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UK to use firefighters to deliver food, collect bodies in coronavirus crisis

LONDON (Reuters) – The United Kingdom will use firefighters to help deliver food, retrieve dead bodies and drive ambulances as it braces for the looming peak of the coronavirus outbreak that has already claimed the lives of more than 22,000 people across the world.

Britain initially took a strikingly modest approach to the worst health crisis since the 1918 influenza epidemic but then changed tack to impose stringent controls after projections showed a quarter of a million British people could die.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ordered a virtual lockdown of the world’s fifth largest economy to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus banning Britons from leaving their homes for all non-essential reasons.

So far, 578 people in the United Kingdom have died after testing positive for coronavirus and the number of confirmed cases has risen to 11,658. The UK toll is the seventh worst in the world, after Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France and the United States, according to a Reuters tally.

Under a deal struck between the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Fire chiefs and Fire and Rescue Employers, firefighters will continue to respond to their usual emergencies but will now also carry out new tasks.

“We face a public health crisis unparalleled in our lifetimes. The coronavirus outbreak is now a humanitarian emergency and firefighters rightly want help their communities,” said Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary.

“Many fear the loss of life in this outbreak could be overwhelming and firefighters, who often handle terrible situations and incidents, are ready to step in to assist with body retrieval.”

As well as collecting those who die should there be mass casualties, firefighters can drive ambulances, and take food and medicine to the vulnerable under the agreement.

To cope with the outbreak, Britain has already asked tens of thousands of retired doctors and healthcare workers to return to work, while hundreds of thousands of people have volunteered to assist the state-run National Health Service.

On Friday, the capital’s ambulance service appealed to former paramedics and control room staff for help, and London’s police force asked officers who have retired in the last five years to come back.

“It is important that we take all reasonable steps to bolster our numbers,” London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said.

BRITAIN CLAPS

Britons across the country took to their balconies and front doors on Thursday evening to applaud health workers and bang pots and pans to show support for those working for the nation’s much-loved NHS.

Related Coverage

  • UK working quickly as it can on ventilators after missing EU scheme: PM's spokesman

There has been criticism that the government has not acted quickly enough to provide protective equipment to frontline healthcare staff and it is also scrambling to source thousands of ventilators to treat those with severe breathing problems caused by the virus.

The government has admitted that it missed an opportunity to join a European Union procurement scheme to source the equipment because of an email mix up.

“There was an issue in terms of communications so the tendering process on those schemes had already started,” Business Secretary Alok Sharma told BBC radio on Friday.

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World News

Britain's PM Johnson has coronavirus, self-isolates in Downing Street

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tested positive for coronavirus and is self-isolating at his Downing Street residence but said he would still lead the government’s response to the accelerating outbreak.

Johnson, 55, experienced mild symptoms on Thursday, a day after he answered at the prime minister’s weekly question-and-answer session in parliament’s House of Commons chamber, and received the positive test result around midnight.

“I’ve taken a test. That has come out positive,” Johnson said on Friday in a video statement broadcast on Twitter. “I’ve developed mild symptoms of the coronavirus. That’s to say – a temperature and a persistent cough.

“So I am working from home. I’m self-isolating,” Johnson said. “Be in no doubt that I can continue, thanks to the wizardry of modern technology, to communicate with all my top team to lead the national fightback against coronavirus.”

British health minister Matt Hancock said later on Friday morning that he has also tested positive and is self-isolating at home with mild symptoms.

Johnson is the first leader of a major power to announce a positive test result for coronavirus. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went into isolation earlier this month after his wife tested positive for the virus.

U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have both been tested, so far with negative results.

Johnson chaired a government meeting on the coronavirus on Friday morning via teleconference.

ISOLATING IN DOWNING STREET

It was not immediately clear how many Downing Street staff and senior ministers would need to isolate themselves given that many have had contact with Johnson over recent days and weeks.

The moment Johnson felt symptoms he took steps to avoid close contact with anyone, a spokesman said, adding that ministers would need to self-isolate if they developed symptoms but that he was unaware of further testing among senior ministers.

Johnson will have his meals delivered to the door of an apartment at Number 11 Downing Street, while he self-isolates for seven days from the warren of corridors and rooms that make up the seat of British political power at Number 10 Downing Street.

“The doors between Number 10 and Number 11 have been closed off to all other staff who work in the building,” a Downing Street spokesman said. “The PM will work from the office and the study in Number 11.”

His finance minister, Rishi Sunak, who traditionally works out of Number 11 Downing Street, is not self-isolating, a Treasury source said.

