Tens of Millions Will Be Pushed into Poverty Amid COVID-Induced Recession

Jake Johnston

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has lowered regional GDP growth projections from positive 1.3 percent to negative 1.8 percent in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic. ECLAC projects that, with such a growth rate, poverty and extreme poverty will increase by 34 million and 23.3 million, respectively. In an op-ed, ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena notes that more than 47 percent of the region’s population does not currently have access to social security, placing the region’s elderly population in a dangerous position.

Bárcena writes:

In the current situation, it cannot be overlooked that massive fiscal stimulus is needed to bolster health services and protect income and jobs, among the numerous challenges at hand. The provision of essential goods (medication, food, energy) cannot be disrupted today, and universal access to testing for COVID-19 must be guaranteed along with medical care for all those who need it. Providing our health care systems with the necessary funds is an unavoidable imperative.

When we talk about massive fiscal stimulus, we are also talking about financing the social protection systems that care for the most vulnerable sectors. We are talking about rolling out non-contributory programs such as direct cash transfers, financing for unemployment insurance, and benefits for the underemployed and self-employed.

Likewise, central banks have to ensure liquidity so the production apparatus can guarantee its continued functioning. These efforts must translate into support for companies with zero-interest loans for paying wages. In addition, companies and households must be aided by the postponement of loan, mortgage and rent payments. Many interventions will be needed to ensure that the chain of payments is not interrupted. Development banks should play a significant role in this.

And, certainly, multilateral financing bodies will have to consider new policies on low-interest loans and offer relief and deferments on current debt servicing to create fiscal space.

Economic distress will come through various channels in the coming months and will not be solely tied to domestic efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Remittances, a key source of revenue in many countries, are expected to diminish drastically. The region’s exports are also likely to take a hit as economic growth slows among trading partners. Commodities, which many countries in the region rely upon for foreign exchange, are experiencing significant price declines. ECLAC estimates a possible 10.7 percentage point reduction in the value of the region’s exports this year. The collapse of the tourism industry, especially important in the Caribbean, will also have significant impacts — in some countries calamitous.

Bárcena acknowledged that ECLAC’s projection of -1.8 percent growth in 2020 could turn out to be over-optimistic. Some private estimates already anticipate a much larger shock. Goldman Sachs, for example, projected -3.8 percent growth for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru — which together account for some 89 percent of regional GDP.

S&P Global, although more optimistic than either ECLAC or Goldman in projecting -1.3 percent growth, notes that the risk is very clearly on the downside. As opposed to the six-quarter recession during the Great Recession, however, S&P projects only two quarters of negative regional growth in 2020. The current situation differs in another key regard, according to S&P: regional growth has been slow in previous years, placing economies in an already fragile place before the current slowdown. “Fixed investment has been either declining or slowing across most of the region in recent years,” the ratings agency notes. Further, S&P estimates that the length of the downturn will depend greatly on the public health response of individual countries:

The initial economic policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America was similar to other parts of the world: emergency interest rate cuts and programs designed to boost liquidity, followed by fiscal stimulus measures in some countries, most notably in Chile, where a 5% of GDP recovery package was announced. These measures will help curb the fall in demand and reinvigorate the economic recovery once the pandemic wanes. However, the public health policy response, which has diverged across the region, will determine the length of the health crisis, and, as a result, affect the length of the economic crisis.

Unfortunately, few countries in the region are well positioned to robustly respond to the crisis. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) points out that 21 of the 26 regional countries borrowing from the IDB reported current account deficits in 2019. With an abrupt halt in countries’ access to foreign capital, many could find themselves in an unsustainable position. Early evidence points to an even greater outflow of capital from the region than during the 2009 financial crisis. Only Brazil and Mexico have capped dollar access via a bilateral swap line with the Federal Reserve to placate this outflow. In contrast to previous periods, however, the COVID-19 pandemic is a truly global problem, meaning that it will be difficult for countries to increase exports to make up for the lack of foreign capital.

Further, traditional stimulus measures are likely to be less impactful than during previous economic downturns given that many businesses will remain closed as part of the public health response to COVID-19. All of this makes a coordinated, international response imperative. The IMF has pledged to increase its lending capacity in response to the crisis, but it is unlikely the fund has the capacity to process loan requests from the more than 80 countries that have already inquired. Further, IMF-supported austerity policies ― such as those in Ecuador and Argentina ― have left those countries in an even worse position to respond to the current situation.

One way for the IMF to respond to the immediate needs of the region ― and developing nations across the globe ― would be with a significant allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which function as a reserve currency. In response to the Global Recession in 2009, the IMF increased SDRs by some $250 billion, providing necessary financial lifelines for countries without access to foreign capital. But the current need is far greater. The IMF itself has estimated that developing countries will need some $2.5 trillion to adequately respond to the situation. CEPR economists Mark Weisbrot and Andrés Arauz have called for a 3 trillion SDR allocation (i.e., $4 trillion). The UN is calling for an allocation of 1 trillion SDRs, while some of the largest and most influential economic policy organizations in the US, like the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Center for Global Development, and the Institute for International Finance support a 500 billion SDR issuance.

What is clear is that the cost of doing nothing is tremendous. The Imperial College of London estimates that, in a worst-case scenario, more than 3 million could die in Latin America and the Caribbean and more than 560 million could be sickened due to COVID-19. The study estimates that, if significant “suppression strategies” are implemented, the death toll could be reduced to 158,000.

But it is important to remember that regardless of the severity in terms of health or the economy, it is likely to be the most vulnerable in the region who will be most affected. As ECLAC notes, the COVID-induced recession will likely push more than 30 million people into poverty throughout the region. Further, many regional economies have expansive informal labor markets that will make it extraordinarily difficult to enforce physical distancing responses to COVID-19. While the wealthy will have resources to stay at home and survive, it will be the most vulnerable, forced to continue working just to live, who will bear the brunt of COVID-19. That will be true in terms of health outcomes as well as economic outcomes, and policy responses should be formulated with that consideration at the forefront.

