BitGou: Friday Morning Briefing: Virus rhetoric escalates

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Virus rhetoric escalates
Donald Trump’s attacks on China’s handling of the early days of the pandemic have now escalated to threats of trade measures. The U.S. president said on Thursday his trade deal with China was now of secondary importance and warned of new tariffs. That reflects his growing frustration with Beijing over the pandemic, which has cost tens of thousands of lives in the United States alone, sparked an economic contraction and threatened his chances of re-election in November. China has repeatedly pushed back at what it considers are politically motivated attacks on it.

The long path to easing
Various countries are now assessing how they wind down stringent social distancing measures without risking a new wave of infections. Ireland’s health chiefs hold meetings on Friday ahead of the current May 5 expiry of stay-home coronavirus restrictions. In Spain, adults will finally be able to exercise and go for walks on Saturday after seven weeks shut indoors, and on the same day Austria will reopen thousands of bigger shops as well as small businesses like hairdressers.

The "R" rate
Those countries will all keep a close watch on the so-called “R”, for reproduction, rate of the virus. It shows the average number of infections one person with the virus causes, and governments around the world will want to maintain it below 1.0. That remains the case in Denmark, the first country outside Asia to ease its coronavirus lockdown, which said on Thursday the spread of Covid-19 has not accelerated since the gradual loosening of restrictions began in mid-April.

Project Restart
Man-to-man marking in the era of social distancing? It was a relatively quick step to suspend Premier League soccer matches but it will prove harder to agree on how exactly to relaunch them. Premier League clubs will discuss plans for resuming the season in a conference call on Friday, but the practicalities of how to even begin training will be the first obstacle they have to overcome with “Project Restart”. A protocol with proposed arrangements - including equipping players with masks - has been circulated to some early controversy.

Track the spread of the virus with this state-by-state and county map.

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Life under lockdown

Sweden has kept most schools, restaurants and businesses open, and relied primarily on voluntary measures to fight COVID-19. Swedes have been asked to keep social distance, work from home where possible, and avoid travel. “I feel confident in the overall strategy. One reason that we have chosen this strategy, and where we have supported the agencies, is that all measures have to be sustainable over time,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said last week. Some Swedish scientist have however accused the government of running a dangerous experiment with people’s lives and urged it to implement lockdowns like those in neighboring countries.

Coronavirus patients with light symptoms arriving to stay at several Tokyo hotels are likely to get a lift from a pleasant surprise - a robot greeter in the lobby. Japan is now using hotels to house patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus but whose symptoms are too light to need hospitalization, and several in Tokyo which have just opened feature robots to help lighten the burden on nurses. Japan’s health ministry will introduce a system for health centers to report new coronavirus cases online instead of by hand-written faxes, phone or email - drawing praise from some but scorn from others wondering what took it so long.

India’s film industry will take at least two years to recover financially from the coronavirus pandemic, which is threatening big-ticket projects, putting at risk tens of thousands of jobs. That was the somber assessment of about a dozen top producers, distributors and actors from Bollywood, the movie industry in India’s commercial capital of Mumbai, during a video conference this week, one of the participants said.

In the battle against coronavirus, Swiss soldiers are using smartphones to test a new contact tracing application that could prevent infections while also protecting users’ privacy. Switzerland hopes to launch the app on May 11 based on a standard, developed by researchers in Lausanne and Zurich, that uses Bluetooth communication between devices to assess the risk of catching COVID-19.

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