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  • Turkey imposes two-day lockdown in all major cities from midnight

    Turkey imposes two-day lockdown in all major cities from midnight

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    TURKEY IMPOSES TWO-DAY LOCKDOWN IN ALL MAJOR CITIES FROM MIDNIGHT

    Turkey ordered citizens to stay at home for 48 hours across 31 cities starting midnight Friday as it rolled out new strict measures to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. The interior ministry said in a statement the order would last until midnight Sunday in dozens of cities, including the economic hub of Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

    Turkey is imposing a two-day lockdown in 31 provinces — including Istanbul, Ankara and other major cities — in response to the spread of COVID-19, the Interior Ministry said on Friday.

    It said the curbs would begin at midnight and end at the same time on Sunday. Turkey earlier announced its death toll from the novel coronavirus had risen to 1,006.

    The ban came amid concerns that with fine weather predicted over the weekend, many would ignore government advice to stay at home.

    Turkey has so far avoided a total lockdown but has ordered anyone above the age of 65 or below the age of 20 to remain home. Although schools and businesses such as cafes and hair dressers were shut down, many businesses and offices remain open and workers continue to go to work.

  • EN LEZZETLI 23 TURK YEMEGI/ CNN- Best Turkish foods: 23 delicious dishes

    EN LEZZETLI 23 TURK YEMEGI/ CNN- Best Turkish foods: 23 delicious dishes

    HAMSILI PILAVDAN SIMITE – LAHMACUNDAN TEPSI KEBABINA KADAR EN SIHHATLI  TURK YEMEGI TARIFLERI CNN DEN EVDE GECIRDIGIMIZ BU GUNLER ICIN YAPILMALARI TAVSIYESI ILE… AFIYET OLSUN

    TURKISH FORUM – DUNYA TURKLERI BIRLIGI

    Best Turkish foods: 23 delicious dishes

    Lisa Morrow, CNN • Updated 9th April 2020
    1/23
    Piyaz: The traditional version of this Turkish salad or meze includes a soft-boiled egg that’s chopped up and mixed through before the dish is served.
    Shutterstock
    (CNN) — Turkey may be famous for its kebabs, but the popular dish is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Turkish cuisine.
    Covering over 300,000 square miles, the European destination’s rich and diverse food is largely thanks to its landscape.
    Plateaus and plains of fertile soil formed by now extinct volcanoes, snow-covered mountains and fast-flowing rivers lend themselves to a rich and varied table.
    This includes olive oil based dishes from the Mediterranean coast, hearty pastries from central Anatolia, subtle spicy flavors from the east and southeast, and that’s just for starters.
    Traditional Turkish foods rely less on seasonings and more on tasty fresh ingredients rolled, kneaded, shaped and cooked to perfection with care, dedication and passion.
    In fact, the Turks love their food so much they even write songs about it — “Domates, biber, patlican” by the famous Anatolian rock star Baris Manco translates to “Tomatoes, pepper, eggplant.”
    Here are 23 top Turkish dishes beyond the basic kebab.

    Piyaz

    Antalya’s piyaz salad is one of the Turkish city’s most famous dishes — and its secret ingredient is its beans.
    They’re not just any old butter bean, but a small version known as candir, named after the inland province where they’re grown.
    Delicate and flavorful, candir are mixed, together with tahini thinned with a little water, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, garlic, flat-leaf parsley and olive oil.
    In the very traditional version, a soft boiled egg is roughly chopped up and mixed through just before serving.

    Ezogelin corba

    Ezogelin soup was supposedly conjured up by a woman who wanted to impress her husband’s mother.
    Shutterstock
    According to legend, this dish was dreamed up by an unhappily married woman named Ezo who was trying to win over her mother-in-law via her stomach.
    She concocted a zesty soup consisting of red lentils, domato salca (tomato paste — sweet or hot), grated fresh tomatoes and onions, served with dried mint and pul biber (chili flakes) sprinkled on top.
    There’s no proof it actually worked, but just in case, ezogelin (which literally translates to bride Ezo), originating from a small village near Gaziantep, is still the food of choice for brides-to-be.

    Saksuka

    A traditional Turkish side dish, saksuka consists of eggplant, zucchinis, garlic, tomatoes and chili.
    Shutterstock
    Turkish cuisine incorporates a huge range of vegetable dishes known as zeytinyagli yemegi — foods cooked in olive oil.
    The majority are vegetable-based and include green beans, artichokes and of course, eggplants.
    One of the tastiest eggplant offerings is sasuka.
    Here silky purple skinned cubes of green flesh are cooked with zucchinis, garlic, tomatoes and chilli — how much of the latter depending on where in Turkey it’s made.
    Related content

    Mac and cheese? Noodle soup? Top chefs share their go-to comfort foods

    Kisir

    This simple salad dish is made of fine bulgur wheat, tomatoes, garlic, parsley and mint.
    Shutterstock
    Kisir is a salad made from fine bulgur wheat, tomatoes, garlic, parsley and mint.
    There are numerous versions from all over Turkey, but the Antakya one includes nar eksisi (sour pomegranate molasses) and pul biber (hot red chili flakes). They like it hot down south.

