Spain's rural regions become fierce battleground for votes

April 22, 2019

LA BIENVENIDA, Spain (AP) — Spanish politicians are swapping campaign buses for tractors, buddying up with hunters and inspecting home-grown tomatoes in Spain's often-neglected rural regions as they hunt for votes in Sunday's general election, one of the country's most polarized votes in decades.

The ballot comes as Spain's traditional bipartisan political landscape — which used to revolve around the center-left Socialists and the conservative Popular Party — has fractured into five main political parties, including a far-right populist newcomer. That has spurred a race for votes in Spain's overrepresented hinterland, where nearly one-third of the seats in parliament's lower house are up for grabs.

Spain's electoral rules grant a bigger say in parliament's lower house to provinces with shrinking populations. A few thousand votes in these areas can swing a win for one party or another, turning the "every vote counts" cliché into a reality for candidates far from the big cities.

That doesn't mean these politicians are getting a warm welcome. Marcy Jurado, 64, lives in central Spain's Alcudia valley, surrounded by pastures dotted with holm oaks, with her husband and son, the only remaining residents in the village of La Bienvenida. She's wary of politicians knocking on farmers' doors.

"All I wish is that they don't forget about us once the elections are over," she said. Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is the politician most favored by the splintering of Spain's right wing into three parties. But his ability to stay in office hinges not just on how well the front-running Socialist party does in the national vote but also on how his divided opposition performs. Sánchez or others will likely need the backing of other parties to form a coalition government, making the race for rural votes even more critical.

Spanish politicians across the political spectrum are seeking both photos of themselves in muddy boots and headlines promising more investments for rural jobs, better internet access and more local schools and health care centers.

Nestled at the top of a hill, La Bienvenida has gone from having 50 families only 20 years ago to seeing "for sale" signs on house after house. A 37-year-old dairy farmer is the breadwinner in the only inhabited house, and also Jurado's only reason to stay.

"If my son loses his job, I'm done with it, I'll leave," said the retired truck driver. "The days are hard and long enough for somebody who enjoys company." Her wish list for lawmakers has two items: Make sure pensions keep up with inflation and create more jobs for the young.

At a state-of-the-art game preserve down the road, a provincial candidate from the far-right Vox party was telling people that his upstart party will unapologetically defend hunting against "lefties, ecologists and animalists who tell rural dwellers how to live their lives."

Ricardo Chamorro, a lawyer, fell out with the Popular Party and embraced the nationalist populism of Vox, whose program echoes the "take back control" mantra of populist movements across the globe. The party vows to defend Spain from Muslims, communists and Catalan separatists, who held a defiant secession referendum in 2017, unleashing a wave of Spanish nationalism.

"We are committed to rural Spain, which sees the money flowing to richer areas that are being disloyal to the nation," Chamorro said to applause from three dozen farmers who gathered under stuffed boar and deer trophies at a bar in Brazatortas, on the edge of the Alcudia valley.

Barring any last-minute surprises, Vox is poised to grab 29 to 37 deputies in Spain's 350-seat national parliament on Sunday, a big splash for a party that only last year made its first big advance with a win in the regional election in Andalusia, a Socialist stronghold.

With nearly 400,000 voters in a country of 37 million, the rural Ciudad Real province is a mirror of national politics. In the last general election in 2016, three of the five deputies chosen here went to the Popular Party and two to the Socialists. This year, polls are predicting at least two seats for the Socialists and one for the Popular Party, with the remaining two up for grabs among four parties, including the center-right Citizens Party and the Vox party.

Only the anti-austerity Unidas Podemos party seems to be left out in the province, according to the latest polls. At the national level, Podemos could lose up to 15 deputies from rural areas in Sunday's vote.

Blanca Fernández, Ciudad Real's 41-year-old Socialist candidate, said politicians and the media are victimizing the countryside. "It bothers me deeply when people (politicians) climb onto tractors in a forced manner," she said. "It's an insult to those who live here."

What the Socialists want, she said, "is for anybody in Spain to have access to services in comparable quality conditions, no matter where they live. And that means more opportunities in rural areas." "It all comes down to how much taxes we want to pay and what are the services we want to have," she said as she inspected a Manchego cheese business that exports to the U.S.

Fernández wants to boost women's roles in the countryside, subsidize young farmers taking over old operations and ensure that farmers have access to water. "There's no future for the farmland without women or schools," she said.

During two straight days of campaigning, Fernández and Chamorro listened to similar concerns. Tuberculosis tests were seen as too strict, forcing farmers to cull herds and lose money. Sheep ranchers had conflicts with laws on preserving natural spaces. The swelling numbers of wild boars and vultures were hurting livestock operations. All residents complained about too much administrative red tape, poor infrastructure, schools and clinics that were too far away, limited phone and internet services.

While Chamorro visited cattle farms and met with retirees, Fernandez toured a solar panel farm and a madeleine factory where three siblings have returned with university degrees to take over the family business.

"There was a time when all I wanted was to be away," said Julián Arenas, whose muffin-making plant is now the biggest employer in Corral de Calatrava, a village of 1,200. "I've seen what's out there and now I realize that, given the right setup, there are also plenty of opportunities here as well."

Mass graves from Franco era become Spanish election issue

April 18, 2019

PATERNA, Spain (AP) — When archaeologists in Spain unearthed layers of human bones from a mass grave last year, the remains of one body emerged draped in a shirt that had the letters "MG" embroidered on it in red.

The initials spoke volumes to Daniel Galán. They sparked hope he would be able to provide a proper burial for his grandfather, Miguel Galán, a village mayor who disappeared eight decades ago along with tens of thousands of others summarily executed by the forces of Gen. Francisco Franco during and after the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War.

Galán is among a small number of descendants promised provincial government funds for DNA tests to confirm that their ancestors were tossed into a mass grave at Paterna Cemetery in Valencia. But with Spain's national election later this month exposing an ideological divide that has echoes of the clash of left and right during the civil war, some Spaniards worry they may lose the chance to recover their dead.

The far-right Vox party, which recently exploded onto Spain's political scene, wants to scrap efforts to exhume and identify Franco's victims. Its ambition counters the pledge by the ruling Socialists to remove Franco's remains from a huge, publicly maintained mausoleum near Madrid so they no longer attract nationalists celebrating the dictator as a hero.

"Depending on who wins, logically there would be a change. If the right wins, well, all this will just stop or worse," Galán, 61, said while visiting Paterna Cemetery to repair the grainy black-and-white photo of his grandfather, which had fallen off the headstone.

For other Spaniards, digging up bodies just stirs up a painful past unnecessarily and runs counter to the desire for reconciliation that made it possible for Spain to have a bloodless transition from dictatorship to democracy after Franco's death in 1975. They also fear that the exhumations could lead to a shaming of those who had relatives on the side of Franco*s right-wing forces.

"I think that that period of history was settled," Elena Escribano, a 60-year-old housewife, said at a Vox rally. "Not knowing where a relative is is hard, but there are victims on both sides. We must pray for them but we must look to the future."

Activists and relatives pushed for the excavations after the then-Socialist government passed the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, which allowed exhumations of mass graves and condemned atrocities committed during Franco's regime. But the law did not guarantee funding, and the conservative Popular Party that governed between 2011 and 2018 included none in the national budget.

The result is a piecemeal and sometimes cumbersome process. At Paterna, the precarious funding scheme and a backlog of work meant the remains of 244 people — Galán's grandfather possibly among them — ended up being stored in a ceramics museum.

Rosa Pérez, a local lawmaker who championed funding for families to exhume mass graves at Paterna Cemetery and other sites in the province of Valencia, has promised that money will be there to carry out forensic and DNA tests on the bones stored in the museum regardless of who wins the April 28 national election.

But Pérez is putting on hold any spending for new exhumations until after regional and local elections this month and next to see if her United Left party remains in power locally. So far, archaeologists have removed the remains of 450 of the 2,237 bodies thought to be in the mass graves at the Paterna Cemetery.

"This shouldn't be how this is being handled," Pérez said. "We have been in need of a national plan for a long time." Experts have estimated for the Spanish government that 740 mass graves and 9,000 bodies have been exhumed nationally since 2000. That leaves an estimated 114,000 bodies still hidden in 2,500 mass graves, they added.

The Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wanted to include 15 million euros ($20 million) in the national budget that failed to pass this year to continue identifying victims of Franco's regime. It has also mentioned establishing a "truth commission" to investigate the crimes of his dictatorship, and is studying a plan to have 25,000 bodies exhumed in five years.

But Sánchez faces strong competition in the April 28 national election, at which the far-right Vox is widely anticipated to win its first seats in the Spanish Parliament. Vox has already successfully pushed the Popular Party to commit to rolling back regional laws that allow the exhumations of mass graves in Spain's south in order to support their formation of a government for Andalusia earlier this year.

Now, Vox could prove influential in the creation of possible coalition government at the national level after the election. Popular Party president and opposition leader, Pablo Casado, who in 2015 called those who want to recover the mass grave bodies "old fogeys," wants a new "Law of Concord" that would subsume the Law of Historical Memory.

