UK families see hard times ahead as COVID programs end

September 30, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Diana Gaglio has been in the economic crosshairs of the pandemic for the past 18 months. The 53-year-old from Bedfordshire, north of London, was furloughed from her job as entertainment manager for a holiday company when COVID-19 gutted the travel industry, then lost her job altogether just before Christmas. Now her temporary job at a virus testing center is coming to an end, just as the government scraps the emergency program that provided an income the last time she was out of work.

“The market is going to be flooded,’’ Gaglio said. “If it wasn’t hard already, it’s going to be harder.’’ Gaglio is one of millions of people across the U.K. who are facing a long, bleak winter as the rising cost of living coincides with the end of government programs that once shielded households from the economic fallout of COVID-19.

The biggest of those programs, which sought to preserve jobs by subsidizing the wages of workers whose hours were cut due to the pandemic, ends on Thursday. Some 1.6 million people were still supported by the so-called furlough program this month, down from a high of 8.9 million in May of last year.

Also, a temporary increase in welfare payments ends next week, cutting benefits by almost 1,100 pounds ($1,480) a year; and protections for renters squeezed by the pandemic are being phased out. All of this comes as 15 million households face a 12% jump in energy bills, adding to consumer price inflation that reached the highest level in more than nine years last month.

Adding to the sense of gloom, drivers are facing long lines to fill their tanks after a truck driver shortage curtailed fuel deliveries. Newspapers warn of a scarcity of everything from toys to turkeys this Christmas unless the crisis is resolved soon.

“The country and the labor market is in for a really bumpy autumn,’’ said Charlie McCurdy, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank focused on improving living standards for those on low to middle incomes. “We can expect a living standard squeeze for families across the country.”

With front page headlines screaming “Prepare for winter of discontent” and “Boris in battle to save Xmas,” the bad news is fueling concerns about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s leadership and heaping pressure on him to do more to help struggling consumers.

Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party, on Wednesday mocked Johnson’s promise to “level up” incomes and economic opportunity. “Level up?’’ Starmer said during a speech at the party’s annual conference. “You can’t even fill up.”

The government has resisted calls to reverse course, saying the economy is rebounding from the pandemic and it is time to end emergency support programs. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak said Thursday that other programs, including job training, recovery loans for businesses and a recent increase in housing benefits would remain in place. The government has spent 400 billion pounds to support the economy during the pandemic.

“With the recovery well underway, and more than 1 million job vacancies, now is the right time for the scheme to draw to a close,’’ he said of the furlough program. “But that in no way means the end of our support.’’

The U.K. economy has recovered strongly since the depths of the pandemic, although gross domestic product remains about 2.1% smaller than it was in February 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The recovery has pushed job vacancies to record levels as employers hire staff to meet increasing demand. But while the future may look bright for truck drivers and hospitality workers, things are a lot less hopeful for other professions.

The surge in vacancies has been driven by openings for low-paid workers, with more than two-thirds of unemployed jobseekers facing increased competition for jobs, according to the London-based Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The situation is particularly bad for older workers. Data released Thursday by the IFS showed that just 35% of workers over 50 had found work six months after being laid off during the pandemic, compared with 64% of younger workers.

Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less, a digital community for people over 50, said his members are anxious about the darkening financial situation. “We’re seeing there’s concerns around the pandemic and the health risks that are still lingering for some,” he said. “There’s additional concerns, as well, around affordability, around the financial impact as people run into Christmas. There’s a perfect storm of challenges that many people are concerned about in the coming months.”

Gaglio is one of them. Before the pandemic she was a respected manager, booking cabaret performers, comedians and singers for an international holiday company and spending much of her year abroad. Now she’s back in England, renting a room in someone else’s house to keep costs down as she tries to get her career back on track.

But she fears that recruiters and employers don’t look beyond her age to see the vivacious, curious and confident woman she remains. “Other people see your face and your skin and it's older — they have a perception of you,” she said. “Maybe they need to get to know me better.”

