Pandemic intensifies social crisis in New Zealand

Tom Peters

The New Zealand government’s Commission for Financial Capability (CFFC) reported on Thursday that a survey of 3,000 people, conducted in April, found 34 percent of households were in “financial difficulty.” A further 40 percent were “at risk of tipping into hardship.”

The survey was part of a study involving eight countries. New Zealand ranked worse than the UK and Norway, where 28 percent and 8 percent of respondents respectively were in “financial difficulty.” Other countries have not yet reported their results.

The findings reflect the dramatic and widespread fall in living standards due to the global economic crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thirty-eight percent of respondents, an estimated 679,500 households, suffered a decline in income, with 232,500 losing more than a third.

CFFC head Jane Wrightson warned that “income loss will get worse before it gets better.” In fact, there is no end in sight for what is the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s.

New Zealand is highly exposed to the crisis: its tourism and international education industries are imploding. Households have low savings and high debt levels, many workers are in insecure jobs and social welfare benefits are extremely low.

The country also has some of the world’s most unaffordable housing. The CFFC estimated that 179,000 households, one in 10, had missed a mortgage or rent payment since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

The survey found that another 40 percent of households “were not in financial difficulty yet but were at risk of financial difficulty” if they lost any more income. Only 26 percent were “financially secure,” with “enough money in savings to meet financial shocks in the future.”

On Thursday, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft told Stuff he estimated 200,000 more children could be pushed into poverty, bringing child poverty to nearly 40 percent. Already, before the present crisis, 235,400 or one in five children lived below the poverty line, after housing costs were deducted.

Job cuts are accelerating, abetted by the Labour Party-led government and enforced by the trade union bureaucracy. All the claims made over the past three years that Jacinda Ardern’s coalition government with the Greens and NZ First would alleviate poverty and restore “capitalism’s human face” are being thoroughly discredited.

According to Stuff, 53,000 more people have signed up for the JobSeeker unemployment benefit since the week of March 20. This brings the total to 198,000, indicating more than 7 percent unemployment—the highest level in more than a decade. The rate is expected to go well above 10 percent.

In the past week, Air New Zealand announced it is making 4,000 people redundant, up from previous estimates of 3,750. The airline is majority-owned by the government and has access to a $900 million government loan.

Air New Zealand has received tens of millions of dollars in “wage subsidies” from the government. These handouts, falsely promoted as a means of saving jobs, have not stopped businesses slashing wages and sacking workers.

In the tourism sector, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels announced 910 job cuts. Tourism Holdings Ltd, which runs the Waitomo caves and Kiwi Experience businesses, is axing 140 staff. AJ Hackett Bungy will slash about 150, nearly three quarters of its staff, in Queenstown, Taupo and Auckland. Invercargill Licensing Trust, which operates hotels and hospitality businesses, has made 87 people redundant.

Furniture and electronics retail chain Smiths City has sacked 115 people, nearly a quarter of its staff. Retail group H&J Smith intends to shut stores in Dunedin, Mosgiel, Te Anau and Balclutha, with 175 redundancies.

Fuji Xerox, the printing and photocopying company, plans to cut about 100 jobs, 11 percent of its workforce. Its competitor Ricoh is reportedly slashing 80 jobs, despite receiving $2.2 million in wage subsidies.

MediaWorks is cutting 130 staff, mostly across its radio stations and sales team. This follows 200 layoffs last month by NZME, which owns the New Zealand Herald.

Tower Insurance announced 108 redundancies after posting a first-half-year profit of $14.9 million.

ANZ Bank’s New Zealand arm is also attacking workers, despite making a $789 million profit for the six months to March. The bank is cutting pay for about 200 contract workers by 20 percent until the end of September.

Auckland Council is formulating an “emergency” austerity budget for the country’s largest city in response to $550 million in expected lost revenue over the next financial year. Labour Party mayor Phil Goff told TVNZ on May 22 the council was “conducting a review that will result in fewer jobs in our organisation in the coming months.”

Already, about half the 1,100 temporary council workers and contractors have lost their jobs. The council is reportedly in talks with the Public Service Association about imposing a wage freeze.

The Ardern government, facing an election in September, announced an Income Relief Payment (IRP) on May 25 for people who have lost jobs since March 1. The payment of $490 a week is about double the normal JobSeeker benefit, but only lasts for 12 weeks.

The new payment is still not enough to pay for basic needs, particularly in major cities where rents are highest. And people who were already unemployed prior to March will receive no increase to their payments. Thousands of migrant workers remain barred from accessing welfare.

Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff, however, praised the IRP, saying the government was being “nimble and responsive… to meet the needs of our community.” Opposed to any fight in defence of jobs, the unions are echoing the government and employers’ position that mass redundancies are inevitable.

After the election, the IRP and the wage subsidy scheme are due to expire. That will trigger a further wave of layoffs and increased poverty.

There are growing demands from big business for whoever wins the election to slash spending on social programs. Government ministers have made clear that “generations” of workers must pay back the debt incurred from its pro-business subsidies, tax cuts and bailouts.

ANZ Bank economist Sharon Zollner told Stuff on May 26: “A bunch of our sacred cows might be getting reviewed.” They included pension eligibility. The opposition National Party has pledged to increase the retirement age from 65 to 67. The current government has ruled out such a move, but the Labour Party previously campaigned for restricting pensions.

Australia’s “national cabinet” declared permanent

Oscar Grenfell

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced yesterday that the so-called national cabinet, established in response to the coronavirus pandemic, will become permanent, regardless of the progress of the public health crisis.

All the members of the cabinet, composed of the federal, state and territory government leaders, agreed with this major shift in the country’s political order at their meeting yesterday.

Five of the eight leaders come from the Labor Party, which is in opposition to the Liberal-National Coalition at the federal level. They have been at the centre of a de facto national unity government since March, resting on the support of the corporatised trade unions and the federal Labor opposition.

This cabinet has no clear legal or constitutional status—there is no mention of such a body in the 1901 Constitution. Nevertheless, it has ruled by decree, via emergency powers.

The cabinet has been directly responsible for the criminally-negligent official response to the pandemic, the hundreds of billions of dollars provided by governments to big business and the woefully-inadequate assistance to the unemployed. It is now spearheading a campaign to force workers back into workplaces in the interests of corporate profit, despite the ongoing dangers to their health and lives.

Morrison said the national cabinet will meet fortnightly as the COVID-19 crisis continues, and once a month after that. It will replace the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), which featured irregular gatherings of federal and state leaders.

