Skip to main content

New story in Health from Time: Ukrainians Hurl Stones at China Evacuees En Route to Quarantine Amid Coronavirus Fears



(NOVI SANZHARY, Ukraine) — Ukraine’s effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak plunged into chaos Thursday as local residents opposing the move hurled stones at the evacuees and engaged in violent clashes with police.

Buses carrying evacuees were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, were peeking through bus windows as they drove slowly under a heavy police escort.

Protesters hurled stones at the buses and shattered a window in one of them, but the evacuees appeared unhurt.

Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine’s central Poltava region had cut the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing they could become infected. Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tires and clashed with riot police who moved to clear access. One protester tried to ram into police lines with his car.

Nine police and one civilian were hospitalized, the regional police said in a statement.

More than 10 protesters were detained, and Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov personally visited the site of the protests to try to calm the crowd down.

Avakov urged the protesters “not to fall for provocations and be understanding of the necessity for these temporary measures.”

“The situation is rather heated,” Poltava regional police spokesman Yuri Sulayev said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky weighed in, saying the protests showed “not the best side of our character.” He tried to reassure people that the quarantined evacuees wouldn’t pose any danger to local residents.

In a statement published on his Facebook page, Zelensky said the people evacuated from China are healthy and will live in a closed medical center run by the National Guard in the village as a precaution.

“In the next two weeks it will probably be the most guarded facility in the country,” Zelensky said.

But municipal legislators in the village vowed to continue opposing the evacuation, saying that the sanitarium’s sewage system is linked to the one in the village and ends up in a nearby wastewater facility.

“We can’t allow putting the health and life of local residents at risk, and demand that top officials take urgent moves to prevent people from China from being put here,” they said in a statement.

Amid the clashes between local residents and police, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said he will immediately fly to the site to personally oversee things.

In the early hours of Thursday, a plane with 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreign nationals took off from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak that has infected more than 75,000 people worldwide and killed over 2,100.

Those evacuated included people from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama and other countries.

Argentina’s Foreign Ministry thanked Ukraine for its “generosity” and China for its collaboration in a statement.

The plane stopped in Kazakhstan to drop off Kazakh passengers. Later, it sought to land in Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine, but could not due to bad weather conditions.

Instead it flew to Kyiv to refuel, and eventually arrived in Kharkiv.

Also Thursday, the Russian Embassy in Japan said that two more Russians aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Japan have been diagnosed with the virus. That raises to three the number of Russians on the ship confirmed to have the virus.

The two will be transferred to a hospital in Japan for treatment, according to the embassy.

In Slovenia, authorities said two of six Slovenian citizens who were on the cruise ship have been hospitalized in Japan after testing positive for the virus. The four others have tested negative. Two of them have arrived back in Slovenia and will be quarantined at home for two weeks.

The Diamond Princess has been docked in the Yokohama port near Tokyo since Feb. 4, when 10 people on board tested positive for the virus. So far 621 cases of the disease, which has been named COVID-19, have been confirmed among the the Diamond Princess’s original 3,711 people on board.

Russia so far has reported only two cases of the disease on its soil. Two Chinese nationals diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized in two different regions of Siberia in late January have recovered and have been released from hospitals.

___

Yuras Karmanau reported from Minsk, Belarus. Associated Press writers Daria Litvinova and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed reporting.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: Here’s How Quickly Coronavirus Is Spreading in Your State

The novel coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis, a national emergency and a local nightmare. But while a great deal of the focus in the U.S. has been on the federal government’s response, widely criticized as slow and halting , the picture on the ground remains very different in different parts of the country. A TIME analysis of the per capita spread of the epidemic in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. found considerable range in the rate of contagion, and, in some parts of the country, a significant disparity compared to the national figure. The U.S., unlike nations such as South Korea and now Italy , has yet to show signs of bringing the runaway spread of the virus under control. However, while no single state is yet showing strong signs of bending the curve , some are faring much worse than others. The following graphic plots the rise in the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in each state, plotted by the day that each state reported its first case.
Read more

New story in Health from Time: We Need to Take Care of the Growing Number of Long-term COVID-19 Patients

On July 7, 2020, the Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez tested positive for the new coronavirus. He was scheduled to start Opening Day for the Sox, but the virus had other plans— damaging Rodriguez’s heart and causing a condition called myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). Now the previously fit 27-year old ace left-hander must sit out the 2020 season to recover. Rodriguez is not alone in having heart damage from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In a new study done in Germany, researchers studied the hearts of 100 patients who had recently recovered from COVID-19. The findings were alarming: 78 patients had heart abnormalities, as shown by a special kind of imaging test that shows the heart’s structure (a cardiac MRI), and 60 had myocarditis. These patients were mostly young and previously healthy . Several had just returned from ski trips. While other studies have shown a lower rate of heart problems—for example, a study of 416 patients hosp
Read more

New story in Health from Time: U.S. Inmates ‘Mistakenly’ Received COVID-19 Stimulus Checks. Now, the IRS Wants That Money Back

(BOISE, Idaho) — Hundreds of thousands of dollars in coronavirus relief payments have been sent to people incarcerated across the United States, and now the IRS is asking state officials to help claw back the cash that the federal tax agency says was mistakenly sent. The legislation authorizing the payments during the pandemic doesn’t specifically exclude jail or prison inmates, and the IRS has refused to say exactly what legal authority it has to retrieve the money. On its website, it points to the unrelated Social Security Act, which bars incarcerated people from receiving some types of old-age and survivor insurance benefit payments. “I can’t give you the legal basis. All I can tell you is this is the language the Treasury and ourselves have been using,” IRS spokesman Eric Smith said. “It’s just the same list as in the Social Security Act.” Read more: ‘A Double Whammy.’ Those Who Most Need The $1,200 Stimulus Checks May Wait the Longest To Get Them Tax attorney Kell
Read more