    Mercimek kofte

    Mercimek kofte is a hugely popular Turkish appetizer or side dish.
    Shutterstock
    Known to Diyarbakir locals as belluh, mercimek kofte is a vegetarian delight.
    Made from red lentils, fine bulgur, salt, finely chopped onion, scallions, tomato and aci biber salca (hot red pepper paste) and crushed cilantro, they come in handy bite-sized servings.
    Just pop one of these nuggets of flavor onto a lettuce leaf, add a squeeze of lemon juice, roll it up and munch away.

    Yaprak dolma

    This traditional dish is essentially vine leaves rolled and filled with either well-seasoned rice or mincemeat.
    Shutterstock
    In the Isparta version of yaprak dolma, rice is cooked with tomatoes, a bunch of parsley, onion, garlic, tomato paste, olive oil, black pepper, salt and water.
    A spoonful of this mixture is placed on a vine leaf, folded in and carefully rolled by hand into neat little cylinders.
    While leaves are sold at most street markets, the best ones come from a neighbor’s tree, usually picked at midnight.
    Yaprak dolma are part of Turkish Aegean cuisine and sometimes include a pinch of cinnamon in the mix, a nod to the Rum people, Greeks born in Turkey.

    Inegol kofte

    Inegol Kofte — grilled meatballs made using ground beef or lamb, breadcrumbs and onions.
    Shutterstock
    Meatballs are so much more than just balls of meat in Turkish cuisine.
    Each style brings its own unique serve of history. One of the best known is Inegol kofte, invented by one Mustafa Efendi.
    Originally from Bulgaria, he migrated to Inegol in northwest Turkey in the 19th century.
    Unlike other Turkish kofte his mix uses only ground beef or lamb and breadcrumbs, seasoned with onions.
    Related content

    Kebab city: How grilled meat makes sense of Istanbul’s chaos

    Iskender kebab

    Iskender kebab is named after İskender Efendi, the man who invented the dish.
    Shutterstock
    Located in northwest Turkey, Bursa is famous for three things — silk, the ski fields of Uludag and a type of kebab called Iskender.
    Apparently a gentleman of the same name first cooked this dish for workers in the city’s Kayhan Bazaar back in 1867.
    Thin slices of doner meat are reverently laid over pieces of plump pide bread, smothered in freshly made tomato sauce, baptized with a dash of sizzling melted butter and served with a portion of tangy yoghurt, grilled tomato and green peppers.

    Cag kebab

    To prepare this dish, marinated lamb meat is roasted on a horizontal rotating spit and cooked over a wood fire.
    Shutterstock
    The people of Erzurum take their meat very seriously. So much so, they’re prepared to wait more than 12 hours for a sliver of hot and tasty lamb cag kebab.
    First the meat is smeared with a mix of onions, salt and black pepper and left to marinate for half a day.
    Then it’s fed onto a long skewer and cooked horizontally over a wood fire.
    Divine on its own, cag kebab is also served wrapped in flat lavas bread with slices of tomato, white onion and long thin green peppers called sivri.

    Hamsili pilav

    Hamsili pilav — an oven baked rice dish with a layer of fresh anchovies on top.
    Shutterstock
    Hamsi, aka European anchovy, is a staple in Turkish Black Sea kitchen. In the city of Rize, the slender fishes are prepared with rice to make Hamsili Pilav.
    This dish is cooked in a stock made from fried onions, butter, peanuts, Turkish allspice and raisins, which is mixed with fresh parsley and dill.
    Then filleted anchovies are arranged over the rice and the whole lot is cooked in the oven.

    Perde pilav

    Perde pilav — a buttery dough filled with rice, chicken, currants, almonds, pine nuts and butter.
    Shutterstock
    The town of Siirt is home to perde pilav, or curtain rice, a rice-based dish wrapped in a lush buttery dough, baked in an oven and served up hot.
    Usually served at weddings, perde pilav is cooked with chicken, currants, almonds, pine nuts and butter, and seasoned with salt, oregano and pepper.
    The shape of the dish is thought to represent the creation of a new home — the rice symbolizes fertility and the currants are for future children.

    Manti

    The most coveted version of these tasty Turkish dumplings are made in Kayseri, Central Anatolia.
    Shutterstock
    The most popular type of manti, small squares of dough with various fillings, are those made in Kayseri.
    This central Anatolian version contains a spoonful of mince sealed into a small parcel, but they use cheese elsewhere.
    The manti are dropped into boiling water and topped with yoghurt and pul biber (chili flakes).
    Legend has it, a good Turkish housewife can make them so small that 40 fit onto one spoon.
    Related content

    Are the French becoming insecure about their cuisine?

    Testi kebab

    Testi kebab — a meat and vegetable dish that needs to be broken open before it’s eaten.
    Shutterstock
    This specialty of the Nevsehir region features pottery made in Avanos, using red clay from the famous Kizilirmak River.
    First the clay jug is filled with beef, tomatoes, bell pepper, garlic and a knob of butter. Its opening is then sealed with a peeled slice of potato and covered in alfoil, before the jug is placed in a wood-burning oven.
    Once the contents are ready, the cook must hold the alfoil covered top in one hand and a small hammer in the other to break open the meal.
    The trick is to aim for the thin line circling the body of the vessel three quarters of the way up.

