The largest condom manufacturer, Malaysia-based company Karex Bhd, has warned that condom shortages could occur in the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reported March 28.
Karex Bhd CEO Goh Miah Kiat told the agency that the demand for condoms is growing "in double digits" because many people in different countries are at home due to quarantine, and many do not want to have children because of an uncertain future.
Due to quarantine, three Karex Bhd factories in Malaysia did not work for more than a week. On March 25, the company resumed production, but only half of the employees were allowed to work, Reuters reported.
Goh Miah Kiat predicts that condom shortages will be everywhere, but especially in Africa, where supplies of condoms as part of humanitarian programs can drag on for months.
In addition, Karex Bhd suggests that condom prices will rise.
Karex Bhd produces more than 5 billion condoms per year (about 20% of the global market) and exports them to more than 140 countries. The company produces condoms for well-known brands such as Durex, and also sells products under its own brand.
Reuters noted that other major condom producing countries are China, where the outbreak of the coronavirus began and where production stopped for a while, as well as India and Thailand, where the number of infected people is growing.
An outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus infection began in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. March 11, the World Health Organization announced the spread of coronavirus pandemic.
According to the American Johns Hopkins University, on March 30, the total number of infected people in the world exceeded 755 thousand, of which 36 211 people died, more than 156 thousand recovered. According to CNN, a third of the world's population is about 2.5 billion people because of the coronavirus quarantined.
In Malaysia, according to official data as of March 30, 2626 cases of coronavirus infection were registered, 37 of them ended fatally.
Real stories of virus outbreaks, horror stories about zombies and a philosophical parable about the plague.
Outbreak
The military kept a dangerous virus in the laboratory, but the infected experimental monkey broke free. Now epidemiologists need to urgently find a vaccine. To do this, they need to find the first carrier - that same animal.
Contagion
A dangerous virus spreads from Asia all over the world. Mortality from it is more than 20%, and a quick mutation complicates the creation of a vaccine. WHO is trying to stop the mass infection and find a "null patient."
World War Z
Former UN employee Jerry Lane stuck with his family in traffic and witnessed a massive outbreak of a zombie virus. Each bitten after 12 seconds turns into a fast and aggressive flesh eater. Having managed to get out of a dangerous situation, Lane joins a group that is trying to find a cure for the virus.
Perfect Sense
Chef Michael and epidemiologist Susan have fallen in love. But they are not able to enjoy a passionate romance, because the world was struck by an outbreak of an unknown virus: people lose their sense of smell, then taste, and then other feelings.
The Andromeda Strain
A military satellite falls to Earth near a small town in Arizona. A dangerous virus escapes from it, killing all residents in the vicinity, except for an old man and a child who is ill with a ulcer. A group of scientists gather in an isolated area to study the disease.
Panic in the Streets
Several criminals kill on the street a man who won a large sum of money in their cards. When the police find the body, the medical examiner discovers that the deceased was infected with pneumonic plague. Now the detectives urgently need to catch the bandits in order to arrest them for the murder, and at the same time save the entire city from the epidemic.
Morte a Venezia
Composer Gustav von Aschenbach is tired of both creativity and life. He goes to relax at a resort near Venice. But soon the hero falls in love with a young Pole and again loses peace. Meanwhile, the cholera epidemic is beginning in the city.
Busanhaeng
Suk Woo is about to take his daughter Su Ahn to her mother in Busan. They board the train, but at the last moment a woman infected with a zombie virus jumps into the car. It turns out that the living dead are already taking over the world. Passengers need to stop the spread of infection within the train and get to a safe place.
The Painted Veil
The film takes place in the 1920s. Middle-class physician Walter married the aristocrat Kitty, but their marriage cannot be called happy. At a certain point, the husband sets a condition: either the wife leaves for her lover, or leaves with her husband in a Chinese village, where he will help fight the cholera outbreak. And it is precisely Walter’s dedication to the dangerous work that makes Kitty truly love him.
28 Days Later
A simple guy Jim comes out of a long coma and discovers that he missed the start of a terrible epidemic. An unknown virus turns people into mindless killers. Jim meets several survivors, and together they try to get to a safe haven. But in the new world, the problem is not only infected.
Four months after the first cases of coronavirus were recorded and three months after total quarantine was declared in Wuhan, the Chinese authorities changed the status of the city from closed to open to the public. However, the metropolis, apparently, it will take more time for the city to return to normal life - consumer activity is at zero, and there will probably be no foreign investors for several more years.
