the resolution and claimed it constituted a mandate to investigate the origins of the virus, a subject the resolution itself does not mention.
“This will ensure we have a complete and transparent understanding of the source of the virus, timeline of events, early discussions, and the decision-making process for the W.H.O.’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the U.S. statement said. “We must reform the W.H.O. and supporting entities to be fully capable of fulfilling their core and crucial mission moving forward.”
The leader of the W.H.O., Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the evaluation would begin “at the earliest appropriate moment.”
He also added: “Dark and difficult days may lie ahead.”
The resolution was adopted without objections, though it fell short of what the United States wanted. While China did not object to it, President Xi Jinping has said any such inquiry should wait until the health crisis has been brought under control.
Mr. Xi also announced at the start of the meeting that Beijing would donate $2 billion toward fighting the coronavirus and dispatch doctors and medical supplies to Africa and to countries in the developing world. The gesture was seen — particularly by American officials — as an attempt by China to forestall closer scrutiny of whether it hid information about the outbreak.
People arriving from the United States played a significant role in spreading Covid-19, a nationwide genomic study of Israeli cases has found.
The analysis, led by biologists at Tel Aviv University, sequenced the genomes of virus samples from a randomly chosen, representative group of more than 200 patients at six hospitals across the country and then compared those to samples sequenced worldwide.
The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, called into question the Israeli government’s decision to admit travelers from the United States until March 9, though visitors from some European countries were barred as early as Feb. 26.
While only 27 percent of all travelers who tested positive for the virus had arrived from the United States, more than 70 percent of virus samples sequenced had originated there.
Had American travelers been barred just as fast, the researchers concluded, “a substantial fraction of the transmission chains in Israel would have been prevented.”
The study also found that so-called superspreaders in Israel have been unusually potent: While, with many viruses, 20 percent of patients are often responsible for 80 percent of cases, researchers said, the Israeli coronavirus data showed that only five percent of patients were responsible for spreading the disease to 80 percent of those ultimately infected.
Israel has reported 16,650 cases and 277 deaths linked to the coronavirus.
The study also suggested that the country is nowhere near achieving herd immunity, said Dr. Adi Stern, its lead author. According to a statistical model the researchers developed based on the genetic sequencing, no more than 1 percent of the population has contracted the virus, she said.
On the bright side, the study estimated that slamming the door on tourists, enforcing social-distancing rules and imposing a lockdown on citizens cut the virus’s rate of transmission in Israel by two-thirds. Dr. Stern said it highlighted “how important it is to follow quarantine measures wherever possible, and to close borders.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Tuesday that the border between his country and the United States would remain closed for at least another month after the two countries reached an agreement to extend its closing.
Recently, several Canadian provincial leaders have said that they oppose a rapid reopening of border. The outbreak in the United States is much more severe; the United States has reported about 463 cases per 100,000 people, more than double Canada’s number.
Mr. Trudeau said at a news conference that the closing had protected people on both sides of the border. He added that American officials had been “completely open” to the extension.
Mr. Trudeau declined to speculate on when the measure might be permanently lifted.
“Every step, we have to make the right decisions based on the circumstances,” he said.
The measure has caused some frustration, particularly among spouses who have been separated by its restrictions.
A crushing cyclone barreled up the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday, heading for a swampy stretch along the border of India and Bangladesh and threatening to unleash 165-mile-an-hour winds and massive floods when it makes landfall on Wednesday.
The power of the storm is not the only threat, as the cyclone, Amphan, nears coastal areas. It also poses a risk to the coronavirus response as hundreds of thousands of people begin moving toward emergency shelters.
In the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the authorities have fewer shelters to work with because many have been turned into Covid-19 quarantine centers. Indian officials are struggling to evacuate people and prepare for floods and destruction while still under a partial lockdown to fight the coronavirus. Humanitarian officials are worried that by packing people into shelters, infections could spread.
Satya Narayan Pradhan, the chief of India’s National Disaster Response Force, said the incoming storm could “wreak havoc.”
Her friends had posted all over social media: The milk tea shops had reopened! Wuhan was coming back!
But when Rosanna Yu, 28, took a sip of her first order in two months, she was unimpressed. “Did you guys forget how to make milk tea?” she posted jokingly on WeChat in late March. “How is it this bad?”
Still, disappointing milk tea is better than none. And while normalcy and good bubble tea may still be out of reach, just the prospect has Ms. Yu feeling buoyant.
She recently took a video of the long line at a local restaurant for takeout “hot dry noodles,” Wuhan’s signature dish. She has to pause for traffic before crossing the street — a burden that has never felt less like one.
“Seeing a lot of cars, I’m actually so happy,” she said.