    Gozleme

    This traditional Turkish pastry is often stuffed with salty white cheese, minced beef or spinach.
    Shutterstock
    Alternatively known as sac boregi, pastry cooked on a sac, a hot convex metal plate, gozleme are flat savory pockets usually filled with salty white cheese, spinach or minced beef.
    Although often considered village food, it takes expert handling to roll out the paper-thin dough without tearing it.
    The word goz means “eye”, and the name gozleme is believed to come from the dark spots that form as the pastry cooks and absorbs the oil on the sac, forming “eyes.”

    Pide

    A type of flatbread made from stretched out dough balls stretched and inserted with a range of fillings.
    Shutterstock
    Pide are a firm favorite among Turks, with some of the tastiest originating in the Black Sea region.
    Here dough balls are stretched out into an elongated base and loaded with a choice of fillings.
    The most popular is sucuklu yumurta, spicy Turkish sausage and egg mixed with kasar (yellow sheep cheese) but ispanakli kasar, spinach with cheese, is equally good.
    It’s the crust that makes pide a winner. Cooked in a wood-fired oven, the high temperature produces a crisp crunchy base ideal for all types of ingredients.

    Su boregi

    This savory pastry is made by layering sheets of a dough named “yufka” and adding a filling of white cheese.
    Shutterstock
    Borek, a savory pastry made from layering sheets of a fine filo-like dough called yufka, is a staple of the high plateaus of central Anatolia.
    It was brought to Turkey by nomadic herders hundreds of years ago, and different varieties can be found all over the country and throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
    Su boregi, meaning “water borek” is the most commonly available, relying on white cheese, butter, olive oil and salt for flavor.
    Related content

    The world’s 50 best foods

    Simit

    If a country can be said to run on its stomach, simit is the fuel that keeps Turkey going.
    They’re sold everywhere, by street vendors carrying baskets or pushing carts, in bakeries and cafes, at tram, train and metro stations and even on ferries.
    It’s believed simit were created in the palace kitchens of Suleyman the Magnificent in the 1500s, but no official records exist.
    In October 2019, the word simit was officially recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary and the rest, as they say, is history.

    Lahmacun

    Lahmacun is commonly referred to as Turkish Pizza.
    Shutterstock
    According to Ottoman explorer Evliya Celebi, who roamed far and wide in the 17th century, lahmacun takes its name from the Arabic word lahm-i acinli.
    It’s a type of pastry made from lahm, meat in Arabic and ajin, paste.
    The paste consists of low fat mince mixed with tomato paste, garlic and spices smeared on a thin round of pita dough and can be made spicier on request.
    Served with fresh parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice, Turks have been eating this dish for more than 300 years.

    Cig kofte

    Cig kofte — a raw meatball dish in which the meat is usually substituted with bulgur and/or ground walnuts.
    Shutterstock
    Cig kofte originates from Sanliurfa, taking its name from the original recipe using raw (cig) ground beef, combined with bulgur, tomato paste, onions garlic, pepper and Turkish spices.
    The mix was kneaded until it was declared ready, determined by throwing a piece up to the ceiling. When it stuck there it was done.
    These days the meat has been wholly replaced by bulgur and sometimes ground walnuts, making for a healthier, but equally tasty choice.

    Baklava

    The people of Gaziantep, also known as Antep, in Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Region, know the best baklava is made in a darkened room with a controlled temperature perfect for stacking the 40 sheets of tissue-like pastry that go into this Turkish culinary icon.
    First each sheet is brushed with butter, and ground pistachios are sprinkled over every few layers. Then a honeyed syrup is poured over the contents, and the pastry is baked until golden.
    Different versions have enticing names such as twisted turban, nightingale’s nest, saray or palace baklava, and are all equally irresistible.
    Baklava can be enjoyed plain or with a dollop of kaymak, Turkey’s answer to clotted cream.
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    Dondurma

    Dondurma is made from milk and sahlep, a flour made from the tubers of orchids, and mastic.
    Shutterstock
    Where can you find ice cream you can eat with a knife and fork?
    In Kahramanmaras, home of traditional Turkish dondurma, of course. Traditional dondurma (which means freezing in Turkish) is made from milk and two special ingredients, sahlep and mastic.
    Sahlep is a type of flour produced from orchids that provides a smooth velvety finish to the ice cream, while the mastic, a natural gum, adds a unique chewiness.

    Lokum

    Also known as Turkish Delight, Lokum dates back centuries.
    Shutterstock
    Lokum, known in English as Turkish Delight, dates back centuries. However, it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that it became a hit with the Ottoman sultans.
    That’s when corn starch was invented and Istanbul confectioner Haci Bekir added it to the list of ingredients.
    This simple combination of water, starch and sugar, boiled together to produce delicate cubes flavored with rose water, pistachio and other flavors continues to delight.