Britons paid tribute to health workers on Thursday evening, clapping and cheering from doorways and windows. Johnson and Sunak took part, but came out of separate entrances on Downing Street and did not come into close contact, according to a Reuters photographer at the scene.

It was not immediately clear whether Johnson’s 32-year-old partner, Carrie Symonds, who is pregnant, had been tested.

QUEEN IN GOOD HEALTH

Queen Elizabeth last saw Johnson on March 11 and she remains in good health, Buckingham Palace said. The 93-year-old monarch usually sees the prime minister once a week but has recently conducted the regular audience by telephone.

“The queen last saw the PM on the 11th March and is following all the appropriate advice with regards to her welfare,” a palace spokesman said.

So far, 578 people in the United Kingdom have died after testing positive for coronavirus and the number of confirmed cases has risen to 11,658. The death toll is the seventh highest in the world, after Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France and the United States, according to a Reuters tally.

Prince Charles, the 71-year-old heir to the British throne, tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week. He is in good health and is now self-isolating at his residence in Scotland with mild symptoms along with his wife Camilla, who tested negative, his office said.

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World News

France, Malaysia charter flights to bring home citizens stranded in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – France and Malaysia have organized chartered flights to fly out hundreds of their citizens stranded in Cambodia after Southeast Asian nation sealed borders and canceled flights in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are trying to find solutions for stranded French tourists who have their flights canceled or can not go through transit hubs in the region anymore,” Hugo Wavrin, political and press counselor at the French Embassy in Cambodia told Reuters on Friday.

A special charter flight departed on Thursday with 413 French people on board, Wavrin said.

He said another 100 French nationals will be leaving Cambodia on Saturday and many more will be leaving in the next two days aboard regular commercial flights.

Malaysia also sent a special plane to take home 111 stranded Malaysian nationals on Wednesday, said Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn.

At the same time, Cambodia coordinated with Malaysia to repatriate six Cambodians stranded in Malaysia, Sokhonn said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

Cambodia reported two new coronavirus cases on Thursday, taking its total to 98, the health ministry said.

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Alleged Maduro accomplice surrenders to US agents, will help prosecution: sources

CARACAS/BOGOTA (Reuters) – U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents on Friday remanded in custody retired Venezuelan general Cliver Alcala, three people familiar with the matter said, after he agreed to work with prosecutors who charged him, President Nicolas Maduro and other top officials with drug trafficking.

Alcala surrendered to DEA agents in Colombia and waived his right to challenge extradition, the three people told Reuters. He was flown to White Plains, New York from the port city of Barranquilla, where he had been living.

The White House and a DEA spokeswoman referred questions to the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to comment. The State Department did not reply to a request for comment. Colombia’s National Police declined to comment.

The U.S. government on Thursday indicted Maduro, Alcala and 13 other current and former Venezuelan officials on charges of “narco-terrorism”, the latest escalation of a pressure campaign by U.S. President Donald Trump administration to oust the socialist leader.

Attorney General William Barr accused Maduro and his associates of colluding with a dissident faction of the demobilized Colombian guerrilla group, the FARC, “to flood the United States with cocaine.”

Maduro, in a state television address, dismissed the charges as false and racist, and called Trump a “miserable person.”

The U.S. State Department had offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to Alcala’s arrest, while there is a reward of up to $15 million for information aiding Maduro’s detention.

The indictment alleged that Alcala and other top officials received bribes from the FARC in exchange for safe passage for cocaine shipments sent through Venezuela.

Around 2008, at a meeting with senior socialist party leader Diosdado Cabello and then head of the military intelligence unit, Hugo Carvajal, it was decided Alcala would coordinate drug-trafficking with the FARC, according to the indictment.

Cabello and Carvajal were both charged too. They have previously denied accusations of drug trafficking.

Alcala retired from the armed forces as Maduro took over the presidency in 2013 following his predecessor Hugo Chavez’s death from cancer.

Alcala later fell out with the ruling Socialist Party and fled to Colombia, from where he has publicly spoken out against Maduro and backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has staked a rival claim to the presidency with U.S. support.

On Thursday evening, after the indictment’s announcement, Alcala told the DEA over the phone that he would give himself up, one person said.

In a video posted on his Instagram account on Friday afternoon, before leaving with the DEA, Alcala said, “Family, I say goodbye for a while. I face the responsibilities of my actions with the truth.”

Other Venezuelan officials whose indictments were announced on Thursday include Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and the chief justice of the country’s supreme court, Maikel Moreno, who was charged with money laundering.

