According to World Health Organization, as of today, March 26, 2020, the UK reported 8.077 coronavirus cases and 422 deaths while across the globe, the number of confirmed cases tops 458,662 cases with over 20.801 deaths.
Among those people who have been tested positive is Queen Elizabeth II's son and the heir to the British throne – Price Charles.
Prince Charles, who is 71, said to only have mild symptoms and is otherwise in good health, Clearance House said in a statement. At the moment of writing, no one knows how he got the virus or if he was in contact recently with Queen Elizabeth II. The most likely version is that he caught the virus because of this recent busy schedule of public event.
Both Charles and Camilla are now self-isolating at Balmoral.
As the Queen is reported to meet with her son last time on the 12th of March, appropriate actions have been taken to make sure that the Queen is in good health, the Buckingham Palace said. She now appears to be “in good health”.
The coronavirus incubation period is usually around five to seven days, with a maximum number of days close to 12. According to a royal source, Prince Charles started showing symptoms last weekend, which means that potentially, he could have been exposed before he saw the Queen on the 12th of March.
According to a source close to CNN, he was tested on Monday and received the results on Tuesday.
While trying to receive an official statement from Price Charles office, they said: "It is not possible to ascertain from whom the Prince caught the virus owing to the high number of engagements he carried out in his public role during recent weeks,"
Following his last public event where he attended along with the Queen, Prince Charles has had a number of private meetings with many individuals, all of whom have been made aware of the situation.
Now, everyone will focus their attention on the Queen – as she is in her mid-90s, it is know that people at that age are more vulnerable against Coronavirus. Until the moment of writing the article, it is not known if she has been tested.
However, as a precaution, the palace said the Queen was canceling public events and was moving from the Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle beyond the Easter period, sources say.
Reported by Bemorepanda Team
The President of Belarus says he sees zero benefits from imposing quarantine in the country
Quarantine measures introduced in Russia and other countries due to the spread of coronavirus pandemix will not give any positive result. Such an opinion was expressed by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday, April 26.
“They tried to isolate the virus in Russia. Did it worked? No. And we are the same as in Russia. You cannot isolate us, ”Lukashenka said during a live broadcast at the Belarus 1 television channel.
According to Lukashenko, under quarantine, "someone in isolation is sick, they are pulled out of there, treated while everyone is sitting in these apartments."
“Now they have opened the gate - people have come out. And the people infected by this virus is going up again. And the second wave of incidence will turn out. The first one didn’t go away, and the second wave will cover them wither, ”the Belarusian leader believes.
Therefore, according to him, he “decided to go his own way,” reports TASS.
The number of people infected with coronavirus in Belarus over the past 24 hours has increased by 873 people and reached 10,463; 72 patients died in the country. Due to coronavirus, no quarantine has been introduced in Belarus; preparations are underway for the Victory Day parade. From April 20, the schools have been opened
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended quarantine and curfews. However, President Alexander Lukashenko refused to close state borders, calling this measure utter stupidity, and also condemned some other preventive measures, including the closure of churches.
The Slovenian government has announced the end of the new coronavirus pandemic in the country, with the news being the first country in the European Union. Slovenian authorities have confirmed less than seven contaminations a day in the past two weeks.
People coming to Slovenia from other EU member states are no longer required to be isolated for at least seven days, as they have been since early April, the government said in a statement on Thursday. Slovenia, a country with 2 million inhabitants bordering Italy, Croatia and Austria, has a total of 1,500 infections and 103 deaths from COVID-19, with few new contaminations in recent days.
Slovenia, a country of two million people, has reported 1,464 infections with the new coronavirus and 103 deaths from covid-19. "Slovenia has calmed the pandemic in two months. Today, Slovenia has the best epidemiological homage in Europe, "Prime Minister Janez Jansa announced in Parliament on Thursday.
Some restrictions will remain, such as banning public gatherings, wearing a mask and complying with social distancing rules. Earlier this week, the Slovenian government announced the lifting of most restrictions starting next week, including the reopening of shopping malls and hotels with less than 30 beds.
"You cannot milk cows remotely" - Lukashenko’s reason not to impose quarantine in Belarus
Experts believe that the situation with the coronavirus epidemic in Belarus is at the point where an urgent decision is needed. The number of cases began to increase by 30-40% per day.
The population of Belarus begins to complain against the fact that the country's president, Alexander Lukashenko, does not introduce any quarantine measures in the country, but, on the contrary, practically denies the existence of an epidemic. Residents made a petition calling on the authorities to quarantine. It has already been signed by more than 150 thousand people.
Moreover, the son of a resident of Polotsk, who died of pneumonia, Lidia Matveeva, who was diagnosed with a coronavirus, wrote a statement to the police demanding to institute criminal proceedings against the president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Economist Aleksnadr Rogers believes that it is too early to talk about the alarming situation, Lukashenko still has time to maneuver.
Here the situation is not simple: Alexander Grigorievich is a stubborn man, if he has decided something, he will not give up. So I'm not sure that he will make another decision. But, on the other hand, it’s also impossible to say exactly how much sick, the tests in Belarus are few, the influx of patients, a certain critical mass is also not observed, and the statement to the police is, excuse me, a cry of the soul, one can only sympathize with a person, - says Rogers.