Employers are also in a bind. Take Tool Shop, a hardware chain that had 12 shops and 50 employees before high property taxes and the shift toward online shopping closed three stores in 2019. The pandemic added to those pressures, forcing Tool Shop to close five more outlets and merge two others last year, leaving it with just three shops and 11 staff members. The company used to draw up a multi-year strategy targeting growth and expansion. Now the planning horizon is three months.

Tool Shop is hoping customers will return as the pandemic eases and people return to their usual routines, said Sara Edmiston, the company’s human resources director. Tool Shop employee Martin Matio, 69, is betting people will recognize that personal service is valuable and seeing what you are buying is better than looking at a tiny picture on a website.

Matio quickly illustrates his understanding of the London household, together with instant recall on where items can be found in a shop packed to the rafters. Got a moth problem? He’s got just the thing. Mold? No problem.

Returns? No questions asked. Jokes? Part of the service. “I believe physical contact is the most important thing; customers want to know what they are buying’’ he said, comparing retail transactions to courtship. “If I’m going to get married, I want to see the girl.”

Associated Press Writer Khadija Kothia contributed.

Two Europes: Low vaccine rates in east overwhelm ICUs

September 28, 2021

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — In a packed intensive care unit for coronavirus patients in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, 55-year-old Adrian Pica sits on his bed receiving supplementary oxygen to help him breathe. “I didn’t want to get vaccinated because I was afraid,” he said.

Around 72% of adults in the 27-nation European Union have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but a stubbornly low uptake of the shots in some eastern EU nations now risks overwhelming hospitals amid a surge of infections due to the more contagious delta variant.

“Until now I didn’t believe in COVID-19,” Pica, who said his early symptoms left him sweating and feeling suffocated, told The Associated Press. “I thought it was just like the flu. But now I’m sick and hospitalized. I want to get a vaccine.”

Bulgaria and Romania are lagging dramatically behind as the EU’s two least-vaccinated nations, with just 22% and 33% of their adult populations fully inoculated. Rapidly increasing new infections have forced authorities to tighten virus restrictions in the two countries, while other EU nations such as France, Spain, Denmark and Portugal have all exceeded 80% vaccine coverage and eased restrictions.

Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health commissioner, said the “worrying gap” on vaccinations needs urgently addressing. Slovakia, Croatia and Latvia have vaccinated around 50% of all their adults. But jab uptake in many Central and Eastern European countries has remained weak or declined.

In Norway, where about 70% of the population has been vaccinated, authorities on Saturday scrapped restrictions that Prime Minister Erna Holberg called “the strictest measures in peacetime.” Nordic neighbor Denmark lifted virus restrictions on Sept. 10, while the U.K. has also abandoned most pandemic restrictions due to high vaccine rates.

In contrast, at Bucharest’s Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, the ICU's chief doctor, Genoveva Cadar, says the beds are now at 100% capacity and around 98% of all the virus patients are unvaccinated.

“In comparison to previous waves, people are arriving with more severe forms” of the disease, she said, adding that many patients in this latest surge are younger than in previous ones. “Very quickly they end up intubated — and the prognosis is extremely bleak.”

New daily coronavirus cases in Romania, a country of 19 million residents, have grown exponentially over the last month, while the number of people getting vaccinated has declined to worrying lows. Romanian officials reported 11,049 new cases on Tuesday, the highest daily tally since the pandemic started. Government data shows that 91.5% of COVID-19 deaths in Romania during Sept. 18-23 involved unvaccinated patients.

On Sunday, 1,220 of Romania's 1,239 ICU beds for virus patients were occupied. In many cases, only deaths freed up spaces. At the Marius Nasta Institute, a mobile ICU on hospital grounds that opened Monday already was full.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get over the next period, but we’re definitely going to be here,” hospital manager Beatrice Mahler told the AP. “We’re going to do everything we can (but) we don't have a winning recipe.”

Vlad Mixich, a Romanian public health specialist, told the AP that a “historic distrust of authorities” together with what he said was a very weak government vaccination campaign has contributed to the low vaccine uptake among his compatriots.

“During the vaccination campaign, unfortunately the politicians were the main communicators,” he said, adding that a frequent turnover in the country's health ministers has had a massive impact on efforts to inoculate Romanians.