The move is part of a broader coming together of the entire political establishment, directed against the working class. The purpose of such “national unity” arrangements, not seen outside wartime, is to suppress widespread social and political opposition and to create the conditions for a further pro-business overhaul of the economy.

Through the national cabinet, the constituent governments have activated sweeping provisions in emergency and health legislation, including those allowing for expanded police and military operations. It will undoubtedly seek to maintain these measures, in line with a broader assault on basic democratic rights.

Unlike COAG, the cabinet’s discussions are covered by confidentiality pacts, shielding its actual deliberations from the population. Morrison touted this as providing for “collective responsibility” and “cabinet solidarity” and prevent “political posturing.” In other words, this secrecy is aimed at facilitating the seamless collaboration of the Labor and Liberal-National members of the cabinet, in the interests of big business.

Morrison said the national cabinet would “streamline” decision-making, allowing governments to impose major policies without “a whole bunch of paperwork” or “endless meetings.”

The establishment media welcomed the move. Commentator Michelle Grattan wrote: “Scott Morrison strengthens his policy power, enshrining national cabinet and giving it ‘laser-like’ focus on jobs.” An article in the Australian Financial Review declared: “COAG is dead. Long live the national cabinet.”

Morrison signaled that the arrangement will be critical to “tax reform,” i.e., lowering tax rates for the major corporations and reducing public spending. This is part of a further profit-driven restructuring.

Earlier this month, with the support of all his cabinet colleagues, Morrison outlined a plan to “streamline” tertiary education funding. The state governments will oversee a “simplification” of the TAFE technical college model, reducing the number of courses and gearing them even more directly to the employment needs of big business.

Morrison said the national cabinet’s central mission will be “job creation.” In reality, working with employers and the unions, it has already overseen the destruction of more than a million jobs in the past three months.

The endless invocation of “creating jobs” is aimed at legitimising a far-reaching assault on wages and working conditions.

Governments, the unions and employers’ groups are insisting that workers accept the permanent imposition of changes introduced during the pandemic, including the slashing of penalty rates and shift restrictions across entire industries. With the Australian Council of Trade Unions in the lead, they are preparing a tripartite reshaping of industrial relations, aimed at removing any obstacles to a continuous assault on wages and conditions.

To create the conditions for a resumption of corporate profit-making, the national cabinet is accelerating a dangerous “back to work” campaign, aimed at forcing employees back into all work sites, including schools, factories, offices and universities.

In recent days, face-to-face teaching has been resumed in public schools in New South Wales (NSW) Victoria and Queensland, despite widespread opposition from education workers and parents. Within days of the reopening, two schools in Sydney and one in Melbourne were forced to close last week, as a result of COVID-19 cases among students.

The national cabinet meeting agreed yesterday that it had completed “stage one” of a three-stage removal of lockdown measures. This has included the abolition of numbers of restrictions on gatherings and intrastate travel, as well as the resumption of classroom teaching.

Without even waiting to assess the results, states are going beyond “stage one” already. The NSW government, for instance, is allowing clubs to have 500 people on their premises from next Monday. Such measures render contact tracing, in the event of viral outbreaks, virtually impossible.

The federal government Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy admitted it was not yet possible to determine the health consequences of stage one. In other words, the authorities do not know how widely the coronavirus is circulating.

Morrison restated that there would be “spikes” and “outbreaks.” He again declared that the policy is not to “eradicate or eliminate” COVID-19 transmissions, because he insisted this would be too costly.

The dangers have been underscored by continuing infections, including 12 across the country over the past 24 hours. The possibility of unknown community transmission was highlighted last week by the tragic death of 30-year-old miner Nathan Turner in the regional Queensland town of Blackwater.

After he died, it was determined that he had the coronavirus. The miner had not come into contact with any confirmed cases or recently traveled outside the town. It was previously thought there were no cases in that region.

Investigations are continuing, but one possibility is that Turner contracted COVID-19 from fly-in fly-out miners or contractors. Throughout the pandemic, the multi-billion dollar mining industry has been exempted from key restrictions. Employees have continued to travel to remote and regional sites from major cities, despite the obvious danger of further outbreaks.

An article in the Melbourne Age this morning further pointed to the ruthless role of business in the health crisis. It revealed that workers at Cedar Meats, a Melbourne abattoir that has been the source of over 100 infections, warned management in mid-April that they thought COVID-19 was circulating in the facility. Their concerns were dismissed as “rumour and innuendo.” They were forced to remain on the job, resulting in the largest virus cluster in the state of Victoria.

After ignoring migrant workers’ plight, the Indian Supreme Court now acknowledges unfolding social tragedy

Wasantha Rupasinghe

After two months of ignoring the horrific plight facing migrant workers due to the calamitous, ill-prepared COVID-19 lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government, the Supreme Court of India issued an order Thursday regulating the transportation of migrants to their home states.

The order came two days after the country’s highest court took suo motu cognizance of the “problems and miseries of migrant labourers who have been stranded in different parts of the country.” The order is motivated above all by the fear among India’s legal authorities that continued failure to take any action could cause the rage building up among millions of oppressed workers and toilers to erupt in opposition to the entire capitalist elite and its state.

Modi imposed a three-week nationwide lockdown in late March with barely four hours of warning. The sweeping move was not accompanied by any financial or social assistance for hundreds of millions of migrant workers and other impoverished day labourers who were robbed of their livelihoods overnight.

The government only announced so-called relief measures on the second day of the lockdown. The $22.5 billion package offered a pittance to India’s 1.37 billion inhabitants, with total assistance amounting to a mere 1,200 rupees, or $16 per person. Many workers were either not eligible for or could not access the “relief” because the programs through which it was distributed were tied to their home state or place of birth.

Within a matter of days, horrific images began to appear showing migrant workers left to fend for themselves desperately trying to return to their home villages where they hoped to find food and shelter with their kith and kin. With train and bus services suspended, millions of migrant workers began treks of hundreds of miles to return to their home villages on foot. When the authorities intervened, they did so not to assist the workers, but rather to confine them to prison-like camps on the pretext of stopping the spread of the coronavirus. In reality, the cramped, makeshift living quarters, inadequate food and terrible sanitary conditions created a favourable environment for the virus to spread.

The helpless migrants largely depended on charities and NGOs for food while they were confined.

