China economic growth up but major problems mount

Nick Beams

China has reported a better-than-expected growth rate for the first three months of the year but there are a number of questions hanging over the economy. These include the increase of debt held by local government authorities, the sustainability of consumer demand and the worsening effects of US technology bans.

A worker assembles electronic devices at an Alco Electronics factory in Houjie Town, Dongguan City, in the Guangdong province of China. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

Data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics last week showed the economy had advanced at a rate of 4.5 percent for the first three months of the year, considerably better than the 2.2 percent growth in the December quarter, and above market predictions of a 4 percent increase.

But the bureau said that while the first quarter had “made a good start,” domestic demand remained “inadequate” and the “foundation for economic recovery is not solid yet.”

The main driver of the increase was consumer spending with retail sales growing by 10.6 percent in March following the abandonment by the Xi Jinping regime of its previous “zero Covid” policy at the end of last year.

Exports were another key driver, expanding by 14.8 percent over the year to March compared to expectations of a decline of 5 percent. How long this surge might continue is another question as economists expect a slowdown in the US and Europe.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast that growth in the US will slow to 1.6 percent this year, down from 2.1 percent in 2022, while the growth rate for the eurozone is predicted to be only 0.8 percent.

The parlous state of the global economy is highlighted by the expectation that lower Chinese growth will account for around one-third of total world growth this year, according to the IMF.

It has said the world economy will grow by only 2.8 percent this year which, apart from the major contraction in 2020 when the pandemic hit, is the lowest level since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

But China is not going to come to the rescue as it has in the past. As Louise Loo, China economist at Oxford Economics in Singapore, put it: “Anyone looking for China to save the global economy this year might be somewhat disappointed.”

Internally, the property market and real estate development, which have been key components of Chinese growth for more than a decade, continue to remain under pressure because of liquidity and financial problems that have led to a series of defaults as credit conditions have been tightened.

Real estate investment fell by 5.8 percent in the first quarter, home sales dropped by 1.8 percent and new housing starts declined sharply by 19.2 percent year on year.

Growing financial problems were pointed to in a recent report by Bloomberg. It said that while China had so far not experienced a financial crisis, despite close calls, there was an elephant in the room in the form of Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs). For years local authorities had relied on them to finance major infrastructure projects and to support their regional economies.

But this had resulted in a massive increase in debt such that LGFV borrowings at $12.4 trillion are equivalent to 48 percent of China’s GDP and are almost the same as central and local government debt combined.

This financial edifice has been maintained to a considerable degree by the revenue local governments obtain from land sales, but over the last year this dropped by 23 percent.

The problems for the Chinese economy and the Beijing leadership were outlined by long-time China analyst Eswar Prasad, even as he extolled what he called the “stunning” growth of the Chinese economy in recent decades.

In a paper prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this month, Prasad said the huge build-up of domestic debt and the highly volatile prices of stocks, property and other assets were “emblematic” of a number of problems.

Beijing now faced a series of policy dilemmas, some of its own making, he wrote. These included: how to reduce debt while maintaining growth; how to reduce energy-intensive production while the economy continued to rely on heavy industry; how to restrain wealth inequality while relying on the private sector to generate more wealth, and how to encourage private sector innovation while cutting private enterprises down to size.

The economic issues and problems are inextricably connected to political ones. Having long ago abandoned any, even nominal, connection to socialism, under conditions where social inequality has widened, the Xi regime is tolerated by the population to the extent that it is seen as promoting economic growth.

It used to maintain that social stability required a growth rate of at least 8 percent. Now the official target is just 5 percent, amid concerns that even this rate will only be obtained this year with considerable difficulty.

The regime sits atop a potential social powder keg because the very economic expansion over the past three decades has led to the growth of the working class, numbering around 400 million, as economic prospects become gloomier.

As the Financial Times noted in a recent article: “The ruling Chinese Communist Party claims legitimacy from its ability to improve the lives of the country’s 1.4 billion people, but a structural slowdown in manufacturing has hampered its ability to boost employment.”

This is seen in the persistence and increase in youth unemployment. There are now 30 million Chinese people aged 16 to 24 who are out of work, with the youth jobless rate rising by 3 percentage points from the December to March quarter.

The Xi regime is well aware that the growing problems of the economy and the class tensions to which they will give rise cannot be resolved through the methods developed since the restoration of capitalism three decades ago.