The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, criticized the exhumations when he kicked off his campaign. "How are we going to condemn our grandparents?" Abascal asked supporters. "For us, we only have one doctrine for the recent historical memory. And that is liberty: liberty for you to respect your grandparents."

Outside the walls of the Paterna Cemetery, a walk through scrubland leads to a wall in which bullet holes from the Francoist firing squads that executed people like Miguel Galán still are visible. Galán insists he does not want to drag Spain back into its bloody past.

"The difference is between them lying in mass graves like rotting dogs and being able to take them and give them dignified burial," Galán said. "For those who say we are only reopening old wounds, that is not true, because these wounds have been open for 80 years."

South Africa's ruling ANC set to celebrate election victory

May 11, 2019

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — South Africa's ruling African National Congress on Saturday was preparing to celebrate its win in national elections, with the formal announcement of final results coming later in the day.

With all votes counted, the ANC had 57.5%, the electoral commission said . While a win was never in doubt, it was the worst-ever showing at the polls for the party of the late Nelson Mandela which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid 25 years ago. The party won 62% of the vote in 2014.

Voter turnout was another low at 65%, reflecting the frustrations of many South Africans after corruption scandals around the ANC that led former president Jacob Zuma to resign last year under party pressure. Turnout was 74% in 2014.

Current President Cyril Ramaphosa, a Mandela protege, has vowed to clean up the rot and apologized to South Africans. But his new five-year term is threatened by Zuma allies within the ANC's leadership, who could pressure the party to oust him from power.

Observers have said South Africa's economy, the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa, would be further weakened if Ramaphosa is removed by his own party. He narrowly won the party leadership in late 2017, weeks before Zuma was pushed out.

Ramaphosa's image as a leader willing to rid the government of graft helped the ANC's showing in this election, political analyst Karima Brown said. "It's a departure from a president who faced continuous allegations of corruption," she said.

But ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, seen as leading the party faction opposed to Ramaphosa, has said the victory could not be attributed to the president alone. Widespread disillusionment over the ANC and long-standing issues of high unemployment and poor delivery of basic services had been expected to give top opposition parties a boost in Wednesday's election.

Top opposition party the liberal Democratic Alliance slipped in its share of votes, however, winning 20.7%, down from 22.2% in 2014. The populist Economic Freedom Fighters in just their second showing in parliamentary and presidential elections did gain ground, winning 10.7% of the vote, up from 6.3% five years ago.

The EFF won support notably among younger voters with its outspoken demands for a bigger share of South Africa's wealth from the country's white minority. It struck a chord in a country where unemployment is 27% and many in the black majority struggle to get by. The party also had promised to expropriate white-owned land without compensation and nationalize mines and banks.

The ANC barely retained control of the country's economic hub of Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria, with just over 50% of the vote. ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said the party was now focused on constituting a credible government. "The task now is to roll up our sleeves and to sort these problems out," she said.

In South Africa, the president and parliament are not elected directly. The number of votes won by each party determines how many representatives are sent to the national 400-seat legislature. The president of the country is the leader of the party that gets the most votes.

"I knew that the ANC would win the elections so my vote for them did not go waste," said Karabo Kgole, a gas station attendant in Pretoria.

South Africa votes with corruption, jobs as big issues

May 08, 2019

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africans voted Wednesday in presidential and parliamentary elections, with signs of a relatively low turnout and voters saying they were disillusioned by widespread corruption and unemployment.

Despite the demise of apartheid 25 years ago, South Africa remains divided by economic inequality . The African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela that has been in power since 1994, is likely to win a majority but it will face a difficult challenge to match the 62% of the vote it got five years ago.

The party has been tarnished by corruption scandals and a national unemployment rate of 27%. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who leads the ANC, has campaigned on promises to clean up his party, an acknowledgment of the problems that forced out his predecessor last year.

"Corruption got into the way," Ramaphosa said after voting, saying graft has prevented his party from serving the people. Selina Molapo, a 38-year-old resident of Tembisa township in eastern Johannesburg, agreed with him, complaining the ANC has not delivered on its promise of jobs.

"In 2014, we voted for the ANC but our situation has not changed," Molapo said. "I am voting for a different party." Firebrand opposition leader Julius Malema voted in his home area of Polokwane in northern Limpopo province and said he expects a good turnout for his party, the populist, leftist Economic Freedom Fighters .

"If the people want to continue unemployed, if the people want to continue landless, then they can continue voting for the same party," Malema said, referring to the ruling ANC. "But if you need change, the EFF is the way to go!"

Young voters make up about 20% of the electorate and largely support Malema, who broke from the ANC six years ago. However, registration of voters under 30 was relatively low. Mmusi Maimane, leader of the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, was one of the first voters at the Dobsonville polling station in Soweto, Johannesburg's largest black township.

"Soweto represents to me the home of the struggle against apartheid and it is where we are now struggling against corruption and for a new government," Maimane said. Black support for his party is limited because it is generally perceived to be run by whites.

The ANC has vowed to embark on a program of seizing white-owned land without compensation, for which it needs a 67% majority to change South Africa's constitution. In the most likely scenario, the ANC will need to form a coalition government with another party to get the votes needed. That is likely to be the EFF, which supports land seizures.

If the ANC's share of the vote slips below 60%, Ramaphosa could be vulnerable and his party could oust him and choose a new leader. More than 40 smaller parties also are vying for power in the balloting.

Neither the president nor the parliament is elected directly. Voters cast ballots for a national party and the number of votes won by each party determines how many representatives are sent to the legislature. The president is the leader of the party that gets the most votes.

At the polling station in the overwhelmingly white, upscale Parkhurst suburb of Johannesburg, a lanky young man hustling as one of the city's "car guards" — the ubiquitous youths who offer to keep an eye on a vehicle while the driver is away — paused to say he had given up on the ANC and was voting for the Democratic Alliance instead.

"They ate a lot of millions," 26-year-old Anthony Molele said of the ANC's many corruption scandals. At a lonely-looking table for the populist EFF, party agents and domestic workers Marie Lekgothoane and Sophie Tsoai watched the arrival of mostly white voters.

Lekgothoane described how she and her 13-year-old daughter must wake up at 5 a.m. daily to commute more than an hour by minibus to Parkhurst, where she works and once lived before being asked to move out.

"We struggle a lot," Lekgothoane said, adding that she has put her faith in the EFF and its promise of change. "I like this party with all of my heart," she said. "I like the way they talk." When South Africa held its first all-race elections in 1994 after the end of the harsh apartheid system of racial discrimination, voters waited in long, snaking lines. Few such scenes were evident Wednesday, except in the poor Diepsloot township north of Johannesburg.

Voter apathy could be trouble for the ANC. Winston Rammoko, 41, did not vote because he said he did not believe it would be significant. "We all know that the ANC is going to win the elections so I do not think mine will make any difference," said Rammoko, who sells tires in the eastern suburb of Kempton Park. "They have won since 1994 and it will happen again."

Tracy van Tonder, 20, is one of the younger South Africans who did not register to vote. "By the time I got interested in voting, the deadline to vote had already passed," she said while accompanying her older sister. Van Tonder is one of the nearly 6 million eligible voters under 30 who did not register.

Some 26 million people of South Africa's population of 57 million are eligible to vote, and the day is a national holiday to encourage turnout. Most of the 22,900 polling stations opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 9 p.m. (0500 to 1900 GMT).

Preliminary results will be announced from the electoral commission in the capital, Pretoria. Final results are not expected for 48 hours.

Associated Press writer Cara Anna contributed.

Trump: US to deploy anti-drug Navy ships near Venezuela

April 02, 2020

MIAMI (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Navy ships are being moved toward Venezuela as his administration beefs up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro.

The president's announcement was a break from the daily White House press briefing to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, which has left much of the country in lock-down and which the government warns could cause 100,000 to 240,000 deaths.

“The Venezuelan people continue to suffer tremendously due to Maduro and his criminal control over the country, and drug traffickers are seizing on this lawlessness,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said after the president's announcement.

The mission involves sending additional Navy warships, surveillance aircraft and special forces teams to nearly double the U.S. counter-narcotics capacity in the Western Hemisphere, with forces operating both in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Esper said the mission would be supported by 22 partner nations.

“As governments and nations focus on the coronavirus there is a growing threat that cartels, criminals, terrorists and other malign actors will try to exploit the situation for their own gain,” said Trump. "We must not let that happen."

The enhanced mission has been months in the making but has taken on greater urgency following last week's indictment of Maduro, Venezuela's embattled socialist leader, and members of his inner circle and military. They are accused of leading a narcoterrorist conspiracy responsible for smuggling up to 250 metric tons of cocaine a year into the U.S., about half of it by sea.

“If I was just indicted for drug trafficking by the United States, with a $15 million reward for my capture, having the U.S. Navy conducting anti-drug operations off my coast would be something I would worry about," said Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who has been among those calling for a tougher stance against Maduro.