The Modi government’s refusal to roll out mass testing and provide additional resources to India’s chronically underfunded health care system meant that the lockdown failed to “break the chain” of infections. Modi was therefore compelled to repeatedly announce the extension of the lockdown, now set to end on May 31. In so doing, he offered nothing more to the people struggling to survive on the government’s famine-like relief.

Amid the unbearably brutal conditions in the camps, migrant workers began protesting to demand their right to return home. As the lockdown was eased, various state governments chartered trains and buses to transport the workers. However, in a callous move that sums up the contempt of the Indian bourgeoisie towards the impoverished masses, they sought to make the starving workers pay for their travel. The authorities also made no effort to test the workers for the virus before returning them home, meaning that many likely carried it with them into rural areas across the country.

Many workers who lacked the funds to pay the fares demanded by the government once again took to walking home along highways and railways lines, producing a series of tragic accidents. In one especially horrendous episode, a train ran over 16 migrant workers as they walked home.

Against the background of such widespread human suffering, the Supreme Court felt compelled to state in its order, “As and when the state governments put in a request for trains, railways has to provide them. No fare for train or bus shall be charged from migrant workers. The fare will be shared by the states.” It also said the stranded migrant workers “shall be provided food by the concerned state at places” and given food and water during their railway journey. States should oversee the registration of migrant workers and then ensure they board a bus or train at an early date, the order continued. Finally, it ruled that if migrant workers are found walking on the roads, they should be taken to shelter and provided food and all facilities. The Supreme Court will hold a further hearing on the issue on June 5.

LiveLaw.in, an Indian legal website, wrote that the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.R. Shah “was not saying that the Centre was not doing anything,” but that “some further steps need to be taken.” Appearing on behalf of the government, Solicitor General Thusar Mehta said that so far approximately 10 million migrants have received transport home—5 million by rail and 4.7 million via road transport. Underlining the fact that the government does not even know the scale of the problem, the Solicitor General admitted that only the states have “exact information” on the numbers still in the makeshift camps. Mehta also arrogantly tried to downplay the terrible conditions faced by migrant workers, calling them “isolated incidents.”

Less than two weeks prior to grudgingly admitting the tragedy that has befallen the migrant workers, the Supreme Court rejected a public interest litigation on May 15 seeking relief for migrants. Responding to the petitioner’s reference to the 16 workers killed by the train, Justice Nageswara Rao, a member of the bench that heard the case, cynically asked, “There are people walking and not stopping. How can we stop it?” Endorsing Rao’s line, the aforementioned Justice Kaul told the petitioner, “Your knowledge is totally based on newspaper clippings and then under Article 32, you want this court to decide. Let the states decide.” Article 32 of the Indian Constitution gives the right to individuals to seek justice from the Supreme Court if they feel their rights have been “unduly deprived.”

The BJP government and Indian ruling elite’s callous treatment of the migrant workers underscores the utter bankruptcy of Indian capitalism. After three decades of rapid capitalist expansion and India’s purported “rise,” all that is left for millions of Indian toilers is hunger, poverty and endless social misery at the hands of a corrupt and brutal ruling elite. That the Indian legal authorities have now intervened has less to do with their concern for the plight of the impoverished workers than it does with their fear that the suffering and death being experienced on a mass scale could trigger a social explosion that the state institutions will be incapable of controlling.

This can be seen in some of the rulings the Court has issued during the pandemic. On March 31, after nearly one week of the lockdown, the Supreme Court uncritically accepted the government’s submission that the mass movement of migrant workers was the result of “panic created by fake news that the lockdown would continue for more than three months.” In flagrant violation of the rights to free speech and freedom of the press guaranteed in India’s constitution, the Court joined the government in threatening media outlets with prosecution for spreading “fake news” if they fail to publicize what it termed “the official version” of “developments”.

The Supreme Court’s latest ruling on migrant workers must also be seen as an attempt to refurbish its badly tattered image as a “people’s institution.” For decades, India’s highest court has connived in attacks on democratic rights and in the ruling elite’s ever more pronounced turn to rabid communalism as a means to deflect social opposition and split the working class.

During the six years of the Modi government, it has lurched still further right giving a legal imprimatur to the BJP’s authoritarian and Hindu supremacist polices. Last November, for example, it issued a decision endorsing the violent, decades-long agitation that the BJP and its Hindu right allies have mounted to build a temple dedicated to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram on the former site of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ajodhya, Utter Pradesh. The 16th century mosque was razed to the ground in 1992 by Hindu fanatics, acting at the instigation of the BJP’s top leaders, and in express violation of Supreme Court orders.

India’s highest court has also greenlighted the BJP government’s patently anti-democratic abrogation by executive fiat of the semi-autonomous constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s lone Muslim-majority state, and its imposition of a six month-long de facto state of siege in the disputed region.

Bangladesh COVID-19 deaths soar past 500

Rohantha De Silva

Yesterday, the number of COVID-19 deaths in Bangladesh rose to 582, with 42,844 confirmed cases, marking an accelerating spread of the pandemic. Over two days, the official death toll rose by 48 and the number of infections by about 4,500, or more than 10 percent.

Both curves are still rising and the real number of victims of the coronavirus must be much higher. Testing remains at very low levels. The health directorate conducted only 9,310 tests on Thursday, in a population of 162 million.

To make matters worse, five people died on Wednesday when a fire broke out in makeshift COVID-19 isolation center at the private United Hospital in the capital Dhaka. The patients, four men and one woman, were aged between 45 and 75.

The reason for the fire is not yet known. But it illustrates how the pandemic is straining the poor health infrastructure. A doctor at the hospital said: “We are already very stressed out at work and the fire only added to our headache.”

Despite the growing virus threat, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government has refused to extend the nationwide lockdown after May 30, even while insisting that citizens must strictly abide by health guidelines.

Like its counterparts in other countries, the ruling elite is safeguarding the interests of big business, saying offices will be open, and just the sick, and pregnant women, can stay home.

Likewise, the government plans a “limited reopening” of public transport—buses, trains and ferries—despite it being impossible to follow health guidelines and adhere to social distancing in the notoriously over-crowded services.

While shops will be allowed to open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., a ban on people’s movement from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. will be strictly enforced, with violations treated as punishable offences. Public gatherings will remain banned.

Bangladesh has only 127,000 hospital beds, including 91,000 in government-run hospitals and 737 intensive care unit beds. A further surge in coronavirus cases will be catastrophic. The Hasina government’s request for hospitals to allocate at least 50 separate beds for virus-infected patients will be totally inadequate.

