Archives for April 2021

Japan to issue 3rd virus emergency in Tokyo, Osaka area

TOKYO (AP) — Japan is set to issue a third state of emergency for Tokyo and three western urban prefectures amid skepticism it will be enough to curb a rapid coronavirus resurgence ahead of the Olympics in July.

Health and economy ministers in charge of the virus measures were meeting with experts on a government taskforce to obtain their preliminary endorsement for the plan.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is set to formally announce later Friday a state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and its two western neighbors Kyoto and Hyogo from April 25 through mid-May.

Japan’s third state of emergency since the pandemic began comes only a month after an earlier emergency ended in the Tokyo area. For days, experts and local leaders said ongoing semi-emergency measures have failed and tougher steps are urgently needed.

Past state of emergency measures, issued a year ago and then in January, were toothless and authorized only non-mandatory requests. The government in February toughened a law on anti-virus measures stipulating that authorities could issue binding orders for nonessential businesses to shorten hours or close in exchange for compensation for those who comply and penalties for violators.

Measures this time are to include shutdown orders for bars, department stores, malls, theme parks, as well as theaters and museums. Restaurants that do not serve alcohol and public transportation services are asked to finish early. Schools will stay open, but universities are asked to return to online classes.

Mask-wearing, staying home and other measures for the general public remain non-mandatory requests, and experts worry if they will be followed.

Japan, which has about half a million cases and 10,000 deaths, has not enforced lockdowns. But people are becoming impatient and less cooperative and have largely ignored the ongoing measures as the infections accelerated.

Osaka, the epicenter of the latest resurgence, has since April 5 been under semi-emergency status, and the alert has since been expanded to 10 areas including Tokyo through May 11, a step promoted by Suga’s government as an alternative to a state of emergency with less economic damage.

Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura, who requested the emergency Tuesday, said semi-emergency measures were not working and hospitals were overflowing with patients. Osaka doctors said a number of people were forced to wait at hotels and on ambulances.

Japan’s latest resurgence, fueled by a new, more contagious variant detected earlier in Britain, has spread rapidly across the country.

It also has been slow to roll out vaccinations, leaving its population largely unprotected before the Olympics begin in July.

The third emergency is largely intended as a short and intensive step to stop people from traveling and spreading the virus during the “Golden Week” holidays from late April through the first week of May.

The May 11 end of the emergency, just ahead of an expected Japan visit of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Back triggered speculation that the government is prioritizing the Olympic schedule over people’s health.

Bach’s comment that the state of emergency is “not related to” the Olympics also fueled criticisms from opposition lawmakers and others.

Suga has been reluctant to hurt the already pandemic-damaged economy and faced criticism for being slow to take virus measures.

Japan’s inoculation campaign lags behind many countries, with imported vaccines in short supply while its attempts to develop its own vaccines are still in the early stages. Inoculations started in mid-February but progress comes slowly amid shortage of vaccine supply and healthcare workers.

The rapid rise of the new patients flooding hospitals and would likely to cause further staff shortage and slowdown of vaccinations.

NHL: Virus protocols not ‘relaxed’ for vaccinated players

The NHL on Wednesday confirmed it has not guaranteed loosened virus protocols for players who are vaccinated after Vegas goaltender Robin Lehner ripped the league for what he said were unkept promises.

“Nobody from the league has communicated to any player or club that any of our COVID protocols would be ‘relaxed’ for any player once he is vaccinated,” a league spokesman said.

The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball have set vaccination thresholds to relax some protocols, such as mask-wearing and prohibition of outdoor dining, when a certain percentage of team personnel are fully inoculated against COVID-19. Those leagues have all teams currently playing in the U.S., where everyone 16 and older can get a vaccine. The NHL has seven teams in Canada, where eligibility — the nation only recently moved to 40 and older in some jurisdictions — and availability is not nearly as robust.

The NHL has only one player, Toronto’s Joe Thornton, over age 40 and playing in Canada, where 25% of people have received one dose and 2.5% are fully vaccinated, according to the Global Change Data Lab. In the U.S., roughly 40% have had one dose and 25% are fully vaccinated.