Neither production of cheap consumer goods, as took place in the 1990s and the early years of this century, nor the reliance on massive infrastructure and real estate development, as occurred following the global financial crash of 2008, provides a way out.

Hence the turn by the regime to high-tech development as the key driver of further economic development which is central to its maintenance of political power.

However, here it has run headlong into a major obstacle in the form of US imperialism which regards the growth of Chinese technological development as an existential threat to its global dominance and is determined to crush it by all means necessary, including war.

Like its counterparts in the former USSR, which maintained that the concept of imperialism was not the expression of objective economic and political reality but a figment of Marxist imagination, the Chinese Stalinist-Maoist leadership considered, as it restored capitalism, that it would be able to manoeuvre and join the “family of nations” through a “peaceful” rise.

US imperialism is determined to crush such a development, regarding it as an existential threat to its economic dominance.

The high-tech bans it has imposed on China, begun under Trump and intensified under Biden, are already causing major problems.

Last month, the Financial Times carried a report on one of China’s richest counties, Kunshan, located just 50km from Shanghai. Tech bans introduced by the US have led to firms relocating out of the country.

Factory owners are cutting back with some reducing wages by as much as a third, according to the report.

It stated: “The labour market weakness has been exacerbated by Taiwanese manufacturers, the county’s biggest employer, relocating to other countries, to limit their exposure to US-China tensions.”

One logistics company owner said shipments from the county had dropped by at least a third in the first quarter of this year.

And the pressure on China is going to intensify, not lessen, as a major speech by US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen on US-China relations delivered last week made clear.

The speech was generally welcomed as offering accommodation for China or even as an olive branch. But as a Foreign Policy column by economic historian Adam Tooze indicated, it was anything but that.

He said Yellen had presented a “goldilocks vision” in which US bans were targeted and not directed at the broader economy.

Tooze responded: “But as everyone knows, those targeted measures have so far included massive efforts to hobble the world leader in 5G technology, Huawei, sanctions against the entire chip industry supply, and the inclusion of most major research universities in China on America’s entities list that strictly limits trade.”

Tooze, who would like to believe that Yellen’s speech was intended to be “reasonably accommodating,” nevertheless found it “jarring” that China had to accept America’s demarcation of the status quo and if it did not “then it should expect to face massive sanctions.”

And it was hard to see how Yellen’s “vision in which the United States arrogates to itself the right to define which trajectory of Chinese economic growth is and is not acceptable, can possibly be a basis for peace.”

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TikTok and US National Insecurity

Mel Gurtov

Photograph Source: Solen Feyissa – CC BY-SA 2.0

High-tech spying is in the news because of the one-sided, hypocritical debate in Congress on whether the popular app TikTok is actually a tool for Chinese government data collection on American users. The sensitivity of the issue has to do not only with rivalry with China but also the fact that the US government has recently been the target of hackers.

In November 2021 President Biden banned use of Pegasus, a powerful Israeli-made surveillance tool, by all US government agencies. His order came in the wake of two developments: hackers who used Pegasus to break into the phones of some State Department employees, and investigative journalism that revealed use of Pegasus by many governments, democratic as well as autocratic, to break into the cell phones of political opponents and human rights activists.

As the New York Times has just found, not all US agencies have apparently gotten the message; an unnamed government agency is said to be using the nearly undetectable surveillance device in Mexico. Meantime, the phones of 50 more US government employees have been hacked.

The US case against TikTok, however, sidesteps two matters: the US government’s own spying on citizens under cover of law, and the questionable political motives that seem to dictate the specific effort to kill TikTok.

Fear of Spying

Congress members are far more concerned about the US government as victim of spying than as perpetrator. We’ve just been reminded of that with the top-secret documents hacked by an Air Force reservist that revealed US spying on various allies as well as on Russia.

That spying is widely considered legitimate, but Congress members prefer to forget the long history of government spying on unsuspecting citizens, a history that goes well beyond the Cold War. Various agencies—Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the State Department—have monitored social media to report on “national security” dangers.

Leaders of Black Lives Matter, left and right political parties and resistance groups, immigrants from Muslim and socialist countries, environmental activists—the list of targeted groups is long. To that list should be added the mainstream social media—Facebook, Twitter, Google—that have given government agencies access to users’ personal information and communications. Their data collection probably exceeds TikTok’s, but somehow they are not considered national security threats.

Legislation passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress has cemented the government’s right to invade privacy, most recently to combat terrorism. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 permits electronic and other means of surveillance of US citizens suspected of being “agents of foreign powers.” A FISA court, consisting of 11 federal district judges appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, considers applications to carry out surveillance and may issue warrants based on probable cause.