A calamitous situation is developing in the Rohingya refugee camps, where about one million people live without proper medical facilities. Twenty-nine positive COVID-19 cases had been reported in the camps by Tuesday, after the first case was confirmed on May 15. At least 15,000 refugees are under quarantine.

Entry and exit from the Cox’s Bazar district, where the refugees are camped, were prohibited from April 8 but that did not prevent the spread of the virus. Despite victims being placed in isolation blocks, the refugees are extremely vulnerable to the pandemic. In the desperately-overcrowded camps, with around 40,000 people living in each square kilometre, social distancing is impossible.

Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh to escape atrocities carried out by the Burmese military and Buddhist supremacist thugs. But the Dhaka government considers them an unbearable burden and provides meagre resources, including for education and health care.

The government says it is trying to scale up testing in the camps, which stood at only 188 a day by Tuesday. But the lack of facilities and protection gear means that aid workers themselves fear being infected, Al Jazeera reported.

Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, said there are not enough ICU beds and ventilators, not just for the refugees but also for the local community. Cox’s Bazar district is home to 3.4 million people, including refugees.

The government cut off internet access in the camps last September, resulting in lower awareness of the virus. Many of the refugees know little about how COVID-19 spreads, or how to prevent and contain it. The government cut off the internet to harass the Rohingyas into moving to the cyclone-prone remote Bhasan Char silt island.

COVID-19 has seriously impacted on the Bangladesh economy, especially in the apparel sector. Desperately trying to maintain production and profits in this sector, Hasina has reopened garment facilities. Garments account for 84 percent of the country’s $US40 billion annual export earnings.

There is widespread anger among apparel workers over the unsafe working conditions, as well as job and pay cuts. In the latest protest, on May 22, hundreds of workers from 10 garment factories staged demonstrations demanding full April wages and other allowances. They gathered outside their factories in Gazipur, Ashulia and Dhaka, and blocked roads.

Since the pandemic erupted, Western countries have halted placing orders, causing revenue losses estimated at $3 billion. More than 400 garment factories have remained closed for the past two months and nearly 100 have shut permanently.

With tensions rising between the US and China, the companies hope to get some of the orders that previously went to Beijing, and that employers from Japan, the US, Europe and South Korea will relocate their factories from China. Reportedly, at least 34 Japanese companies have shown interest in relocating to Bangladesh.

The Awami League government is racing against Vietnam, India and Indonesia to attract these companies and is therefore particularly desperate to reopen the economy. Another major factor in the economy, remittances from Bangladesh workers overseas, have dropped sharply since January because of the pandemic.

The Gulf countries and others are sacking migrant workers because of the economic fallout. Hasina’s government plans to bring home 29,000 from the Middle East in several phases. But in Kuwait alone, thousands are detained in squalid and cramped facilities.

Workers in Germany report on corona virus infection risk in workplaces

Ulrich Rippert

New scientific findings suggest that aerosol infection is playing a greater role in the spread of the coronavirus than previously known. This was recently explained by Berlin virologist Christian Drosten on Deutschlandradio.

Drosten explained that aerosols are microparticles—i.e., exceptionally small suspended particles—that can remain in the air like a cloud for a long time in closed rooms and transmit the virus. This new knowledge about the infection mechanism is important, he said, because it requires a revision of the existing behavioural guidelines.

Staying in closed rooms, in particular, carries a high risk of infection. Constant, thorough ventilation is at least as important as wiping and disinfecting surfaces. In this context, Drosten warned against staying in crowded train compartments, trams and buses, but also in poorly ventilated classrooms, restaurants, offices and production spaces.

Instead of welcoming these findings and taking the warning seriously, a veritable smear campaign is taking place in the media against the Charité scientist, led—as so often when reactionary propaganda is involved—by tabloid Bild-Zeitung. In the interest of the economy, attempts are being made to intimidate and silence serious scientists in an effort to resume production despite the great danger of infection.

Against this background, the call by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) to set up action committees to ensure safety in companies is gaining great importance. The SGP says:

“Without a careful plan to implement a safe return to work, based on science and rigorously enforced, there will be an enormous increase in the rate of infection, resulting in serious illness and death.

“The COVID-19 virus will spread rapidly through factories, warehouses, office buildings, shopping malls and all other places where large numbers of people congregate. There is an immense danger that workers, unknowingly infected on the job and not yet showing symptoms, will return to their homes and neighbourhoods and transmit the disease to their families, loved ones and friends.”

These risks are very real. Transport workers from several cities have reported to the WSWS about completely inadequate coronavirus protection measures in bus and train operations.

From Munich, a tram driver describes how, despite protests by employees, trains with open cabs are still being used where the driver is not separated from the passenger compartment. Retrofitted Plexiglas walls offer just as little protection as the old felt curtains. When changing drivers, no additional time is allowed to thoroughly disinfect the driver’s cab. Providing enough ventilation and fresh air supply is also difficult.

In Berlin, Andy Niklaus had already pointed out serious safety deficiencies at public transit provider BVG in March. Although the ridiculous demarcation of the driver’s area using red and white tape has since been replaced by Plexiglas in some buses, even that does not provide any safety. It does not change the fact that drivers spend hours in a largely enclosed space with passengers and the risk of aerosol infection is extremely high.

Many so-called safety measures are purely placebo in nature and only exist in an effort to keep the anger of colleagues and passengers at the irresponsible behaviour of the BVG management under control.

Drivers are still being given face masks that do not meet the required standards and are permeable to the coronavirus. The World Health Organisation has warned against the use of these masks because they give a false sense of security. Even the cleaning of the vehicles is still not carried out by professional cleaners equipped with special anti-virus disinfectants.

Meanwhile, the already poor hygienic conditions in the toilets at the turning points—if they exist at all—are still not being improved. Drivers at some turning points are not even able to wash their hands properly. Soap and paper towel dispensers are often empty. There is no disinfectant. There is also no testing of drivers, which is necessary to contain the virus.

A temporary worker from BMW in Leipzig described the catastrophic conditions at his workplace to the WSWS. He had been working in the car factory’s paint shop but did not want to continue there because of the danger of infection. His changing room and washroom were about 700 metres away from his workstation. He had to walk down long corridors and stairs, whose railings were not professionally cleaned, not to mention the doors and door handles.

There was only one toilet near his workstation, with only cold water and no disinfectant. In the past, he had worked in food processing companies for many years and knew very well that hygiene standards could be maintained. However, this also requires specialist companies that professionally disinfect all important rooms and transit points several times a day.

