The Latest: British prime minister spends night in ICU
The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
TOP OF THE HOUR:
— British virus crisis deepens, while New York sees positives.
— South Korea is looking into setting a guideline for plasma treatments.
— New Zealand declares Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy as essential workers.
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LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has spent the night in an intensive care unit of a London hospital after his coronavirus symptoms dramatically worsened.
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove told the BBC that Johnson was receiving oxygen but was not on a ventilator.
Gove says that he’s “receiving the very, very best care from the team at St Thomas’ and our hopes and prayers are with him and with his family.”
The 55-year-old Conservative leader was admitted to St. Thomas’ Hospital late Sunday, 10 days after he was diagnosed with COVID-19, the first major world leader to be confirmed to have the virus.
He was moved to intensive care after his condition deteriorated Monday.
Britain has no official post of deputy prime minister, but Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been designated to take over should Johnson become incapacitated.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea says it will soon announce a guideline for hospitals on experimental coronavirus treatments using donated blood from patients who survived.
Kwon Jun-wook, an official from South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday the guideline will draw from the country’s experience with similar treatments on patients who contracted the MERS virus during an outbreak in 2015.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, discovered in 2012, is caused by a coronavirus in the same family as the common cold, SARS and the new virus that’s causing the COVID-19 illness. The 2015 outbreak killed 36 people and sickened nearly 200 in South Korea.
Kwon said officials were examining recent recoveries of two elderly COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Seoul who had been infused with survivors’ plasma — the liquid part of blood that contains antibodies — after other treatment attempts failed to improve their conditions.
He cautioned there’s still no guarantee that plasma treatment will work, and that health authorities and civilian experts are continuing to debate its effectiveness.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand has decided there is some magic in the world after officially declaring children’s favorites the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are essential workers.
That means they can carry on with their work while others stay at home during a monthlong lockdown.
“You will be pleased to know that we do consider both the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny to be essential workers,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday. “But, as you can imagine at this time, of course, they are going to potentially be quite busy at home with their family as well and their own bunnies.”
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TOKYO — Japan’s Defense Ministry said it has sent a group of soldiers to a Tokyo hotel to prepare rooms for COVID-19 patients with no or slight symptoms to stay.
It is an attempt to relieve overburdened hospitals and save beds for patients with more serious symptoms as Tokyo sees the number of cases surge. The Defense Ministry said 10 soldiers were to support the transfer of the patients, deliver meals and provide other assistance.
The measure, under the health ministry’s new medical care guideline for the coronavirus, is designed to relieve overburdened hospitals amid a growing fear of a medical system collapse. Monday’s pilot case began at Toyoko Inn, where about 100 people can stay in single rooms while being monitored.
The step comes hours before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo and six other prefectures later Tuesday to bolster social-distancing measures in the hard-hit areas.
Tokyo has seen a surge of new cases since late March, with its city total doubling every few days to 1,116 as of Monday, a sign experts say of an infection explosion. Nationwide, Japan has 4,618 cases including 712 from a cruise ship.
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NEW DELHI — India says it will lift a ban on some drug exports including hydroxychloroquine after President Donald Trump threatened retaliation if India failed to send the anti-malarial drug to the United States.
Foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said in a statement Tuesday that having confirmed sufficient supplies for India’s needs, export restrictions “have been largely lifted.”
The White House has been championing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, even though it hasn’t been proven effective against the disease. The drug is officially approved in the U.S. for treating malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and experts warn it can cause heart rhythm problems.
Trump has said that he spoke to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week about lifting the ban, and in a news conference Monday said that he would be surprised if Modi didn’t comply.
“If he doesn’t allow it to come out, that would be OK, but of course there may be retaliation. Why wouldn’t there be?” Trump said.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s health minister has described himself as an “idiot” and has been stripped of some responsibilities after breaching the country’s strict lockdown measures.
David Clark drove about 12 miles to the beach to take a walk with his family. He said that at a time when the government was asking New Zealanders to make historic sacrifices by staying at home, he had let them down.
“I’ve been an idiot, and I understand why people will be angry with me,” he said in a statement.
Clark had earlier admitted to driving to a park near his home to go mountain biking.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said under normal circumstances, she would sack Clark. But she said the country couldn’t afford massive disruption in its health sector while it was fighting the virus. Instead, she said, she was stripping Clark of his role as Associate Finance Minister and demoting him to the bottom of the Cabinet rankings.
New Zealand is nearly halfway through a planned four-week lockdown aimed at minimizing the spread of the virus.
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Hong Kong will continue to be closed to foreigners, extending the initial two-week entry restrictions on non-residents indefinitely.
Non-residents coming from overseas to Hong Kong by plane will be denied entry, and those coming from mainland China, Macao and Taiwan will be barred from entering if they have been overseas in the past 14 days.
The move to continue shutting out foreigners was announced by the government on Monday, and comes as the number of COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong rose to 915. Hong Kong has seen a rise in the number of imported cases in the city, and its confirmed cases has more than doubled in the last two weeks.
On Sunday, Hong Kong’s airport saw only 813 arrivals, a drop of close to 82% compared to before the restrictions were put in place on March 24.
Hong Kong’s entry restrictions exempt certain groups, including aircraft crew, government officials on duty, spouses and minor children of Hong Kong residents as well as personnel engaged by the government in anti-epidemic work.
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UNITED NATIONS — More than 160 current and former global leaders and other VIPs are urging the world’s 20 major industrialized nations to approve $8 billion in emergency global health funding to hasten the search for a vaccine, cure and treatment for COVID-19 and prevent a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an open letter to governments of the Group of 20 nations released Monday night, the leaders, ministers, top executives and scientists also called for $35 billion to support countries with weaker health systems and especially vulnerable populations, and at least $150 billion for developing countries to fight the medical and economic crisis.
They also urged the international community to waive this year’s debt repayments from poorer countries, including $44 billion due from Africa,
While the communique from the G20 leaders’ summit on March 26 recognized the gravity and urgency of the health and economic crisis sparked by the pandemic, the letter said “we now require urgent specific measures that can be agreed on with speed and at scale.”
The group called for a global pledging conference, coordinated by a G20 task force, to commit resources to meet the emergency needs to tackle COVID-19.
The 165 signatories included former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, 92 former presidents and prime ministers, the current prime ministers of Ethiopia and Bangladesh, Sierra Leone’s president, philanthropist George Soros, former Irish president Mary Robinson who chairs The Elders, and Graca Machel, the group’s deputy chair.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials are considering using electronic wristbands to monitor the growing number of people placed under self-quarantine to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
Health Ministry official Yoon Tae-ho on Tuesday said such devices were one of several measures discussed by officials as they search for “practical and effective ways” to monitor people isolated at homes and facilities.
Yoon acknowledged that wristbands would come with privacy concerns and didn’t offer a specific answer when asked how likely it was that the government would enforce their use.
The number of people placed under quarantine has ballooned since last week when South Korea began enforcing 14-day quarantines on all passengers arriving from overseas to stem a rise in imported infections.
Lee Byeong-cheol, an official from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, said more than 46,500 people were under self-quarantine as of Monday evening, including 38,400 who have recently arrived from abroad. He said the number could eventually reach 80,000 or 90,000.
While quarantined individuals are required to download an app that alerts authorities if they leave their homes or facilities, Yoon said apps aren’t enough when people are slipping out by leaving their smartphones behind or switching off location functions.
Lee said South Korean police are currently investigating more than 70 people over allegations of breaking quarantine.
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Follow AP news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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