Her optimism is born, in part, of luck. None of her friends or family were infected. The lockdown was hard at first, but she distracted herself by learning to bake crullers and sweet buns.
Some things are undeniably harder. Ms. Yu quit her job as a secretary last year, planning to look for a new one in January. But her parents now want her to wait until the fall, for safety reasons.
She rarely sees friends, because there is nowhere to go; dining in at restaurants is not allowed.
But for the most part, Ms. Yu has embraced Wuhan’s new normal. She plans to keep baking. She may take online classes.
And she has a new kinship with her neighbors. During the lockdown, residents who were barbers offered free haircuts. The neighborhood’s group chat, formed to coordinate bulk grocery buys, has became a virtual support circle.
“This was my first time feeling like the entire neighborhood, and all of Wuhan, was all in something together, working toward the same goal,” Ms. Yu said.
Just a week after many schools were reopened in France, the discovery of 70 coronavirus cases in classrooms across the country forced the authorities to shutter some preschools and elementary schools.
The cases are spread throughout France, from Brittany in the west to Nice in the south, in the latest example of the challenge faced by European countries in reopening their societies while seeking to avoid new waves of infections.
The education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said Monday that such developments were “inevitable,” but that the cases remained a minority among the 150,000 pupils who returned to schools last Monday.
“The consequences of not going back to school are much more serious,” Mr. Blanquer said on RTL radio.
Although schools have not been seen as a major source of outbreaks in Europe, countries that eased restrictions last week, like France and Spain, are keeping careful watch for signs of a spike in coronavirus cases.
The first students in Britain may return to school on June 1, and Gavin Williamson, the country’s education secretary, has used the example of Denmark, whose pupils were the first in Europe to go back to schools in mid-April, to argue in favor of reopening.
As Italy further loosened Europe’s first lockdown against the coronavirus and allowed restaurants, bars, churches and stores to open, Lucilla Vettraino went directly to her hair salon.
“I look like a witch with this hair!” Ms. Vettraino, 78, said on Monday as she held strands the color of Campari.
And perhaps nowhere is that passion for primping as sharply felt as in Italy, where — amid fights between the national and regional governments, concerns about a resurgent epidemic and fears of a coming economic catastrophe — Italians greeted Monday’s opening as a chance for a Great Beautification.
Italy is a capital of coiffuring, with 104,000 hair salons and tens of thousands more beauty parlors for nail care, eyebrow threading, body waxing and massaging, according to a government study by the agency representing the Chamber of Commerce.
On Monday, Italy allowed unlimited travel within individual regions, and permitted businesses to open up across most of the country. Many restaurants decided not to open because rules requiring tables to be 6.5 feet apart would make it impossible to turn a profit. But the salons had customers.
Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son and the heir to the British throne, has urged people across the nation to join a government campaign aimed at finding farm labor to “pick for Britain” and save the season’s crops as the country faces a dearth of migrant workers.
“If we are to harvest British fruit and vegetables this year, we need an army of people to help,” Prince Charles said in a message that was broadcast on Tuesday.
“Food does not happen by magic,” he said, adding that the crucial work would be at times unglamorous and challenging.
George Eustice, the British cabinet minister responsible for food and farming, said last month that Britain had just one third of its typical migrant agricultural work force because of the coronavirus lockdown.
Germany, where as many as 300,000 migrant workers from Eastern Europe would usually arrive to harvest asparagus, pick strawberries and plant late-season crops, has its own solution: It is allowing farmers to airlift workers from Romania and Bulgaria. The farmers must organize and pay for charter flights, and the program was capped at 40,000 workers a month in April and May.
The move has eased the labor shortage, but not solved it. The cost and logistical challenges have meant that only about 28,000 workers have been flown in so far, well short of the number needed. It has also raised concerns about importing infections and exploiting vulnerable workers.
Wang Zhigang, China’s minister of science and technology, spoke on Tuesday at one of the first in a series of ministerial news conferences ahead of the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, which begins on Friday.
“We developed the testing kits from the beginning, but it may take a little longer and may have a lower sensitivity,” he said. “We are gradually improving it in the process of later use and adding new technical elements, solving the problem: high sensitivity, fast detection.”
China has had a separate series of scandals in recent years regarding fraudulent academic research, although none so far regarding the coronavirus. Mr. Wang volunteered at the end of his news conference that while he believed almost all Chinese researchers to be honest, the authorities would respond with the full force of the law if another scandal did take place.
“For a few people, they are not worthy of the name of scientists, we have zero tolerance for them,” he said.
Museums and galleries across Europe have started to reopen, but the disruption isn’t over yet.