In Wuhan, a Chinese metropolis with a population of 12 million people, where coronavirus cases were first recorded in December 2019, quarantine is officially canceled on Wednesday, April 8. Trains will start to run from the city and it will be possible to fly by plane, intercity automobile communication will be restored. But this will not mean a return to normal, Bloomberg reports.
Despite the fact that now the number of new infections per day does not exceed 30 compared to several thousand in February, the shock from the epidemic still persists, and the fear of the second wave does not allow businesses to resume work at “pre-virus” levels. Fears are fueled by the fact that cases of infection in people who do not have symptoms of the disease are still being detected in the city. It is such asymptomatic cases that played a huge role in the spread of the epidemic. “Silent carriers,” up to a third of those whose tests tested positive for coronavirus, wrote the South China Morning Post in late March, citing Chinese government data. At the same time, Chinese doctors claim that an asymptomatic patient can infect a maximum of one person.
"Before and after"
Wuhan is the center of one of the most important industrial regions of China, Hubei Province. Before the outbreak, the provincial GDP was expected to grow by 7.5–7.8% in 2020. The city’s attractiveness for doing business has grown rapidly - according to the report of the Milken Institute for 2019, Wuhan ranked 9th in terms of aggregate economic indicators among all Chinese cities, rising seven lines in a year. Business in the city ranged from biomedicine and chip manufacturing to auto parts. Coronavirus delivered a painful blow to all of this.
In February alone, Hubei’s domestic regional product fell by at least 50%, and budget lost about $ 1 billion, estimates Chen Bo, an economics professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.
New life
Shopping centers in Wuhan reopened, but they are mostly empty, most people are still too scared to go shopping for non-essential items. “I'm happy if no one comes in,” admits sales assistant at Calvin Klein's store at Wuhan International Plaza. “It's safer.” Typically, customers left 20,000 yuan (about $ 3,000) in the store over the weekend, and there were only two purchases in the week that passed since the store opened after the outbreak on March 30.
Such sentiments are ubiquitous. For example, in order to maintain a distance between sellers in shops and buyers, real walls are build in the city - 2 meters in height.
The movement of residents remains under tight control, and officials are on high alert for an outbreak. The Chinese government tracks residents through QR codes embedded in Alipay payment system and Wechat social network. Each application user automatically receives their health status at midnight - green, yellow or red - depending on their location, basic health information and travel history. Only those with a green code can leave their apartments and go to work. It is easy to lose the color of the code necessary for movement: it is enough to visit a shopping center, where later a case of infection with coronavirus will be revealed — then the green color turns yellow and implies self-isolation of the house.
Xiaomi Corp. employees who return to work are instructed not to enter the office elevator for more than five people each. At the same time, you can only stand in the elevator in accordance with special marks on the floor.
Five-star hotels are up and running again, but the buffet has been reduced to a few basic dishes, packed in individual disposable containers.
Li Jing, 33, who provides visitors with apartments, admits that Wuhan is now “clearly not the place people choose to visit first.” To lure guests, before each check-in, Lee will carry out a three-hour disinfection and expand the menu of services for guests. However, he admits that his apartments may be vacant for several weeks and even months.
Investors will not come
Officially, the plants in Wuhan can already resume work, but people are not in a hurry to return to jobs, and the supply chain must now be reorganized. One of the largest factories in Wuhan is the joint production of Peugeot cars by the PSA Group and the Chinese Dongfeng Motor Group. Machine assembly has resumed, but employees indicate that supply chains are intermittent. According to one of the plant’s managers, Mei Yunfeng, many of the company's suppliers have not yet returned to the same level as business as ussual.
“The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic destroyed Wuhan’s plans to integrate more tightly into the global supply chain,” said Professor Chen from Huazhong University. The implications for tourism and foreign investment will continue for a long time. Chen points out that after the outbreak of SARS in 2003, foreign direct investment in Guangdong, where the epidemic began, stopped for two to three years. “The same thing will happen to Wuhan,” he is pessimistic. “Investors will be careful, fearing new outbreaks of the disease, in addition, it will seem to them that the city is poorly managed.”
The coronavirus pandemic affected almost all the countries around the world, led to the closure of borders, the suspension of production and the cancellation of mass events. But when will it end? There is no exact answer to this question yet. However, in this article we will talk about three possible scenarios.
