Leaked Western intel dossier reveals how China deceived the world about coronavirus

Article written by Nick Givas, Samuel Chamberlain of "Fox News":

A research dossier compiled by the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance states that China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of lives around the world.

The 15-page document from the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was obtained by Australia's Saturday Telegraph newspaper and states that China's secrecy amounted to an “assault on international transparency."

The dossier touches on themes that have been discussed in media reports about the outbreak of the virus, including an initial denial by China that the virus could be transmitted between humans, the silencing or "disappearing" of doctors who tried to speak up, the destruction of evidence in laboratories and refusal to provide live samples to international scientists working on a vaccine.

Specifically, the file notes that China began censoring news of the virus on search engines and social media beginning Dec. 31, deleting terms including “SARS variation," “Wuhan Seafood market” and “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.”

Three days later, on Jan. 3, China’s National Health Commission ordered virus samples to be either moved to designated testing facilities or destroyed, while simultaneously issuing a "no-publication order" related to the disease.

The Saturday Telegraph report includes a timeline of Chinese obfuscation. On Jan. 5, for example, Wuhan's Municipal Health Commission stopped releasing daily updates on the number of new cases and would not resume them for 13 days. On Jan. 10, Wang Guanga, a respiratory specialist at Peking University First Hospital who had been investigating the outbreak, said it was "under control" and largely a "mild condition." (Wang himself would disclose 12 days later that he had been infected with the virus.)

Two days later, on Jan. 12, a Shanghai professor's lab was closed down after it shared data on the virus' genetic sequence with the outside world. On Jan. 24, Chinese officials stopped the Wuhan Institute of Virology from sharing virus samples with a lab at the University of Texas.

Perhaps most damningly, the dossier states that Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be spread between humans until Jan. 20, "despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December."

The file is similarly unsparing about the World Health Organization (WHO), stating that it toed the Chinese line about human-to-human transmission despite the fact that "officials in Taiwan raised concerns as early as December 31, as did experts in Hong Kong on January 4.”

As of Friday night, the WHO's official Twitter account still featured a tweet from Jan. 14 that stated: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China."

World Health Organization (WHO) ✔ @WHO

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China


The dossier goes on to state that throughout February, "Beijing [pressed] the US [sic], Italy, India, Australia, Southeast Asian neighbours [sic] and others not to protect themselves via travel restrictions, even as [China] impose[d] severe restrictions at home."

At the same time, the file states: "Millions of people [left] Wuhan after the outbreak and before Beijing lock[ed] down the city on January 23."

The dossier continues with a litany of Chinese defensiveness, stating: “As EU [European Union] diplomats prepare a report on the pandemic, [China] successfully presses Brussels to strike language on [China] disinformation."

Similarly, “As Australia calls for an independent inquiry into the pandemic, [China] threatens to cut off trade with Australia. [China] has likewise responded furiously to US [sic] calls for transparency.”

The Saturday Telegraph report does present one apparent point of divergence between the allied governments, with Australia believing the coronavirus most likely originated in the Wuhan wet market and putting the chances it accidentally leaked from a lab at "5 percent."

By contrast, Fox News reported April 15 that U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly confident that coronavirus likely originated in a Wuhan lab as a consequence of China's attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.

President Trump said Thursday that he's seen evidence suggesting the virus came from a lab after Fox News and others asked if he knew of anything that gave him confidence that the outbreak originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"Yes, I have," he replied, "And, I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China."

Multiple sources previously told Fox News that it is believed standards in Wuhan were disregarded before the virus leaked, prompting Beijing to initiate a cover-up. Sources also claimed the WHO was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.

The WHO and China have denied any wrongdoing.

The Saturday Telegraph also reported that key figures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology previously worked or trained in Australian government labs where they conducted research on pathogens in live bats as part of an ongoing partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the dossier, the team's work at the Wuhan lab involved discovering samples of coronavirus within a cave in Yunnan province and synthesizing a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be cured.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/new-dossier-condemns-china-for-destroying-evidence-of-covid-19-outbreak

1 officer dead, 1 injured following helicopter crash in Texas

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:20 AM PT — Saturday, May 2, 2020