In neighboring Bulgaria, an alarming 23% of people said they do not want to get vaccinated, compared with only 9% across the bloc, according to a Eurobarometer survey. Sabila Marinova, the ICU manager at a hospital in Bulgaria’s northern town of Veliko Tarnovo, says none of its COVID-19 patients is vaccinated.

“We are very exhausted," she said. “It seems that this horror has no end.” The vice president of Romania’s national vaccination committee, Andrei Baciu, said that fake news has been a key factor in keeping people from getting jabbed.

“There is and was a culture that promotes fake news. We are working with a team of specialists to combat (it) ... right now there is a high number of (infections) due to low vaccination rates,” he said, adding that the government is looking to increase ICU capacity.

Sometimes medical workers in Eastern Europe face additional risks. In September in Bulgaria’s port city of Varna, a group opposed to vaccines attacked a medical team at a mobile vaccination station. Health Minister Stoycho Katsarov condemned the attack, saying “we will not allow our medics to be insulted, publicly harassed and humiliated” for trying to save lives.

The implementation of vaccine passports, which allow people to show their vaccine status to carry out day-to-day activities, may be one of few options left for European governments at a loss on how to encourage their vaccine-hesitant citizens to get jabbed.

Experts say vaccine skeptics in parts of Europe could hamper the entire continent's efforts to end the pandemic. Back at the Marius Nasta Institute, Nicoleta Birtea, a 63-year-old unvaccinated COVID-19 patient who had previous health issues, says she woke up a month ago feeling dizzy and ill and called for an ambulance.

“I hope that I got here on time,” she said, adding “I understand very clearly that the vaccine can’t protect you.”

Polish protesters warn that health care crisis is looming

September 24, 2021

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — When a priest arrives at a hospital in Chorzow to perform the last rites, nurse Mariusz Strug can see the fear in dying patients' eyes. “After the sacrament, they knew what was happening,” he said.

But there have been no psychologists available to offer any consolation to the patients. Strug and another nurse would try to offer some kind words, but they were strained to the limit caring for 60 patients in their COVID-19 ward.

“People come to us and they want us nurses to perform a miracle," said Strug. Exhausted from working in such an understaffed system, he is among a group of health care workers who have come to Warsaw from across Poland for an around-the-clock protest outside the prime minister’s office that has gone on for nearly two weeks.

After a year and a half of the pandemic, and with Poland on the cusp of a fourth surge of COVID-19 infections, nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and other health care workers have come to urge Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and other authorities to make deep reforms to the health care system, arguing that it is in danger of collapse.

“The pandemic showed us how bad the health care system is,” said Gilbert Kolbe, a nurse and spokesman for the protest movement. “This is the last chance to do something before it will be too late. We won’t be able to avert a crisis coming in five, ten years.”

While health care workers across the 27-nation European Union have been tested by the pandemic, Poland faced that test with fewer doctors and nurses than most. According to OECD statistics, Poland has the lowest number of working doctors in proportion to its population — just 2.4 to 1,000 inhabitants compared with 4.5 in Germany. Poland also has only 5 nurses to 1,000 inhabitants, below the EU average of 8 and far below richer countries like Germany, which has 14.

Poland’s health care sector has been strapped for resources for decades, a situation not rectified by a series of governments on the left, the center or now the right. The problems have been exacerbated by the thousands of doctors, nurses and others who left Poland for higher paid work in Western Europe after the country joined the EU in 2004.

Of the medical professionals who have stayed in Poland, many have also left the public sector for better-paying jobs in the private sector, leaving fewer to care for the poorest people, said Kolbe, a 25-year-old who left a public hospital to work for a private medical company but hopes to return to the public system one day.

Kolbe said 5,500 people complete their nursing studies on average each year in Poland, but only about 2,500 go to work in the public system. Some of those protesting say they are simply exhausted. With wages low, some work more than one medical job to support themselves.

Alicja Krakowiecka, a 56-year-old nurse from the southern city of Czestochowa, said her hospital is so short-staffed that during the height of the pandemic she would sometimes begin her day at 6 a.m. only to be asked to stay on because the night nurse was sick. She was then left alone with 30 patients for a 24-hour shift. Instead of getting two days off she would be asked to return the next evening.