Amid Plague, Sanctions are Genocide

Eve Ottenberg

Sanctions have long been indefensible; now in the time of Covid-19, more so than ever. Nor are they some minor phenomena. Over a quarter of humanity lives under U.S. economic sanctions. That means millions of people lack untroubled access to food and medicines during a lethal pestilence. Thus in Iran, where the government fears millions of deaths from Covid-19, sanctions amount to genocide. Under ordinary circumstances, these embargoes are economic warfare. By putting Iran and Venezuela under economic siege even before the pandemic, the U.S. had murdered tens of thousands of those countries’ citizens. Yet most Americans seem unaware or unconcerned about this sadistic, criminal and murderous policy inflicted on millions in their name.

It’s important to understand where the U.S. corporate and political elite is coming from. To them, Covid-19 is an opportunity. An opportunity to loot the U.S. government via bailouts for ill-run corporations. An opportunity to attack a beleaguered country like Venezuela or even start a war. An opportunity to crush perceived enemies like Iran. To Trump and his advisers, the deadly plague does not demand charity or humanity. It does not entail saving lives in Iran or Nicaragua. And it means the barest minimum of help for U.S. workers. In times of pandemic, we see what people are made of and who they truly are. Our rulers are killers.

The U.S. sanctions countries, individuals and companies. The six countries sanctioned are Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Cuba and Venezuela, while in 23 countries, the U.S. sanctions presidents, military officials, powerful businessmen and companies. By sanctioning these leaders, the U.S. impedes normal international trade for their countries. One country thus embargoed, Russia, has leverage against the U.S. In the current oil price war, Russia and Saudi Arabia have pulled the plug on the U.S. fracking industry. As one journalist noted, Trump – who sanctioned Russian firms but then phoned Putin about stabilizing oil prices – “can dish it out, but he can’t take it.” Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, however, have no such leverage.

During a plague, like now, Cuba is perhaps safest from U.S. sanctions brutality, having weathered it for decades, by means of its sensibly market-unfriendly policies. Cuba also has the medical resources to cope with Covid-19. Indeed Cuba has sent its doctors and medicines around the world to help with this disease. The contrast between Cuban solidarity with humanity and the haughty cruelty of U.S. sanctions could not be plainer.

Cuba has over 22 anti-viral medicines that may have some efficacy against Covid-19. One of them, Interferon alpha 2b shows real promise, and over 45 countries have requested it from Cuba. The U.S. is not among them. Though the epicenter of the pestilence, the U.S. political elite is so blinded by the ideology of aggressive, militaristic capitalism, that it won’t allow its citizens access to potentially life-saving medicines. This is beyond arrogant prejudice – it is rank, doctrinaire stupidity.

For Iran, one way around U.S. sanctions is Instex, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges created by European countries in response to Trump’s illegal rupture with the Iran nuclear deal. On March 31, Europe used Instex for the first time to send Iran badly needed medicines. Originally Iran hoped Instex could broadly facilitate trade. It waited over a year for Instex’s launch. Now it is clear that Instex will only serve humanitarian assistance. This is less than Iran had hoped for, but still better than nothing.

Meanwhile, Italy asked for medical help from China and Cuba, and many other countries have followed suit. They don’t care about U.S. sanctions, or their dubious rationale – that they will lead Iranians or Venezuelans to rise up and overthrow their governments. Sanctions have no such effect anyway. And in reality, they are the reverse of such imaginary liberation – they are collective punishment of countries the U.S. considers enemies. Such collective punishment is a war crime under the 1949 Geneva conventions. In a better world, the U.S. politicians responsible for this wanton murder would be put on trial for this crime. But this is not a better world. War criminals are in charge.

Survival of the unfittest?

Bilal Ahmad Dar

    Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.  Carl Sagan

Survival in the trying times becomes a matter of concern and ponderation both for the rich and the poor. The Corona pandemic has nudged the mind of the whole world about the question of survival. The entire population of the world is in a situation where the survival seems utterly difficult and impossible because of this novel pandemic: the pandemic that defies not only diagnosis but also medication.

Marx, as we know, divided the society into three economic classes, bourgeois, proletariat, and lumpen-proletariat. Among the three, lumpen-proletariat is the most precarious and disadvantageous class. Beggars, daily-wagers, prostitutes, criminals, and insane belong to this class.  The condition of this class can never change. Besides this, this class can never  change its social position because of their economic, physical, social and psychological precarity. This class is the part of our society. But do we accept this factual statement? Most of us don’t. But on humanitarian and ethical grounds we should accept it and at the same time we should take care of the people who belong to this Marxian economic class.

The pandemic that has put a kind of existential brake on the survival of the entire world population should alert us about the survival of the other people in our society, the people who are not in a position to feed themselves. We should help each other every time. But alas! We are insensitive to the plight and precarity of our fellow humans.

The whole world is in a lockdown situation. No one is allowed to move. Restrictions ring everywhere. The survival even for the rich people has become extremely difficult and utterly impossible despite the resources and victuals that the rich usually store beforehand in order to fend off themselves against any natural calamity or existential exigency. When the capitalists, rich, and bourgeois are in a way at a precarious and vulnerable position because of this pandemic, the question arises how are the proletariats (working class) and lumpen-proletariats  surviving in this lockdown?  It is a question that should give us creeps and should also compel us to think about them, if at all, we bother to care about humans. We do not care a fig about the poor and precarious people of our society. We do not bother to feed the hungry and nurse the wounded and sick. Every country has a large percentage of population that because of one reason or the other is economically disadvantageous.

The world we are living in is highly inequal and unjust in terms of economy.  We should try to end this inequality. The section of the people (beggars, handicaps, and insane) who mainly survive on the leftovers of the rich, the question arises how would they be surviving in this pandemic when the whole world is in lockdown? In addition to this, have we made a prior arrangement for them? Most of the countries have no time to think and care about them. We in India have a large percentage of people who depend on daily wages. From street vendors to rickshaw- pullers the list is long. What is the plight of these daily wagers in this lockdown? Is the government taking care of them? No doubt, the NGO’S and government machineries both at the central and state levels are working to reach out to these people but this temporary care for them won’t help. We should learn a lesson from this pandemic. We should find a permanent solution to the economic problems of these people. We cannot live our life happily and savor the beauty of the world until we take care of the people who are not in a position to eat; who do not have a home to sleep in. Let’s pledge to help the people in this pandemic. Let’s be sensitive to the woes of the people who are more vulnerable to this pandemic, who do not have money to buy medicine.

