coronavirus epidemic

Twitter Apologises For Tagging India’s Region As China

Twitter Staff Ordered To Work From Home Over Virus Fears

March 12, 2020 4:32 pm

Twitter has ordered all staff globally to work from home in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly new coronavirus epidemic.

The outbreak has spread across the world since emerging in central China late last year, killing more than 4,600 people, infecting over 126,000, and prompting a wave of travel restrictions.

The social media platform had already announced a mandatory work from home policy for its staff in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan earlier this month and suspended “non-critical” business travel and events in February.

“We are moving beyond our earlier guidance… and have now informed all …

Coronavirus Trump Facing Hurdles To Virus Stimulus Package

Trump Facing Hurdles To Coronavirus Stimulus Package

March 11, 2020 5:06 pm

As nearly three-quarters of US firms suffer supply disruptions due to the coronavirus epidemic, President Donald Trump‘s treasury secretary said the administration is “working full time” on a stimulus package to aid the economy.

However, a key senator shot down giving an immediate payroll tax cut to American workers, the plan’s main pillar, while Democrats are moving ahead with their own plan.

The outbreak has prompted US airlines to cancel flights, the Federal Reserve to make its first emergency rate cut in 12 years and the stock exchange to experience its worst session since 2008.

This spells trouble …

Italy Deploys Emergency Field Hospitals To Fight Virus

March 4, 2020 4:50 pm

A blue tent packed with masked medics in nylon overalls and rubber gloves greets patients outside an Italian hospital at the European epicentre of the new coronavirus epidemic.Welcome to the “sorting” room: an urgently deployed army-style field hospital where people running a fever or showing other flu-like symptoms are tested for signs of COVID-19.

Italy is learning fast from its mistakes.

One of them involved a single man — a 38-year-old codenamed “patient number one” — who developed pneumonia but was never isolated while he was treated in hospital, resulting in him unwittingly infecting other patients.

Italy’s 3,000 cases …

International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva at the Global Women's Forum in Dubai

Coronavirus Could Damage Global Growth In 2020: IMF

February 17, 2020 1:05 pm

The coronavirus epidemic could damage global economic growth this year, the IMF head said Sunday, but a sharp and rapid economic rebound could follow.

“There may be a cut that we are still hoping would be in the 0.1-0.2 percentage space,” the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, told the Global Women’s Forum in Dubai.

She said the full impact of the spreading disease that has already killed more than 1,600 people would depend on how quickly it was contained.

“I advise everybody not to jump to premature conclusions. There is still a great deal of uncertainty. …