A Texas city is mourning the loss of a tactical police officer following a helicopter crash.
The pilot and the Officer Jason Knox crashed into part of an apartment complex in Houston on Saturday. They were reportedly responding to a call about bodies floating in a bayou.
According to authorities, the pilot was able to avoid all residential buildings and no civilians were injured.
The victims were pulled from the wreckage and airlifted to the hospital in critical condition.
 “The pilot and the copilot were trapped in the wreckage for an extended period of time. HFB, Houston Fire Department assets responded to the scene and worked feverishly to cut the pilots out. They literally had to cut the pilots out of the wreckage.” – Chief Art Acevedo, Houston Police Department
 Officers have said it is unclear what caused the helicopter to go down. The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.

 https://www.oann.com/1-officer-dead-1-injured-following-helicopter-crash-in-texas/

COVID-19 has revealed an abyss between friends and neighbors, right and left, freedom-lovers and authoritarians

 
Article by Patricia McCarthy in "The American Thinker":

"People do not change, they are merely revealed." —Anne Enright 

As these state lockdowns are arbitrarily extended at the whims of certain Democrat governors, we are all discovering previously unknown personality traits of our friends, neighbors, and local politicians that we might never have learned of had it not been for this particular flu.

Most cities these days have online neighborhood sites where people post relevant facts or questions close to home: coyote sightings, lost pets, furniture for sale, etc.  But now?  Whew!  Things have changed.  Now we are seeing something else: the stark reality of how our local friends and neighbors think and operate.

Most of us don't bother to wonder to which political party the people who walk by our homes, or whom we see in our markets, libraries, or schools, belong.  But based on what's seen in these neighborhood bulletin boards and discussion groups, many are revealing their inner police-state tendencies.  Day after day, these neighborhood sites are chock-full of complaints about "people walking without masks" or exercising in a park too close to others.  These online complainants rage against all the inconsiderate people who are not "following the rules."  They get responses like "Call the police."  One might think they were all brought up in Ceaușescu's Romania, where even children were taught to report their own parents' verbal deviations from the party line. 

New Jersey is using drones with loudspeakers to harass people deemed too close to one another from the air above them.  As Dennis Prager wrote the other day, this is a dress rehearsal for a police state.  And millions of Americans are taking it lying down!

This is why seeing those SoCal beachgoers fighting Gov. Gavin Newsom's orders to close the beaches is such a relief.  All Americans need to remember how and why this country came into being.  It was not to be treated like subjects of minor dictators.  We should all remember that these governor-ordered rules do not, cannot have the force of law.  It seems that too few Americans have a clue about the constitutional rights they have long taken for granted: speech, assembly, religion.  Suddenly, they are giving them up without a fight.

Probably in all states, we can see people alone in their cars wearing a mask!  What are they thinking?  That the virus can somehow breach their closed windows if they drive by an infected person?  So cheers to all those Southern Californians who have ignored Newsom's ridiculous politically motivated beach closures.  If Newsom had being paying attention, he would know by now that being outdoors in the sunlight is the best disinfectant.

President Trump is a genius for leaving these things to the governors.  He clearly knew full well that the dumbest among them would overreach.  Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan has become a national joke, but she is still doubling down.  Her citizens can row in a canoe but not be in a motorboat!  Other Democrat governors are imposing restrictions on their citizens' essential freedoms that have no basis in the science they all claim to be using to validate these impediments on our daily lives.  New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of the outbreak there has been the worst by far.  New York was tragically unprepared, and Cuomo's every step to address the crisis was disastrous.  New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio has been a disaster as well.  Both of them were encouraging New Yorkers to "go about their lives" until late in February.  Everything that went right in New York was thanks to President Trump.  But they both began blaming Trump for their own failures.  Cuomo is largely responsible for the huge numbers of deaths in the nursing homes; it was on his watch that the state ordered these homes for the vulnerable to accept COVID-19-positive patients.  He also cut the subway runs in half, making them twice as crowded.  His judgment has been so poor that he will never be a viable presidential candidate.  Never.

Heather Mac Donald wrote the must-read piece of the week, "The paranoid style in COVID-19 America," in which she tells of early-morning cyclists and runners in New York's Central Park who are whizzing by masked!  How on Earth have so many freedom-loving Americans become so terrified of a politically charged virus that they are not even questioning the sudden repeal of their basic rights?  Mac Donald references Japan, which did not shutter its economy but employed a guideline: avoid the three Cs — confined places, crowded places, and close contact.  Japan, a nation of 126.5 million, with a very large proportion of elderly people, has had only 360 deaths. 

