News Headlines - 15 April 2020
▽Experts warn 400,000 coronavirus deaths in Japan | NHK WORLD
The health ministry set up the team to help halt the spread of the virus. They reported their estimate on Wednesday.
They say the number of seriously ill patients would peak about 60 days after the infection starts to expand, if no social distancing measures are taken.
At the peak, 200,000 people aged 15 to 64, and 650,000 people aged 65 or older would be in serious condition. In total, 850,000 patients would need ventilators.
The team says half of them would likely die because of a shortage of ventilators, based on a study from China that showed a similar fatality rate.
▽TV Asahi anchor Yuta Tomikawa positive for coronavirus | The Japan Times
Yuta Tomikawa, a main anchor of TV Asahi Corp.’s “Hodo Station” evening news program, has been infected with the novel coronavirus, the broadcaster said Sunday... According to the broadcaster, Tomikawa complained of sickness after he last appeared on the show Thursday. He was hospitalized Friday, and tested positive for the coronavirus in a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test he took the following day after showing signs of pneumonia.
As Japan's novel coronavirus infections surge and its health-care system stands on the brink of collapse, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has an added concern: its image.
An emergency economic relief package unveiled last week earmarked $22 million for the foreign ministry “to dispel negative perceptions of Japan related to infectious diseases,” and to strengthen communications about the situation in Japan - over the Internet and through its embassies.
Artificial intelligence will also be harnessed to monitor social media and see what is being said about Japan abroad. This will give the Foreign Ministry a chance to respond to “wrong information,” the Mainichi newspaper reported.
▽Locust invasion creates food crisis for 1 million Ethiopians | Al Jazeera
Some one million people in Ethiopia require emergency food aid after swarms of desert locusts damaged 200,000 hectares (half a million acres) of cropland in a region already struggling with food security, the United Nations has said.
The announcement on Monday from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which recently concluded a joint assessment with the Ethiopian government, came as parts of East Africa are bracing for new swarms that could be even more devastating.
Billions of desert locusts, some in swarms the size of Moscow, have already chomped their way through much of the region, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda.
▽Three new Ebola cases detected in Democratic Republic of the Congo | New Scientist
Fresh cases of Ebola have been detected just days before the deadly epidemic in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was to be declared over.
The Ministry of Health on Friday confirmed the death from Ebola of a 26-year-old man in the city of Beni in North Kivu province. An 11-month-old girl treated at the same health centre also died, it was announced on Sunday, and a 7-year-old girl is currently being treated for the virus.
It marks a significant blow for the Central African country, which had previously recorded its last Ebola case on 17 February and was on the verge of ending an outbreak that has killed more than 2200 people since August 2018.