FISA has been amended several times—the USA Freedom Act (2015) is the latest version—but has been challenged as an unconstitutional violation of personal liberty. That’s because catching terrorists was used to justify creation of a huge data base that went well beyond counterterrorism.

The Freedom Act puts some limits on metadata collection, but still has provisions for warrantless surveillance, for instance against whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden. Courts have rarely ruled against US government intrusion, usually when national security is the justification.

But then there’s the 2013 case in which the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, decided that Amnesty International lacked standing to challenge FISA. The case was brought against James Clapper, then director of national intelligence.

The TikTok “Threat”

To judge from the virulence of the rhetoric, TikTok is one of China’s biggest threats to US national security. Congress members actually seem to believe that killing off TikTok would be a major victory over a malevolent foreign power—a way to “protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party,” as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy put it. TikTok is owned by Bytedance, a Chinese technology company, but its CEO claims the company does not share data with the Chinese government, has independent management, and is willing to store its US data in the US.

Now I have to say that I have never used TikTok, nor do I even know anyone who does. But the roughly 150 million Americans who use it swear by it; TikTok has become an icon of US culture.

A number of countries, including the European Union, Denmark, New Zealand, and India, have restricted government use of TikTok or banned it altogether. But I have yet to see evidence that TikTok is channeling Chinese propaganda or amassing anyone’s personal data to be offloaded to Beijing.

Yet Congress members, and the Biden administration, are determined either to ban TikTok or force its sale, which the Chinese government opposes on the grounds that would harm investments in the US. The political lineup against TikTok mirrors the bipartisan consensus in Congress that is hostile to most anything Chinese-made or owned.

Allowing TikTok to continue operating but ensuring that its database resides in a US server such as Oracle would seem to be a reasonable answer for those who insist TikTok is a security threat. At one time the administration supported that idea.

But now we learn that Biden has “endorsed a bipartisan Senate bill that would give the Commerce Department the clear power to ban any app that endangered Americans’ security.”

That’s the authoritarian solution, but it would probably satisfy the China hawks, who love the prospect of turning public attention away from America’s real security issues. Their posturing on TikTok may fool some people, but far from strengthening national security, it reveals how insecure government leaders are when dealing with China.

Sudan fighting provokes mass exodus

Jean Shaoul

Sudan has seen 10 days of fierce fighting after months of rising tensions between rival factions of the armed forces spiralled into an all-out battle for control of the country. Yet another ceasefire, a three-day truce for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday agreed on Friday, fell apart the next day.

Both General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the Sudanese army chief, leader of the Sovereign Council and de facto ruler of the country, and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have pledged to fight each other to the end.

Smoke is seen in Khartoum, Sudan, Saturday, April 22, 2023. The fighting in the capital between the Sudanese Army and Rapid Support Forces resumed after an internationally brokered cease-fire failed. [AP Photo/Marwan Ali]

United Nations figures show that more than 420 people have been killed, including at least 256 civilians, and more than 3,500 wounded since fighting broke out on April 15. Sudan’s doctors’ union said that shelling in the capital Khartoum, its twin city of Omdurman and neighbouring states has destroyed or damaged hospitals, while others have been ransacked, rendering more than two-thirds of medical facilities “out of service.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Sudanese Red Crescent Society said they were “closely monitoring the humanitarian situation in Khartoum and other parts of the country.”

“We are extremely worried that the fighting is affecting densely populated areas. People are seeking cover in their houses,” said Alfonso Verdu Perez, head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan.

Parts of Khartoum and Omdurman are still without water and electricity, with people sheltering indoors to avoid the constant shelling and air strikes. Everything is closed, including Khartoum airport, which has been badly damaged by shelling, leaving people without access to food. Stinking corpses lie uncollected in the streets. Italian NGO boss Stefano Rebora told the BBC, “There's utter destruction too. Everything is just devastated.'

Monitoring service NetBlocks said that Sudan experienced a “near-total collapse” of internet and phone services Sunday.

ICRC spokeswoman Alyona Synenko told the BBC the situation was now “untenable” for civilians left without food or water and some hospitals out of action. People were making “desperate attempts” to flee.

Around 10,000 Sudanese fled the country for South Sudan over the weekend, while at least 20,000 are believed to have crossed from the western Darfur region where fighting has flared up again into neighbouring Chad, which already hosts 400,000 Sudanese refugees. Many have fled the capital, home to 10 million people, for other parts of the country where they have family ties, leaving parts of the city centre completely deserted. Others have gone north to Egypt by bus or gone south.