It also comes as Maduro steps up attacks on his U.S.-backed rival, Juan Guaidó. Maduro’s chief prosecutor ordered Guaidó to provide testimony Thursday as part of an investigation into an alleged coup attempt. Guaidó, the head of Venezuela's congress who is recognized as his country's legitimate leader by the U.S. and almost 60 other nations, is unlikely to show up, raising the possibility he could be arrested. The U.S. has long insisted it will not tolerate any harm against Guaido.

“No matter where you sit ideologically, any move to try to bring democracy back to Venezuela requires first recognizing the criminal nature of the Maduro regime, and making moves that scare the regime into negotiating," said Raul Gallegos, a Bogota, Colombia-based director in the Andean region for Control Risks, a consulting group.

Maduro has blasted the Trump administration’s offer of a $15 million reward for his arrest, calling it the work of a “racist cowboy” aimed at getting U.S. hands on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the world's largest. He also points out that the vast majority of cocaine leaves South America from Colombia, a staunch U.S. ally.

Others have faulted a U.S. plan, unveiled Tuesday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to create a five-member council without Maduro or Guaidó to govern the country until elections can be held within a year. While its the first attempt in months by the U.S. to seek a negotiated solution to Venezuela's stalemate, coming on the heels of the indictments many say it has little hope of succeeding and likely to drive Maduro farther away from the path of dialogue.

The Trump administration has long insisted that all options are on the table for removing Maduro, including military ones. Still, there’s no indication then, or now, that any sort of U.S. invasion is being planned.

Rather, the sending of ships fits into a longstanding call by the U.S. Southern Command for additional assets to combat growing antinarcotics and other security threats in the hemisphere. In January, another Navy vessel, the USS Detroit, conducted a freedom of navigation operation off the coast of Venezuela in a show of pressure against Maduro.

“That presence sends a big statement about U.S. commitment, it sends a big statement to our friends, it reassures them, and then to our adversaries that those are capable performers,” Adm. Craig Faller, the head of the U.S. military's Southern Command, said in congressional testimony last month.

The report of the planned deployment comes two days after one of Venezuela's naval patrol boats sank after colliding with a Portuguese-flagged cruise ship near the Venezuelan-controlled island of La Tortuga. Maduro accused the ship of acting aggressively and said it was possibly carrying “mercenaries” seeking his ouster.

“You have to be very naive to see this as an isolated incident,” Maduro said Tuesday night on state TV. But Columbia Cruise Services, the operator of the cruise ship, said the patrol boat fired gunshots and than purposely rammed into the liner at speed. There were no passengers on board and none of its 32 crew members were injured, the company said.

US opposes Kosovo's 'new barriers' to Serbian goods

April 01, 2020

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — The decision of Kosovo's government to phase out the country's 100% tariff on imports from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina starting Wednesday did not ease international pressure on the tiny Western Balkans country and sparked more domestic tensions.

Although the United States and the European Union had pushed for lifting the import taxes, Prime Minister Albin Kurti announced early Wednesday that his caretaker Cabinet would instead require goods from Serbia to be certified for quality, a mandate already in place for Kosovar products shipped to Serbia.

Marko Djuric, head of Serbia’s office for Kosovo, rejected Kurti’s move, saying “the situation did not deescalate or return to the previous state when uncivilized taxes were introduced.” Kosovo imposed the punitive tariffs in November 2018 over Serbian efforts to block Kosovo from joining international organizations. The dispute led to the suspension of European Union-mediated talks to normalize ties between Pristina and Belgrade.

Most Serb goods stopped arriving in Kosovo after the import taxes were introduced, except for products that were mainly smuggled into Kosovo's Serb-dominated Mitrovica. Annual trade between Serbia and Kosovo was valued at about 400 million euros ($440 million) before the tariffs were adopted, and inflation in Kosovo rose to about 3% in 2019 after the import taxes took effect compared to 1.1% the previous year.

Kosovo was formerly a part of Serbia and won independence after a 1999 NATO bombing campaign that ended a bloody Serb crackdown on an armed uprising by members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Serbia refuses to accept Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.

Since the start of the Pristina-Belgrade talks in 2011, 33 deals have been signed to ensure the country's recognition each other in areas such as education and professional degrees. Kosovo claims Serbia has not fulfilled its side of the agreements. Kosovo recognizes diplomas from Serbian universities, but Serbia does not accept the degrees of Kosovar university graduates. It’s the same with drivers' licenses.

Kurti said the government would monitor whether Serbia moves toward reciprocity until June 15 and if not, the tariffs will be restored. The junior partner in Kurti's coalition government, the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, initiated a successful parliamentary vote of no-confidence vote in his Cabinet last week. His government now is acting in a caretaker capacity.

The motion came after an LDK minister was fired for not supporting the restrictions on movement the government imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The LDK also wanted Kurti to fully revoke the 100% tariff and not damage ties with the Kosovo's most important ally, the United States.

The United States argued that Kurti's actions would strangle Kosovo's economy. “We remain opposed to the latest move to implement reciprocal measures on the movement of goods from Serbia.” the U.S.Embassy in Kosovo said in a statement Wednesday.

Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, hailed Kosovo's move as “an important decision.”

Associated Press witers Dusan Stojanovic and Jovana Gec contributed from Belgrade.

UN climate summit postponed until 2021 because of COVID-19

April 02, 2020

LONDON (AP) — This year's United Nations global climate summit is being postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, host country Britain said Wednesday, The U.K. government said the meeting, due to take place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, will now be held next year at a date still to be determined.

The government said in a statement that “in light of the ongoing, worldwide effects of COVID-19, holding an ambitious, inclusive COP26 in November 2020 is no longer possible.” The meeting is formally known as the 26th Conference of the Parties.

The decision was made by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Britain and Italy, which had been due to host some preparatory events. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that it was a “disappointing decision, but absolutely the right one as we all focus on the fight against #coronavirus.”

Glasgow’s SEC Arena, which had been due to host the event, has been named as the site of a temporary hospital for COVID-19 patients. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made tackling climate change a priority, but Britain’s tenure at the helm of the conference got off to a bumpy start even before the coronavirus pandemic. In January, Johnson fired Claire O'Neill, a former British government minister appointed last year to head the event, and replaced her with Business Secretary Alok Sharma.

“We will continue working tirelessly with our partners to deliver the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis and I look forward to agreeing a new date for the conference,” Sharma said Wednesday.

Patricia Espinosa, who heads the U.N. climate office, said the new coronavirus “is the most urgent threat facing humanity today, but we cannot forget that climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity over the long term.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stresses that safeguarding lives “is our foremost priority" but countries must step up action on climate change especially as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“Countries must work to protect the health of people, and the planet has never been more at risk,” the U.N. chief’s spokesman said. “Solidarity and greater ambition is needed now more than ever to transition to a sustainable, resilient low carbon economy that limits global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).”

The meeting in Glasgow would have been held five years after the 2015 Paris climate accord was agreed. Countries that signed the landmark agreement are still expected to provide an update on their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

In the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and do their best to keep it below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, compared with pre-industrial times.

President Donald Trump has triggered the United States's withdrawal from the Paris accord, a move that formally comes into force in November. His Democratic rivals have said they would rejoin if elected.

Environmental campaigners said postponing this year's U.N. talks was the right move. “It doesn’t make sense to bring people from every country together in the middle of a pandemic," said Mohamed Adow, a longtime participant at U.N. climate meetings who heads the think tank Power Shift Africa.

Adow said postponing the conference mustn't stop countries from taking action to curb global warming, though, and suggested plans to revive economies after the pandemic ends should avoid propping up the kinds of industries that contribute to climate change.

“Economies in the rich north must not be kick-started with dirty investment that will lead to climate suffering in the global south,” he said. Environment officials are planning to hold a lower-level meeting online at the end of April.

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless reported this story in London and AP writer Frank Jordans reported from Berlin.

Tokyo Olympics rescheduled for July 23-Aug. 8 in 2021

March 30, 2020

TOKYO (AP) — The Tokyo Olympics will open next year in the same time slot scheduled for this year's games. Tokyo organizers said Monday the opening ceremony will take place on July 23, 2021 — almost exactly one year after the games were due to start this year.

“The schedule for the games is key to preparing for the games," Tokyo organizing committee president Yoshiro Mori said. “This will only accelerate our progress.” Last week, the IOC and Japanese organizers postponed the Olympics until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

This year's games were scheduled to open on July 24 and close on Aug. 9. But the near exact one-year delay will see the rescheduled closing ceremony on Aug. 8. There had been talk of switching the Olympics to spring, a move that would coincide with the blooming of Japan's famous cherry blossoms. But it would also clash with European soccer and North American sports leagues.

Mori said a spring Olympics was considered but holding the games later gives more space to complete the many qualifying events that have been postponed by the virus outbreak. “We wanted to have more room for the athletes to qualify,” Mori said.