It should be clear to all Americans by now that this lockdown, perhaps initially understandable, given the outrageous numbers of the first models used by Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, has been a colossal mistake.  Once it became clear that those models were fallacious, everyone should have relaxed. Our hospitals have not been overrun except briefly in NY and even there all the beds and ventilators Cuomo claimed he needed were not necessary. No one has died for lack of a ventilator. Hydroxychloroquine works and now it seems Remdesivir can do the same, speeding up recovery from the disease. There are numerous vaccine trials already underway. It is a bad flu, but all things considered, the worst is over. The deaths have significantly been among the elderly with one or more co-morbidities, which does not make them any less tragic, but we are all on borrowed time from the moment we are born, far more dangerous are the pandemics and epidemics which target the young and healthy as some do.

From Heather Mac Donald's article:

"The average death rate from coronavirus in New York City is 128 per 100,000. In New York State, it is 71 per 100,000. To put those numbers in perspective, the national death rate for all causes was 723.6 per 100,000 in 2018; for heart disease it was 163.6 per 100,000. New York's coronavirus death rates bear no resemblance to the country at large, despite New York governor Andrew Cuomo's recent pronouncement that 'an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere'. California's coronavirus death rate is four deaths per 100,000; Pennsylvania's, 13 deaths per 100,000; Utah's, one death per 100,000; Washington State's, nine deaths per 100,000; Wisconsin's, four deaths per 100,000; Georgia's, which we are supposed to believe is about to unleash a mortal plague upon the country, eight deaths per 100,000; Texas's, two deaths per 100,000; and Florida's, four deaths per 100,000, despite its elderly population. An MSNBC pundit gleefully predicted several weeks ago that Missouri would succumb because it had not halted its economy soon enough. Its virus death rate stands at four deaths per 100,000."

The impact of the virus varies vastly throughout the country which is why Trump wisely left ending the lockdown to the governors. For three and a half years the left has called Trump a Hitler, a Mussolini, a dictator and of course he is nothing of the kind. Now they are apoplectic that he has refused to dictate an extended national shutdown when it is clear that is not necessary. He is reminding people what federalism actually is and why it is an integral part of our Constitution. He is abiding by it to the eternal frustration of the totalitarian left that believes that if one person suffers, everyone must suffer.

Our nation has been thoroughly enervated by this cult of "safetyism," the silly notion that we can and should all be safe at all times, both physically and mentally. This is what our kids are being taught in universities. Our ancestors are spinning in their graves. All those angry snitches raging against every person not sufficiently cowed by this flu are rather pathetic. They self-righteously report their neighbors, want to see them punished while they are only punishing themselves and exposing themselves as the authoritarian scaredy-cats they are. It is probably safe to assume that most of these watchdog informants, these cowards and snitches, are Democrats and most of those showing up at SoCal beaches are Republicans. It is also likely that many of those locked-down Democrats in Michigan, New Jersey, Maine California and elsewhere will be Republicans by November. Even nominal Democrats don't want to be under house arrest for any extended period of time for no reason.

"The secret to happiness is freedom… And the secret to freedom is courage." --Thucydides

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/covid19_has_revealed_an_abyss_between_friends_and_neighbors_right_and_left_freedom_lovers_and_authoritarians.html#ixzz6LIPXEyUq

As World Economic Crisis Worsens, Societies Begin to Fall Apart

 
Article by Rick Moran in "PJMedia":

The unprecedented world economic crisis will inevitably lead to social chaos and the breakdown of law and order and unknown consequences.

Lest you think this is an exaggeration, look at what’s happening in Lebanon.

Times of Israel:

Demonstrators in northern Lebanon have attacked banks and clashed with security forces for three consecutive nights, re-energizing a protest movement launched in October against a political class the activists deem inept and corrupt.
The government unanimously approved the economic plan after minor amendments, the presidency said on Twitter following a cabinet meeting in the presidential palace in Baabda.
Details were unclear but Prime Minister Hassan Diab was expected to reveal more during an address to the nation at 5:30 pm (1430 GMT).

President Michel Aoun called it a “historic day” for Lebanon.

Lebanon was in dire straits before the pandemic hit, with a serious economic crisis, rampant corruption, and political instability. But there are dozens of countries around the world where the same could be said of conditions prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the recession/depression promises to deepen considerably, debtor nations will be holding out their hands for huge bailouts from the international community.

Among the first in line will be Lebanon, where almost a year of having no elected government and corruption tearing at the fabric of the country has reduced people to begging in the streets for food.