The government stresses about the precautions that people should stay indoors in order to stave off themselves against the virus. The medical advisories are being published day in and day out. This is done with extreme emphasis and force, because staying indoors and thereby maintaining a social distance is the only measure to contain this virus. On the order and advice of the government, people have self- quarantined themselves in their cozy and comfortable homes. The question that needs to be addressed at this critical juncture is: how are the homeless people coping with this problem? The homeless people sleep alfresco.  Where would they quarantine themselves? The answer to this serious question is: nowhere! We should build hospices for them so that they can have a place where they can live in. Plaster or bandage solution to any problem won’t do. How would they buy face- masks and hand- sanitizers, when they do not have the victuals to eat, and homes to live in! The establishment should be serious and concerned about the woes of these people. Rousseau opines that law is the invention of the rich; his statement is a veritable truth. The people sitting on the high profile seats make laws for their own ulterior motives and lucrative benefits. They can make laws also for the welfare and development of the homeless people but they dilly-dally.

The government machinery is the only force that can uplift and ameliorate the life of the precarious people in the society. But there is a deliberate inaction and inertia on the part of the establishment in doing so. The establishment or the state does not want to erase the binary/ dyad of the rich and poor, the binary of the raw and cooked as explained by Levi Strauss. The exclusionary ideology of the global establishment is behind the economic oppression of the global poor. The World Health Organization should announce the measures and means that can save the homeless in this pandemic.

We must think about the permanent solution to the problems of the economically precarious people. We must play human to save the humanity in this pandemic. We should think about the survival of the unfittest, not about the fittest, for the fittest are already surviving and the unfittest are at the verge of death. Humanity is precious. Let’s play our part in preserving it always.

COVID-19 Challenge To Healthcare System In India

Zahida Bano

Due to covid-19 outbreak, the healtcare system in US is under deep stress, even though US Healthcare system is considered to be the best in the world .

If this deadly virus can wreak havoc in developed countries with far superior healthcare, India surely in ramping up their public health system lagging far behind. What part  of Prime minister’s declared Fund Rs 15000 crore goes towards rebuilding Healthcare. Most part would go into emergency meetings, imports of safety etc. It has been difficult for politicians to  sell such investments to the public in a noisy democracy, Noted Das Gupta.

The cholera epidemic in mid-nineteenth century London and the Spanish flu in the early part of the twentieth century made people and governments all over the world realize the importance of public health, wrote the Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton in his 2013 book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality.’

According to the National Health Profile 2019, over 50 percent of all deaths due to communicable diseases in 2018 were because of respiratory diseases and pneumonia, symptoms common with those of COVID-19.

The growing awareness that germs caused disease, and the consequent investments in public health systems involving sanitation and disease surveillance played a bigger role in improving life expectancy in the twentieth century than gains in income, Deaton noted.

Deaths from contagious diseases in India are much higher than the global average, latest data from the Global Burden of Disease Study shows.

The Global Burden of Disease study of 2016 (GBD 2016), published in the medical journal Lancet in 2018, put India at number 145 among 195 countries (including sub-Saharan Africa), in the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index. India’s score was 41.2, against the global mean value of more than 60, and lower than some of the neighbours like Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.

The latest National Health Profile 2019, released in October 2019, shows India’s public expenditure on health (centre plus state) has been less than 1.3% of the GDP for many years.

Decades of neglect results in:

• Wrong public health strategy.
• Lack of resources.
• Limited investments in both health infrastructure and health data .
• Low priority /not considering it a priority.
• Failed to create manpower and resources.
• Poor quality infrastructure.
• Lowest spending on preventive measures/care.
• Improvement in health system were not uniform.
• Little investment in an overarching public health infrastructure(such as sanitation etc)
• Inadequate to provide quality infrastructure .
• Poor accessibility .
• Poor public investment.
• Disparities in care
• High healthcare costs.
• Reduced economic productivity
• Insufficient access to care.
• Sub-standard care.
• Poor communication or rude providers.
• Healthcare/income inequality .
• Ineffectve healthcare

Despite scary stories ,yet this deadly virus is a real-kicker – be it economical or mental. It is really a big challenge  ,be in healthcare system or economic growth. we have to be resourceful to deal with. The Indian public healthcare system is facing enormous challenges and to address these….

• Facilitate administrative clearance
• The economic & political structure need to be tackled.
• The cultural & social barriers need to be addressed.
• Overcrowded & poor living conditions need to be??
• Strenghtening National Health system
• Tackling structural cause of poor health.
• Providing access to care for all.
• Provide enough resources, sufficient quality based.
• Provide standard care at low cost.
• Provide community based healthcare in low income areas
• Remove barriers to accessing healthcare services.
• Focus spending on patient care.
• Utilize inexpensive primary care.
• Advancement in technology.
• Patient empowerment.
• Develop standards & work for their implementation.
• Reimbursement for services should reflect the actual cost.
• Encourage & enhance research activities in medical science.
• Provide quality infrastructure.
• Adopt patient/public oriented healthcare system.
• Promoting effective care coordination and communication.
• Anticipating a increasing number of covid cases to hospitals in coming days/weeks, administration has to rush to make arrangements for additional beds ,ventilators and other medical equipments.
• Quality and cost recovery must be balanced with equal opportunities.

Sri Lanka: Billions to big business as government prepares new attacks on working people

Saman Gunadasa

The Sri Lankan economy, hit by the widening global crisis of COVID-19, teeters on the brink. President Gotabhaya Rajapakse has responded to the pandemic by seeking to protect big business while preparing a new round of social attacks on the working class.