One of the people familiar with Friday’s DEA operation said efforts had been under way to convince other individuals who have been indicted to surrender, but it was too early to say whether that would succeed, as unlike Alcala they remained in Venezuela.

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Business

Wall Street jumps at open as jobless claims raise hopes of more stimulus

(Reuters) – Wall Street jumped at the open on Thursday, building on a two-day rally, as investors bet on more stimulus measures after the U.S. jobless claims surged past 3 million last week, underscoring the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 267.83 points, or 1.26%, at the open to 21,468.38. The S&P 500 .SPX opened higher by 25.73 points, or 1.04%, at 2,501.29, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC gained 77.91 points, or 1.06%, to 7,462.21 at the opening bell.

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Business

'Maximum bearish': funds in record rush to cash in past week

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors rushed into cash and out of bonds at a record pace over the past week as the coronavirus pandemic caused mayhem in markets, BofA said on Friday, though it noted a key positioning signal at “maximum bearish” could signal a big rally ahead.

BofA’s weekly fund flows data based on figures from EPFR Global showed a record $234.6 billion had made their way into cash funds in the week to Wednesday while another record of $109 billion was registered in redemptions from bond funds.

The bank noted record $61.2 billion outflow from investment grade debt and “monster” $17.1 billion outflows from emerging bonds. Bond outflows totalled a “stunning” $218 billion in the past two weeks and $257 billion over the past month, it noted.

“The bond bubble pops,” the report said, adding the past four weeks’ redemptions had unwound 44% of “bubble inflows of $583 billion in the prior 52 weeks.”

(Graphic: BofA chart, here)

Equity funds meanwhile shed $26.2 billion, with U.S. share funds down $15.8 billion, the data showed.

The data, however, does not capture the market rebound seen in the past three sessions that boosted New York’s Dow Jones on Tuesday to its biggest one-day rise since 1933, thanks to central banks promising “whatever it takes” to ensure liquidity and a $2 trillion U.S. coronavirus relief bill.

Before that, between February 19 and March 23, an MSCI index of world stocks .MIWD00000PUS, fell about 35%.

BofA said its Bull & Bear Indicator – a key market measure it used to track positioning – had hit zero, a level it described as “maximum bearish”.

That potentially implies a substantial rebound in credit and stock markets if the stimulus plans of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government succeed, the bank added.

That could be borne out by the present rally, which was undeterred even after Thursday data showing nearly 3.3 million Americans had filed for unemployment benefits in the past week, eclipsing the previous record of 695,000 set in 1982.

(Graphic: BofA B&B, here)

BofA also said the equity allocations of its private clients had fallen to 52.8%, the lowest since February 2013.

While the U.S. job data shows how deep the incoming recession will likely be, some investors are hoping that additional stimulus from the Donald Trump administration will further cushion the blow.

BofA noted the Bull & Bear indicator had hit zero in July 2008 but that rally had been aborted by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy four weeks later.

“The big difference in this crash is that policy panic (happened) before not after the credit event; if Fed bazooka short-circuits a systemic bankruptcy, the combo of max bearish positioning and max policy stimulus equate to big rally in credit and stock markets,” it added.

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Italy to extend coronavirus schools shutdown past current April 3 limit: minister

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s education minister on Friday said schools across the country would remain closed beyond the current April 3 limit due to the coronavirus outbreak.

“Our aim is to ensure that students return to school only when we are completely sure that it is safe, health is the priority,” Education Minister Lucia Azzolina told State broadcaster RAI.

Schools and universities have been closed nationwide since March 5, as part of a lockdown to curb the spread of the virus which has so far killed more than 8,000 people in Italy, the highest death toll of any country in the world.

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Business

Wall Street Week Ahead: Fund rebalancing could help buoy stock rebound

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Money managers rebalancing their portfolios to boost equity exposure into the end of the quarter may support the nascent stock rally that has followed the steep coronavirus-fueled market drop.

With the S&P 500 having lost around a third of its value in the recent selloff, investors may need to step up their equity purchases and sell bonds in order to maintain allocation targets.

A portfolio that had stock allocations at 60% and bond allocations at 40% in mid-February may now be more evenly split between the two asset classes, facilitating the need for some investors to shift exposure toward stocks.

“Given the many trillions of dollars in assets that follow some sort of multi-asset class approach, the coming rebalance could well be in the range of a few hundred billion,” Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro in Fidelity’s global asset allocation division, wrote in a note to clients this week.