After holding out for weeks, local organizers and the IOC last week postponed the Tokyo Games under pressure from athletes, national Olympic bodies and sports federations. It's the first postponement in Olympic history, though there were several cancellations during wartime.

The Paralympics were rescheduled to Aug. 24-Sept. 5. The new Olympic dates would conflict with the scheduled world championships in track and swimming, but those events are now expected to also be pushed back.

“The IOC has had close discussions with the relevant international federations," organizing committee CEO Toshiro Muto said. "I believe the IFs have accepted the games being held in the summer.” Muto said the decision was made Monday and the IOC said it was supported by all the international sports federations and was based on three main considerations: to protect the health of athletes, to safeguard the interests of the athletes and Olympic sport, and the international sports calendar.

“These new dates give the health authorities and all involved in the organisation of the Games the maximum time to deal with the constantly changing landscape and the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the IOC said. “The new dates ... also have the added benefit that any disruption that the postponement will cause to the international sports calendar can be kept to a minimum, in the interests of the athletes and the IFs.”

Both Mori and Muto have said the cost of rescheduling the Olympics will be “massive” — local reports estimate billions of dollars — with most of the expenses borne by Japanese taxpayers. Muto promised transparency in calculating the costs, and testing times deciding how they are divided up.

“Since it (the Olympics) were scheduled for this summer, all the venues had given up hosting any other events during this time, so how do we approach that?” Muto asked. "In addition, there will need to be guarantees when we book the new dates, and there is a possibility this will incur rent payments. So there will be costs incurred and we will need to consider them one by one. I think that will be the tougher process.”

Katsuhiro Miyamoto, an emeritus professor of sports economics at Kansai University, puts the costs as high as $4 billion. That would cover the price of maintaining stadiums, refitting them, paying rentals, penalties and other expenses.

Japan is officially spending $12.6 billion to organize the Olympics. However, an audit bureau of the Japanese government says the costs are twice that much. All of the spending is public money except $5.6 billion from a privately funded operating budget.

The Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee is contributing $1.3 billion, according to organizing committee documents. The IOC's contribution goes into the operating budget. IOC President Thomas Bach has repeatedly called the Tokyo Olympics the best prepared in history. However, Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso also termed them “cursed.” Aso competed in shooting in the 1976 Olympics, and was born in 1940.

The Olympics planned for 1940 in Tokyo were canceled because of World War II. The run-up to the Olympics also saw IOC member Tsunekazu Takeda, who also headed the Japanese Olympic Committee, forced to resign last year amid a bribery scandal.

New Zealand embraces teddies to help make lockdown bear-able

April 02, 2020

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Some are perched in trees. Some are hanging upside down. Some are baking scones. Teddy bears are popping up in the unlikeliest of places as New Zealanders embrace an international movement in which people are placing the stuffed animals in their windows during coronavirus lockdowns to brighten the mood and give children a game to play by spotting the bears in their neighborhoods.

The inspiration comes from the children's book “We're Going on a Bear Hunt,” written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. New Zealand last week began a four-week lockdown but people are still allowed outside to exercise if they keep a safe distance from each other. In other words, bear-spotting is okay.

Mother-of-two and part-time school administrator Deb Hoffman started the Facebook page "We're Not Scared - NZ Bear Hunt" and also set up a website where more than 120,000 people have now put pins on an online map to show the location of their bears. “We're not scared” is a repeated line in the book, which features a family overcoming a number of obstacles in their search for a bear.

Hoffman said she's been taken aback by the huge response. She said some people are creating personalities for their bears by having them do a different activity each day. Hoffman said one woman wrote that the teddy bears were the only thing getting her through the isolation, after she had already been housebound for six weeks following surgery before the lockdown began.

“It's a way for people to feel connected, and to contribute,” Hoffman said. “It's really important at a time like this.” Hoffman said she's getting some help to enhance her website so that people will soon be able to interact with the bears by giving them an emotion.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has even joined in, saying people should keep an eye on her window because they might spot a bear. In a grimly ironic twist, the author of the book is hospitalized with symptoms similar to COVID-19.

Rosen’s family said Tuesday that the 73-year-old writer was “poorly” but improving, having previously spent a night in intensive care. Rosen’s wife Emma-Louise Williams tweeted: “He has been able to eat today & will be getting a more comfortable oxygen mask soon. All good signs.”

She did not say whether Rosen had been diagnosed with the new coronavirus. In recent weeks, Rosen has described his illness on Twitter, wondering whether symptoms including fatigue and fever meant he had COVID-19 or a “heavy flu.”

NATO says its role not hit by virus as Russia drills troops

April 01, 2020

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the organization’s security capabilities have not been diminished by the coronavirus, amid suspicion that Russia might try to use the impact of disease to probe the military alliance’s defenses.

NATO acknowledges that cases of the disease have surfaced among personnel deployed near Russia’s border as well as in its training operation in Afghanistan. Wargames have been scaled down and the coronavirus has forced the 30-country alliance to cut staffing and meetings at its Brussels headquarters.

Russia, meanwhile, has been conducting drills that its defense ministry says are aimed at checking troop readiness to deal with any contagion. Britain’s navy said last week that its vessels had been shadowing Russian warships “after unusually high levels of activity in the English Channel and North Sea.”

“We of course see significant military activities close to NATO borders with a new exercise in the western military district of Russia,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “We have seen significant Russian presence in the North Sea.”

“We have made some adjustments to exercises. We have cancelled some exercises, we have adjusted other exercises, but that doesn’t undermine our operational readiness. We continue to patrol the skies and defend our borders and continue our missions and operations,” he said.

Stoltenberg’s remarks came on the eve of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, to be held by secure video-conference for the first time in the U.S.-led organization’s 70-year history, where the impact of the coronavirus will dominate discussion.

While the disease is hitting all its member countries and could yet raise security concerns, NATO itself has no front-line role to play against its spread, apart from coordinating and supporting national efforts with logistical, transport and communications help.

UK's Johnson under fire for low number of COVID-19 tests

April 01, 2020

LONDON (AP) — When Prime Minister Boris Johnson developed a cough and fever, he got a test for the new coronavirus. Most other Britons won’t be offered one. Johnson’s Conservative government was under fire Wednesday for failing to keep its promise to increase the amount of testing being done for COVID-19, even as the country saw its biggest day-to-day rise yet in deaths among people with the virus, to 2,352.

The issue has become an incipient political crisis for Johnson, who has mild symptoms and is working from isolation in the prime minister’s Downing Street apartment. Richard Horton, editor of medical journal The Lancet, said Britain’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis was “the most serious science policy failure in a generation.”

In a tweet, he noted that England’s deputy chief medical officer said last week that “’there comes a point in a pandemic where that (testing) is not an appropriate intervention.” “Now (testing is) a priority,” Horton said. "Public message: utter confusion.”

Like some other countries, the U.K. has restricted testing to hospitalized patients, leaving people with milder symptoms unsure whether they have had the virus. Many scientists say wider testing -- especially of health care staff -- would allow medics who are off work with symptoms to return if they are negative, and would give a better picture of how the virus spreads.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick conceded Wednesday that “we do need to go further and we need to do that faster.” The U.K. initially performed about 5,000 tests a day, but the government promised to increase that number to 10,000 by the end of last week and to 25,000 by mid-April. The target has been elusive. On Wednesday, the government said 9,793 tests had been performed in the previous 24 hours, the highest daily total yet.

Critics contrast the U.K. with Germany, which reacted quickly as reports of the new respiratory virus emerged from China at the end of last year. It began producing a test for COVID-19 in January, weeks before the U.K. Germany now has the capacity to do 500,000 tests a week.

Jenrick said the U.K.’s test tally should hit 15,000 a day “within a couple of days” and 25,000 a day in a couple of weeks. But progress has been agonizingly slow. The government says testing front-line health care workers is a priority — however only 2,000 have been tested so far, from a National Health Service workforce of more than 1 million.

Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England, said authorities were setting up five drive-through testing centers for medical staff. “The intention here is to get from thousands to hundreds of thousands in the coming weeks," she said at a news conference.

British officials blame shortages of swabs to take samples and of chemicals known as reagents, which are needed to perform the tests, for the delay in ramping up testing. “There is a massive demand for raw materials and commercial kits -- this is not unique to the U.K. -- and many places no longer have stock of essential reagents,” said Stephen Baker, professor of molecular microbiology at the University of Cambridge.

The United States has also struggled to boost its testing capacity. A test produced by the Centers for Disease Control suffered early reliability problems and there were delays in engaging the private sector to ramp up testing capacity. U.S. testing is now growing rapidly, but varies widely from state to state.

Public health experts have estimated the U.S. should be testing between 100,000 and 150,000 patients daily to track and contain the virus. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Monday that the U.S. is testing “nearly 100,000 samples per day" and had now tested more than 1 million samples for the coronavirus. It wasn’t clear if that figure represented actual patients or samples processed.

British officials defend their record at developing and deploying a test for COVID-19. They also say that while too little testing is a weakness, so is too much, because testing vast numbers of healthy people would be wasteful.