    Ekmek kadayifi

    This Afyonkarahisar dessert is made from a special type of dehydrated bread with a consistency similar to crumpets.
    The bread is placed on a large tray and steeped in water to make it expand. Then it’s covered in a syrup made of sugar, water and lemon and simmered on the stove.
    The syrup is constantly spooned back over the bread to infuse it with a sweet sticky texture.
    When read, it’s turned upside down onto a serving dish and eaten with kaymak, thick Turkish cream.
  • NURSING HOMES FOR THE ELDERLY ARE NOW DEAD TRAPS WITHOUT CARE

    NURSING HOMES FOR THE ELDERLY ARE NOW DEAD TRAPS WITHOUT CARE
    by Darren McCaffrey
    Euronews Political Editor
    @DarrenEuronews
    In the coming weeks, our daily special coverage newsletter will be dedicated to bringing you the latest updates from Europe on the coronavirus outbreak.
    Taking a toll

    Sadly, yesterday the death toll in France surpassed 10,000 as the country announced a record number of daily fatalities from COVID-19.But, the latest deadly spike was perhaps most glaring in the country’s nursing homes – some 820 elderly people have succumbed to the awful disease in recent days.

    “The tsunami has entered the building, it’s a disaster” is how one director vividly described what was happening in his care home in the central Loire Valley region, where at least 10 people have died recently and 19 others are presenting symptoms.

    It is a horrific story that is being repeated again and again in different cities, regions and countries across Europe.

    In Spain, the army found the bodies of dozens of dead – and apparently abandoned – elderly people at retirement homes. Health officials said that in some cases, where the cause of death was suspected to be linked to COVID-19, the deceased residents were left in their beds until properly-equipped funeral staff were available to come to take care of the bodies.

    Authorities from the Belgian region of Flanders have reported more than 600 probable deaths among residents of care homes. In recent days, at least 24 people have died in similar institutions in Scotland.

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Statistically, the coronavirus is shown to prey mostly on the elderly – death rates are highest among those over the age of 70 – and social distancing is more difficult in nursing homes, not least of all because staff members who live in the local community are having to continue to come into the home to provide care, despite the risks to both them and their residents.

    Many of those same carers are now also having to face the twin challenge of a lack of equipment and staff shortages.

    And all of this is likely to turn out to be much worse than we currently realise. Numerous countries are, at the moment, only officially announcing daily death tolls from hospitals, not from care homes or the community.

    Even among those who are casting the net wider in their reporting of figures, there are limitations. France changed its way of counting yesterday, to include nursing homes in its figures. But the head of its public health authority said that the count was still not complete as some care homes had yet to report their numbers. Many care homes and mortuaries simply don’t have test kits – they are unable to officially identify whether or not someone has died of COVID-19.

    In the summer of 2003 a heatwave hit France, killing what initially seemed like dozens of elderly people. Then, it was revised to hundreds of fatalities. It was only months later that statisticians said it was likely to have been closer to 15,000.

    Tragically, the same thing is happening again, but on a more frightening scale. And again it is likely to be many months before we get a true sense of the horrors this virus has really inflicted on Europe
    WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

    JOLT TO JOBS The international Labour Organization’s forecast for the next three months makes for bleak reading: “We are going to lose the equivalent of 195 million jobs around the world,” ILO Director-General, Guy Ryder, told Euronews. According to the UN body, the coronavirus crisis is having a devastating impact on employment worldwide and will prove a lot more damaging to the labour market than the global recession ten years ago.SCIENCE CHIEF QUITS The European Union confirmed it has accepted the resignation of the head of its top science organisation. Mauro Ferrari had been the president of the European Research Council for little more than three months. In a statement to the Financial Times, he cited disappointment with the bloc’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and “lost faith in the system itself.” The European Commission has defended its record, saying 18 research and development projects had already been picked at short notice to fight the coronavirus.

    “WE’RE ALL IN A WAR” Euronews spoke to Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, about the EU’s response to the COVID-19 crisis and the pressure on healthcare systems. She urged citizens to respect lockdown measures and predicted that life in Europe would go “back to normality gradually.”

    MASK DIPLOMACY The coronavirus has led to a reassessment of EU-China relations, which were already strained before the outbreak began. Recent moves by Beijing to provide millions of masks to EU countries have been dubbed “mask diplomacy” and are being seen as a way to keep trade ties alive, especially in the race to win lucrative public contracts in Europe.

    FAKE NEWS Numerous copy-pasted posts with false or misleading information about the coronavirus have been circulating on social media platforms over the past weeks. In a bid to curb the spread, WhatsApp has now imposed a limit on how many messages we can forward. Seana Davis explains the new system.

    CALL TO ACTION With half of the world’s population living under lockdown measures and forced close-quarter living, cases of domestic abuse have spiked. Specialists and charities aren’t properly equipped to help victims in these conditions, so organisations are calling on citizens to take responsibility and get involved.
    STAT OF THE DAY

    The German economy is sliding into its deepest recession on record and will shrink by almost 10 percent in the three months to June. According to the country’s top economic research institutes, that would be double the magnitude recorded in early 2009. Europe’s largest economy is expected to contract overall by 4.2 percent this year, but is expecting to rebound next year, with growth of 5.8 percent.
    PREVENTION AND A CURE

    The challenge of combatting the coronavirus is uniting almost the whole world and the race to find a vaccine is well and truly on. While in the not-so-distant past preventative medication would have taken more than a decade to develop, health crises in recent years have forced science to speed up. “For Ebola, we did it in five years, I know we can accelerate that,” says Seth Berkley, the CEO of the Global Alliance For Vaccines and Immunization.The World Health Organization says there are over 40 potential vaccines. Around 100 are believed to be being developed and, highly unusually, human trials with at least one experimental COVID-19 vaccine have already begun. But, while prevention is being worked on, the scientific community is also grappling with the issue of finding a safe and tested treatment, imminently.