The huge movement of people threatens to overwhelm Sudan’s seven neighbours, themselves wracked by poverty and instability and hosting refugees and internally displaced people.

Sudan itself hosts about 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers, mostly from South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan in 2011 and has been ravaged by civil war ever since. Others have fled conflicts and autocratic rule in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Syria. Still more are migrants working in Sudan to support their families back home. The fighting will disrupt the flow of remittances and limit cross-border trade.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that Sudan was 'on the edge of an abyss,” as the brutal fighting between rival forces shows no sign of abating and that the violence in Sudan, one of the world's poorest countries, with a history of military coups, “could engulf the whole region and beyond.”

In the last days, the UN, United States and numerous European, Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations have launched emergency operations to evacuate their diplomatic staff and in some instances their nationals from the country by road, air and sea. Most sent military helicopters to Khartoum from the Red Sea state of Djibouti to fly people out amid a brief ceasefire, while others transported them in convoys the 500 miles to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

With some of the convoys coming under attack, including one carrying Qatari embassy staff and another carrying French citizens, the situation is too dangerous to be able to evacuate more than a few foreign nationals.

Both leaders of the two rival factions now fighting for control of the country rose to prominence during the war in Darfur, in western Sudan, where 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million were displaced in fighting from 2003 to 2008. Al-Burhan was an army chief, while Dagalo (widely known as Hemedti), led the notorious Janjaweed militias responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the conflict, with both men implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

These corrupt figures are engaged in a conflict that has global impulses, origins and implications, with US imperialism playing the central role.

Al-Burhan is backed by Egypt’s brutal dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and layers close to the military that have long controlled Sudan’s sprawling military-industrial complex. He is supportive of the United States and the European powers in the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

Dagalo, who has become enormously rich based on Darfur’s gold, is backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. Controlling the export of gold, much of which goes to Russia via the UAE, he has close relations with Russia. Moscow, whose Wagner mercenaries operate in Sudan and neighbouring Central African Republic, is trying to establish a base at Port Sudan.

The US Biden administration, infuriated by Sudan’s abstention on the UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has been determined to sever Sudan’s relationships with Iran, Russia and China; close Port Sudan to the Russian navy; and strengthen its regional anti-Iran alliance to which Sudan had signed up earlier this year. This meant curbing the military and its relations with Russia and encouraging Sudan’s transitional civilian government under Abdalla Hamdok to crack down on the military’s export of gold to Russia, which enabled Moscow to evade sanctions. This was one of the factors that led to the military’s coup against Hamdok’s government in October 2021, which US official and former official sources accuse Russia of backing. The anti-corruption committee leading the crackdown was then immediately dismantled.

The violence that erupted on April 15 came after weeks of mounting tensions, increased army deployment and security measures and jockeying by the rival factions for public and international support over the planned integration of the RSF and other former rebel militias involved in insurgencies in various parts of the country into the Sudanese army. This was a key demand of al-Burhan’s faction in the Framework negotiations aimed at forming a civilian-led government that would leave the military and its corporations in economic control, while ending the protests and social unrest that had engulfed the country since December 2018 and led to the military’s pre-emptive coup against long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Since then, Burhan and Hemedti have had increasingly fractious relations, amid a crackdown on the ongoing social protests that have led to the deaths of more than 120 civilians. Some 15 million of Sudan’s 46 million people already faced acute food insecurity due to escalating food and fuel prices, the economic crisis precipitated by the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011, political instability, conflicts and the displacement of some 3 million people, poor harvests and floods.

Dagalo refused to integrate his RSF into the Sudanese army unless the military was placed under civilian control and the Islamists that had pulled the strings under al-Bashir were eliminated as a political force. This has enabled him to win support from some of the middle-class professional and civilian groups that are party to the negotiations and in December signed a renewed Framework agreement with the military for a return to civilian rule.

The emergence of a dangerous fungus, Candida auris, in US health care systems

Benjamin Mateus

On April 21, Nevada’s congressional delegation wrote an urgent letter to Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asking for help from the federal government to assist in fighting off a potentially lethal fungus known as Candida auris (C. auris) that has caused the largest outbreak in the country at southern Nevada hospitals and long-term care facilities, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 

The multi-drug-resistant fungus has been called an urgent threat by the CDC, but, according to the letter, the public health agency ‘has yet to develop a comprehensive plan to prevent further spread of C. auris in Nevada and the more than 27 states now reporting infections.”

