anna maria: March 2020

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Monday, March 30, 2020

FILE - People walk along the main pedestrian shopping street in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday, March 25, 2020. The streets of Stockholm are quiet but not deserted. After a long, dark Scandinavian winter, the coronavirus pandemic is not keeping Swedes at home even while citizens in many parts of the world are sheltering in place and won't find shops or restaurants open on the few occasions they are permitted to venture out. (AP Photo/David Keyton, File)

Amazon's headquarters in Seattle

Amazon's headquarters in Seattle was virtually empty on March 10. Amazon recommended employees there to work from home.

John Moore/Getty Images

Deserted Seattle Times Newsroom

The Seattle Times' newsroom is empty on March 12. Employees have been working remotely.

Bondi Beach Closed

A single sunbather remains following the closure of Sydney's Bondi Beach on March 21.

Loren Elliott/Reuters

Making scrubs for NHS staff in Northern Ireland

A worker wears a protective face mask as she makes scrubs for front-line National Health Service staff in O'Neills sportswear factory in Strabane, Northern Ireland. PAUL FAITH / AFP

Homeless man looks for money in Trafalgar Square Fountain

London, UK

Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

Barriers still up in Wuhan

Separating neighbours and blocking shuttered shops, the roughly two-metre tall plastic barriers are a common sight in the car-manufacturing city of 11 million people which was locked down and forced into mass quarantine in late January.

Workers repair barriers, which have been built to block buildings from a street in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicentre of China's coronavirus outbreak. REUTERS/Aly Song

A woman wearing a face mask passes eggs above the barriers, which have been built to block buildings from a street in Wuhan, Hubei province. REUTERS/Aly Song

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Australian Emergency Notice

Australian Emergency Notice

If you feel unwell, have a fever or sore throat please do not go to the medical centre or hospital, contact the communicable disease control branch directly. There will be a doctor who will visit your place or residence and do a check on you, it will be free of charge.

Contact Numbers by State

WA: 08 9222 8588

ACT 02 6205 2155

NSW 1300 066 055

NT 08 8922 8044

QLD 13 432 584

SA 1300 232 272

TAS 1800 671 738

VIC 1300 651 160

Drug trial in Norway and Spain underway

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO)

Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg via Getty Images

The first patients in a “historic” drug trial to test treatments for the coronavirus have been enrolled in Norway and Spain, World Health Organization officials announced Friday.

World health officials are testing four of the most promising drugs to fight COVID-19, including malaria medications chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, an antiviral compound called Remdesivir, a combination of HIV drugs Lopinavir and Ritonavir and a combination of those drugs plus interferon-beta.

Exhibition Centre in London transformed into 4000 bed hospital

ExCeL (Exhibition Centre London) is an exhibitions and international convention centre in Custom House area of Canning Town, East London.

Beds are being set up inside London’s ExCel Centre as the Army helps transform it into a 4,000 bed coronavirus field hospital.

Recalled masks imported from China

Medical personnel transfer an Intensive care patient to a Mobile Intensive Care Unit vehicle in Breda, The Netherlands.PHOTO: EPA-EFE

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Dutch officials have recalled tens of thousands of masks imported from China and distributed to hospitals battling the coronavirus outbreak because they do not meet quality standards, the health ministry said on Saturday (March 28).

Spain Nationalizes all private hospitals

Spain has nationalized all of its private hospitals as the country goes into coronavirus lockdown

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/coronavirus-spain-nationalises-private-hospitals-emergency-covid-19-lockdown-2020-3?r=US&IR=T

Ireland Nationalises Private Hospitals

Minister for Health Simon Harris at a news conference at Government Buildings in Dublin on March 24 where he announced Ireland will nationalize its healthcare system for the duration of the coronavirus outbreak. (Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images)

The news that Ireland is nationalizing its healthcare system for the duration of the coronavirus crisis inspired observers including Rep. Ilhan Omar to call for the same approach in the U.S. as the world's largest economy faces the disease.

"For the duration of this crisis the State will take control of all private hospital facilities and manage all of the resources for the common benefit of all of our people," Ireland's Health Minister Simon Harris announced Tuesday.

"There can be no room for public versus private when it comes to pandemic."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/26/ireland-nationalizes-hospitals-duration-coronavirus

Tom Hanks and wife now back home

If they can do it, so can we.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Peacock Butterfly

A peacock butterfly gathers pollen on a blooming branch of an apricot tree, near Pristina, Kosovo.