“Do you refuse?” she asked, explaining that she agreed to the exhausting shifts out of a sense of obligation. The protest began Sept. 11, when tens of thousands from across Poland marched through Warsaw. Some stayed on in tents and held daily press conferences and lectures.

Last weekend the protesters were deeply shaken when a 94-year-old man who come been stopping by and giving them candies killed himself a few feet away. A shot rang out during a news conference and the medics ran to the man, but couldn't help him.

Since then they have protested silently, forgoing news conferences. Amid the pressure of the protests, and with talks between health care unions and the government going on for weeks, Morawiecki announced Tuesday that an additional 1 billion zlotys ($254 million) would be allocated this year to salaries and education in the health care sector.

In addition, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said Wednesday that he had agreed to pay paramedics more. Still, the group organizing the protests said the rest of the health care community was not satisfied, meaning more talks between the government and the protesters are planned.

Kamila Maslowska, a medical intern, stopped by the protest tents with some friends Tuesday to show her solidarity. “I know two additional languages fluently, apart from Polish, so I think I could find a job abroad," she said "(But) I would not like to leave. I would like something to change for the better.”

Tunisia to lift covid curfews

September 24, 2021

Tunisia will entirely lift its nightly curfew against COVID-19 from Saturday, Reuters reported the presidency saying today, after about a year after the policy came into force.

In October 2020, Tunisia announced a night-time curfew in all governorates, shutting schools and banning inter-regional travel to halt the resurgence of coronavirus.

The government has also banned gatherings of more than four people in public places, except for on public transport, suspended congregational prayers in mosques and religious spaces until mid-November, and ordered restaurants and cafes to close at 4pm each day.

Tunisian COVID-19 cases spiked sharply in July but have since fallen as the country has carried out a vaccination campaign.

As of yesterday, 703,059 coronavirus cases had been registered in Tunisia, including 24,676 patients who died as a result of infection. To date, 7,342,484 people have received at least one shot of the vaccine, while 3,357,086 are now fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Source: Middle East Monitor.

Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210924-tunisia-to-lift-covid-curfews/.

Virus fallout, slow internet worry businesses in German vote

September 17, 2021

GOLSSEN, Germany (AP) — A mill owner in eastern Germany hopes the next government will restore supply chains disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. A brewer in the country’s south wants a more predictable strategy for responding to the virus and a better cellphone network. A hotel owner in the west wants money, fast, to clean up after devastating floods.

A crowded race to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel after she decided not to extend her 16 years in office has left many Germans uninspired and undecided ahead of the Sept. 26 parliamentary election. While some of the issues that voters say are most important to them — including climate change and the economy — are global or national in scope, many have local and personal priorities.

Looming over the election in Europe’s biggest economy, as elsewhere, is uncertainty over how much more disruption the pandemic will cause — and small business owners are especially hoping a new leader might help them avoid a repeat of the pain of the last 18 months.

But they are also interested in how the next chancellor will guide efforts to rebuild areas hit by flash floods in July and address unfinished business from the Merkel era — such as improving Germany's internet and cellphone service or reducing its onerous bureaucracy.

At the Kanow Mill in Golssen, in the rural, eastern state of Brandenburg, owner Christian Berendt is grateful for the financial support his seventh-generation family vegetable oil business has received as part of efforts by authorities to strengthen local business.

But, while he said that parts of the formerly communist east have developed well, many rural areas there and across the country still need help. “Rural structures have to be strengthened” in a coordinated, long-term way, he said.

In the shorter term, Berendt, 37, hopes the next government can ease the problems still being caused by the pandemic. His mill suffered because it missed out on business at local markets and trade fairs, but it has stepped up direct shipments to customers. Still, disruption to supply chains, for packaging and some seeds, continue to plague him.

“At the moment, you either have very, very long delivery times or you have to pay a horrendous price,” he said. A few hundred kilometers (miles) southwest in Salz, in the Rhoen hills in Bavaria, brewer Florian Rehbock is also worried about the pandemic — and hopes the next administration can soften its blows. When restaurants and bars, which make up 85% of Rehbock's business were shuttered during lockdowns, the brewer was forced to throw out large quantities of beer that takes weeks to prepare.