Last week, Dr. Teena Chopra, epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Wayne State University School of Medicine, told the Detroit Free Press, “Just like the rest of the nation, we are struggling with a multi-facility outbreak of C. auris in Southeast Michigan. This invasive candida infection can cause very high morbidity and mortality, particularly in patients who are at very high risk, like long-term care facility patients, those in nursing homes, older adults.”

Dr. Chopra then added, “Currently, we don’t have many treatment options for this fungus, so it is a big challenge, and that’s why CDC has labeled it as an urgent threat to the community.”

In October 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) drafted its first-ever list of fungal priority pathogens with C. auris added as one of 19 that can cause invasive disease and threaten public health. In particular, C. auris is among the four in the “critical priority group,” the highest level of concern.

WHO priority list for fungal infections [Photo: WHO]

As the WHO report notes, “Cases of invasive fungal disease (IFD) are rising as the at-risk population continues to expand. This is due to many factors, including advancements in modern medicine and accessibility to therapies and interventions that impair the immune system, such as chemotherapies and immunotherapy for cancer, and solid organ transplantation. New groups at risk of IFD are constantly being identified. Examples include patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver or kidney disease, viral respiratory tract infections …”

They added, “The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been associated with an increase in the incidence of comorbid invasive fungal infections. Three groups of COVID-19 associated fungal infections; aspergillosis; Mucormycosis; and candidemia, were frequently reported, often with devastating consequences. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that both the incidence and geographic range of fungal infections are expanding globally due to climate change.”

However, surveillance data and the distribution of fungal pathogens and their resistance pattern have been poorly studied. Only a few countries across the world maintain an adequate fungal surveillance program and have the necessary laboratory equipment to monitor them. Funding for addressing these pathogens is woefully lacking.

According to the CDC’s C. auris tracker, in the last 12 months there were 2,377 clinical cases and 5,574 screening cases across 27 states and the District of Columbia. Screened cases imply the fungus was found colonizing the skin without making people ill.

Although the number of cases appears small overall, that needs to be placed in perspective. From 2013 to 2016, the CDC had documented only 63 clinical cases and 14 screening cases. In total, there have been 5,654 clinical cases and 13,163 screening cases since 2013. The last 12 months account for over 40 percent of all cases. This has become a matter of considerable urgency from the standpoint of public health.

In this regard, Nevada leads in C. auris cases with 384 reported last year, which includes infections that have spread into the blood stream, going into the heart or brain. California (359), Florida (349), New York (326) and Illinois (276) round out the top five states with the highest number of clinical cases in the last 12 months. 

The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services has reported that of a total of 527 clinical cases identified in southern Nevada thus far, 103 people died, many with complicated medical conditions that predisposed them to systemic fungal infection. Once the disease becomes systemic in a patient, it has a fatality rate between 30 and 60 percent.

States impacted by Candida auras [Photo: CDC]

Additionally, once such a case is identified, the treating facility must undergo a rigorous disinfection protocol to rid the environment of the fungus, due to its ability to survive on surfaces for prolonged periods and withstand most commonly used disinfectants. This means stopping the day-to-day operation of the health system to sterilize the facility, which is costly and disruptive to patient care. 

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “The cases were identified in at least 35 general acute-care hospitals, long-term-care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in southern Nevada. The fungus can spread from surfaces such as bed rails and medical equipment, where it can linger for long periods of time, invisible to the eye. It can also spread by colonized people who don’t know they have it.”

Though healthy people tend not to become ill if they are colonized or exposed, those suffering from debilitating chronic health conditions who require prolonged hospitalizations, need for central lines that access their blood vessels, or have been on lengthy courses of antibiotics and anti-fungal medications previously, are at higher risk of acquiring C. auris infection. 

The first C. auris infection in southern Nevada was identified in August 2021. The letter to the CDC underscores the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on exacerbating this difficult to treat fungal infection. The congressional representatives wrote, “The COVID-19 pandemic created an environment for C. auris to spread rapidly alongside COVID-19, as patients were increasingly exposed to C. auris when seeking care for COVID-19 at health care facilities, including hospitals, or while patients were isolated in congregate care settings, such as long-term care facilities.”