Control and isolation
Duration: from 3 months and more
It is believed that the pandemic can be stopped by controlling the virus. For this, it will be necessary to identify and isolate patients who are infected so that the disease can not spread. This idea seems logical: an outbreak of SARS in 2003, also caused by a member of the coronavirus family, ended with the isolation of patients.
The main problem with this strategy is that, due to difficulties with the diagnosis of the virus, there is no accurate data on the number of cases. Statistics simply do not take into account those cases when the disease is mild or asymptomatic. This means that many people can be infected, but are not aware those, risking to infect others.
At the same time, experts from China report that the epidemic can be stopped by the summer if all countries take serious quarantine measures. In Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, the peak of the coronavirus has already passed, and now authorities have lifted restrictions and opened access to the city of Wuhan. However, there are doubts about whether China is now capable of controlling the outbreak of coronavirus and whether this measure is conducive to continued spread of the virus. Now the hospitals in Wuhan have stopped testing patients and are not recording cases of asymptomatic virus in the human body, which means that there are still many infected people in the city and the epidemic may continue, but perhaps not at such a fast pace.
Vaccination
Duration: 18 months and more
The vaccine is the first way to fight COVID-19. If most people are vaccinated, the pandemic should stop to develop. Tests will be completed in July, and after about 11 months, the vaccine should be finally ready. And in the United States last week, the first person already received an experimental vaccine. This happened after the researchers were allowed to skip the rule of animal testing - primarily because of the crisis. But even if these initial tests succeed, it will still take up to 18 months for any potential vaccine to be available to most people.
The duration of the pandemic will also be affected by how effectively states can fight the virus before the vaccine appears on the market. To do this, they need to slow down its spread (for example, by full or partial quarantine, which we talked about above) and prepare hospitals for a large number of patients by increasing the number of places and mechanical ventilation devices.
Immune system
Duration: from 24 months and more
Finally, the least option: you are likely to get the coronavirus, but it will help to overcome the pandemic. If the virus continues to spread, then in the end many people will be infected and (if they survive) will become immune to it. In this case, the virus will disappear on its own, but it is not known how many people will suffer in such a scenario. This phenomenon is known as collective immunity. Great Britain initially chose the strategy of forming collective immunity, but then abandoned it, believing that this would lead to high hospitalization rates and the need for emergency medical care for a large number of people at the same time.
To summarize, to combat COVID-19, according to various estimates, it will take from 3 to 24 months.
It's tough to stay positive when coronavirus deaths top 12,000 globally and entire nations go on lockdown. However. But no matter how hard it gets, there’s always a cold weapon known as a sense of humor. And some people aren’t missing a chance to spice up the hard times with funny jokes, memes, and deadly funny quips.
So, even though it's difficult to be positive during these difficult times, let's try. After all, what other options do we have? Let's take a look at top fuuny list that is going viral on the internet compiled by Bemorepanda
Birthday during Coronavirus
When you thought you have Coronavirus but it's just a cancer
The closed gym effect of the summer 2020
Debating where to go during Coronavirus Easter
My plans for the weekend
Women in Islamic countries be like
Coronavirus lego edition
Pretending to be on a holiday
French people during quarantine
Corona Been name change to Ebola Extra
Lawyers wainting for the quarantine to be over
How I see working from home
At the beach during quarantine
Working as a lifeguard from home be like
People being honest during epidemic
Posted by Bemorepanda
Chinese authorities have announced the end of the coronavirus epidemic in the country. This was announced at a briefing by the official representative of the State Committee for Health of the People's Republic of China, Mi Feng.
Feng said that as of March 28, the number of confirmed cases of infection throughout the country was less than three thousand. Thus, the spread of infection in China was stopped.
According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University (USA), the total number of cases of coronavirus infection in China is just over 82 thousand. 75.5 thousand people recovered, 3.3 thousand died. Now in the first place in the world in the number of cases of coronavirus - the United States. Almost 125 thousand infected were detected there.
On March 22, it was reported that several tens of thousands of coronavirus infected in China were not included in official statistics due to the absence of symptoms. This was written by the local press with reference to closed government data. Thus, according to reporters, the number of cases in China can reach 125 thousand.
In the rest in the world, the number of infections are growing day by day, reaching over 700.000 cases with 32,144 deaths. Out of those infected, 25,423 are in either serious or critical condition. Italy has been the worst country affected, with 10,023 confirmed deaths followed by Spain, with 6,528 cases.