Lehner said the league showed players the NBA’s protocol plan and told them “(when) X amount of players leaders in this team or leaders around the league takes this vaccine, a new set of rules are going to come out.” He said he had calls with the league and NHL Players’ Association on Tuesday and found out nothing was changing.

“They told me yesterday they’re surveying all the teams to see who has taken the vaccine and who has not taken the vaccines and they’re not going to change the rules for us as players until all the teams have a fair, have the vaccines at the same time, so it’s not a competitive edge,” Lehner said during 10 minutes of unprompted comments on the subject. “They’re talking about competitive edge instead of human lives. Competitive edge, human lives. We’re humans, too.”

The league has not publicly announced any changes to its pandemic protocols, which limit where players, coaches and staff can go. Lehner’s comments concerned the mental health of himself and fellow players, a topic he has talked about often in recent years.

Lehner called the NHL’s situation “totally unacceptable.”

“Look at the NBA, NFL and the other leagues,” he said. “They’ve already implemented these things. And now we are, we are vaccinated and we’re still going to be trapped in a prison.”

Lehner apologized on Twitter for his use of the word “prison” but stood by his mental health concerns given the restrictive protocols.

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More AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Bilbao told by UEFA it’s been dropped as Euro 2020 host

MADRID (AP) — The Spanish city of Bilbao has been dropped by UEFA as a host for the upcoming European Championship, local authorities said Wednesday.

Bilbao was supposed to be one of 12 cities across the continent to host games for the tournament, but had been unable to give UEFA guarantees that fans would be allowed into the stadium amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The city’s local organizers threatened to sue the European soccer body over its “unilateral” decision to drop Bilbao as a host. It had been scheduled to host Spain’s matches in Group E against Poland, Sweden and Slovakia. It would also host a round-of-16 match.

Organizers published a seven-point letter saying they wouldn’t allow anyone to “damage the image” of Bilbao, which had been preparing for the tournament for more than six years with “professionalism and responsibility.”

They said no one could question the capacity of the city and Basque Country to attract and organize the most varied types of events.

The Spanish soccer federation had said recently that the current pandemic situation in Bilbao made it impossible for fans to be allowed into matches based on the regulations established by health authorities in the northern Basque Country region, one of the hardest hit by the pandemic in Spain.

Other host cities for the June 11-July 11 tournament have given assurances to UEFA that spectators will be allowed into stadiums.

UEFA recently gave Rome, Munich, Bilbao and Dublin an extension to the deadline for providing guarantees on fans being allowed into games. The Italian government last week gave the all-clear for a limited number of fans at the city’s venue, but Munich, Dublin and Bilbao still haven’t offered guarantees.

UEFA’ executive committee is expected to make its final decision on Friday.

The Spanish federation recently offered Seville as an alternative to Bilbao, with games to be played at the La Cartuja Stadium in the southern Andalusia region. The stadium was host to the Copa del Rey finals this month.

UEFA has used another stadium in Seville, Sevilla’s Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán, as a replacement venue after the home team was eliminated from the Champions League. It hosted both legs of the Chelsea-Porto quarterfinal because of travel restrictions between England and Portugal.

The games in Bilbao would have taken place at Athletic Bilbao’s San Mamés Stadium.

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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Tales Azzoni on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tazzoni

Meituan raises $10 bln for self-driving cars, drone delivery

HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese food delivery giant Meituan raised nearly $10 billion in a sale of convertible bonds and additional shares and plans to invest those funds in developing and expanding delivery technologies.

The Beijing-based firm, China’s largest food delivery platform, said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange that it sold 187 million additional shares in a top-up placement at 273.80 Hong Kong dollars each, raising about $6.6 billion.

The company also raised nearly $3 billion in two tranches of convertible bonds, and an additional $400 million by selling more shares to Tencent Holdings, its largest shareholder, it said.

Over the past year Meituan has invested aggressively in grocery retail and community group-buying as it competes with rivals like Alibaba and Pinduoduo in these hotly-contested sectors.