The letter also admits that screening procedures and decontamination efforts had been neglected during this period at these facilities. Unless efforts are put in place to actively monitor for C. auris colonization and begin work to eradicate the difficult-to-treat fungus from health care settings, the risk associated with the spread of the fungus and the disease it causes will compound rapidly. As with COVID, wastewater data indicates the fungus is spreading within communities.

Alarmingly, genomic sequencing has demonstrated that the fungus is mutating, making it more resistant to the available anti-fungal medications used in clinical settings. C. auris species of fungus are considered resistant (90 percent) to a class of commonly used anti-fungal treatments called azoles. A second treatment, polyenes such as Amphotericin B, have considerable side effects on the patient, such as fevers and rigors, as well as potentially impairing kidney function and causing electrolyte abnormalities. Resistance has been noted in about 8 percent of cases.

Echinocandins are the newest class of anti-fungal medications that have been around for the last two decades. Caspofungin was the first drug in this class to get FDA approval in 2002. It has a much-improved toxicity profile compared to previous anti-fungal medications but is an expensive alternative. However, what has genomic scientists and researchers concerned is that among the Nevada outbreaks, 2 to 3 percent of cases of C. auris have shown resistance to echinocandins.

The fungus was first detected in 2009, isolated from the external ear canal of an inpatient in a Japanese hospital. Since then, it has now been detected in 41 countries. At present there are four known distinct geographic clades that include South Asian, East Asian, South African, and South American. There is a possible fifth clade being investigated that may have originated from Iran.

A three-dimensional representation of the Candida auris fungus [Photo: Ohio Department of Health]

The transmission of the fungus occurs from person to person with a predilection for the skin around the groin and axilla (armpit). It can colonize the person within as short as a few days to weeks after exposure. Invasive infections can occur days to months after colonization. The fungus can persist for months or indefinitely. For these reasons, identifying patients who are colonized is critical before any invasive procedures are performed. 

The use of Far-UVC at around 222 nanometers has shown promise in treating such scenarios. In a study published in August 2022 in the journal Mycoses, the authors write, “Our results are in agreement with the data from Narita et al., where the fungicidal effect of 222 nm UVC against candida albicans is comparable with 254 nm UVC. A devastating effect could be demonstrated from 24 mJ/cm2 compared to control.” They showed a reduction level of 70 percent for this level of irradiation. At 40 mJ/cm2 the colony growth of the Candida species fell by more than 98 percent.

Such technology can be used to disinfect rooms and surfaces throughout health care settings and poses, if appropriately mounted and maintained, no harm to patients and staff. 

COVID infections rise in Sri Lanka, despite government’s efforts to hide the crisis

P. T. Sampanthar

On April 20, a 76-year-old man from Neerveli village, in northern Sri Lanka’s Jaffna district, died after he was found to be infected with COVID-19 at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital.

The bodies of COVID-19 victims placed on hospital stretchers in Sri Lanka. [Photo: Facebook]

According to media reports, another person being treated for a fever at the Pointpedro Base Hospital, 30 kilometres north of Jaffna, was transferred to Jaffna Teaching Hospital where they tested positive for the coronavirus. Hospital administration said both patients had been placed on ventilators.

Four days earlier, on April 16, Jaffna Teaching Hospital assistant director, Dr. Jamunananda held a media conference and warned that the coronavirus was spreading in the district. “Up to date, five people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. In order to prevent this infection from spreading in the community, we need to wear face masks, maintain social distance, and avoid crowded places,” he said.

When Jaffna hospital management reported this information to the Ministry of Health in Colombo and began taking precautionary action, government officials intervened, opposing the imposition of new COVID-19 safety measures.

Ministry of Health officials discussed the situation with the director of the Northern Province Health Services and Jaffna Teaching Hospital management. They instructed the Northern Health authorities not to conduct coronavirus tests, or to publicly release the information without their permission.

When World Socialist Web Site reporters contacted Dr. Jamunananda about the rising infections and the discussions with government health officials he said: “I cannot provide any information related to coronavirus. It is not allowed.”

According to COVID-19 reports from the Ministry of Health’s Epidemiological Unit, three people died from COVID-19 and 32 people tested positive in Sri Lanka last week (April 17–24). No information was given on which district or hospital reported this data. The latest coronavirus deaths and the emergence of severe cases in Jaffna district refute governments claims that COVID-19 is just like a normal dose of the flu.

Sri Lanka’s official coronavirus death toll has now exceeded 16,800, but this figure is likely to be a serious underestimation because testing and tracing has been severely limited for a long period.