    Monica Pinna looks into the short- and long-term solutions to shutting down the COVID-19 pandemic.
    ON A POSITIVE NOTE

    Wherever you are in the world, if you looked into the sky last night, you would have seen something really quite special: the biggest and brightest supermoon of the year – a full moon at its closest point to Earth within its elliptic orbit.It was a rare moment for people to feel connected in uncertain times, astronomer and astrophotographer Tom Kerss told us: “When we look at the night sky, we are actually engaging with the natural world. And granted we’re sort of closed off from one another, but when we look at the sky, we’re engaging in a shared experience as well.”

    And NASA scientist Noah Petro said anyone can get a good photo of a supermoon: “You don’t need to have super fancy high-tech equipment, just your naked eye,” he remarked, adding even with a camera phone you can take a decent picture of the moon when it’s this size. He’s probably right, but here are some taken by the professionals…
    NO COMMENT

    Wuhan let the world know it was out of lockdown with a spectacular light show, a whopping 11 weeks after the restrictions were first imposed.
    I’ll be back tomorrow, but in the meantime stay safe, stay at home, and don’t forget to wash your hands.
  • The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate

    The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate

    By Reis Thebault ,
    Andrew Ba Tran and
    Vanessa Williams

    April 7 at 11:45 PM

    As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the United States, it appears to be infecting and killing black Americans at a disproportionately high rate, according to a Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country.

    The emerging stark racial disparity led the surgeon general Tuesday to acknowledge in personal terms the increased risk for African Americans amid growing demands that public-health officials release more data on the race of those who are sick, hospitalized and dying of a contagion that has killed more than 12,000 people in the United States.

    A Post analysis of available data and census demographics shows that counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.

    African Americans by percentage of population and share of coronavirus deaths

    Only a few jurisdictions publicly report coronavirus cases and deaths by race.

    In Milwaukee County, home to Wisconsin’s largest city, African Americans account for about 70 percent of the dead but just 26 percent of the population. The disparity is similar in Louisiana, where 70 percent of the people who have died were black, although African Americans make up just 32 percent of the state’s population.

    In Michigan, where the state’s 845 reported deaths outrank all but New York’s and New Jersey’s, African Americans account for 33 percent of cases and roughly 40 percent of deaths, despite comprising only 14 percent of the population. The state does not offer a breakdown of race by county or city, but more than a quarter of deaths occurred in Detroit, where African Americans make up 79 percent of the population.

    And in Illinois, a disparity nearly identical to Michigan’s exists at the state level, but the picture becomes far starker when looking at data just from Chicago, where black residents have died at a rate six times that of white residents. Of the city’s 118 reported deaths, nearly 70 percent were black — a share 40 points greater than the percentage of African Americans living in Chicago.

    [Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]

    County majority Counties Cases per 100k Deaths per 100k
    Asian 6 19.5 .4
    Black 131 137.5 6.3
    Hispanic 124 27.2 .6
    White 2,879 39.8 1.1
    Note: Data per 100k based on averages.
    Source: Johns Hopkins University and American Community Survey.

    President Trump publicly acknowledged for the first time the racial disparity at the White House task force briefing Tuesday.

    “We are doing everything in our power to address this challenge, and it’s a tremendous challenge,” Trump said. “It’s terrible.” He added that Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “is looking at it very strongly.”

    “Why is it three or four times more so for the black community as opposed to other people?” Trump said. “It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t like it, and we are going to have statistics over the next probably two to three days.”

    Detailed data on the race of coronavirus patients has been reported publicly in fewer than a dozen states and several more counties.

    African Americans’ higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and lung disease are well-documented, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) noted that those health problems make people more vulnerable to the new respiratory disease. But there never has been a pandemic that brought the disparities so vividly into focus.

    The crisis is “shining a bright light on how unacceptable” those disparities are, Fauci said at the briefing. “There is nothing we can do about it right now except to try and give” African Americans “the best possible care to avoid complications.”

    “I’ve shared myself personally that I have high blood pressure,” said Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who is 45, “that I have heart disease and spent a week in the [intensive care unit] due to a heart condition, that I actually have asthma and I’m prediabetic, and so I represent that legacy of growing up poor and black in America.”

    U.S. Surgeon General: ‘I and many black Americans are at higher risk for covid’
    0:48
    On April 7, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, discussed the lack of health equity when it comes to the impact covid-19 may have on African Americans. (Reuters)

    Adams added, “It breaks my heart” to hear about higher covid-19 death rates in the black community, emphasizing that recommendations to stay at home to slow the spread are for everyone to follow.