Meituan has a market valuation of about $217 billion. It said it plans to spend the money it raised on research and development of self-driving vehicles, drones delivery and other technology.

In community group-buying, consumers living in the same neighborhood can band together to buy groceries or other items in bulk to obtain a discount. The model is especially popular in smaller Chinese cities and is attractive to e-commerce companies as they can save on delivery and storage costs when it comes to bulk purchases.

Aggressive investments to gain market share in these new sectors of e-commerce have come at a cost. Meituan’s fourth-quarter profits last year sank 250%, with a net loss of 2.2 billion yuan ($330 million).

Ratings agencies Moody’s, S&P and Fitch lowered their ratings on Meituan following those results, citing lower profitability amid heavy investments.

The demand for Meituan’s shares and bonds underscores strong appetite for technology stocks among investors even as Beijing cracks down on the internet sector over anti-monopoly concerns.

Earlier this month, Beijing slapped China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding with a record $2.8 billion fine for antimonopoly behavior, while various other companies, including Tencent and Baidu, were fined for failing to disclose takeovers or investments in other companies.

Latin American leaders seek more vaccines at Andorra summit

MADRID (AP) — Representatives of 22 countries from Latin America and Europe’s Iberian Peninsula, in their first, mostly virtual meeting since the pandemic started, called for more equitable access to coronavirus vaccines and flexible funding for their economic recovery.

Frictions emerged over the participation of Venezuela’s government in the Iberoamerican Summit hosted Wednesday by the tiny mountainous nation of Andorra, which lies between Spain and France in the Pyrenees mountain range.

But the countries spoke with one voice assessing the crisis provoked by the virus outbreaks on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, calling for unity in overcoming economic and health challenges ahead.

Many of the leaders were critical of global mechanisms for vaccine distribution that have brought to the Latin American region of 640 million just about 8% of the doses distributed across the world, most of them to a handful of countries. That’s despite the disproportionate impact of the pandemic in the region, which accounts for nearly 30% of confirmed global COVID-19 deaths.

Calling for a suspension of vaccine and drug patents, Bolivia’s President Luis Arce called for a reshuffle of “international standards that protect the hegemonic pharmaceutical industry at the expense of billions of human beings.” Argentina’s Alberto Fernández said that patent protection should be guaranteed but that temporary licenses should be issued for increasing jab production.

“Intellectual property rights should help rather than getting on our way,” said Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, one of the few leaders who attended the summit in person. Sánchez announced that his government will donate a minimum of 7.5 million vaccine doses for Latin American and Caribbean countries through the U.N.-sponsored COVAX mechanism for lower-income countries. The Spanish leader said that the donation won’t happen until Spain vaccinates at least half of its adult population, which under the current rollout speed would be July.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he was alarmed by the unequal distribution of vaccines.

“If this dangerous trend of vaccine nationalism and parallel deals continues, vaccination in developing countries could take years, delaying, even more, the world’s recovery,” Guterres told the leaders. “The vaccination campaign is the main moral challenge of our times.”

The summit’s final declaration didn’t include any reference to vaccine patents. Instead, the leaders urged the international community and big pharma to “face the pandemic in a more equitable way and with solidarity” and to provide “universal access at affordable costs” of vaccines and drugs against COVID-19.

The meeting normally takes place every two years. It was due to be held last year but was delayed in the hope of gathering the heads of state and government of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries in person. A recent surge in virus infections across the world has finally resulted in most leaders attending via video conference.

Nicaragua and Venezuela informed organizers at the very last minute that their presidents would not participate, joining the leaders of Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay and El Salvador, which instead sent their deputies or lower-ranking officials.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who has been recently appointed First Secretary of Cuba’s Communist Party, denounced the sanctions that the United States has imposed on both his country and neighboring Venezuela, adding that Washington had increased enforcement at a difficult time of health emergency.

Various country representatives —including those of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay— criticized Venezuela’s presence at the summit and called for Nicolás Maduro to step down and pave the way for elections in the troubled country.

Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez responded saying that “those who speak about democracy should respect the sacred will of the Venezuelan people.”

Archives for April 2021

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