Reuters:

A rapid slide in the Lebanese pound, which has lost more than half its value since October, has sparked renewed unrest, with a demonstrator killed in riots targeting banks that have frozen savers out of U.S. dollar deposits.
Beirut hopes that with an IMF programme in hand, foreign donors will release about $11 billion pledged at a Paris conference in 2018 which was tied to long-stalled reforms.
“Implementation is the hard bit, and Lebanon has consistently failed on this. Progress will only be possible with that, on the basis of greater political and public consensus,” a Western diplomat told Reuters.

Africa, the Middle East, developing nations in Asia — all will be vulnerable to large-scale social upheaval and disruption because the pandemic has exposed their massive weaknesses. Civil society hangs by a thread in many countries anyway and with world economic growth entering negative territory, the basic needs of people to eat and find shelter will not be met.

With mass unemployment, commodity prices bottoming out, unsustainable sovereign debt levels, adding deflation to that toxic brew would be a killer:

World Economic Forum:

A third issue is the growing risk of deflation. In addition to causing a deep recession, the crisis is also creating a massive slack in goods (unused machines and capacity) and labor markets (mass unemployment), as well as driving a price collapse in commodities such as oil and industrial metals. That makes debt deflation likely, increasing the risk of insolvency.

During an economic crisis, the doomsayers get a lot of attention, but it usually turns out they overstated the crisis or missed the boat entirely. This time, they may be understating what might happen. The world was already massively overextended and steeped in political crisis.

It’s going to be a very rough few years to come.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/01/as-world-economic-crisis-worsens-societies-begin-to-fall-apart-n387379

University of Texas Being Probed for Ties to Wuhan Lab In Question Over Coronavirus

Article written by Nick Arama in "RedState":

There’s a pretty troubling story breaking about the University of Texas System and the Wuhan lab that has been the focus of such attention over the coronavirus.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a suspect in the hunt for the origin of the virus. The U.S. intel community has said that while they do not believe that the virus was created there, they believe it’s possible it may have originated there as a result of an accident.

It’s now gone around the world infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands.

The troubling news is that the Department of Education is now looking into the University of Texas’s dealings with that lab.

Federal investigators have asked the UT system to hand over any documents related to the lab or researcher She Zhengli, the “bat lady,” know for specializing in bats to ferret out any connections to the Chinese government.

Reed Rubinstein, the Education Department’s acting general counsel, sent a seven-page letter to University of Texas Chancellor James Milliken on April 24, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, with the government saying it did not have confidence that the school had reported all of its foreign contracts, including with the Wuhan lab, as required by Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965.
The letter said the University of Texas’s Medical Branch is responsible for the operation of the Galveston National Laboratory, which, in turn, has “substantial contractual relations” with a maximum biocontainment laboratory, or MCL, in Wuhan, China. That lab is owned by the Chinese government’s Chinese Academy of Sciences.

There are a ton of contracts and connections with China.

The Education Department noted that from 2014 through 2019, the University of Texas “reported approximately twenty-four contracts with various Chinese state-owned universities and ten contracts with Huawei Technologies, all purportedly worth a reported total of $12,987,896.” But “it is not clear, however, whether UT has in fact reported all gifts from or contracts with or relating to the Wuhan MCL, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and/or all other foreign sources, including agents and instrumentalities of the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China,” the agency said.
To verify the school’s compliance with the law, the government asked it to hand over within 30 days a tranche of China-related records from 2012 through the present, including copies of each donation agreement and contract reached by the University of Texas with the Wuhan lab or the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Education Department also asked for a complete list identifying anyone at the school who had been involved “in any capacity” with the Wuhan lab and asked the school to provide the contact information of those people.

This is part of a broader concern about how deep the Chinese government’s connections have delved into our systems and how problematic that can be. Universities have disclosed more than $6.5 billion in funding from foreign entities, some of which has come from countries, such as China, that are hostile to us.

We’ve already seen questions raised about National Institutes of Health Grant to a program to study coronavirus that had gone to EcoHealth Alliance, which provided some of that money to the Wuhan lab, that began in 2015.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has called a lot of this out but we need a comprehension assessment of any problematic connections to the Chinese government that are extant and we need to decouple our supply chains and any sensitive institutions from government influence. 

https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/05/01/university-of-texas-being-investigated-for-ties-to-wuhan-lab-suspected-in-coronavirus/

New report says coronavirus pandemic could last for two years – and may not subside until 70% of the population has immunity

Article written by Christopher Brito in "CBS News":

As coronavirus restrictions around the world are being lifted, a new report warns the pandemic that has already killed more than 230,000 people likely won't be contained for two years. The modeling study from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota also says that about 70% of people need to be immune in order to bring the virus to a halt. 