Health authorities in Sri Lanka yesterday reported that there had been six deaths from COVID-19 and that another 186 people were infected. Many thousands are currently in quarantine at specific centres and several villages have been completely isolated and locked down. While medical experts keep warning that widespread testing is necessary to prevent a major outbreak, Colombo has not allocated the money needed to deal with the developing health crisis.

Sri Lanka has been totally locked down since March 18 and almost all industries have been shut, apart some essential services, such as water, electricity, fuel and food distribution and those producing medical supplies. These closures have seriously impacted on exports and imports. The country’s economic activities are also being disrupted by COVID-19 lockdowns in major European countries, the US, Middle East and India.

On March 31, Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced a 50-billion rupee ($US250 million) refinancing facility for banks, enabling them to expand their lending capacity by 400 billion rupees to businesses, offer loan repayment moratoriums and provide working capital at 4 percent interest. While small and medium businesses can apply for these concessions, the main beneficiaries will be big business.

The COVID-19 pandemic is seriously compounding Sri Lanka’s debt crisis. At the end of March the government attempted to raise $220 million from the money market by issuing development bonds. It collected less than $12 million, starkly exposing Colombo’s inability to raise further loans as international investors withdraw from the country.

Following the development bond debacle, President Rajapakse called an emergency meeting with the Central Bank Governor and senior officials on April 1. The next day government announced that there would be expanded import-control measures on “non-essential” goods. While fuel and medicine are excluded, no details were provided on the “non-essential” items. Previous restrictions included cars and electronic goods.

Sri Lanka imports a range of essentials, including rice, wheat, sugar, dhal and milk powder. According to the media reports, unnamed government ministers have suggested food imports could be restricted through export bans from India, Pakistan, China or other countries due to the danger of COVID-19.

Pointing to future food shortages and more austerity measures, the government is encouraging expanded food cultivation, including in home gardens. The agricultural department is now distributing vegetable plants to householders.

Central Bank Governor W.D. Lakshman has referred to the severe shortage of foreign exchange and called on citizens working overseas to deposit their savings in Sri Lanka.

These deposits will not only be exempted from existing exchange laws and taxes but confidentiality will be protected, which signals that black money will be accepted. Sri Lanka needs to raise $2.8 billion within the next two months in order to service its foreign debt, and a total of $4.8 billion for the year.

The rupee continues to depreciate against the US dollar, reaching almost 200 rupees on Monday. The Sri Lankan currency has been devalued by about 10 percent since early this year, increasing the rupee value of the debt and the cost of imports.

Last week Rajapakse issued another appeal to the World Health Organization’s director general, calling on him to urge international lending agencies and wealthier nations to grant loan moratoriums to Sri Lanka and other under-developed countries.

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva has announced that the agency was “exploring additional options” that go beyond its traditional lending facilities to ease foreign exchange shortages for many developing countries.

Sri Lanka already has an IMF bailout loan and is ruthlessly implementing austerity measures demanded by the bank. Future loans for Colombo, which has yet to receive the last installment of a $1.5 billion loan obtained in mid-2016, will involve massive attacks on workers and the poor.

Working-class struggles against austerity escalated in 2018, plunging the then Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration into political crisis. While Rajapakse was able to win last November’s presidential election by exploiting this discontent and making various promises, the new government has been quickly confronted with rising working-class opposition.

Rajapakse has mobilised the military and the police to impose its COVID-19 lockdown and curfew measures. Yesterday, the police announced that it had arrested and locked up about 15,000 people for violating curfew laws. No details were given about how or why these individuals had broken the curfews.

Over 50 percent of the Sri Lankan workers are temporary, daily-wage earning employees, including those from manpower companies and small businesses, and in the construction and sanitary industries. These workers and the rural poor have been the hardest hit by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The government’s generosity towards big business and the finance industry stands in stark contrast to its tight-fisted refusal to spend money on curbing the COVID-19 pandemic. The country’s dilapidated healthcare system has been run down by decades of government spending cuts and desperately needs massive financial support.

No meaningful government funds have been provided for enough personal protection equipment (PPE) for health workers, ventilators for patients and kits for mass coronavirus testing.

One local medical expert has estimated that only 4.8 billion rupees was needed to provide 5,000 daily tests for a month. But up until April 6 only 3,248 tests have been carried out in Sri Lanka, an utterly inadequate number in response to the widening pandemic. He said there was a desperate shortage of intensive care unit beds.

Export earnings are predicted to fall by 60 percent to $7.75 billion, with the apparel industry, Sri Lanka’s main export earner, already announcing a 30 percent cut in jobs and drastic reductions in wages. Last week, Sri Lankan Airlines announced that it was slashing employees’ salaries.

Foreign exchange earnings from tourism are plummeting and directly impacting on about 500,000 workers and two million dependents in over 2,500 hotels, restaurants and resorts.

The Middle East, Italy and South Korea, where the majority of overseas Sri Lankan workers are employed, have been severely affected by COVID-19. Workers' remittances are diminishing and the future of their jobs is uncertain.

Facing growing anger among the most vulnerable sections of working people, the government has issued a paltry payment of 5,000 rupees ($25) for the disabled and the elderly, for leased vehicles used by self-employed persons, and for businesses unable to pay their employees.

The government previously promised an interest-free conditional loan of 10,000 rupees for the impoverished welfare recipients. Many people, however, have not yet received this pittance.

There are many signs of rising social opposition against the government. Public health inspectors last week threatened to strike over the lack of COVID-19 protective measures and equipment. Their union, after discussion with government authorities, delayed the strike for two weeks. Nurses have also warned that they will walk out if they are not provided with enough PPEs and other facilities, and payment for the extended hours they are working.

Thai government introduces lockdowns amid criticisms of its pandemic response

Owen Howell

Within just a month, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Thailand has leaped from a few dozen to over 2,000, prompting the military-backed government to introduce more stringent social isolation measures.