Photograph: Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images

Pints to Go in Dublin

PINTS TO GO:

Graingers at Hanlon's Corner on North Circular Road, Dublin, are doing a brisk trade in take-away pints of beer. Pictured are brothers Ross and John Murray heading home with their take away. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

President Trump signs Coronavirus Stimulus Bill

President Trump Signs Coronavirus Stimulus Bill In The Oval Office

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 27: Vice President Mike Pence speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a bill signing ceremony for H.R. 748, the CARES Act in the Oval Office of the White House on March 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Earlier on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the $2 trillion stimulus bill that lawmakers hope will battle the the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

Blood donations in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - MARCH 27: Ken Muller of Nevada donates blood during an American Red Cross blood drive to help alleviate a blood supply shortage as a result of the coronavirus pandemic at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 27, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The speedway plans to hold a total of four blood drives due to a lack of donated blood and facilities large enough to collect it while observing social distancing guidelines. Many blood drives across the United States have been canceled as a result of the spread of the virus. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic on March 11th.

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy

A member of the medical staff in a protective suit is seen in front of a patient diagnosed with coronavirus disease in an intensive care unit at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, Italy.

Nitmiluk National Park, Katherine Gorge, Northern Territory

Credit: jodibilske_photographics

Uluru, NT, Australia

Uluru Credit: ally.and.matt

Earlier this week we returned back home across the border to WA putting the rest of our trip around Australia on indefinite hold.

Bear bile to treat coronavirus cases

A black bear at Chengdu zoo in Sichuan province, China. The Chinese government is said to have recommended an injection containing bear bile to treat severe and critical coronavirus cases.

Photograph: Wang Lei/China News Service/Getty Images

Covid-19 could be harmful to gorillas

A mountain gorilla in the Virunga national park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). WWF-UK has welcomed decisions to close protected areas for mountain gorillas to eco-tourism during the pandemic. Cath Lawson, the Africa conservation manager, said: ‘Mountain gorillas are known to be susceptible to other human respiratory illnesses, so we have to assume that they are susceptible to the virus which causes the disease Covid-19 in humans. That means that right now, minimising human-mountain gorilla interaction, and the opportunity for disease transmission, is the priority.’

Photograph: Sabrina Schumann/WWF-UK

Fremantle, Australia

Fremantle, Australia

Members of the Port Beach Polar Bears club enjoy their daily swim

Photograph: Tony Ashby/AFP/Getty Images

Friday, March 27, 2020

Pisa, Italy

The deserted Piazza dei Miracoli

Photograph: Fabio Muzzi/Guardia di Finanza /EPA

Doctors not covered for COVID-19

Doctors would not be covered for COVID-19 death under TAL's leaked insurance policy.

One of Australia's biggest life insurers has moved to cut off payouts to customers who die from COVID-19, including frontline doctors fighting the deadly virus.

TAL, which is owned by the Japanese insurance giant Dai-ichi Life and has almost 4 million Australian customers, declined requests for an interview but in a statement said the exclusion had so far been inserted in "only a very small number of new customer policies".

Great Wall of China Reopens

REOPENED WALL: Tourists wearing protective face masks walk at an almost empty Badaling Great Wall, in Beijing, China on March 26th. China has reopened Badaling section, one of the most popular tourists section of The Great Wall which was closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. While the new cases of Covid-19 in China has plummeted, the disease now is spreading dramatically around the world. It has so far killed more than 22,000 people worldwide. Photograph: Roaman Pilipey/EPA

Northern Ireland

PRODUCTION: A worker wears a protective face mask as she makes scrubs for front-line National Health Service (NHS) staff in O'Neills sportswear factory in Strabane in Northern Ireland on March 26th. The company, which had laid off its workforce due to the coronavirus outbreak, has now brought staff back to make hospital scrubs for health workers in Northern Ireland. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP via Getty

PM Scott Morrison Attends G20 Virtual Summit

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 26: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (centre, L) takes part in an unusual G20 Leaders’ Summit to discuss the international coronavirus crisis on March 26, 2020 in Canberra, Australia. The emergency G20 virtual summit was convened for world G20 leaders to discuss the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The teleconference took place at Parliament House in Canberra and included DFAT Frances Adamson, Dr John Kunkel, Prime Minister, Simon Duggan and Philip Gaetjens, as well as the Australian Prime Minister, during the conference. (Photo by Gary Ramage - Pool/Getty Images)