That point was echoed by World Health Organization emergencies chief Dr. Mike Ryan, who said a ratio of 10 negative tests to one positive was “a general benchmark of a system that's doing enough testing to pick up all cases.”

In Britain, about 20% of tests have been positive, suggesting a substantial number of cases is being missed. Critics of the British government say the testing debacle is typical of its sluggish and complacent response to the pandemic.

The U.K. was slower than many European countries to implement measures such as closing schools, bars and restaurants and telling people to stay home to impede transmission of the virus. A nationwide lock-down was imposed just over a week ago.

After a decade of public spending cuts by Conservative governments, the National Health Service and other public health bodies have very little spare capacity. Jonathan Ashworth, health spokesman for the main opposition Labour Party, said health workers “are rightly asking if we've left it too late to buy the kits and chemicals we need, or whether our lab capacity is too overstretched after years of tight budgets.”

"NHS staff and carers on the front line who need these tests urgently deserve an immediate explanation from the government as to what's going on,” he said.

AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London and AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone in Washington contributed to this story.

'A battlefield behind your home': Deaths mount in New York

April 01, 2020

NEW YORK (AP) — New York authorities rushed to bring in an army of medical volunteers Wednesday as the statewide death toll from the coronavirus doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900 and the wail of ambulances in the otherwise eerily quiet streets of the city became the heartbreaking soundtrack of the crisis.

As hot spots flared around the U.S. in places like New Orleans, Detroit and Southern California, the nation's biggest city was the hardest hit of them all, with bodies loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by gurney and forklift outside overwhelmed hospitals, in full view of passing motorists.

And the worst is yet to come. “How does it end? And people want answers," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure.” Across the U.S., Americans braced for what President Donald Trump warned could be “one of the roughest two or three weeks we’ve ever had in our country." The White House on Tuesday projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. before the crisis is over, and Vice President Mike Pence said models for the outbreak show the country on a trajectory akin to hard-hit Italy's.

Under growing pressure, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis belatedly joined Cuomo and governors in more than 30 states in issuing a statewide stay-home order, taking action after conferring with fellow Republican Trump. The governors of Pennsylvania and Nevada, both Democrats, took similar steps.

Meanwhile, European nations facing extraordinary demand for intensive-care beds are putting up makeshift hospitals, unsure whether they will find enough healthy medical staff to run them. London is just days from unveiling a 4,000-bed temporary hospital built in a huge convention center.

In a remarkable turnabout, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from less wealthy ones. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the United States. Cuba supplied doctors to France. Turkey dispatched protective gear and disinfectant to Italy and Spain.

Worldwide, more than 900,000 people have been infected and over 45,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead and large numbers of mild cases that have gone unreported.

The U.S. recorded about 200,000 infections and about 4,400 deaths, with New York City accounting for about 1 out of 4 dead. In New York, more than 80,000 people have volunteered as medical reinforcements, including recent retirees, health care professionals taking a break from their regular jobs and people between gigs.

Few have made it into the field yet, as authorities vet them and figure out how to use them, but hospitals are expected to begin bringing them in later this week. Those who have hit the ground already, many brought in by staffing agencies, have discovered a hospital system being pushed to the breaking point.

“It’s hard when you lose patients. It’s hard when you have to tell the family members: ‘I’m sorry, but we did everything that we could,’” said nurse Katherine Ramos, of Cape Coral, Florida, who has been working at New York Presbyterian Hospital. "It’s even harder when we really don’t have the time to mourn, the time to talk about this.”

To ease the crushing caseload, the city's paramedics have been told they shouldn’t take fatal heart attack victims to hospitals to have them pronounced dead. Patients have been transferred to the Albany area. A Navy hospital ship has docked in New York, the mammoth Javits Convention Center has been turned into a hospital, and the tennis center that hosts the U.S. Open is being converted to one, too.

With New York on near-lockdown, the normally bustling streets in the city of 8.6 million are empty, and a siren to some is no longer just urban background noise. The city's playgrounds are closing, too, at Cuomo's order.

“After 9/11, I remember we actually wanted to hear the sound of ambulances on our quiet streets because that meant there were survivors, but we didn't hear those sounds, and it was heartbreaking. Today, I hear an ambulance on my strangely quiet street and my heart breaks, too,” said 61-year-old Meg Gifford, a former Wall Streeter who lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Near severely swamped Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, resident Emma Sorza, 33, described an eerie scene. “I think everyone’s just doing what they can, but at the same time it bothers you. Especially if you’re around Elmhurst, because you can hear all the ambulances, she said. "There is a truck and people are actually dying. It’s like a battlefield behind your home.”

Cuomo said projections suggest the crisis in New York will peak at the end of April, with a high death rate continuing through July. “Let's cooperate to address that in New York because it's going to be in your town tomorrow," he warned. "If we learn how to do it right here — or learn how to do it the best we can, because there is no right, it's only the best we can — then we can work cooperatively all across this country.”

Elsewhere around the country, Florida's DeSantis was locked in a standoff over whether two cruise ships with sick and dead passengers may dock in his state. More than 300 U.S. citizens were on board. Two deaths were blamed on the virus, and nine people tested positive, Holland America cruise line said.

DeSantis, who is close to Trump, said the state's health system is stretched too thin to accommodate the passengers. But the president said he would speak with him. “They're dying on the ship,” Trump said. “I'm going to do what's right. Not only for us, but for humanity.”

In Southern California, officials reported that at least 51 residents and six staff members at a nursing home east of Los Angeles have been infected and two have died. Even as the virus has slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals on the Continent are buckling under the load.

"It feels like we are in a Third World country. We don't have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too,” said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.

Spain hit a record of 864 deaths in one day, for a total of more than 9,000. In Italy, with over 13,000 dead, the most of any country, morgues overflowed with bodies, caskets piled up in churches, and doctors were forced to decide which desperately ill patients would get breathing machines.

England's Wimbledon tennis tournament was canceled for the first time since World War II. India’s highest court ordered news media and social media sites to carry the government’s “official version” of developments, echoing actions taken in other countries to curb independent reporting.

The strain facing some of the world's best health care systems has been aggravated by hospital budget cuts over the past decade in Italy, Spain, France and Britain. They have called in medical students, retired doctors and even laid-off flight attendants with first aid training.

The staffing shortage has been exacerbated by the high numbers of infected personnel. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have been infected and more than 60 doctors have died. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and lead to death.

China, where the outbreak began late last year, on Wednesday reported just 36 new COVID-19 cases.

Charlton reported from Paris. Sherman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers around the world contributed, including Joseph Wilson in Barcelona; Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Karen Matthews in New York; and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand.

Europe faces ICU crunch, rushes to build field hospitals

April 01, 2020

ROME (AP) — Facing intense surges in the need for hospital ICU beds, European nations are on a building and hiring spree, throwing together makeshift hospitals and shipping coronavirus patients out of overwhelmed cities via high-speed trains and military jets. The key question is whether they will be able to find enough healthy medical staff to make it all work.

Even as the virus has slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals in Spain and France are reaching their breaking points and the U.S. and Britain are bracing for incoming waves of desperately ill people.

"It feels like we are in a third world country. We don't have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too,” said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.

In a remarkable turnaround, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from less wealthy ones. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the U.S. on Wednesday. Cuba sent doctors to France. Turkey sent masks, hazmat suits, goggles and disinfectants to Italy and Spain.

London is just days from unveiling a 4,000-bed temporary hospital built in a massive convention center to take non-critical patients so British hospitals can keep ahead of an expected surge in demand. Still, there are concerns about finding thousands of medical workers to run it.

Spain, which hit a new record Wednesday of 864 deaths in one day, has boosted its hospital beds by 20%. Hotspots in Madrid and northeast Catalonia have almost tripled their ICU capacity. Dozens of hotels across Spain have been turned into recovery rooms, and authorities are building field hospitals in sports centers, libraries and exhibition halls.

Intensive care units are particularly crucial in a pandemic in which tens of thousands of patients descend into acute respiratory distress. Those ICU units are much harder to cobble together quickly than standard hospital beds.

Milan opened an intensive care field hospital Tuesday at the city fairgrounds, complete with a pharmacy and radiology wards. It expects to eventually employ 900 staff. The move came after the health situation turned extreme in Italy's Lombardy region, where bodies overflowed in morgues, caskets piled up in churches and doctors were forced to decide which desperately ill patient would get a breathing machine.

“We aren’t happy to have done this,” fairgrounds foundation head Enrico Pazzali said. “It's something I never would have wanted to do.” The pressure is easing on hard-hit Italian cities like Bergamo and Brescia as the rate of new infections in Italy slows. Yet many Italians are still dying at home or in nursing homes because hospitals are saturated and they could not get access to ICU breathing machines.

With over 12,400 dead so far, Italy has the most coronavirus deaths of any nation. Italy, Britain and France are among countries that have called in medical students, retired doctors and even laid-off flight attendants with first aid training to help, although all need re-training.