On Friday, police and soldiers began to enforce an indefinite curfew, lasting each night from 10:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. Curfew exemptions are made only for essential staff, including health workers, those involved in transporting medical supplies, and postal staff.

Police, army and other security forces have set up 923 checkpoints around the country. Curfew violators can be punished with up to two years in prison and a fine of $US1,200.

Earlier that day, the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand declared a temporary ban on all incoming flights, to be effective until Monday.

Since March 1, growing numbers of Thai citizens have returned after being infected abroad. A large portion of the infections originated at a Muslim convention in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Authorities have placed in quarantine nearly 2,000 people who came into contact with those infected with the virus.

A nationwide state of emergency was invoked last week until April 30, which could be extended if conditions worsen. On Monday, another 51 cases and three deaths were recorded, in one of the sharpest spikes in recent weeks. The national total currently stands at 2,258 confirmed infections, with 27 fatalities. Cases have been detected in 66 of the country’s 76 provinces.

Government responses have focused on the gradual implementation of a lockdown ever since a huge spike of 188 new cases was reported on March 22. As explained in the Bangkok Post, the majority of those infections were connected to a previous cluster of cases from the Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok.

Following this sharp rise, soaring by a rate of 33 percent daily, the government ramped up social distancing and urged the public to stay at home. Bangkok residents who had planned to return to their home villages and towns in the country were advised to stay in the city. All provincial governors have been ordered to closely monitor people who return from the capital.

Over the past two weeks the government has shut down schools, shopping malls and entertainment venues. Bangkok’s popular markets are closed, along with the city’s parks.

The latest measures are a belated step-up from previous coronavirus regulations. The government has come under constant criticism from medical experts for its slow response to the crisis. Some medical experts have condemned its limited 6-hour curfew as inadequate. Authorities failed to introduce a rigorous testing regime as recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Despite being the first country outside China to report a case of the novel coronavirus nearly three months ago, testing rates in Thailand have been among the lowest in South-East Asia. Hospitals quickly became overwhelmed with frightened visitors seeking coronavirus tests after the sharp rise in late March. The current demand for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests means that kits are in short supply in the major city hospitals, and virtually non-existent in rural health centres.

The WHO has stressed the importance of testing since the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, particularly with regards to historically oppressed regions of the world with less developed health systems.

“What we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them,” Dr Mike Ryan said in an interview with the BBC this week. “If we don’t put in place the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.”

Of the 51 new cases on Monday, at least 13 were health workers, who are imperiled by an insufficient supply of protective equipment. The Pattaya Mail reported at the beginning of the week that Thailand’s state pharmaceutical enterprise is expecting 400,000 sets of N95 masks and 400,000 sets of protective suits to arrive from China over the coming days. Estimates suggest, however, that this supply will likely be exhausted in less than a month.

Thailand’s first field hospital for coronavirus patients is now in operation. The high demand for field hospitals has already led to a student dormitory at Thammasat University’s campus in Rangsit being transformed into a 308-bed facility.

As the number of cases is predicted to rise when testing increases, the immediate construction of more field hospitals will become a dire necessity, in order to relieve the pressure on under-funded healthcare facilities in cities and rural towns across the country.

The working class and the poor have been hardest hit. Social distancing is an impossible task in the densely populated neighbourhoods of Bangkok and other major cities.

Khlong Toey, Bangkok’s largest slum community, is home to around 100,000 people. Under conditions where makeshift houses are squeezed between narrow passages, and sometimes one or several families live together in a single room, the transmission of the virus could reach disastrous levels.

The impact of the virus is underscoring Thailand’s massive levels of social inequality. A Credit Suisse report last year named the country the most unequal in the world, with the richest 1 percent of the population owning 66.9 percent of the nation’s wealth.

The shutdown of factories has left tens of thousands of migrant labourers from Myanmar and Cambodia out of work. With the Thai government only offering limited assistance and denying them welfare due to their migrant status, many are afraid they will be unable to pay daily expenses and care for their families.

Government measures are focused on propping-up the economy so that profits continue to flow to the largest corporations and the transnational conglomerates that have a base in the country. On March 10, the government unveiled a stimulus package worth $US12.7 billion, which includes tax deductions and cash handouts for businesses.

An article from the Economist this week nevertheless revealed that the Bank of Thailand expects the economy to shrink by 5.3 percent this year, the sharpest contraction in 22 years.

Almost 22 million people have registered for miserly government grants to those unemployed or whose work is otherwise impacted by the pandemic.

Workers in the tourism sector, which accounts for as much as 14 to 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), face a catastrophe. Millions of others confront the immanent prospect of being laid-off.

The Thai government is a military junta that came to power by staging a coup in 2014 and has stayed in office by rigging the national election in 2019.

Amid the deepening crisis, it has desperately sought to deflect mounting social and political opposition. The government has sought to stoke anti-Chinese xenophobia and has also blamed the rapid spread of the virus on white tourists and expatriates.

Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has, on numerous occasions, accused Westerners of being “dirty” and refusing to wear face masks. According to the Thaiger, a Phuket newspaper, he wrote on his Twitter account: “This is the reason our country is being infected all around. We should be more careful of the farang [i.e. Westerners] than Asians.” The tweet was deleted only hours later after being widely condemned.

The promotion of nationalism is a clear sign that the government fears widespread anger over its handling of the crisis. The prominence of the military in enforcing necessary social distancing and lockdown measures is a warning of preparations to repress mass opposition from the working class and the poor.

Africa’s elite build VIP hospitals for themselves, leaving workers to die

Stephan McCoy

“We are the only continent that has its leaders seeking medical services outside the continent, outside our territory. We must be ashamed.”— Aaron Motsoaledi, South African Health Minister, 2017

The number of COVID-19 cases on the African continent has now exceeded 10,000, with more than 500 deaths reported. World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is warning of an “imminent surge” on the continent.

The response of the African ruling elite has been to cocoon itself in luxury, distancing even more surely from the impoverished masses it views with hostility and fear, entrenching the ever-deepening class divide.

