The worldwide race to protect people against being infected by unwitting coronavirus carriers intensified Thursday, pitting governments against each other as they buy protective gear and prompting new questions about who should wear masks, get temperature checks or even be permitted to go outside.
Covid-19 statewise tally: Tamil Nadu, Delhi outnumber coronavirus cases in Kerala
In the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began in December, a green symbol on residents’ smartphones dictates their movements. Green is the “health code” that says a user is symptom-free. It’s required to board a subway, check into a hotel or enter the central city of 11 million. Serious travel restrictions still exist for those who have yellow or red symbols.
In northern Italy, the country with the most virus deaths in the world at over 13,000, guards with thermometer guns decide who can enter supermarkets. In Los Angeles, the mayor has recommended that the city’s 4 million people wear masks. They’re mandatory for all Israelis who leave home, as well as customers of grocery stores in Austria and pharmacies in Pakistan.
A top official in France’s hard-hit eastern region complained Thursday that American officials swooped in at a Chinese airport to spirit away a planeload of masks that France had ordered.
“On the tarmac, the Americans arrive, take out cash and pay three or four times more for our orders, so we really have to fight,” Dr. Jean Rottner, president of the Grand Est regional council and an emergency room physician in Mulhouse, told RTL radio.
A study by researchers in Singapore on Wednesday estimated that around 10% of new infections may be sparked by people who carry the virus but have no symptoms yet or never do.
In Greece, authorities placed an entire refugee camp of 2,400 people under quarantine Thursday after discovering that a third of the 63 contacts of just one infected woman tested positive — and none had showed symptoms.
The top U.S. infectious disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said medical experts are no closer to figuring out why some seemingly healthy people have only mild or no symptoms while others become catastrophically sick.
“I’ve been doing infectious diseases now for almost 50 years, and I can tell you I don’t fully understand exactly what the mechanism of that is,” he told NBC’s “Today” show.
In response to the study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed how it defined the risks of infection, saying essentially that anyone may be a carrier, whether they have symptoms or not. But neither it nor the World Health Organization changed their recommendations that not everyone need to wear a mask.
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