At the beginning of May, his temporary employment agency Adecco-Personaldienstleistungen informed him in a “Staff Information-BMW Leipzig” about the imminent resumption of shift work. As for safety measures, the usual hygiene rules were mentioned—maintaining a minimum distance, avoiding shaking hands and bodily contact, repeated hand washing and coughing into the crook of the arm.

The Adecco letter says, “The changing rooms and showers are closed until further notice due to the risk of infection. It is therefore recommended to put on work clothes at home.” This is not feasible at all, the painter stressed, since he works in a so-called clean room, which must be kept dust-free. Also, it was an unreasonable demand to travel the long way to the plant in a work uniform. He would not do this under any circumstances.

A former salesman from a consumer electronics store in Rostock spoke to WSWS reporters and welcomed the establishment of action committees to ensure safety in companies. “I think this is absolutely right and important. Health must come first. Without the initiative of the employees, companies always think only about profit and not about the staff. If everything speaks against resuming work because the risk of people becoming infected is too great, why is this being enforced? How profit-hungry must a state be that does this to its people?”

Above all, coronavirus tests for all workers were important, because it was only by doing so that you could determine who was infected and who was not. “The government and authorities must provide medical masks that have been proven to be impervious to the virus free of charge to everyone,” the former salesman said. “Infected people must not come into contact with healthy people, to effectively contain the pandemic. I firmly reject the issue of herd immunity; it leads to mass infection and countless victims.”

The urgency for workers themselves to take the initiative to control and demand safety standards in their respective companies is shown by the constant stream of reports of infections in the workplace. Not only are mass infections in slaughterhouses and the meat industry increasing daily, but the number of those infected is also rising in courier services and at supplier companies.

At Hüttenwerke Krupp-Mannesmann (HKM) in Duisburg, seven workers tested positive for coronavirus. A statement by the management says, “The operational processes in the coking plant are not endangered by the coronavirus cases.”

It was already known weeks ago that several employees of a Turkish subcontractor had tested positive at the large construction site of the Stuttgart 21 railway project. Quarantine was then ordered for more than 90 men. The magazine FAKT reported a dispute between the affected construction workers and their superiors. In it, the workers complained about conditions on the site. “We have said it several times, we need disinfectants,” one of the men said critically. In response to the demand for masks, the company spokesman replied, “There are no masks.”

German and French trade unions back Merkel and Macron’s recovery programme

Peter Schwarz

The major German and French trade unions have expressed their support for the European recovery plan proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. In a joint declaration on May 20, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and the French trade union federations CFDT, CGT, FO, CFTC and UNSA “expressly welcome the Franco-German initiative for economic recovery in Europe after the coronavirus crisis presented by the French president and the German chancellor on May 18, 2020.”

The unions describe the initiative as a “change of direction towards more solidarity between the member states of the European Union [EU]” and proclaim: “We are convinced that our two countries must now assume their special responsibility to ensure that the European Union emerges stronger, more socially equitable, more democratic, more responsible and more environmentally friendly.” The task now was to “convince all other EU member states of the Franco-German proposals so that after the crisis we can build a more sustainable Europe based on more solidarity.”

These highly paid union officials are well aware that Merkel and Macron’s proposal has nothing to do with social justice, democracy and environmental sustainability. Neither does it serve European solidarity—let alone solidarity with the millions of workers, clerical employees and self-employed who are losing their incomes and livelihoods due to the coronavirus crisis. Instead, the fund—like the numerous national aid programmes and European Central Bank’s bond purchases—will continue to inflate the equity portfolios and bank accounts of the rich.

As we demonstrated in an earlier article, the main aim of the Franco-German initiative is to reinforce European companies in their trade war with rivals, particularly the US and China. Accordingly, “strategic projects” are to be promoted and “global champions” built up. The coronavirus crisis is to be used to reorganise the European economy in the global battle for markets and profits.

In particular, the economies of weaker EU countries, for which the fund is primarily intended, are to be restructured. It goes without saying that this will involve mass layoffs, and cuts to wages and social benefits. Major corporations in the auto, aerospace and steel industries as well as numerous other industries have already announced tens of thousands of layoffs.

The reconstruction plan, presented by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in more detail on May 27, is expected to total €750 billion, of which €500 billion will be allocated in the form of grants and €250 billion as loans. In order to finance the package, the EU Commission will break with previous practice and borrow money, which is then to be repaid from the EU budget between 2028 and 2058.

As the EU budget is financed by the member states, they will then have to repay the programme according to their economic weight. Also in consideration are new import taxes to directly boost the EU budget. The main recipients of the programme will be Italy (€82 billion in grants/€91 billion in loans), Spain (€77/€63 billion) and Poland (€38/€26 billion). France and Germany are also slated to receive grants of €39 billion and €29 billion, respectively.

An EU summit will discuss the proposal on June 18–19. At least one further summit will be necessary, however, until an agreement is reached.

As the funds are allocated within the framework of the EU budget, they are subject to strict neo-liberal requirements, as is the case for all EU programmes. Von der Leyen wants to ensure that the annual recommendations from the EU Commission for the economic and financial policies of member countries, which have so far largely been ignored, are binding on the recipients of grants. Brussels could then dictate cuts in social, educational and cultural spending, as it did after the 2008 financial crisis in Greece.

The exact use of the funds is still under debate. In addition to traditional regional and structural aid, subsidies for climate protection, renewable energies, digitisation and, above all, armaments production are also under discussion.

The trade union declaration of support, which is only one-and-a-half pages long, is a signal to the rulers in Paris and Berlin and the EU Commission in Brussels that they can rely on the unflinching support of the trade unions in combating their rivals in the global trade war and implementing the consequent attacks on the working class.

The unions are already in the forefront of driving workers back into the factories where they risk their health and lives due to the continuing risk of infection. To give one example, IG Metall and the works council in Wolfsburg organised a three-day light show on the wall of the Volkswagen plant in the city to promote the return of workers to Europe’s largest car factory. For years, every plant closure and layoff plan in Germany has borne the signature of union officials.

The coronavirus crisis, however, has hugely intensified the tendency towards corporatism—i.e., the fusion of entrepreneurs, unions and government. The greatest economic downturn since the 1930s has to a great extent swept the carpet from beneath the so often praised free-market economy. Governments are pumping billions of euros and dollars into aerospace, auto and other corporations, and even becoming shareholders to strengthen their own companies in the struggle to survive against competitors.