Unable to jet off to the advanced countries to receive high-quality medical treatment as they did until recently, the African ruling elites are moving heaven and earth to provide themselves with the best possible health care—leaving millions to suffer in dilapidated hospitals and clinics.

According to Zim Live, two private hospitals in Zimbabwe—Rock Foundation Medical Centre in Harare’s low-density suburb of Mt. Pleasant and St. Anne’s Hospital—were requisitioned by Zanu–PF financier Kudakwashe Tagwirei through his company Sakunda Holding, to exclusively serve the country’s business and political elite.

The Zimbabwe Herald reports, “Sakunda Holdings is bringing into the country [100 ventilators], 10,000 rapid test kits, 10,000 disposal protective gowns, 20,000 medical masks, 10,000 disposable shoe covers, 100 infra-red thermometers, 5,000 respirator N95 masks and 2,000 hand sanitisers,” among other resources to stock these hospitals for Zimbabwe’s ultra-wealthy.

A letter sent to St. Anne’s Hospital by Health and Child Care Secretary Dr. Agnes Mahomva shows a ruling elite that will spare no expense and waste no time when its own health and well-being are at stake. Mahomva insisted that the hospitals become functional in “the shortest possible period of time.” Tagwirei reassured her that they have the “resources and funding to do the work and hence refurbishments” will not be at the cost of the hospital. Refurbishments alone will run to US $2.7 million.

This comes as Zimbabwe’s nurses and doctors in public hospitals went on strike to protest an extreme shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and a complete lack of necessary medical equipment to battle the coronavirus pandemic. The Associated Press already reported in 2019 that doctors were forced to perform “bare-handed surgeries.”

“Thorn Grove Hospital in Bulawayo, one of the two infectious diseases hospitals [owned by the local council and will serve the entire Southern region] that have been established to cater for coronavirus patients, is still ill-equipped to admit patients as government has not provided any funding,” according to New Zimbabwe.

Africa’s health systems, underfunded, understaffed and starved of resources by governments for years, now confront a rapidly spreading contagion that is projected to count its victims in the hundreds of thousands.

Foreign Affairs reports that in contrast to the United States, where there are 33 ICU beds to 100,000 citizens, “In sub-Saharan Africa, the situation is even more dire: Zambia has 0.6 ICU beds per 100,000; The Gambia has 0.4; and Uganda has 0.1.”

Rural doctors are facing even more difficult conditions. Dr. Lungi Hobe in South Africa told SABC News, “The rural population basically accounts for about 42 percent of healthcare services and we only have 15 percent of doctors looking after rural care and 20 percent of nurses. This poses a major concern for us in terms of human resources. It has always been a major issue but now with COVID-19, it’s going to be a particularly major issue.”

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the health system, already under strain after a measles outbreak that killed more than 6,000 children, is now threatened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The continent’s overcrowded slums, where many live without proper sanitation and, as Reuters recently noted, entire “families also live in just one room, making it impossible to maintain a physical distance of 2 metres (6 feet),” is another cause for the spread of the contagion. The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study showing that the virus can survive in air for three hours. This will no doubt facilitate the rapid and effective spread of the virus in these cramped conditions, especially given the lack of mass testing.

It should come as a shock to no one if the number of deaths from COVID-19 in Africa quickly accelerates, as dead bodies overwhelm the morgues and hospitals, and overrun the streets, homes and walkways of slums and working-class areas as has already happened in Ecuador.

The indifference and criminal negligence of the bourgeoisie to the possible exposure of millions of workers to the coronavirus is the expression of a ruling elite that will stop at nothing to extract ever more profit from the working class. Despite the possibility that the virus could kill millions without emergency action, the African ruling elite will not relinquish its billions.

Reports of the virus spreading amongst miners have already surfaced. Reuters reported that an Endeavour Mining employee in Burkina Faso had tested positive for coronavirus after returning from the UK.

Displaying mild symptoms, he was placed in quarantine; despite the identification of a case in the mine, the company reported that it had not “witnessed any impact to production or operations at any of its mines or exploration activities.”

Similarly, a worker at AngloGold Ashanti’s Obuasi mine in Ghana tested positive for the coronavirus. He was asked to self-isolate, and his contacts were traced. Miners, who often work together in close quarters, are particularly susceptible to picking up the virus and spreading it to their colleagues and loved ones.

Miners have found themselves in an especially difficult situation—with both governments and employers utilising the pandemic for their own purposes.

All Africa reports that 23,000 miners from Mozambique, with only the option to stay in the mining area, were forced out of South Africa after the announcement of a 21-day lockdown. Tenke Fungurume, a mine owned by China Molybdenum Co., used the lockdowns to enforce longer work hours and stepped-up exploitation, with about 2,000 people ordered to stay on site and avoid “contact with the outside world.”

Anger is mounting amongst truck drivers, as many find themselves hampered by the various lockdowns implemented all over the continent. According to Yahoo! Finance, cargo carriers who transport copper and cobalt from Congo’s mines to ports in South Africa and Tanzania can still cross into Zambia, but new sanitation measures have led to 25-mile backups at the border. At the Congo-Zambia border, more than 1,000 trucks carrying food, equipment, and supplies for mines had to queue last week after a partial lockdown came into effect.

The response of the ruling class to the unfolding crisis exposes the great divide that exists between working people and the bourgeoisie, nowhere more so than in Africa. For the bourgeoisie it is matter of securing its wealth, returning workers to the job under unsafe conditions and destroying whatever gains were made in social welfare. For working people, it is a matter of saving lives, closing all non-essential production and reorganising economic life based on social need and not private profit. For this to be done, a socialist leadership in the working class must be built, allying with the impoverished peasantry and in unity with the working class in the imperialist centres. This requires an intransigent struggle against the banks, corporations and world imperialism and all their agents on the continent.

US deal with Taliban breaks down while coronavirus spreads in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

A “peace” deal concluded between Washington and the Taliban Islamist movement that was supposed to bring an end to US imperialism’s longest war is rapidly unraveling amid rising violence and the failure of the crisis-ridden Kabul regime to carry out a prisoner release agreement brokered by Washington.