The medical staffing shortage has been exacerbated by the high numbers of infected personnel. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have been infected and more than 60 doctors have died. While Spain's confirmed infections shot past 102,000 Wednesday and its deaths are now beyond 9,000, the increase in infections was less than the previous day, offering some hope that the contagion rate is stabilizing.

Still, COVID-19 patients who need intensive care can occupy a bed for three to four weeks, meaning Spain and other nations will still see increasing pressures on their hospitals for days or weeks to come.

The Paris region more than doubled its ICU capacity over the past week – but the beds are already full. So Paris was sending critically ill patients to less-saturated regions on special high-speed trains Wednesday. Others have been moved by military planes, helicopters or warships.

One reason Germany is in better shape than other European countries is its high proportion of ICU beds, at 33.9 per 100,000 people, compared to 8.6 in Italy. Germany has 775 virus deaths, 16 times fewer deaths than Italy.

Britain still has some free ICU beds available, but the outbreak is likely weeks away from its peak there and the U.K. has one of the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in Europe. The new hospital inside London’s Excel center plans to admit its first patients at the end of this week. Chief operating officer Natalie Forrest warned that it will need thousands of doctors, nurses and volunteers.

“The numbers are scary,” she said. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and lead to death.

U.S. health authorities warned the number of dead could reach up to 240,000 even with social distancing measures in place as the New York region also rushed to set up extra hospital capacity. A 1,000-bed emergency hospital at the mammoth Javits Convention Center began taking non-coronavirus patients on Tuesday to help relieve the city's overwhelmed health system. A Navy hospital ship was expected to accept patients soon, and the indoor tennis center that hosts the U.S. Open is being turned into a hospital.

“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” President Donald Trump said Tuesday after he extended social distancing guidelines until April 30. “We're going to go through a very tough two weeks.”

The U.S. recorded a big daily jump of 26,000 new cases, bringing its total infections to more than 189,000, the highest in the world. The U.S. death toll leapt to over 4,000, and refrigerated morgue trucks parked on New York streets to collect the dead.

Worldwide, more than 860,000 people have been confirmed infected and over 42,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Italy and Spain accounted for half of all the deaths. Everywhere, the real figures are believed to be much higher due to issues in counting infections and deaths.

China, where the outbreak began late last year, on Wednesday reported just 36 new COVID-19 cases. Some people have chosen to ignore social distancing guidelines. In Louisiana, buses and cars filled a church parking lot Tuesday as worshippers flocked to hear a pastor who is facing charges for holding services despite a ban on gatherings. A few protesters also showed up at the Life Tabernacle Church, including one with a sign that read: “God don't like stupid."

Two ships carrying passengers and crew from an ill-fated South American cruise are urging Florida officials to let them dock. Four people aboard with the virus have died and nine have tested positive. Trump said, for humanitarian reasons, Florida should do so.

Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report including Joseph Wilson in Barcelona; Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London; Karen Matthews in New York; and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand.

Europe's hospitals among the best but can't handle pandemic

March 31, 2020

LONDON (AP) — As increasing numbers of European hospitals buckle under the strain of tens of thousands of coronavirus patients, the crisis has exposed a surprising paradox: Some of the world’s best health systems are remarkably ill-equipped to handle a pandemic.

Outbreak experts say Europe’s hospital-centric systems, lack of epidemic experience and early complacency are partly to blame for the pandemic’s catastrophic tear across the continent. “If you have cancer, you want to be in a European hospital,” said Brice de le Vingne, who heads COVID-19 operations for Doctors Without Borders in Belgium. “But Europe hasn’t had a major outbreak in more than 100 years, and now they don’t know what to do.”

Last week, the World Health Organization scolded countries for “squandering” their chance to stop the virus from gaining a foothold, saying that countries should have reacted more aggressively two months ago, including implementing wider testing and stronger surveillance measures.

De le Vingne and others say Europe’s approach to combating the new coronavirus was initially too lax and severely lacking in epidemiological basics like contact tracing, an arduous process where health officials physically track down people who have come into contact with those infected to monitor how and where the virus is spreading.

During outbreaks of Ebola, including Congo’s most recent one, officials released daily figures for how many contacts were followed, even in remote villages paralyzed by armed attacks. After the new coronavirus emerged late last year, China dispatched a team of about 9,000 health workers to chase thousands of potential contacts in Wuhan every day.

But in Italy, officials in some cases have left it up to ill patients to inform their potential contacts that they had tested positive and resorted to mere daily phone calls to check in on them. Spain and Britain have both declined to say how many health workers were working on contact tracing or how many contacts were identified at any stage in the outbreak.

“We are really good at contact tracing in the U.K., but the problem is we didn’t do enough of it,” said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Exeter in southwestern England.

As cases began picking up speed in the U.K. in early March, Pankhania and others desperately pleaded for call centers to be transformed into contact tracing hubs. That never happened, in what Pankhania calls “a lost opportunity.”

Pankhania added that while Britain has significant expertise in treating critical care patients with respiratory problems, like severe pneumonia, there are simply too few hospital beds to cope with the exponential surge of patients during a pandemic.

“We are already running at full capacity, and then on top of that we have the arrival of the coronavirus at a time when we’re fully stressed and there isn’t any give in the system,” he said, noting years of reductions in bed capacity within Britain’s National Health Service.

Elsewhere, the fact that health care workers and hospital systems have little experience with rationing care because European hospitals are generally so well resourced is now proving problematic. “Part of the issue is that Italian doctors are getting very distressed to make decisions about which patients can get the ICU bed because normally they can just push them through,” said Robert Dingwall, of Nottingham Trent University, who has studied health systems across Europe. “Not having the triage experience to do that in a pandemic situation is very overwhelming.”

In a departure from their normal role as donors who fund outbreak responses in poorer countries, countries including Italy, France and Spain are all now on the receiving end of emergency aid. But Dr. Chiara Lepora, who heads Doctors Without Borders' efforts in the hot spot of Lodi in northern Italy, said the pandemic had revealed some critical problems in developed countries.

“Outbreaks cannot be fought in hospitals,” she said. “Hospitals can only deal with the consequences.” Doctors in Bergamo, the epicenter of Italy's outbreak, described the new coronavirus as “the Ebola of the rich” in an article in the journal NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, warning that health systems in the West are at risk of being as overrun by COVID-19 as West African hospitals were in the devastating 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak.

“Western health systems have been built around the concept of patient-centered care, but an epidemic requires a change of perspective toward community-centered care,” they wrote. That model of community care is more typically seen in countries in Africa or parts of Asia, where hospitals are reserved for only the very sickest patients and far more patients are isolated or treated in stripped-down facilities — similar to the field hospitals now being hastily constructed across Europe.

Even Europe's typically strong networks of family physicians are insufficient to treat the deluge of patients that might be more easily addressed by armies of health workers — people with far less training than doctors but who focus on epidemic control measures. Developing countries are more likely to have such workforces, since they are more accustomed to massive health interventions like vaccination campaigns.

Some outbreak experts said European countries badly miscalculated their ability to stop the new coronavirus. “But I think the fact that this is a new disease and the speed at which it moved surprised everyone,” said Dr. Stacey Mearns of the International Rescue Committee.

Mearns said the current scenes of desperation across Europe — doctors and nurses begging for protective gear, temporary morgues in ice rinks to house the dead — were unimaginable just weeks ago. In Spain, 14% of its coronavirus cases are infected medical workers, straining resources at a critical time.

“We saw hospitals and communities get overwhelmed like this during Ebola in West Africa,” she said. “To see it in resource-wealthy nations is very striking.”

The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Judges slow abortion bans in Texas, Ohio, Alabama amid virus

March 31, 2020

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Federal judges on Monday temporarily blocked efforts in Texas and Alabama to ban abortions during the coronavirus pandemic, handing Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers a victory as clinics across the U.S. filed lawsuits to stop states from trying to shutter them during the outbreak.

A new Ohio order is also unconstitutional if it prevents abortions from being carried out, a separate judge ruled Monday. The ruling instructed clinics to determine on a case-by-case basis if an abortion can be delayed to maximize resources — such as preserving personal protective equipment — needed to fight the coronavirus. If the abortion is deemed necessary and can’t be delayed, it’s declared legally essential.

The rulings indicated judges were pushing back on Republican-controlled states including abortion in sweeping orders as the outbreak grows in the U.S. In Texas, the ruling came down after state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said abortion was included in a statewide ban on nonessential surgeries.

But U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel said the “Supreme Court has spoken clearly" on a woman's right to abortion. One abortion provider in Texas, Whole Woman's Health, said it had canceled more than 150 appointments in the days after the Texas order went into effect.

“There can be no outright ban on such a procedure," Yeakel wrote. Paxton said the state would appeal. The rulings happened Monday as lawsuits were also filed in Iowa and Oklahoma, after governors in those states similarly ordered a stop to non-emergency procedures and specifically included abortion among them.