    On Monday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and hundreds of doctors joined a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), in demanding that the federal government release daily race and ethnicity data on coronavirus testing, patients and their health outcomes.

    To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has only released figures by age and gender.

    [Covid-19 is ravaging black communities. A Milwaukee neighborhood is figuring out how to fight back.]

    Legislators, civic advocates and medical professionals say the information is needed to ensure that African Americans and other people of color have equal access to testing and treatment, and also to help to develop a public-health strategy to protect those who are more vulnerable.

    In its letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the Lawyers’ Committee said the Trump administration’s “alarming lack of transparency and data is preventing public health officials from understanding the full impact of this pandemic on Black communities and other communities of color.”

    As pressure mounted, a CDC spokesman said Tuesday that the agency plans to include covid-19 hospitalizations by race and ethnicity in its next Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, more than six weeks after the first American died of the disease.

    Health departments nationwide report coronavirus cases to the CDC using a standardized form that asks for a range of demographic information, including race and ethnicity. However, fields are often left blank and those local agencies are “under a tremendous amount of strain to collect and report case information,” said Scott Pauley, a CDC spokesman.

    As the disease has spread in the United States, information on age, gender and county of residence also has been reported inconsistently and sporadically.

    In some regions, lawmakers are pushing to fill the data gap on their own. Virginia reports the racial breakdown of its cases but not of its deaths. In neighboring Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Tuesday the state would begin to release data about race, a day after more than 80 members of the House of Delegates sent him a letter asking for the information.

    Del. Nick Mosby, a Democrat who represents Baltimore, has pushed for the data for weeks after he started hearing from friends, colleagues and his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers about black men who were infected or were dying of covid-19.

    “It was kind of frightening,” Mosby said. “I started receiving calls about people I knew personally.”

    In Washington, D.C., this week, district officials released race data for the first time, showing that the disease has killed African Americans in disproportionately high numbers. Nearly 60 percent of the District’s 22 fatalities were black, but African Americans make up about 46 percent of the city’s population.

    Like many other jurisdictions, the District’s health officials don’t know the race of many people who have tested positive. In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said that the city lacked race data on half of all positive cases but that the existing data was enough for her to be “very fearful of the impact that this virus is going to have disproportionately on African Americans in our country.”

    “We know that underlying conditions, like hypertension and diabetes and heart disease, this virus is particularly hard on,” Bowser said. “And we know that African Americans are living with those underlying conditions every day, probably in larger proportions than most of our fellow Americans.”

    Although the disparities have garnered national attention in recent days, some predominantly black communities have been rocked by the outbreak for the past several weeks — and not just in the nation’s urban cities.

    Dougherty County and the city of Albany, in rural southwest Georgia, have recorded the highest number of deaths in Georgia. Dougherty, with a population of 90,000, had 973 positive cases and 56 deaths as of Tuesday.

    By contrast, Fulton County, which includes Atlanta and has a population of more than 1 million, had 1,185 cases and 39 deaths. Black residents make up 70 percent of Dougherty’s population and more than 90 percent of coronavirus deaths, said county coroner Michel Fowler.

    “Historically, when America catches a cold, black America catches pneumonia,” Albany City Commissioner Demetrius Young said last week.

    Elected officials and public-health experts have pointed to generations of discrimination and distrust between black communities and the health-care system. African Americans are also more likely to be uninsured and live in communities with inadequate health-care facilities.

    As a result, African Americans have historically been disproportionately diagnosed with chronic diseases such as asthma, hypertension and diabetes — underlying conditions that experts say make covid-19 more lethal.

    Critics of the public-health response have cited confusing messaging about how the virus is transmitted, such as an early emphasis on overseas travel, and have noted that some public officials were slow to issue stay-at-home directives to encourage social distancing.

    Even then, some activists argued, black people might have been more exposed because many held low-wage or essential jobs, such as food service, public transit and health care, that required them to continue to interact with the public.

    “This outbreak is exposing the deep structural inequities that make communities pushed to the margins more vulnerable to health crises in good times and in bad,” Dorianne Mason, the director of health equity at the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement. “These structural inequities in our health care system do not ignore racial and gender disparities — and neither should our response to this pandemic.”

    David Montgomery, Ovetta Wiggins, Samantha Pell and Darran Simon contributed to this report.

  • 3 Countries That Managed to Curb COVID-19 So Far

    3 Countries That Managed to Curb COVID-19 So Far

    By: Natalia Jones
     
    The world is engulfed by the Coronavirus Pandemic – all continents are affected and over 1.27 million cases of the disease and nearly 70,000 deaths have been reported as of April 6, 2020. And while it may seem to many that the situation is hopeless and the spread of the disease is out of control, it’s not entirely so if we look at the situation globally. The way the countries we’re about to discuss are handling the crisis, for example, proves that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that the harsh quarantines, the closed borders, and movement restrictions are effective when done right. These three exemplary countries make us hopeful for the future.

