BitGou: Friday Morning Briefing: Post-pandemic China

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Post-pandemic China
China is showing a more assertive face as it seeks to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, gearing up to impose new security laws on Hong Kong and using less conciliatory language in its desire to “reunify” with Taiwan. Such are the two big takeaways so far from the week-long National People’s Congress, itself delayed due to the outbreak.

Delegates traveling from across the country had multiple coronavirus tests, and media events and speeches have been moved online. While the 5,000 attendees wore masks, China’s top leaders - from President Xi Jinping down - did not. Nor was there any sign of social distancing with the delegates sitting side by side in rows as usual.

UK schools told: You decide
Faced with an almighty row about how and when to reopen its schools, the UK government has told establishments: You decide. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government wanted schools in England to reopen for some pupils from June 1 but the plans have been criticized by teaching unions and many local authorities, who say they will not be reopening institutions in their areas.

South Korea’s turbocharged tracing
Merging its advanced methods of collecting information and tracking the virus with a new data-sharing system that patches together cellphone location data and credit card records allows South Korea to be able to track the wide-ranging movements of people testing positive for the coronavirus within minutes.

Mask museum
One day, when the coronavirus crisis is behind us, we may look back to this era with awe at how it changed the world. The Czech National Museum is already heralding that time, opening an exhibition of face masks worn to protect against the infection. The Czech government was one of the first to make it compulsory to wear a mask outside the home.

From Breakingviews: Corona Capital - McLaren, Time Out, Oz hotels. Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Life under lockdown

It could be any one of us. In this case it was Jose Holguin. When he died on April 28, his death was just a speck in a giant storm of numbers defining the global COVID-19 pandemic. As the U.S. opens up, Jose’s family agreed to be photographed and interviewed because they thought their gut-wrenching reality might help save lives. “I feel like some people are failing to understand that this is serious,” said his daughter Jessica Holguin.

Mission of Mercy: In the midst of a global pandemic, St. Marianna University Hospital, a Catholic institution in a working-class suburb south of Tokyo, has become synonymous with the virus. In the three months since the first wave of sick passengers arrived from the cruise ship Diamond Princess, the hospital has treated some 40 people seriously ill with the disease, more than almost any other medical facility in Japan. It has even taken in patients when other hospitals turned them away.

A zoo in Indonesia may slaughter some of its animals to feed others, such as a Sumatran tiger and a Javan leopard, if it runs out of food in coming months after the coronavirus pandemic forced its to shut it doors. The Bandung zoo in Indonesia’s fourth-biggest city, which usually earns about 1.2 billion rupiah ($81,744) a month from visitors, shut on March 23 as part of a wider country lockdown to try to contain the outbreak.

COVID Science

Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to recruit around 10,000 adults and children in Britain for trials of an experimental coronavirus vaccine which received U.S. backing worth up to $1.2 billion. The university said that partner institutions across Britain had started recruiting up to 10,260 adults and children to see how well the human immune system responds to the vaccine and how safe it is.

South Africa could see up to 50,000 coronavirus deaths and as many as 3 million infections by the end of the year as the southern hemisphere winter leads to a higher rate of infection, scientific models showed. The country already has the highest number of infections and deaths on the continent, but a national lockdown entering its eighth week had slowed infections.

The new coronavirus is believed to be spreading throughout Yemen where the health care system “has in effect collapsed”, the United Nations said, appealing for urgent funding.

Follow the money

U.S. shale bust slams rural economies as oil checks shrivel

Thanks to modern drilling technology, shale has turned the United States into the world’s No. 1 energy producer, pumping as much as 13 million barrels per day before prices crashed. It added about a percentage point to U.S. GDP between 2010 and 2015. Shale-related jobs lifted the employment rate in Texas and North Dakota to a multiple of the national average.

7 min read

Full disclosure? Hedge funds navigate COVID health questions

As many infected by the novel coronavirus appear to show only mild symptoms, some hedge funds – normally based in a well-heeled west London enclave but now scattered and working from home – are taking a ‘need to know’ approach to staff health disclosures.

4 min read

Amazon to hire 50,000 temp workers in India as lockdown boosts demand

Amazon's India unit said it would hire 50,000 temporary workers to meet a surge in online shopping in the country, where customers have been stuck indoors for two months in a lockdown to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

2 min read