This form of nationalisation has nothing to do with socialism. Rather, it serves to defend corporate profits against international rivals and claims made by workers and is inevitably linked to whipping up nationalism. The unions, nationalist to the core, cannot stand aside. As always in times of crisis and war they jettison even the appearance of representing the interests of their members.

In August 1914, when World War I broke out, Germany’s trade unions announced a “truce” with employers and government and sent their members to the front to slaughter French and Russian workers. On May 1, 1933, three months after Hitler came to power, they even marched under the swastika to offer their services to the new regime. Hitler interpreted this as weakness and dissolved the unions the following day.

The unions in France and other countries behave no differently in similar situations. If German and French unions are now giving their support to this latest initiative, it is only because they believe that Germany and France cannot advance their interests on the world market without the EU. At the same time, when it comes to job cuts—for example at Airbus or in the auto industry—the unions divide workers and play off one country and location against another.

The unions’ drive to corporatism inevitably arises from their pro-capitalist perspective. It is significant that the CGT, which pretends to be the most radical of the French unions, also signed the joint declaration.

In the fight against the health and social consequences of the coronavirus crisis, workers in Europe confront not only corporations and governments, but also the unions. They must break with these organisations and set up their own independent action committees.

The fight against the consequences of the pandemic is ultimately a political struggle against capitalism. This requires the unity of the European and international working class on the basis of a socialist programme to replace the European Union, the tool of the most powerful capitalist interests, with the United Socialist States of Europe.

UK: Official figures inflate COVID-19 testing rate by more than a million

Alice Summers

The Johnson Conservative government is engaged in a massive campaign of public deception, making cynical claims and pledges about the number of COVID-19 tests being carried out.

Its aim is to cover up the impact of its “herd immunity” policy, which has led to tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths.

Over 1 million more tests have been reported by the government than the numbers genuinely tested, according to Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) figures. This is largely due to a practice of duplicating tests involving two samples from one individual in the official figures. According to Public Health England (PHE), other factors contributing to this discrepancy are tests being repeated due to an inconclusive outcome or being double-checked after a negative result.

Tests that involve taking both nasal and saliva samples from the same person have been counted as two separate tests, the DHSC and PHE have admitted. This double-counting means that daily COVID-19 screening figures reported by the government have been exaggerated by as much as 20 percent, according to the Daily Telegraph. On May 21, the newspaper reported, “Almost 350,000 more tests have been reported in Government data than people tested since the start of the pandemic.”

The last day the DHSC published figures on the number of people tested was May 21. From May 22 to May 29, the DHSC have not published any figures on the total number of people tested but have continued to publish the number of cumulative tests. A post on the department’s Twitter page stated that publication has been “temporarily paused to ensure consistent reporting across all pillars [types of testing]. This is due to a small percentage of cases where the same person would have more than one test.”

Number of tests provided versus number of people tested (credit-https://flourish.studio)

An analysis of the figures shows that the discrepancy between the number of cumulative tests and the number of people tested is far higher than estimated by the Telegraph. The cumulative number of tests as of May 21 was 3,231,921. The number of people tested was 2,144,626. This is a ratio equivalent to approximately 66 percent. As of May 27, the government claims a total of 3,918,079 cumulative tests, which based on the 66 percent calculation means that around 2.6 million people have been tested. This is approximately 1.3 million fewer than the number of tests the government reported.

The testing debacle confirms that not a word that comes out the mouths of Johnson or his ministers at their daily press briefings can be believed. On Thursday, Professor John Ashton, a former regional director of public health said, “It’s very difficult, even for someone like me whose living has centred on numbers, to know exactly what is going on. We don’t know how many people have been tested. We don’t know how many tests have been satisfactory. There’s a real problem of transparency and trust.”

On April 2, the government announced that it planned to conduct 100,000 tests a day by the end of that month, with a Twitter post on the prime minister’s official account stating that this meant “100,000 people per day.” When this plan was announced, only around 10,000 daily tests were being conducted.

After weeks of the government falling far short of this target, it was only finally “met” on April 30 because official figures included thousands of swab kits bulk posted to UK homes and to satellite testing sites like care homes, which had not yet been used or sent to laboratories for results.

Over 40,000 of the 122,347 COVID-19 tests announced by the government on the last day of April were made up of kits that had been sent out but not yet been processed; 27,497 of these were test kits sent out to private homes and 12,872 were posted to satellite testing sites. Moreover, despite claiming to have exceeded its target DHSC figures show that only 73,191 individual people were screened for the virus on that day.

Many home testing kits like these have still not been analysed, with thousands yet to be returned to laboratories according to Professor John Newton, director of health improvement at PHE and the government’s COVID-19 testing coordinator.

Professor Newton told the parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee on May 22 that while 762,252 coronavirus tests have been posted to people’s homes, around half have not been returned for analysis. Admitting that he did not have an up-to-date figure for the numbers processed, Newton stated, “I think certainly more than half [of tests have been returned], and we would like to get that amount up.”

Newton confirmed that tests are counted at the point they are sent out to people or satellite centres, not at the point of being analysed at laboratories and results established.

Comparison between countries of cumulative total tests per thousand population

Taking account of the discrepancy between the number of tests provided and the number of individuals tested, the government has not once succeeded in testing 100,000 people in one day (as of May 26). The number of individuals receiving a test averages around 67,000 a day since the government’s target was supposedly met on April 30.

The number of individuals tested in a single day reached 80,297 on May 21—the highest figure yet—still far short of the government’s 100,000 a day target. On May 2, the lowest day between April 30 and May 26, a mere 56,397 individuals were tested. Given that these figures are compiled at the point of test delivery, not completion, far fewer tests will have been sent to laboratories.

On May 6, Johnson announced yet another arbitrary testing target, pledging to reach 200,000 tests a day by the end of May. On May 27, Health Minister Matt Hancock stated that this target was in fact based on the UK’s “capacity to perform 200,000 tests a day,” and will be measured by “asking laboratories each day to set out how many tests they can provide” rather than counting how many tests are conducted.

Even those tests submitted to laboratories for analysis have been found to be unreliable, with many returning false negative results. According to the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA), three in 10 National Health Service staff taking swab tests could be receiving a false negative result.

Many health workers who may have been coronavirus positive were pushed back to work, potentially infecting patients and other staff members and contributing to the rapid spread of the virus in hospitals. PHE research published mid-May indicated that as many as 20 percent of inpatients and 90 percent of medical workers contracted the virus while in hospital.