Funds can raise stock allocations in several ways, including selling bonds to buy stocks, using the cash in their portfolios or putting fresh money toward equities, said Leo Acheson, director of multi-asset ratings at Morningstar.

From speaking with portfolio managers, Acheson said many have not been waiting for quarter-end to make adjustments and instead are revisiting their portfolios daily and adjusting the split between equities and bonds to maintain their desired risk exposure.

“As managers rebalance and reallocate toward equities to get back toward their strategic weights … that would be a support for equities,” he said.

U.S. stocks have bounced more than 17% from their lows this week following unprecedented stimulus measures from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Senate passage of a $2 trillion bill aimed at helping unemployed workers and industries hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. Few believe the volatility in markets has ended, as the outbreak’s trajectory remains uncertain and the economic fallout potentially massive.

Still, the Fed’s pledge to buy billions of dollars worth of bonds, including $75 billion in U.S. Treasury securities a day this week, may be a boon to those looking to rebalance.

“You are buying equities at significantly lower prices than they were and you are selling bonds that are being artificially bid up by the Federal Reserve,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford, Connecticut.

The flows generated by rebalancing appear to have a noticeable impact on asset prices, especially when bond performance trounces that of equities, as has occurred so far in March.

On average, the S&P 500 has climbed nearly 7% over the final five days of a month in which bonds outperformed stocks by at least 10% during the month’s first few weeks, according to Christopher Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna Financial Group, citing eight such previous occurrences in data back to 1990.

The iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG.P) has fallen just 1% so far in March, against an 11% slide in the S&P 500 .SPX, as of Thursday, though that performance gap narrowed this week.

Pensions, endowments and foundations – overseeing as much as $15 trillion in assets – are among those that often look to adjust their portfolios around quarter end, said Steve Foresti, chief investment officer at Wilshire Consulting.

“All else equal, these institutions are fairly significantly under their target weight to equities, meaning they need to purchase to get back to their target,” Foresti said. “There is no question there is some natural buying and selling around those rebalancing activities.”

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Politics

With eye on election, Trump in high-stakes balancing act over coronavirus response

WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump offered a preview of his re-election campaign playbook last year when he visited the building site of a multi-billion-dollar cracking unit in western Pennsylvania, hailed as one of the largest construction projects in the country.

To Trump, it was a pitch-perfect example of a booming economy.

Except today, the site sits largely empty, after the coronavirus outbreak forced oil company Royal Dutch Shell to halt construction. The project’s thousands of workers are now unemployed, adding to the nearly 3.6 million Americans who filed for jobless benefits in the last two weeks.

The tension between wanting to keep workers safe from infection and trying to get back to business as soon as possible illustrates the fine line Trump must walk as he floats the idea of reopening the U.S. economy in defiance of the advice of public health experts.

Seven months before he faces re-election, Trump must find a balance between trying to stop the economy from spiraling into a severe recession while appearing to act decisively to contain a still-expanding health catastrophe.

Trump has been under increasing pressure to ease back economic restrictions from his Republican base, who consistently have been less alarmed than Democrats about the virus, which has infected more than 85,000 Americans and killed more than 1,200.

A March 18-24 Reuters/Ipsos poll shows 76% of Democrats agreed that the coronavirus is a “serious threat to me and my family” compared with 63% of Republicans.

Many workers at the Shell site in Potter Township, 40 miles (65 km) east of Pittsburgh, live paycheck-to-paycheck and are eager to work. But some are concerned about Trump’s suggestions that the U.S. economy could be re-opened by Easter on April 12.

“If they called me and said come back to work Monday, I would not go. Not until I feel it’s safe for me and the other workers,” said Jonathan Sailers, a 34-year-old union insulator who wraps pipes at the site.

For a graphic on calendar of each state’s Democratic nominating contest and its allocated delegates, please click tmsnrt.rs/37bDD2f

BOTTOM LINE

Prior to the outbreak, a soaring stock market and strong employment stood at the heart of Trump’s message that he should be re-elected in November, with the president even suggesting that even if voters didn’t like him, he helped their bottom line.

For the moment, that argument has evaporated.

Trump’s campaign says he is focused both on safeguarding the health and safety of Americans and getting the economy humming again.

“The president is correct that our nation was not built to be completely turned off for long periods of time and that such dormancy would cause a great many long-lasting problems,” said Trump spokesman Tim Murtaugh.

Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster, said the coronavirus crisis is actually an opportunity for Trump but he must handle it correctly.