The lawsuits were filed by Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights and local lawyers in each state. Their aim, like abortion providers in Texas, is to stop state officials from prohibiting abortions as part of temporary policy changes related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Friday that abortions were included in his executive order banning all elective surgeries and minor medical procedures until April 7, unless the procedure was necessary to prevent serious health risks to the mother. Stitt said the order was needed to help preserve the state’s limited supply of personal protective equipment, like surgical masks and gloves.

A spokesman for Stitt referred questions about the challenge to Attorney General Mike Hunter, who vowed in a statement to defend the ban. “My office will vigorously defend the governor’s executive order and the necessity to give precedence to essential medical procedures during this daunting public health crisis," Hunter's statement said. "Make no mistake, this lawsuit will itself drain significant resources, medical and legal, from emergency efforts, and likely, directly and indirectly, bring harm to Oklahomans as a result."

Monday night, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued a temporary restraining order against Alabama's order, saying the ruling with be in effect through April 13 while he considers additional arguments.

Thompson wrote the state’s concerns about conserving medical equipment during the pandemic, does not “outweigh the serious, and, in some cases, permanent, harms imposed by the denial of an individual’s right to privacy."

Attorneys for the Alabama clinics said facilities had canceled appointments for 17 people scheduled this week. “Patients that have already had their appointments canceled have been devastated; in many instances the calls cancelling the appointments have ended in tears,” lawyers for the clinics wrote.

Alabama closed many nonessential businesses with a state health order, effective Saturday. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said earlier Monday the state would not offer a “blanket exemption" to abortion clinics.

In Ohio, Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics that sued last year to try to thwart a law that bans most abortions after a first detectable fetal heartbeat are asking a court to speed up its decision in that case and to consider a recent coronavirus order by the state health director. In filings Monday, the groups’ attorneys argued “the state is again attempting to ban abortions” through Dr. Amy Acton’s directive barring all “non-essential” procedures and Attorney General Dave Yost’s threats that it will be rigidly enforced.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds spokesman Pat Garrett said the governor “is focused on protecting Iowans from an unprecedented public health disaster, and she suspended all elective surgeries and procedures to preserve Iowa’s health care resources.”

Reynolds said Sunday the move was not based on her personal ideology but a broad order to halt nonessential procedures to conserve medical equipment. The Iowa lawsuit said abortion procedures do not require extensive use of medical equipment and do not use N95 respirators, the devices in shortest supply during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Patients’ abortions will be delayed, and in some cases, denied altogether," the lawsuit states. “As a result, Iowa patients will be forced to carry pregnancies to term, resulting in a deprivation of their fundamental right to determine when and whether to have a child or to add to their existing families.”

The lawsuits seek court orders halting action pertaining to abortions and ask judges for immediate hearings.

Weber reported from Austin, Texas. AP Writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Julie Smyth in Columbus, Ohio contributed to this story.

Dismantling democracy? Virus used as excuse to quell dissent

March 31, 2020

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Soldiers patrol the streets with their fingers on machine gun triggers. The army guards an exhibition center-turned-makeshift-hospital crowded with rows of metal beds for those infected with the coronavirus. And Serbia’s president warns residents that Belgrade's graveyards won’t be big enough to bury the dead if people ignore his government's lockdown orders.

Since President Aleksandar Vucic announced an open-ended state of emergency on March 15, parliament has been sidelined, borders shut, a 12-hour police-enforced curfew imposed and people over 65 banned from leaving their homes — some of Europe’s strictest measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Serbian leader, who makes dramatic daily appearances issuing new decrees, has assumed full power, prompting an outcry from opponents who say he has seized control of the state in an unconstitutional manner.

Rodoljub Sabic, a former state commissioner for personal data protection, says by proclaiming a state of emergency, Vucic has assumed “full supremacy” over decision-making during the crisis, although his constitutional role is only ceremonial.

“He issues orders which are automatically accepted by the government,” Sabic said. “No checks and balances." In ex-communist Eastern Europe and elsewhere, populist leaders are introducing harsh measures including uncontrolled cellphone surveillance of their citizens and lengthy jail sentences for those who flout lockdown decrees.

The human rights chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said while she understands the need to act swiftly to protect populations from the COVID-19 pandemic, the newly declared states of emergency must include a time limit and parliamentary oversight.

“A state of emergency — wherever it is declared and for whatever reason — must be proportionate to its aim, and only remain in place for as long as absolutely necessary," said the OSCE rights chief, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir.

In times of national emergency, countries often take steps that rights activists see as curtailing civil liberties, such as increased surveillance, curfews and restrictions on travel, or limiting freedom of expression. China locked down whole cities earlier this year to stop the spread of the virus as India did with the whole nation.

Amnesty International researcher Massimo Moratti said states of emergency are allowed under international human rights law but warned that the restrictive measures should not become a “new normal." “Such states need to last only until the danger lasts," he told The Associated Press.

In European Union-member Hungary, parliament on Monday passed a law giving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government the right to rule by decree for as long as a state of emergency declared March 11 is in effect.

The law also sets prison terms of up to five years for those convicted of spreading false information about the pandemic and up to eight years for those interfering with efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, like a curfew or quarantine.

Rights groups and officials say the law creates the possibility of an indefinite state of emergency and gives Orbán and his government carte blanche to restrict human rights and crack down on freedom of the press.

“Orban is dismantling democracy in front of our eyes,"said Tanja Fajon, a member of the European Parliament, “This is a shame for Europe, its fundamental values and democracy. He (Orban) abused coronavirus as an excuse to kill democracy and media freedom."

“This is not the way to address the very real crisis that has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said David Vig, Amnesty International’s Hungary director. Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga said criticism of Hungary's bill were "political attacks based on the wrong interpretation or intentional distortion" of its contents.

Other governments have also adopted extreme measures. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu's caretaker government passed a series of emergency executive measures to try to quell the spread of the new virus. These include authorizing unprecedented electronic surveillance of Israeli citizens and a slowdown of court activity that forced the postponement of Netanyahu's own pending corruption trial.

In Russia, authorities have turned up the pressure on media outlets and social media users to control the narrative amid the country's growing coronavirus outbreak. Moscow went on lockdown Monday and many other regions quickly followed suit.

Under the guise of weeding out coronavirus-related “fake news,” law enforcement has cracked down on people sharing opinions on social media, and on media that criticize the government’s response to the outbreak.

In Poland, people are worried about a new government smartphone application introduced for people in home quarantine. Panoptykon Foundation, a human rights group that opposes surveillance, says some users who support government efforts to fight the pandemic worry that by using the app they could be giving too much private data to the conservative government.

While nearly 800 coronavirus cases and 16 deaths have been recorded in Serbia, according to Johns Hopkins University, testing has been extremely limited and experts believe the figures greatly under-represent the real number of victims. Most people suffer mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, from the virus but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, more severe illness can occur, including pneumonia and death.

Images of the transformation of a huge communist-era exhibition hall in Belgrade into a makeshift hospital for infected patients has triggered widespread public fear of the detention camp-looking facility that is filled with row-upon-row of 3,000 metal beds.

The Serbian president said he was glad that people got scared, adding he would have chosen even a worse-looking spot if that would stop Serbs from flouting his stay-at-home orders. “Someone has to spend 14 to 28 days there,” Vucic said. “If it’s not comfortable, I don’t care. We are fighting for people’s lives."

“Do not Drown Belgrade,” a group of civic activists, has launched an online petition against what they call Vucic’s abuse of power and curtailing of basic human rights. It says his frequent public appearances are creating panic in an already worried society.

“We do not need Vucic’s daily dramatization, but the truth: Concrete data and instructions from experts,” the petition says.

Associated Press writers Jovana Gec, Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Hungary, and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.

Hungary approves extra government powers, with no end date

March 30, 2020

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's parliament on Monday approved a bill giving Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government extraordinary powers during the coronavirus pandemic, and setting no end date for them.

The bill was approved by Orban's Fidesz party and other government supporters by 137 votes in favor to 53 against. It needed 133 votes to pass. President Janos Ader signed the bill into law shortly after its approval in parliament and it will take effect from Tuesday.

The legislation has been criticized by opposition parties, international institutions and civic groups for failing include an expiration date for the government's ability to rule by decree. It also includes measures against false information which have raised concerns they they could be used by the government to muzzle independent media.

“The extraordinary measures are related to the pandemic, to its prevention, its elimination and the prevention of the damaging economic consequences,” said Csaba Domotor, a deputy minister in Orban's Cabinet Office. “A time limit cannot be declared in this situation because there is no one ... who can say how many months of struggle we have to prepare for.”

Opposition lawmakers said they were willing to give the government the requested powers, but only if they were set for a certain period, with the possibility of extensions. “The opposition is united on the issue of giving the government powers which are significantly more extensive than the authority in the Constitution,” said Tamas Harangozo, a lawmaker with the opposition Socialist Party." The opposition's request is that “the government accept that it can only do this within time limits.”