The Taliban warned on Sunday that the agreement signed in the Qatari capital of Doha on February 29 is breaking down under the impact of what it charges are US violations in the form of airstrikes that have targeted its forces and killed civilians.

The latest reported airstrike took place early Sunday in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, leaving at least eight civilians killed and two others gravely wounded according to regional officials. The Taliban blamed the US and its NATO-led “coalition” for the attack.

In another incident on Sunday, the Taliban charged that an airstrike carried out against a funeral in southern Zabul province killed two civilians. The Afghan Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces had attacked Taliban fighters there after a clash at a checkpoint manned by security forces of the Kabul regime.

Warning that its deal with the US was reaching the breaking point, the Taliban stated that the attacks had created “an atmosphere of mistrust that will not only damage the agreements, but also force the mujaheddin to a similar response and will increase the level of fighting.”

A spokesman for the US military dismissed the Taliban charges as “baseless,” while insisting that American occupation forces “will defend our ANDSF [Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces] partners if attacked.”

Negotiations between the Taliban and the Kabul regime on a prisoner swap have also broken down, with the Islamist movement announcing that it was withdrawing its negotiating team from the Afghan capital after what it termed a series of “fruitless meetings.”

An agreement that Kabul would release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in return for the freeing of 1,000 soldiers, police and other pro-regime elements was part of the deal signed with the US in Doha. It was described as a “confidence-building measure” that was to precede “inter-Afghan” talks that had been scheduled for March 10.

The US-backed Kabul government headed by President Ashraf Ghani, however, said that it had not been party to this agreement. The Taliban refused to negotiate with it, regarding it as a US puppet, and Washington tacitly acknowledged this characterization by excluding it from the talks. The Kabul regime subsequently attempted to link the prisoner release to the imposition of new conditions upon the Taliban, including a halt to attacks on government security forces.

The Doha-based Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen said that the technical team sent to Kabul would not continue participating in “fruitless meetings,” charging that the release of the movement’s prisoners had been repeatedly “delayed under one pretext or another.”

Spokesmen for Ghani’s government have claimed that the Taliban has demanded the release of 15 of its senior commanders held prisoner by the regime. Matin Bek, a member of the government’s negotiating team, told reporters on Monday that the government refused the demand. “We don’t want them to go back to the battlefield and capture a whole province.”

The regime is loath to release the prisoners without extracting concessions from the Taliban. It sees them as one of its few bargaining chips under conditions in which the Taliban has gained control over more territory than at any time since the October 2001 US invasion that overthrew the regime headed by the Islamist movement. Today, over half the country is either controlled or contested by the Taliban.

The Kabul regime’s negotiations with the Taliban have been hamstrung in part by its continuing failure to resolve its own internal crisis over a disputed presidential election held last September, whose results were announced only in late February, proclaiming incumbent Ghani the victor.

His challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, who had been installed as “chief executive” as part of a US-brokered deal following the last disputed election, charged that the results were the result of fraud and claimed that he was the legitimate president. Both he and Ghani held simultaneous inauguration ceremonies last month. Abdullah declared all actions by Ghani illegitimate and went so far as to appoint one of his loyalists as governor of Sar-e Pol province in north-central Afghanistan.

On March 23, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an unscheduled trip to Afghanistan, where he announced that Washington was cutting off $1 billion in aid to the Kabul regime this year and would do the same in 2021 if the two rivals did not reach an accommodation. According to a report by NBC this week, he also threatened that the US would carry out a complete withdrawal of all of its troops from the country.

Under the agreement signed in Doha, the number of US troops in Afghanistan was supposed to be cut from the present deployment of 13,000 to 8,600 by July, with a complete withdrawal within 14 months. In return, the Taliban pledged to deny the use of Afghan soil by Al Qaeda or any other group that poses a threat to the “security interests” of the US and its allies.

The threat of renewed fighting, government paralysis and the slashing of US aid—with foreign aid accounting for 40 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP—comes amid a mounting threat that the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic will exact a devastating toll on the country’s impoverished population.

After more than 18 years of US war and occupation, the country’s health care system is devastated, while over 40 percent of its 38.4 million people live below the poverty line, without access to clean water or sewerage systems and living in crowded communal dwellings. There are more than 1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan as a result of the war, while millions more have fled into exile.

The threat that the coronavirus will sweep the country is based not only on these social conditions, but also on the impact of hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrant workers returning from Iran, having lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus outbreak and the impact of tightening US sanctions. Iran has one of the highest rates of infection in the world, with over 62,000 confirmed cases and nearly 4,000 deaths. Both figures are believed to be extreme underestimates.

Afghanistan has reported only 423 cases and 14 deaths thus far, but with the near total absence of testing and the lack of medical care for much of the population, these figures are a fraction of the real toll.

In the western province of Herat, on the border with Iran, officials have reported that 41 health care workers from one regional hospital have tested positive with coronavirus. Doctors and nurses there say that they lack personal protection equipment. On Monday, there was the first case of a doctor dying from the disease at a private hospital in Kabul.

More than 200,000 Afghans have poured back across the border from Iran since the beginning of the year. At the height of this exodus last month, 15,000 were crossing a day. None of them were checked for symptoms or subjected to quarantines, and they have scattered throughout the country, doubtless many carrying the virus with them.

The path for the coronavirus to ravage Afghanistan has been paved by a US war of aggression that has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Afghans and laid waste to the entire country, while claiming the lives of nearly 2,400 US troops.

While the estimated cost of this war is over one trillion dollars, Washington has offered a miserable $15 million in aid to Afghanistan to fight the pandemic. Imperialist foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. Just as the ruling class is shoveling trillions of dollars into Wall Street, the banks and corporations while failing to provided resources to save the lives of the sick or protect those of health care workers at home, so it is prepared to spend a trillion dollars on war in Afghanistan, while offering a pittance to stem the tide of the pandemic sweeping over the war-torn and impoverished country.