For the study, experts looked at eight major influenza pandemics dating back to the 1700s, as well as data about the new coronavirus, to help forecast how COVID-19 may spread over the coming months and years. Out of the eight past flu pandemics, scientists said seven had a second substantial peak about six months after the first one. Additionally, some had "smaller waves of cases over the course of 2 years" after the initial outbreak.  

A key factor in their prediction for the current pandemic revolves around herd immunity, which refers to the community-wide resistance to the spread of a contagious disease that results when a high percentage of people are immune to it, either through vaccination or prior exposure. 

"The length of the pandemic will likely be 18 to 24 months, as herd immunity gradually develops in the human population," the report says. "Given the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2" — the virus that causes COVID-19 — "60% to 70% of the population may need to be immune to reach a critical threshold of herd immunity to halt the pandemic."

It will take time to reach that point, since data from blood tests show only a small fraction of the overall population has been infected so far, and a possible vaccine is still months if not a year or more away. It is not yet clear whether people who've recovered from the infection will be immune or how long such protection would last.

The report lays out several possible scenarios, including one in which a larger wave of illnesses may happen in the fall or winter of 2020 and then subsequent smaller waves in 2021. The researchers say this model — similar to the pattern seen in the devastating 1918 Spanish flu pandemic — would "require the reinstitution of mitigation measures in the fall in an attempt to drive down spread of infection and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed." 

Two other scenarios in the report involve either recurring peaks and valleys of outbreaks, or smaller waves of illness over the next two years.

In any case, the researchers said people must be prepared for "at least another 18 to 24 months of significant COVID-19 activity, with hot spots popping up periodically" in different geographic areas.

As the virus continues to circulate among the human population and outbreaks finally start to wane, they say it will likely "synchronize to a seasonal pattern with diminished severity over time." 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-two-years-70-percent-immune/ 

 

Chinese Communists Demolish More Crosses on Christian Churches

Article written by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. in "Breitbart News":

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has torn down more crosses from Christian churches this month as part of its unrelenting crusade to eradicate the Christian symbol from the Chinese landscape.

On Easter Sunday, authorities ripped down the cross that used to surmount the tympanum of a church in the diocese of Xinxiang in Henan province. A blogger priest, Father Shanren Shenfu said that silence in the face of the destruction of crosses is part of the price to pay for the Vatican’s agreement with the CCP on the appointment of bishops in the country.

“Now when a cross is removed, Christians must be calm and smile,” Father Shenfu said. “Accepting the removal of the crosses as an everyday event therefore seems to be the only great contribution that the Chinese Catholic faithful and all the people of God can make to the continuation of the [Sino-Vatican] Agreement.”

“If you are angry about it, you are considered a criminal!” the priest said.

On April 18, authorities removed the cross from Our Lady of the Rosary church in the diocese of Anhui after parish leaders unsuccessfully petitioned local authorities for permission to carry out repairs on the building. Officials denied the permission, saying the plan is to remove all crosses from Christian churches in the area, both Catholic and Protestant.

On tearing down the cross, the local official told the parish representatives that he was acting on “directions from superiors,” UCA News reported this week. On April 18, the official brought in a team of young people to tear down the cross.

In a separate incident, authorities arrived at a church in Suzhou City in the same Anhui diocese at 4:00am on April 19 and removed the cross from that church as well.

Security forces oversaw the pre-dawn operation, making sure that people could not enter the church, gather outside, or take pictures of the demolition. Police seized the cell phone of a parishioner who tried to snap a picture.

Similarly, authorities removed the cross from a historic Christian church in Hefei on April 27. The Hefei Christian Church (HCC), Hefei city’s largest Christian church, was founded by American missionaries sent by Disciples of Christ to China in 1896.

HCC was the second victim of cross removal in Hefei city, after officials tore down the cross from the Feixi Sanhe Church on April 15.

Officials have removed hundreds of crosses from churches all across China in the CCP’s ongoing crackdown on religious practice. Some of the hardest hit dioceses have been those of the Zhejiang, Henan, Hebei, and Guizhou provinces.

“The same routine and tactics are used all across China,” said a priest from Anhui, identified only as Father Chen. “This is not the case of a particular diocese or province. It is happening all over the mainland, but the mainland church is silent.”

“If the churches don’t unite to resist, many more crosses will be removed,” the priest declared.

Reports suggest that church leaders often offer little resistance to the removal of crosses out of fear of losing the church building itself.