The Venice Biennale announced on Monday that it was postponing two of its main international exhibitions: The architecture biennale will now open in May 2021 instead of this month; the next biennale of contemporary art has been pushed to April 2022 from May 2021.
The delay to the architecture biennale became inevitable, organizers said, as the pandemic shuttered architecture studios and universities, and as participants came to terms with health regulations and travel restrictions.
“I hope that the new opening date will allow them first to catch their breath, and then to complete their work with the time and vigor it truly deserves,” said the organizer, the Lebanese architect Hashim Sarkis. “We did not plan it this way.”
The list includes Shakespeare’s Globe, a London theater which opened in 1997 as a full-scale replica of the 1599 original where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed.
“Despite being well managed, well governed, and — crucially — able to operate without public subsidy, we will not be able to survive this crisis,” the Globe said in a submission to a British parliamentary committee published on Monday.
The Globe’s comments appeared days after Matthew Warchus, the artistic director at the Old Vic, another famous London theater, said that it faced “a tough and even perilous year ahead, fighting for our survival like so many others in the cultural sector.”
The crisis for cultural institutions is not limited to Europe. Carriageworks, a major art space in Sydney, said this month that it had been forced into voluntary administration after lockdown led to “an irreparable loss of income.”
And in Singapore, a well-known independent cinema, the Projector, has been appealing to the government for support, according to Karen Tan, a former investment banker who co-founded the venue.
“Planning for uncertainty is the most challenging bit, given that we’ll be opening into an uncertain landscape,” she said.
On April 14 in a residential neighborhood of Kawasaki, Japan, Takehiro Shimada did the unthinkable. He turned off the lights and locked the doors of the 7-Eleven he has owned and operated for over 20 years.
It is a relief for store owners who were already putting in grueling hours for meager returns before the virus struck and have since watched business dry up as Japan’s workers sheltered at home under a state of emergency.
“This is the chance for people to shorten their hours,” Mr. Shimada said during a recent video call from his crowded stockroom. “The emergency declaration is the reason, the best possible reason.”
As Japan moved last week to lift that declaration across much of the country, however, some franchisees were wondering if the change of heart would outlast the pandemic.
Even as Germany is celebrated as Europe’s foremost example of pandemic management, an eclectic protest movement that began last month with a few dozen people marching against coronavirus restrictions has ballooned into more than 10,000 demonstrators in cities across the country.
Now, the AfD’s leaders see the protests as a first step toward moving back into the national conversation, using the demonstrations to position their message for the months ahead, when Germany must confront job losses and a battered economy.
“The crisis is coming, it isn’t here yet,” said Nicolaus Fest, head of Berlin’s AfD chapter, who was protesting near the Brandenburg Gate on Saturday. “Some time soon, a lot of people will be unemployed.”
Alongside anti-vaxxers, anticapitalists and ordinary citizens concerned about job losses and safety at reopened nurseries and schools, the marches have attracted neo-Nazis, hooligans and, consistently, members of the AfD, a party best known for its noisy nationalism and anti-immigrant views.
The protesters remain a small minority. A recent survey found that two in three Germans are satisfied with the government’s response to the crisis. Six out of 10 say they are not worried if certain freedoms have to be curtailed for longer.
But the European Commission expects the German economy to shrink by 6.5 percent this year, the worst performance since World War II. The AfD’s popularity, which early on in the crisis slumped below 10 percent, has begun to edge up.
President Trump said on Monday that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug whose effectiveness against the coronavirus is unproven, for about a week and a half as a preventive measure.
“All I can tell you is, so far I seem to be OK,” Mr. Trump said, explaining that he takes a daily pill. The White House physician said Mr. Trump had no symptoms and had regularly tested negative for the virus.
The drugs can cause dangerous abnormalities in heart rhythm in virus patients, the F.D.A. warned, saying they should be used only in clinical trials or hospitals where patients can be closely monitored for heart problems.
Several doctors said they were alarmed that Mr. Trump was using the bully pulpit of the presidency to tell the public he takes a drug that has not been proven to be effective against the coronavirus, but which does have known risks.
Reporting was contributed by Ian Austen, David Halbfinger, Mihir Zaveri, Karen Zraick, Iliana Magra, Hisako Ueno, Ben Dooley, Sameer Yasir, Jeffrey Gettleman, Jason Farago, Mike Ives, Elian Peltier, Jason Horowitz, Elisabetta Povoledo, Emma Bubola, Megan Specia, Steven Erlanger, Aurelien Breeden, Katrin Bennhold, Christopher Schuetze, Andrew Jacobs, Michael D. Shear, Edward Wong, Anatoly Kurmanaev, José Maria León, Safak Timur, Melissa Eddy, Dan Levin, Maria Abi-Habib, Keith Bradsher and Victor Mather.