A study in the British Medical Journal found that between 2 and 29 percent of COVID-19 tests wrongly came back as negative. The number of “true positive” results from nasal swabs was as little as 63 percent and just 32 percent from throat swabs, according to the lead author, Dr. Jessica Watson.

In a letter to PHE Chief Executive Duncan Selbie, Dr. Paul Donaldson, the general secretary of the HCSA, wrote of his “deep concern and frustration” at the body’s “systematic lack of information” over the reliability of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for coronavirus. Dr. Donaldson said, “A wall of silence seems to have been erected around the issue, with only the occasional claim or hint emerging regarding the current testing regime.”

“Separately, statements by PHE officials and others place the incidence of false negatives somewhere between 20 and 30 percent,” he continued. “If confirmed, this is a worryingly high rate which raises the prospect of many infected individuals, possibly without symptoms, being passed fit to return to health care settings where they will transmit SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] to colleagues and patients.”

Responsibility for the sustained and uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 in hospitals and throughout the population lies with the Johnson government. Determined to impose its criminal herd immunity policy, it refused for weeks to implement a systematic testing programme, on the basis that there was already widespread community transmission and therefore testing was not useful.

On March 12, the day that the government announced its herd immunity policy, Johnson declared that health staff would no longer test people at home—with testing only to be conducted on those already in hospital. Most people were refused tests and simply told to self-isolate at home if they had symptoms. At that point just 10 people had died of COVID-19.

Only when the death toll reached hundreds of people a day did the government announce its 100,000 tests a day plan, limited to only a select group of key workers until mid-May.

The UK ranks at number 20 out of the 31 European countries with available data for coronavirus testing per capita, screening only 31.59 people for every thousand of the population. Impoverished Eastern European countries such as Lithuania (99.14 per thousand), Estonia (57.74), Latvia (52.9) and Belarus (49) have tested far more people relative to their population sizes. Russia, which has more than twice the population of the UK, has tested 61.3 people per thousand.

US Justice Department drops insider trading investigation of three senators

Jacob Crosse

Aides to three US senators, Republicans Kelly Loeffler (Georgia) and James Inhofe (Oklahoma) and Democrat Dianne Feinstein (California), confirmed this week that the US Justice Department has dropped investigations into insider trading activity by the senators in January and February of this year. However, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, remains under investigation.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents seized Burr’s cell phone earlier this month under a warrant that granted agents access to Burrs’ iCloud storage and private messages. As of this writing, no charges have been publicly filed against Burr.

Publicly disclosed Senate filings by all four senators documented that they and/or their associates sold off millions of dollars of their stock investments after the senators were given access to classified briefings in January warning of a major coronavirus pandemic hitting the US. On the basis of this inside information, which they did not share with their constituents or the general public, the senators sold off large stock holdings while the market was at its apex, in advance of a 10,000-point drop in the Dow that began in mid-February and continued into late-March in response to the growing international pandemic crisis.

The market collapse was halted and reversed around the time of the passage of the multi-trillion-dollar CARES Act bailout, which has sustained a record 35 percent rise in the Dow since the end of March.

Even as they were dumping stock holdings, several of the senators were publicly reassuring the country that it had nothing to fear from the virus.

All four senators are multimillionaires. Feinstein, at $58.5 million, is the eighth richest member of the Senate. Loeffler, at $500 million, is the richest member of Congress.

In March, the four were publicly named as targets of a Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department investigation after it was reported by multiple news organizations that each had sold six-figures (or more) worth of stock after receiving classified intelligence briefings on January 24. The Senate Health Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hosted the briefing, which included Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the infectious disease unit of the National Institutes of Health.

While all four senators were, and still are, privy to classified briefings, at the time the transactions were made, Inhofe, Feinstein and Burr were all members of the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee, with Burr serving as chair. Through this committee, each member had access to highly classified and detailed CIA briefings that detailed the true threat of the COVID-19 pandemic as early as the first week of January. This privileged knowledge allowed the senators ample opportunity to maneuver and safeguard their personal wealth, while concealing the US government’s lack of pandemic preparedness.

Through a spokesperson, Loeffler released a statement claiming vindication after a “clear exoneration by the Department of Justice, [which] affirms what Sen. Loeffler has said all along: She did nothing wrong, this was a politically motivated attack shamelessly promoted by the fake news media and her political opponent.”

Disclosure forms revealed that Loeffler engaged in 27 different transactions over a 22-day period starting in January and continuing through February, in which Loeffler sold up to $3.1 million worth of stock.

In April, Loeffler took to Fox News to defend her “success” against “socialist attacks,” stating, “This was a political attack designed to take away from the issue at hand. And to use this outbreak to play politics. We have addressed this and taken extraordinary measures to make sure that we can’t be attacked for our success. This gets at the very heart of why I came to Washington, to defend free enterprise, to defend capitalism. This is a socialist attack.”

It is highly symbolic that in the same week, Loeffler, an embodiment of ill-gotten wealth, was protected by the FBI, while George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police for allegedly passing a $10 bill. This is an instructive example of class justice.

Inhofe, speaking to the Oklahoman, also claimed vindication, stating, “I did nothing wrong, and I’m pleased the Justice Department has exonerated me.” Inhofe had sold shares worth between $180,000 and $400,000 from five companies on January 27. A month later he disclosed that he sold an additional $50,000–$100,000 worth of stock.

California Senator Feinstein declined to comment through representatives after the FBI decided to halt its investigation into her stock dealings. Feinstein’s Senate disclosures revealed that she had sold up to $6 million worth of stock in a single company between January 31 and February 18.

Inhofe, Feinstein and Loeffler all claimed from the outset that they had “no knowledge” of any sales conducted in their names or on their behalf. All three insist that intermediaries handled all of their transactions and no confidential information was provided.

Burr, unlike his fellow grifters, has always acknowledged that he had sold his shares, up to $1.72 million worth, not through an intermediary but on his own accord, and that he sold them in large part due to fears of the financial impact of the virus. His holdings included over $300,000 worth of stock in Wyndham Hotel and Resorts, Extended Stay America and Park Hotels and Resorts.

Burr first claimed in a March 20 statement that he knew to sell his stock after viewing publicly available reports on television. His statement read, in part: “I relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks on February 13. Specifically, I closely followed CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time.”

In his capacity as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr oversaw the Senate investigation into the claims of massive Russian interference in the 2016 elections and possible collusion by the Trump campaign. He worked closely with the Democratic vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, and maintained a show of bipartisan objectivity, in contrast with his Republican counterparts in the House.