Africa’s refugees and internally displaced: The weakest link in the human chain

Jean Shaoul

As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

The coronavirus pandemic’s death toll has until now largely been confined to the advanced industrialized countries, whose health care systems have nevertheless proved unable to cope. But as the pandemic spreads to Africa, Asia and Latin America, the coronavirus will hit the world’s most vulnerable, including refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people (IDPs) even harder.

Africa’s public health provisions are totally inadequate, with little in the way of emergency care facilities to save lives; the Central African Republic has just three ventilators for its 5 million citizens. Endemic poverty and densely packed cities teeming with slums make social distancing and self-isolation restrictions well-nigh impossible. The potential for a continent-wide humanitarian catastrophe is clear.

But far less has been said about Africa’s refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs), who constitute more than a quarter of the world’s 71 million forcibly displaced people. This is the highest number since World War II, the result of terrible armed conflicts, persecution and natural disasters. Their numbers—in the Sahel, East Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region—continue to increase due to ongoing conflicts that rarely get mentioned in the media and the devastation caused by locust swarms.

In the Sahel, populations and conflicts move freely across borders arbitrarily drawn up by the former colonial powers, meaning the disease will almost certainly spread to Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Algeria, Niger, northern Nigeria, parts of Cameroon and Central African Republic, Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea, and the extreme north of Ethiopia—nearly all of which are home to IDPs.

Decades of wars have ravaged Somalia, giving rise to more than 870,000 refugees in the Horn of Africa and Yemen and more than 2.6 million IDPs within the country itself. Much of the country is under the control of al-Shabaab, a militant Islamic group affiliated with Al Qaeda, limiting access by the state and aid agencies to those in need. With no COVID-19 test kits, swabs must be sent to South Africa for analysis.

There are ongoing conflicts in northeast Nigeria, where over 2 million people are internally displaced. In neighbouring Cameroon, fierce conflicts between the government and separatist fighters in the north and west have forced nearly a million to flee their homes.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has over 5 million displaced persons, by far the largest number in the region, thanks to civil wars and armed clashes that have ravaged the resource-rich country for more than two decades. The DRC now faces the coronavirus pandemic just as it is marking the end of the two-year-long Ebola outbreak.

Oil-rich South Sudan, which has suffered years of civil wars since declaring independence from Sudan in 2011, has about 1.6 million IDPs, some living in densely packed tent camps inside UN peacekeeping bases, with a further 2.2 million refugees in neighbouring countries. More than half the country’s population faces acute food insecurity, while the leading causes of death are treatable diseases and conditions like malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoea.

Countries bordering on conflicts and wars host huge numbers of refugees, with limited resources. Uganda has over 1.6 million refugees, three quarters of them from South Sudan. Kenya hosts 500,000 refugees, making it the tenth largest refugee-hosting country in the world and the fourth largest in Africa, following Uganda, Ethiopia and DRC. Most of its refugees are from Somalia. Others have fled conflicts in South Sudan, Ethiopia, DRC and Sudan. Dadaab, near Kenya’s eastern border with Somalia, with a population of nearly 218,000 refugees and asylum seekers, is the third largest refugee settlement in the world.

This toll of suffering has in the final analysis been provoked, fuelled and paid for by the imperialist powers in pursuit of cheap and untrammeled access to raw materials and markets in the interests of the corporations they represent. The priority of the local oligarchies is to remain competitive for foreign investments, while at the same time continuing debt payments to the financial vultures and expanding their armed forces.

With no official count of coronavirus cases among displaced populations—impossible without testing--cases have been reported in places with humanitarian emergencies in Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Venezuela, Somalia and Burkina Faso.

Many refugees and IDPs live in cramped conditions in camps, informal settlements or population-dense shanty towns, sharing the same bathroom, cooking and bathing facilities—if they have access at all. Some are forced to share the same tent, while in some countries, asylum seekers and irregular migrants are put in detention, in appalling conditions, making the rapid spread of the virus inevitable.

Refugee camps, often referred to as “humanitarian silos,” are typically located in remote, arid and dangerous areas and almost always have strict prohibitions on socio-economic activity. Longer-term economic needs go unaddressed, exacerbating helplessness and dependency on aid agencies. To cite one example, many of the 350,000 Somali refugees in Kenya’s Dadaab camps have been there since the early 1990s—and none have the right to work.

Taken together, overcrowding, limited access to WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) facilities and even less access to basic health care make refugee camps particularly susceptible to the pandemic. Poverty is staggering, access to food limited. Refugees buy Paracetamol, antibiotics and other anti-inflammatory medications by the pill rather than the packet, if they are able to buy them at all. Most are unable to afford sterilizers, gloves and masks, even if they were available.

Further compounding the plight of refugees, the aid organisations are struggling to get relief to people in need in conflict zones, such as Somalia, Mali and Burkino Faso, because local militias block access or target doctors and medical facilities. Elsewhere, they are hampered by flight bans and travel restrictions, resulting in a shortage of food, goods and the personnel to tackle the crisis.

Travel restrictions are affecting arrangements to resettle refugees. Last month, the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced the temporary suspension of travel for refugees approved for resettlement, while states have called a halt to new arrivals. This is a disaster for those who have had their travel cancelled, sold most of their possessions and given notice to their employers (if permitted to work) and landlords to vacate their homes.

As host countries themselves become embroiled in conflict, displaced people will once again be on the move. In Burkina Faso, where violence has forced more than 700,000 people to flee their homes over the past year and compelled more than 135 health centres to close, more than 1.6 million people living in conflict-affected areas of the country have little or no access to medical care. Malian refugees, who had sought refuge in Burkino Faso, are fleeing back to Mali despite the ongoing violence and with no assurance of safety, exacerbating the risk of the virus spreading. This in turn may lead the authorities or local people to use force to stop them, creating the potential for escalating violence.

COVID-19 is a truly global crisis. Without controlling the spread of the virus and treating its victims among the world’s most vulnerable peoples, the human toll will grow exponentially. The disease will become embedded in the host nations, repeatedly spreading across the world through migration, travel and human movement, causing second- and even third-wave pandemics.