In 2015, the Chinese province of Zhejiang formally banned placing crosses on church rooftops after removing hundreds of rooftop crosses from Protestant and Catholic churches, in order to prevent leaders from restoring the Christian symbol to the top of buildings.

Government agencies stipulated that any crosses must be affixed to the façade of buildings rather than above the roof and may not measure more than one-tenth of the height of the façade.

Since early 2014, Zhejiang officials targeted the city of Wenzhou, known as China’s Jerusalem because it contains half of the province’s 4,000 churches. The city skyline used to teem with rooftop crosses prior to a systematic crackdown that sought to eradicate the symbol.

In its annual report for 2014, the U.S.-based China Aid group said that 1,000 churches had been stripped of their crosses had, with some 50 churches destroyed,.

“It appears that the scope of persecution may be wider than reported due to fear of reprisal from government authorities,” it said.

According to Christian leaders, the cross removal program was granted a brief respite this year while officials were occupied in battling the outbreak of the coronavirus but now that the virus seems to have been contained, authorities have once more trained their attention on churches.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/05/01/chinese-communists-demolish-more-crosses-on-christian-churches/ 

Coronavirus: Spain enjoys first exercise freedom for weeks

Spanish adults are jogging and cycling again for the first time after seven weeks of coronavirus lockdown.

The lockdown - one of Europe's strictest - was eased for children a week ago, yet the amount of outdoor exercise time remains limited.
There are now exercise slots for different age groups. Most adults can walk or play sports between 06:00 and 10:00, and between 20:00 and 23:00.
Spain's official death toll is 24,824, but the rate of fatalities has dropped.
Italy has Europe's highest death toll, followed by the UK and Spain.
In Barcelona, runners and cyclists crowded paths near the beach on Saturday, Reuters news agency reported.
In Madrid, residents voiced relief to be finally exercising outdoors. "Happy, we feel free!" Susana Piego told Reuters.
Jesus Gutierrez said "it's basic, for physical and mental health, it is basic to allow people to do sport"
Since 14 March people have only been allowed to leave the house to buy food or medicine, to go to work if working from home was not possible, or to briefly walk the dog.


Spaniards have made the most of the latest easing of the national lockdown, as they have taken to the streets in droves since early this morning.
The lifting of exercise restrictions for adults meant that thousands of joggers, walkers and cyclists were able to go out purely for leisure in Madrid and other cities, for the first time in seven weeks.
In many areas, the large numbers who took to the streets made it look almost like a normal Saturday morning, yet social distancing was observed and few cars were on the roads.
Other sports were also practised. In the southern province of Cádiz, surfers returned to the water this morning, although regular swimming remains prohibited.
Some, however, remain reluctant to venture out.
"I want to go out because it's a beautiful day," said Carmen Pérez, a 65-year-old in Madrid. "But I'm a bit scared of getting infected."

Until last week Spain was the only country in Europe where children under 14 could not leave home at all.
From 12:00 to 19:00 only children aged 14 and under are allowed to go outside, accompanied by an adult. The remaining slots are set aside for elderly and vulnerable people.
Teenagers aged 14 and above can go out for exercise once in one of the adult slots.

Lockdowns in other European countries are also being eased, though social distancing remains in force. Some countries require mask-wearing in shops and on public transport.
From Monday passengers travelling on Eurostar from the UK will have to wear a face mask or face covering, in line with guidelines from the French and Belgian governments.
Any type of mask is suitable, Eurostar says, as long as it effectively covers the nose and mouth. Those without masks may be refused travel.
Eurostar has drastically cut its services running between London, Paris and Brussels, with four trains running daily.
In Austria small shops reopened two weeks ago, but now all stores are permitted to start up business again. Hairdressers and beauty salons are also allowed to operate.
Hungary is allowing business travel from some countries.
And in Germany, churches, museums and playgrounds will open on Monday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52513516

Coronavirus: Scientists conclude people cannot be infected twice

A number of reported cases of coronavirus patients relapsing after overcoming the disease were actually due to testing failures, South Korean scientists say.
Researchers at the South Korean centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) now say it is impossible for the COVID-19 virus to reactivate in human bodies.

A total of 277 patients in the country were believed to have fallen ill for a second time, as had patients in China and Japan.
This prompted concerns that the virus could be mutating so quickly that people were not necessarily immune to catching it again.

However, genetic analyses of the virus have not found any substantial changes which would effectively disguise it from the immune system.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-scientists-conclude-people-cannot-be-infected-twice-11981721