    Taiwan

    The country with the promptest and most successful response to the Novel Coronavirus thread is Taiwan. As of April 6, 2020, there are only 365 cases and 5 COVID-19-related deaths in the country, and this unprecedented success in fighting the SARS-CoV-2 virus is hardly coincidental.
    Due to the country’s proximity to China, Taiwan was severely affected by the 2003 SARS epidemic, which also originated in China and spread like wildfire in Taiwan, killing 71 people (making up nearly 10% of the global SARS fatalities). To prevent this from ever happening again, the government of Taiwan created a special epidemiological commission called the Central Epidemic Command Centers, the function of which was to track and deal with any new outbreaks, especially those coming from China. So, the country was pretty much ready for COVID-19, and the first actions towards limiting the outbreak in the country started in January.
    The country’s first actions were to restrict entrance to arrivals from Hong Kong and mandate strict 14-day self-quarantine measures to anyone arriving from China. These restrictions seemed excessive at first, but the recent reports suggesting that China may have been downplaying the magnitude of the Novel Coronavirus outbreak put Taiwan’s unusually quick response in perspective. With the spread of the virus, mask-wearing in public spaces was enforced, mass testing was conducted and televised daily briefings by the minister of health Chen Shih-Chung took place and helped raise morale and cooperation in the public. Other information systems were available to the public to ensure prompt diagnosis and quarantine measures.
    The combination of all these early measures managed to limit the spread of the disease throughout Taiwan dramatically despite the shared border with China and helped prevent the SARS 2003 scenario from repeating itself.
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    Germany

    The percentage of coronavirus-related deaths in Germany is paradoxically low, only 1.4% compared to at least 10% in surrounding countries like the UK, Spain, and France. Even though there are over 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Germany today, the healthcare system is managing to support those affected by the disease. Health officials in the country explain that a combination of fortunate events, mass testing, an abundance of hospital beds, ventilators and other equipment, as well as the country’s quick and organized reaction to the developing crisis, may account for the low death rates.
    “The first people that got infected in Germany tended to be younger than the average of the population … so we were hit later and with younger patients initially,” said Karl Lauterbach, a professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne, in an interview with CNBC. This delay gave health officials the possibility to observe the development of the disease in younger patients, and they found that there is a “tipping point” at around a week after exhibiting the first symptoms of the disease. Patients with a risk of their lungs failing will typically start to deteriorate at around this time, and tracking the progress of these patients greatly helped to reduce the severity of many cases.
    Mass testing is another overarching difference in Germany, with around 350,000 coronavirus tests being conducted every week, which is the largest number of tests in any European country. The tests are conducted whether or not a person is exhibiting any symptoms, too, which helped curb the spread of the disease, as even many asymptomatic patients were sent into quarantine.
    Apart from reducing the number of fatalities, it seems like Germany’s Coronavirus strategy seems to also work at reducing the number of new patients, as in the past four days, the number of new COVID-19 cases has also started to decline.
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    South Korea

    The response of the public to the governmental restrictions imposed during this time is just as crucial as the restrictions themselves, and in all three countries we’ve discussed here, the public eagerly followed the lead of the government. In this respect, South Korea is definitely the prime example, as the country proved that a prompt response of the public can help flatten the curve without shutting down the economy.
    Like Germany, South Korea has a very low death rate compared to other countries – only 1.4%, with only 186 reported deaths from a total of 10,284 known cases of COVID-19. The first cases of the disease were recorded in January, and only a few weeks later, affordable tests became available throughout the country’s pharmacies, and in less than 3 weeks, 46,127 patients were tested.
    All in all, the government’s response included the usual steps we also observed in other countries – mass testing, tracking, and treating severe patients, but it was the mobilization of the public and their initiative to cooperate voluntarily that helped reduce the spread of the Coronavirus in the country. In fact, people started practicing social distancing and wore masks even before it was required by the government.
    One more difference in the way South Korea reacted to the pandemic is the development of publicly available data collections and GPS-tracking of patients. In fact, there are several apps available in the country that the patients’ anonymous location. “One such app — called the “Corona 100m” — alerted users when they came within 100 meters of the recent whereabouts of a coronavirus patient,” says The Diplomat.
    Like it is the case with Taiwan, this openness about the location of patients is influenced by previous negative experiences, namely that of the 2015 MERS epidemic that caused mass panic. The government learned from its mistake, and the reaction to the open and democratic approach it exercised this time around is widespread cooperation, which ended up being the defining feature of South Korea’s success at managing the current pandemic.
  • Lessons from Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Georgia, and Iceland show that the coronavirus can be stopped.

    Lessons from Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Georgia, and Iceland show that the coronavirus can be stopped.

    The Countries That Are Succeeding at Flattening the Curve

    Lessons from Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Georgia, and Iceland show that the coronavirus can be stopped.

    By Audrey Wilson

    |

    Jon Benedict for Foreign Policy/Getty Images

    The United States is now an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with epidemiological models publicized on Tuesday suggesting the disease could infect millions of Americans in the coming months, killing between 100,000 and 240,000. Hospitals in the state of New York, where there are more than 75,000 confirmed cases, are already overwhelmed and experiencing shortages of critical medical equipment such as ventilators and protective gear. The grim projections indicate that the virus has not reached its peak and that the situation will get worse.