The Wickremasinghe government, in line with its counterparts around the world, has implemented “let it rip” policies, downplaying the pandemic and falsely claiming it is possible to “live with the virus.” Like his predecessor Gotabhaya Rajapakse, President Wickremesinghe is maintaining the criminal policy of placing corporate profits over human lives.

When the coronavirus emerged in early 2020, the Rajapakse government disregarded its impact on Sri Lanka, claiming that the country, on its own, could manage the situation.

Amid rising infections and workers’ demands for proper anti-COVID protection measures, the government was compelled to lock down the country in late March 2020. It began to reopen the economy, however, after a month following demands from big business and international finance capital.

Elderly Sri Lankans queue up to receive their second dose of Covishield, Serum Institute of India's version of the AstraZeneca vaccine during a public vaccination drive against the coronavirus in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Monday, June 28, 2021. [AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

The government ignored new surges of coronavirus infections, rejecting calls by independent health experts for appropriate health measures to be implemented. As a result, the Delta variant of COVID-19 in August 2021 began taking thousands of lives and overwhelming the dilapidated health service, forcing the government to introduce a highly limited six-week lockdown.

Beginning in late 2021, all COVID safety restrictions have been abandoned by successive governments with most people, including doctors and nurses in hospitals, no longer wearing masks.

People with fevers, coughs and colds move around without masks and if they visit hospital, they are not tested for COVID-19 but are only treated for common ailments.

When old people die at home, this is seen as a normal death even if the medical cause of death is not determined.

Students no longer wear masks at school or to and from the facility, increasing the risk of infecting their parents with the deadly virus.

Religious festivals and ceremonies, like weddings and funerals, are held without masks and other health and safety precautions. Markets and transport are also operating without anti-COVID procedures while health authorities are not conducting any health awareness programs and activities to educate and protect the public.

Faced with this situation, the Sri Lankan ruling elite and its governments have failed to take any significant steps to upgrade public healthcare. In fact, public health has further deteriorated, having been subjected to consecutive budget cuts. This year’s budget allocation to the health sector is just 322 billion rupees (approximately $US1 billion) compared to 539 billion rupees allocated to defence and the police.

Sri Lanka’s ongoing foreign debt crisis and Wickremesinghe’s brutal IMF-dictated austerity measures are leading to a catastrophic crisis in the public health system.

In February, the Sri Lankan Medical Association (SLMA), the peak body for all medical practitioners, warned that the country’s health sector is heading towards a “total breakdown.” SLMA president Dr Vinya Ariyaratne told the media that Sri Lanka’s health sector faced a severe crisis “due to the shortage of medicines, surgical equipment and chemicals used in labs.”

Sri Lanka’s working masses now face an even graver threat with the emergence of new, even more contagious, COVID-19 variants. The rapidly proliferating lineage of the Omicron virus labeled XBB.1.16, which is far more infectious and immune evading than other Omicron subvariants, is now sweeping through neighboring India and another 33 countries. While India’s far-right Modi government claims it has “successfully controlled” the pandemic, the official daily count of new coronavirus cases exceeded 10,000 the last week.

International Monetary Fund demands cuts as Egypt faces bankruptcy

Jean Shaoul

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is demanding Egypt’s military junta carry out sweeping attacks on living standards before it releases the next tranche of a loan to meet the rapacious demands of Egypt’s international creditors.

Egypt’s external debt has risen to $163 billion equal to 93 percent of the country’s GDP, after a further loan of $13 billion from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and a new issue of government bonds at a higher rate of interest—just to cover regular government expenditure. This comes amid a rise in the value of the US dollar and other major currencies relative to the Egyptian pound, as all the major central banks hiked interest rates. As Egypt’s debt has risen, government's expenditure has gone on debt servicing rather than health, education and welfare.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi makes statements during a news conference, Nov. 11, 2020. [AP Photo/Costas Baltas/Pool via AP]

The working class and rural masses face poverty, along with middle-class professional workers, including doctors who are leaving for Europe in droves. More than one third of Egypt’s 106 million population are already living in poverty, while another 30 percent are teetering around the poverty line. 

Egypt’s economy was badly affected by the pandemic, which halted a tourism industry accounting for around 12 percent of GDP, 15 percent of foreign currency and 10 percent of jobs, and led to the return of workers from the Gulf and the loss of their remittances, swelling the ranks of those without work.