His committee’s final report backed the claims of the intelligence agencies that there was Russian interference, unprecedented in its “manner and aggressiveness.” These findings, coupled with a 2017 subpoena issued by the committee that compelled Donald Trump Jr. to testify before the Senate, angered President Trump. This may explain, at least in part, the disparate treatment of Burr from that of the other three senators.

It is also the case that Burr has been rather brazen in his dealings. Throughout his Senate career, he has sat on committees that oversee the regulation of industries in which he has a direct financial interest. A May 15 article by Politico detailed numerous examples of Burr trading stock in companies while at the same time introducing legislation to benefit the same companies. For example, he bought stock in medical device companies while overseeing a repeal of the medical device tax.

Coronavirus cases surpass six million globally

Bryan Dyne

There are now more than six million officially confirmed cases of the coronavirus pandemic globally, a number that is increasing by one million every 10 days. The dead now number 365,000, or about 6.1 percent of those infected, and the toll of fatalities is growing.

These numbers account for both the 2.6 million people who have recovered, some of whom suffered for weeks or months fighting off the disease, as well as the 2.9 million active mild cases of COVID-19 and nearly 54,000 serious or critical cases caused by the infection. As it has been noted before, these official numbers are a gross underestimation of the pandemic’s true toll.

In the midst of the worst global medical emergency since the 1918 flu pandemic, US President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will withdraw the country from the World Health Organization and halt federal funding to the international public health agency. US funds presently account for roughly 15 percent of the WHO’s budget. In his announcement, Trump reiterated the lie that the WHO is an agent of China and colluded with the regime in Beijing to conceal for weeks the seriousness of the “Wuhan virus” and allow it to escape to the rest of the world.

The president made no mention of the early warnings of the dangers of the virus provided by both China and the WHO, or the belated response by the United States, which allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold in New York City and elsewhere and spread across the country. He instead demanded, “The world needs answers from China.”

In fact, many of the strains of the virus that causes the disease, SARS-CoV-2, have come from the United States. An analysis of the genetic structure of the virus in different parts of the world, using data from Nextstrain and GISAID, clearly shows that the virus escaped from the US to the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, South America and Eastern Europe in February and March. And while the United States remains the hardest hit country, at nearly 1.8 million infections and 104,000 dead, many countries in those parts of the world are now regional and even global epicenters of the pandemic.

Such hotspots include India, which now has the most cases, 173,000, of any country in Asia. This is more than twice that of China. India also has one of the highest rates of new coronavirus cases on the planet. And while its current official death toll is still under 5,000, it is an open secret within the country that the official counts are under-reporting the scope of the disease.

At the same time, the forced reopening of the country by the government of Narendra Modi has caused the case count in the country to begin increasing exponentially. Epidemiologists estimate that the number of cases will hit one million within weeks, with a surge in mass deaths soon after.

Similar policies in neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh have caused their infection and fatality rates to increase in recent weeks. The two countries have 64,000 and 43,000 cases, respectively. Both are second only to India in terms of new cases and face many of the same overcrowding problems in their cities that plague India, creating similar health emergencies.

There is also an increasing danger of a spike in cases in South Korea, which has begun to reopen after a largely successful campaign of testing and contact tracing to contain the pandemic as much as possible. Several clusters of the coronavirus have emerged in the country in the past few weeks, the most recent being a set of 96 new cases that occurred at a logistics center.

This and dozens of other cases forced more than 500 schools to close again Friday after briefly reopening. The government in Seoul has also closed its parks, art galleries, theaters and museums and urged similar private entities to do the same for the next 14 days to curb the current outbreak.

The Middle East has also been hard hit. The number of cases and deaths in Turkey and Iran currently rival those in India. There are currently 162,000 cases and 4,400 deaths in Turkey and 146,000 cases and 7,600 deaths in Iran. Saudi Arabia has also become one of the most plagued nations in the region, with nearly 82,000 cases and 450 deaths. While its number of new cases is currently decreasing, Saudi Arabia’s new death count has been steadily increasing since April.

Over that same period, Qatar has earned the dubious distinction of becoming the country with the most coronavirus cases per capita in the region and the world, excluding European microstates. This is followed by another Gulf nation, Bahrain. While both countries currently have a relatively low death toll, the pandemic is poised to rip through the populations of both nations, particularly their vulnerable immigrant laborers.

In South America, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Ecuador are the countries most infected by the pandemic. They collectively have more than 700,000 cases and more than 32,000 deaths, and are one of the global epicenters of the pandemic. The majority of these are in Brazil, which has at least 443,000 cases and nearly 27,000 deaths. Brazil’s numbers are rising as fast as those in the United States even as fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro orders offices, retail stores, car dealerships, real estate agencies and shopping malls to reopen.

The worst hit city in Brazil is Sao Paulo, which is the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere and the one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. There have so far been 55,000 cases of the virus in the city, which has already caused the medical system to reach capacity.

While Brazil may have overtaken it in the total number of cases and the daily number of new cases, Russia remains the European country with the most coronavirus infections, 387,000. Health officials in Moscow recently more than doubled the number of official fatalities in the city, with 1,561 in Moscow alone.

This figure was revised to account for those who had been recorded as having died from other causes even though they were, in fact, infected with the coronavirus. According to a report from the city’s health department, the new toll now accounts for even the “most debatable” coronavirus deaths.

Other areas of the country are following suit. If a similar correction to the tally were to be made across the nation as a whole, Russia’s dead would be behind only the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain, which are the hardest hit countries in Europe in terms of deaths, and remain some of the worst epicenters in the world.

The center of the pandemic, however, remains the United States, which has seen dramatic spikes in cases in certain areas. In Montgomery Alabama, there are currently just two unoccupied ICU beds as a result of an explosion of cases in the county, which have quadrupled since the state begun reopening. The majority of states in the South are seeing an increase in the number of cases, and it is likely that the two that are reporting a decrease in new cases, Texas and Florida, are deliberately manipulating their data to justify reopening. In the opposite end of the country, California continues to average more than 2,000 cases each day.

At the same time as case counts and deaths continue their macabre rise, the Trump administration is rolling back its Coronavirus Task Force. Vice President Mike Pence, who is the formal head of the group, called it together on Thursday for the first time in a week. This is down from daily meetings in March and April and meetings three times a week starting in May. Trump himself has focused his efforts on whipping workers back into factories, offices and plants, even as the deadly contagion continues to rage through the auto, meatpacking and logistics industries.