    Amid the pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders have faced criticism for their slow and ineffective response since it became clear that the coronavirus would not be contained to China, where it originated. Other countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea have been heralded as relative success stories for flattening the curve before infection rates soared exponentially. As countries brace for a monthslong crisis, we’ve collected our top reads and interviews from recent weeks on how governments and citizens around the world have responded to the threat of COVID-19 so far.

    Taiwan recorded its first case of the coronavirus on Jan. 21, but it has managed to keep its number of confirmed cases to just 329 with five deaths as of April 1. The country is effectively locked out of the World Health Organization (WHO), since membership is usually only accorded to countries that are members of the United Nations, which does not recognize Taiwan. But as Hilton Yip wrote on March 16, the government sprang into action as soon as news broke about a mysterious illness in Wuhan. Taiwan, which sits just 100 miles from mainland China, began inspecting travelers coming from the city on Dec. 31, set up a system to track those in self-quarantine, and ramped up production of medical equipment in January. (Taiwan has not yet resumed exports of the supplies, including surgical face masks.)

    Yip attributed Taiwan’s early and effective response to past experience. “Given that Taiwan has faced everything from its giant neighbor—the spreading of fake news, military threats, the withholding of vital medical information during the SARS outbreak in 2003—the country knows it must be on its fullest guard whenever any major problem emerges in China,” he wrote.

    [Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how it’s affecting countries around the world.]

    South Korea, which had one of the largest initial outbreaks outside China, also managed to slow the spread of new coronavirus cases without instituting any lockdowns. Devi Sridhar argued on March 23 that the country’s exemplary model for mass diagnostic testing was the only way to contain the outbreak—and that other countries should look to East Asia for lessons. South Korea, which has a population of 51 million, tests more than 20,000 people daily at designated testing sites and uses isolation and widespread contact tracing to break chains of transmission—as recommended by WHO. “South Korea is showing how this model ultimately pays off in reducing spread, taking pressure off health services, and keeping its death rate one of the lowest in the world,” Sridhar wrote. 

    In the West, Canada managed to roll out more expansive testing than the neighboring United States, as Justin Ling wrote on March 13. In January and February, Canada began setting up the infrastructure to conduct tests and contact tracing. The early response in part came from the country’s experience during the SARS outbreak in 2003. (Then, Canada was the only country outside Asia to report deaths from the virus.) Canada has a well-funded public health care system, and its criteria for who can be tested for COVID-19 is not as limited as in the United States. “Canada has spent the past two decades preparing for this moment,” Ling wrote. “By catching cases early, and investigating their origins, Canada has blunted the impact of the virus thus far.”

     

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    Some success stories are unexpected. On the Don’t Touch Your Face podcast, Foreign Policy’s Amy Mackinnon singled out the early response of the country of Georgia. Despite its small size and struggling economy, the country began taking serious measures at the end of February, including closing schools and conducting widespread diagnostic tests. Georgia has so far confirmed 117 cases and no deaths from COVID-19. “I think the fact that the government took it seriously from the very start has helped,” the Georgian journalist Natalia Antelava told Mackinnon. So has Georgia’s mindset. “This is a country that is used to crisis, and it is a country that has lived through civil wars and the Russian invasion in 2008 and a very dark period through the ’90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Antelava said.

    Mackinnon also interviewed Jelena Ciric, a journalist in Iceland, which has one of the highest per capita rates of confirmed coronavirus cases. That’s because it has also tested more people per capita than anywhere else in the world—an effort led by a private medical research company based in Reykjavik. The research will be used to inform the global response to the pandemic. “What that gives us in Iceland is somewhat of a clearer picture of how the virus is spreading through the general population,” Ciric said. “Our growth has not actually become exponential due to these early measures of quarantining people who have likely been exposed to the virus.”

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    Elsewhere, citizens are not so trusting of their governments’ expertise. In Russia, daily life continued as normal until mid-March, when medical experts began questioning official statistics showing a low rate of COVID-19 infection. The government moved quickly to close the borders and announce a large economic stimulus plan, wrote Foreign Policy’s Reid Standish, reporting from Moscow. “Should the true scope of the virus prove to be higher than shown in official statistics, it would mean that the Russian government has missed its chance to slow the pandemic,” he wrote. Two weeks later, it appears that the coronavirus could present a serious political challenge for President Vladimir Putin, as Standish reported on March 30.

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    There is also significant doubt about the statistics in Iran, which officially reports 47,593 coronavirus cases and 3,036 deaths as of April 1. The real figures are almost certainly much higher—making Iran a coronavirus epicenter, Maysam Behravesh argues. As cases climbed in China in January, Iranian officials didn’t restrict travel between the countries and apparently delayed announcing an outbreak in the religious city of Qom until after the first COVID-19 deaths. Many high-ranking figures have since died from the virus. Behravesh attributes Iran’s failed response in part to misunderstanding.

    “Iran’s general neglect of the colossal public health threat posed by the coronavirus also emanates from its fundamental unfamiliarity with the nature of such a peril,” he writes. “After all, the virus isn’t a domestic revolt or foreign intervention aimed at regime change, but a creeping, invisible menace against the whole society that requires a science-centered response.”

    Audrey Wilson is an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @audreybwilson