The expert noted that, according to rumors, an epidemic has been going on in Belarus for a long time, and the death toll is increasing, they just make doctors hide everything, but it is not possible to verify the plausibility of such statements.
Alexander Lukashenko himself laughs at the quarantine question, saying that you can enter quarantine in 24 hours, but "who will feed us" or that "cows on a remote place do not milk."
Political analyst Dmitry Rodionov believes that he has no other option.
Lukashenko will pull to the very last. It’s hard to say where the hell is, when he realizes that you can’t do without quarantine. He may try to hide it, somehow manipulate data, but corpses are corpses. You can’t hide them, ”says Rodionov. - This is a double-edged sword: Russia can survive the quarantine - we have reserves, but Belarus has a small economy, and the country is not rich. You look at America, there over a month already ten million have lost their jobs. And in Belarus, and 100 thousand unemployed enough to start a crisis.
Rodionov believes that the key to this pandemic is the very free manipulation of the number of deaths. On the one hand, it is possible to call all victims of the coronavirus its victims, on the other hand, the death toll from the virus can be underestimated in the same way, transferring death to other causes. Whether Lukashenko adheres to one of these strategies, time will tell.
Dmitry Rodionov noted that elections will be held in Belarus this August, so the absence of economic disruptions is one of the priorities of domestic Belarusian policy.
It cannot be said when Lukashenko will change his attitude towards the epidemic and whether it will, however, most likely, in April it will become clear how the epidemic will go across Belarus. So, Russia should also be ready for such a development of events, since Belarus, despite the specific relations in the field of hydrocarbons, remains our main ally and brotherly country, ”he added.
The publicist Anatoly Wasserman, on the contrary, believes that it makes no sense to cheat with numbers, since the result will be exactly the opposite.
- To hide such things is more expensive. When they try to hide something, they distort the picture for themselves, which means they do not have the information necessary for making decisions. By the way, historians therefore trust the documents of internal reporting more. I note that many quarantine measures in Belarus have been taken for a long time. Borders are controlled by neighbors, even with Russia, transit flows have been supervised from the very beginning, much is already being done.
Also, according to him, there is no consensus among epidemiologists on which system to combat this infection is the best. So Belarusians could experiment.
Researchers at Oxford have made an important discovery: they have launched a test that can identify, in just 20 minutes, whether or not a person has antibodies to Covid-19. Those who find out they are immune to coronavirus can return to work and resume their lives. The British government has already ordered 50 million tests that will be ready by June and says it is vital to saving the economy.
A test costs 10 pounds and is done through a small sting that takes a drop of blood. It works on the principle of pregnancy test: if after 20 minutes two lines appear, it means that there are antibodies to Covid-19. One line shows that the person is either vulnerable or the test has failed.
The test was developed by researchers at Oxford in collaboration with a firm backed by the British government. It wants to produce 1 million tests per week, by summer, and from next year to reach a production capacity of 50 million tests. The plan is for people to take pictures of the test result and send them to a central unit, where they will be entered into a database. Those who are immune to the virus will be able to return to work and thus the country's economy would have a chance.
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, recovered from a serious infection with the new coronavirus, resumes his activity on Monday. He was tested positive for the new coronavirus on March 26, he was hospitalized ten days later at St. John's Hospital from London, after which he was transferred the next day, April 6, to the intensive care unit, where he left after three days.
The COVID-19 pandemic could have killed 40 million deaths by the end of 2020 in the absence of any preventative measures, according to Imperial College London (UK).
Researchers included a number of scenarios, such as
- What would have happened if the world had not reacted to COVID-19,
- Two scenarios incorporating social distancing, which result in a single-peaked epidemic
- And several scenarios for suppressing the spread of the disease that can have the largest overall impact in terms of reducing disease and deaths.
It is noted that ignoring all security measures would lead to a worse development of the coronavirus epidemic and infection of seven billion people. This number would be halved if the number of contacts had been reduced by 40 percent for children, young people and adults, and 60 percent for older people.
Dr Patrick Walker, an author of the report from Imperial, said: "We estimate that the world faces an unprecedented acute public health emergency in the coming weeks and months. Our findings suggest that all countries face a choice between intensive and costly measures to suppress transmission or risk health systems becoming rapidly overwhelmed. However, our results highlight that rapid, decisive and collective action now will save millions of lives in the next year"
The study shows that poor countries will lose far more people than developed ones. A press release from the British university emphasizes that the problem of COVID-19 is common to all countries on Earth.
The modelling showed that implementing measures early on can have a dramatic impact.
If all countries were to adopt this strategy at 0.2 deaths per 100,000 population per week, 95 per cent of the deaths could be averted, saving 38.7 million lives.
However, if this strategy is adopted later (1.6 deaths per 100,000 population per week), then this figure drops to 30.7 million.
In March, Chinese experts published a study in JAMA Cardiology, which claimed that diseases of the cardiovascular system increases mortality by almost 4.5 times from coronavirus.