The dire situation confronting workers was compounded by the outbreak of the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine pushing up the cost of agricultural imports, particularly wheat, maize and cooking oils that mostly came from Russia and Ukraine. This led to an $20 billion outflow of speculative capital—more than half of all the hot money invested in the country—seeking a higher rate of interest.

The IMF agreed last December to provide Egypt with a $3 billion loan, its fourth since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the elected government of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohammed Morsi in a 2013 military coup, making Egypt the second largest IMF borrower after Argentina. But this comes nowhere near meeting a financing gap estimated at between $17 and $70 billion.

The loan was also conditional upon Egypt agreeing to float its currency, hitherto pegged to the dollar—leaving the pound at the mercy of international currency speculators, as well as privatizing state assets and curtailing public expenditure, including slashing subsidies on basic household commodities. Crucially, the IMF made its meagre disbursements subject to review, with the first scheduled for last month already delayed, to access the next $354 million tranche.

The Egyptian pound has tumbled to half its value in the last year, with the black-market rate on which many depend even lower. This is not good enough for the IMF, even though devaluation has sent inflation soaring to 34 percent in March and food inflation surging to 62 percent compared to 26 percent in April 2022, according to the World Bank.

Foreign currency has all but dried up, despite the central bank raising interest rates to 19 percent. The shortage of foreign currency means goods are piled up at Egypt’s ports, with ships waiting to be unloaded. Importers, without access to foreign currency due the reduced allocations to non-governmental importers, the shortage of dollars and the depletion of the central bank’s reserves, are unable to get their goods released from customs.

The government also gave a commitment to wholly exit up to 79 business sectors and partially exit 45 more within three years while increasing private investment from 30 to 65 percent. It did so to secure an additional $14 billion from other international sources. It announced yet again that it plans to privatize 32 government companies, including those owned by the military by 2024. The military owns or controls as much as 40 percent of the economy outside the official state budget. Such promises, repeatedly broken, carry little weight. A few weeks ago, Egypt suspended the sale of a stake in state-controlled Telecom Egypt, citing “market conditions,” making it virtually certain that it will fail to raise its target of $2.5 billion in privatization funds to be allocated to the country’s $5 billion financing gap by June.

While the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had all pledged at least $22 billion to shore up el-Sisi’s finances, mainly through investments, few deals have been signed due to Cairo’s reluctance to sell more than minority stakes or reveal the real valuation of the assets.

Egypt has received around $92 billion from the Gulf countries in the past decade, but this has declined sharply in recent years, with Saudi Arabia indicating that it would no longer give aid unconditionally, as it eyes its own profits, interests and influence and seeks to make the kingdom less dependent on oil. It criticized el-Sisi's policies, mega-vanity projects including the new administrative capital outside Cairo, and the military’s role in the economy. Earlier this month, el-Sisi was forced to go cap in hand to Riyadh to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler. 

The economic devastation in Egypt is mirrored throughout Africa, affecting Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Zambia and elsewhere, prompting warnings by analysts and think tanks of the likelihood of social unrest and civil strife. This is taking place as the Horn of Africa, particularly parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, are experiencing some of the driest conditions recorded since 1981, with the World Food Programme warning of famine and people dying “at levels that we have not seen in recent history.”

According to a United Nations Development Programme report, 24 of the 54 lower-income countries at high risk of debt distress are in Africa, with a record number on the brink of defaulting due to spiraling inflation, interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks and the surge in the value of the US dollar.

Zambia was the first African country to default on its foreign debt, an estimated $17 billion, during the pandemic in 2020. The kwacha has fallen more than 10 percent against the US dollar this year and its chief creditors, private lenders in the advanced countries, have refused to restructure Zambia’s debt.

Ghana faces a mounting economic crisis, with the cedi falling by 55 percent between January and October last year, dramatically increasing the price of all its imports amid rampant profiteering by the giant global food and energy corporations. Debt payments take more than 40 percent of government revenue. In January, Ghana suspended payments on most of its external debt, becoming the third African country to default since the start of the pandemic, despite agreeing a $3 billion loan with the IMF.

Like Egypt, Malawi too has a shortage of foreign currency reserves as well as a budget deficit of 1.32 trillion kwachas ($1.30 billion)—equal to 8.7 percent of GDP. The highly indebted country is seeking to restructure its debt to get further IMF money, on top of that agreed in November.

As central banks in the advanced countries hike interest rates to slow the economy, induce a recession and increase unemployment as part of their attacks on the working class, this will worsen the intolerable conditions for workers and oppressed masses in poorer countries who comprise most of the world’s population.