The human rights chief at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe also expressed concerns about the new legislation. “It is clear that states need to act swiftly in order to protect their populations from the COVID-19 pandemic, and I understand that extraordinary measures may be required to do so,” said Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

“However, a state of emergency — wherever it is declared and for whatever reason — must be proportionate to its aim, and only remain in place for as long as absolutely necessary.” The opposition criticized as insufficient the government's economic measures meant to alleviate the effects of the pandemic. While Orban has announced numerous tax breaks and the postponement until 2021 of debt payments by households and companies, critics have cited the lack of direct payments to employers to save jobs. Opposition parties have also called on salaries to be doubled for workers in the health sector.

Orban said the government would announce a package of economic measures on April 6 or 7 to boost growth. He said it would be the largest action of its kind in Hungarian history. A rights group known in part for its advocacy for refugees and asylum-seekers said that checks on the government's rule by decree would now have to come from external institutions to a greater extent.

“Parliament, as the legislative body representing the people, practically will be in recess from now on. Law will be essentially made by the government,” the Hungarian Helsinki Committee said. “In the absence of the proper function of parliament, civic control of the government and its institutions — especially by the press, civic groups, and human rights watchdogs — becomes more valuable.”

The opposition parties were also critical of the government's refusal to consider allowing lawmakers to vote from home. Hungary's Constitution does not allow parliamentary sessions or votes to be held via teleconferencing or other remote methods and the government said it has no plans for a Constitutional amendment needed to create the option.

“If we’re asking the whole country to stay home, then the Hungarian parliament should be able to do the same if the virus situation justifies it,” said independent lawmaker Bernadett Szel. A decree setting restrictions on leaving home, with exceptions for going to work or for essential needs like food shopping, took effect on Saturday.

Hungary declared a state of emergency on March 11 due to the spread of coronavirus. So far 447 cases have been confirmed in the country, with 15 deaths.

With more infections than China, Spain tightens lockdown

March 30, 2020

MADRID (AP) — Spain enforced even tighter stay-at-home rules Monday for its 47 million people, as the country overtook China as the nation with the third-highest number of reported infections in the world, after the United States and Italy.

But the new measures, which confused many Spaniards, came under attack from business leaders who say the government is hurting the economy beyond repair, and opposition parties who accuse it of improvising in its response to the outbreak.

Already stretched beyond breaking point in at least one third of the country, hospitals are seeing scores of medical workers falling ill and requiring quarantine, while the arrival of protective gear is suffering delays.

The government's decision to impose a two-week halt effective Monday to all non-essential economic activity. came even as authorities claimed that the previous two weeks of confinement were starting to pay off with a slower pace of the pandemic’s expansion,

The president of Spain's main business association, CEOE, warned that the stricter measures would create “a very grave economic problem that can lead to a social problem” through potential job and income losses.

Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards have already applied for unemployment subsidies since the confinement measures began in mid-March, and a 200-billion euro aid package, much of it from public funds, has been rolled out to help workers and companies cushion the drop in production.

"If you stop the country, we'll have a huge social problem within five months," Antonio Garamendi told Spain's public broadcaster, TVE. Only workers in hospitals, pharmacies, the food supply chain and other essential industries are required to work until the end of Easter, in mid-April. In a call for Spaniards to “hibernate,” as described by a Cabinet member of Spain's left-wing coalition government, the rest were asked to scale back operations to weekend-level.

But the new measures surprised and confused many Spaniards, who woke up on Monday not knowing whether their jobs were part of the exceptions to the government's new emergency decree that wasn't fully published until midnight on Sunday.

“Spaniards don't deserve more lies, incompetence and internal fighting,” opposition conservative Popular Party leader Pablo Casado said on Monday. In hard-hit Madrid, which has seen nearly half of the country’s deaths, flags flew at half-staff for an official mourning period that began Monday. During a minute of silence observed for the dead, bells tolled across the Spanish capital's empty Puerta del Sol central square. Speakers blasted U.S. composer Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.

With a population thirty times smaller than China’s 1. 4 billion, Spain's official tally of infections was for the first time higher: more than 85,000, an 8% rise from the previous day but smaller than earlier increases that had rocketed up to 20%. The health ministry also reported 812 new deaths, raising its overall confirmed death toll to 7,340.

Crews of workers and soldiers were frantically building more field hospitals in the capital and surrounding towns. The region is among six of Spain's 17 regions at their limit of ICU beds. Three more, according to officials, are close to it.

Spanish health official Dr. Maria José Sierra said there's no end to the stay-at-home restrictions yet in sight. “Reducing the pressure on the ICUs will be important for considering de-escalation measures,” said Sierra, who took over Monday as the health emergency center's spokesperson after its director tested positive.

Nearly 15% of all those infected in Spain, almost 13,000 people, are among the country's 646,000 health care professionals. This hampers hospitals' efforts to help the tsunami of people gasping for breath.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, the virus can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and can be fatal. More than 155,000 people have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins.

Moscow goes into lockdown, rest of Russia braces for same

March 30, 2020

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian capital, Moscow, on Monday woke up to a lockdown obliging most of its 13 million residents to stay home, and many other regions of the vast country quickly followed suit to stem the spread of the new coronavirus.

A stern-looking President Vladimir Putin warned his envoys in Russia's far-flung regions that they will be personally responsible for the availability of beds, ventilators and other key equipment. “We have managed to win time and slow down an explosive spread of the disease in the previous weeks, and we need to use that time reserve to the full,” Putin said.

Russia so far has been relatively spared by the outbreak, with 1,836 confirmed cases and nine deaths, but the number of people testing positive has risen quickly in recent days and authorities are bracing for the worst.

Putin has declared that only people employed by essential sectors should work this week, leaving it to regional authorities to spell out the details. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin followed up by ordering Muscovites to stay home starting Monday except for medical emergencies and runs to nearby shops. He said the city will issue special passes for those who need to keep working and track all others with electronic surveillance.

“We will steadily tighten controls," Sobyanin told a Cabinet meeting. “I hope that by the week's end we will have information systems allowing us to fully control citizens' movements and prevent possible violations.”

On Tuesday, the Russian parliament is scheduled to approve a bill that imposes prison terms of up to seven years and fines of up to 2 million rubles (about $25,000) — a huge sum in a country where an average monthly salary hovers around $500 — on violators of the lockdown.

Moscow has a sprawling system of surveillance cameras complete with facial recognition technology, which were tested during anti-Kremlin rallies last year to track down protesters. City authorities have also used cell phone location data from mobile providers to monitor those who were ordered to self-quarantine for two weeks after arriving from abroad.

Russia took early steps to counter the outbreak, closing the borders with China and then barring access to Chinese citizens last month when China was still the world's hottest coronavirus spot. Authorities followed up by screening arrivals from Italy, France, Spain and other countries worst-affected by the outbreak, and obliging them to self-quarantine. Last week Russia cut all international commercial flights and finally fully closed its borders effective Monday, with the exception of diplomats, truck drivers and a few other categories.

Russian officials said those measures helped slow down the spread of COVID-19, but acknowledged that the disease is accelerating rapidly and relatively low numbers of confirmed cases could be explained by insufficient screening.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with prior health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and can be fatal.

Authorities have converted several hospitals in Moscow to treat coronavirus patients and thousands of construction workers labored around the clock at a construction site on Moscow's outskirts to build a new specialized hospital to be ready in a few weeks.

The Defense Ministry also launched a massive effort to build 16 hospitals across the country in a matter of weeks. Last week, the military also conducted massive drills across Russia to disinfect and quarantine broad areas.

Despite those efforts, many in Russia worry that the nation's underfunded health care system that just recently underwent massive cuts could be easily overwhelmed by the crisis. Putin told his envoys in the regions Monday that they must quickly report the real situation with ventilators and other essential equipment, prepare for moving seriously ill patients between regions and mobilize medical personnel, including medical students. He also ordered a sharp increase in screening. Until last week, just one laboratory in Siberia was analyzing the coronavirus tests.

In a move reflecting the gravity of the crisis, Putin last week postponed a vote on constitutional amendments that would allow him to stay in office until 2036 if he chooses. Russian authorities haven’t restricted travel to and from the capital city. Many residents of the Moscow region commute to work in the capital.

In a sign of lack of sync between various state agencies amid quick-paced developments, police in the Moscow region on Sunday night announced a curfew on top of the lockdown, but the authorities quickly denied the announcement.

Putin has hailed Moscow's lockdown as “necessary and justified." St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, and over a dozen other regions from the westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad to Tatarstan on the Volga River to the Yekaterinburg region in the Urals quickly followed Moscow's example and imposed similar lockdowns.

Russia's leading opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, on Monday blasted the Kremlin for longtime neglect of the country's hospitals and called for public donations to help them. He posted a letter from a doctor at one of Moscow's hospitals treating coronavirus patients who said staff have run out of protective suits and have to reuse those they have worn.

Kremlin critics also voiced concern that the government would use the lockdown to further tighten political controls and crack down on dissent. The authorities already have declared a campaign against “fake news” about the coronavirus, tracking down social media users making claims that contradict official figures on coronavirus figures. Some already have been given heavy fines.

The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.