“There was no support for the beer that was destroyed — it was just gone. That's serious for a small company like me and can even endanger livelihoods,” he said. “I would like ... the new government to set itself up better strategically, that we don't just get day-to-day policies that go one way one week, another the next.”

Rehbock, who brews his beer in several small breweries, said some of his customers fear another lockdown after the election. Average daily deaths from the virus have more than doubled over the past two weeks, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, and the vaccination campaign has slowed to a crawl. Still, Germany has generally managed the pandemic better than many of its peers and its daily death toll remains below that of neighboring France, which has a smaller population, for instance. All three candidates for chancellor say no new lockdown will be needed, at least as things stand.

But the 41-year-old Rehbock, who has been self-employed since 2016, said his concerns go beyond the pandemic. “Germany is not the optimal location” for entrepreneurs, he said, citing problems that include complications in registering with tax authorities and getting construction permits.

He also bemoaned that in rural areas like his, a good internet connection is hard to come by and so is reliable cellphone coverage. "If you're on the phone with clients, you can expect that on at least a third of calls, the call drops out from time to time,” he said.

Rather than talking about grandiose plans for a state-of-the-art 5G network, “I'd say start with a normal cellphone network — that would be enough for me for the time being,” he said. Across the country in Gemuend, near the Belgian border, Manfred Pesch has no time to focus on national issues. He is still cleaning up at his waterside Hotel Friedrichs after the small Urft river swelled to a raging torrent in mid-July.

Germany's parliament last week approved a 30 billion-euro ($35 billion) rebuilding fund for the swath of the country's west affected by the flooding. Overseeing that long-term effort will fall to the next administration.

“The help must really come quickly,” said Pesch, 55. “At the moment, to be honest, what's really important is that we get our problems here solved. I don't have any time really to see the other problems, because I'm in such difficulty.”

The flood compounded the struggles he and others in the tourism business already faced because travel dried up during the pandemic and many staff left. “We have to hope that tourism will return and a lot of young people will again find their way into catering,” he said. “If we overcome the pandemic, and we can look to a positive future, that would be super.”

Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press journalists Christoph Noelting in Salz, Germany, and Daniel Niemann in Gemuend, Germany, contributed to this report.

Hospitalized Czech president to return to work next week

September 16, 2021

PRAGUE (AP) — Czech President Milos Zeman who was hospitalized this week has undergone medical checks that haven't revealed any problems or disease that would threaten his life, the presidential office said on Thursday.

Zeman’s office said doctors carried out CT scans, sonography checks and blood tests at Prague’s military hospital where the president was admitted Tuesday. It said the president was only dehydrated and slightly exhausted.

During his current hospitalization, Zeman will receive unspecified infusions and will fully return to his duties next week, his office said. Zeman, 76, is a heavy smoker who has suffered from diabetes and neuropathy linked to it. He has trouble walking and has been using a wheelchair.

His predecessor, Vaclav Klaus, who was in the same hospital to undergo checks after being diagnosed with high blood pressure might be discharged this week, his spokesman said.

Putin: Dozens in inner circle infected with coronavirus

September 16, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin says dozens of his staff have been infected with the coronavirus and that he will continue his self-isolation because of the outbreak. The Kremlin announced earlier this week that he would self-isolate after someone in his inner circle was infected although Putin had tested negative for the virus and he's fully vaccinated with Russia's Sputnik V. But Putin said Thursday the infections were extensive.

“Cases of coronavirus have been identified in my immediate environment, and this is not one, not two, but several tens of people. Now we have to observe the self-isolation regime for several days,” he said by video link to a summit of the Russia-led Collective Treaty Security Organization.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that those infected were “mainly those who take part in ensuring the work and activities of the head of state, his security.” None of the cases are severe, he said.

Although Russia was the first country to roll out a coronavirus vaccine, less than 30% of the country is fully vaccinated. The national coronavirus task force says about 7.2 million infections have been recorded in the country of 145 million, with 195,835 deaths.