“If we wind up coming through this relatively intact, I think Trump will get a huge amount of credit from voters,” Wilson said.

Trump has already seen a bump in his approval ratings, by 4% to 44% since the health crisis, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. But the rise is modest for a president confronting a national crisis: Former President George W. Bush’s approval rating shot up by 39 points to 90% in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to Gallup polling service.

The numbers have also climbed as Trump took the outbreak increasingly seriously, appearing on television and warning people to stay home, after at first playing down the threat.

If he flips that message, strategists and experts say, he runs the risk of losing supporters, particularly if the death toll continues to grow.

“There’s normally a rallying effect around the president in the early days of the crisis, and Trump’s clearly benefiting from that,” said Alex Conant, a former top aide to Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a 2016 presidential candidate.

Delegate tracker and results tmsnrt.rs/2wfM3Yz

“As days turn into weeks and months, the president’s polling position could weaken if people think the country is losing the fight.”

Shell says it has no timeline for restarting construction at the Potter Township site.

In the meantime, workers are struggling to pay their bills, said Ken Broadbent, business manager for a Pittsburgh-based steamfitters union that supplied the project with hundreds of workers.

“It’s still way too early,” he said. “We just don’t know how long this will last. The longer it lasts, the more it’s going to hurt.”

For a graphic on where the candidates stand on key issues, please click tmsnrt.rs/2ughVeT

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Exclusive: Brazil scales back environmental enforcement amid coronavirus

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil will cut back on efforts to fight environmental crimes during the coronavirus outbreak, an official at environmental agency Ibama told Reuters, despite concerns that reduced protection could lead to a spike in deforestation.

Ibama Director of Environmental Protection Olivaldi Azevedo said the outbreak has left him little choice but to send fewer enforcement personnel into the field because of the highly contagious virus.

He estimated that one-third of Ibama’s field operatives are close to 60 years old or have medical conditions that put them at greater risk for severe symptoms of the virus.

Ibama has not hired new agents in years because of government budget cuts and its ranks are rapidly aging.

“There’s no way you can take these people who are at risk and expose them to the virus,” Azevedo said. “There is no choice between one thing and the other. It’s an obligation.”

Two sources at Ibama, who were not authorized to speak to the media, said rank-and-file field agents are worried about their own health and the risk they could spread coronavirus to the rural regions where they operate.

Deforestation experts said that while health concerns must be a top priority, the policy may have grave environmental consequences.

“Weakening enforcement definitely means a greater risk of deforestation for obvious reasons,” said environmental economist Sergio Margulis, author of a paper on “Causes of Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon.”

The additional risk comes in the wake of soaring deforestation and a spike in fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest after right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, sparking global outcry that he was emboldening illegal loggers, ranchers and land speculators.

Brazil is home to roughly 60% of the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, which absorbs vast amounts of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

Bolsonaro has defended development plans for the Amazon region by arguing that they are the best way to lift more Brazilians out of poverty. But the spike in deforestation threatens to derail a South American free trade deal with Europe and hurt exports.

ESSENTIAL BUT UNDERSTAFFED

In a decree last week, Bolsonaro defined environmental enforcement as an essential service during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing Ibama to keep sending agents into the field.

But Azevedo said even essential services, such as health care and police, must be cut back to protect at-risk workers.

Bolsonaro’s press office directed questions to the Environment Ministry. The Environment Ministry, which oversees Ibama, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The most important operations will be prioritized, while some areas will need to be cut back, Azevedo said, adding that protecting the Amazon is a priority.

“There won’t be a reduction in enforcement agents in the Amazon,” he said, predicting some parts of the rainforest may even see falling deforestation.

Ibama sources said the pandemic presented more logistical challenges given that many hotels and restaurants are closed and flights have been canceled en masse.

Azevedo said that while agents can still choose to fly, Ibama is allocating vehicles and prioritizing ground transportation to reduce the risk of contagion.

Some agents drive for days to reach their assignments in the Amazon, one of the sources said.

Researchers agree that reduced enforcement allows for more deforestation. However, a deep recession triggered by the pandemic could create rising unemployment, which can boost criminal activity, but also depress prices for illegally acquired wood and land.

Paulo Barreto, a senior researcher for non-profit Amazon institute Imazon, said it was impossible to predict the reaction of criminals, who are hard to study. Commodity prices remain high and a weakening Brazilian real currency means farmers are seeing greater profits for their exports. Demand to clear new land for farming therefore remains strong, he said.

Illegally clearing and selling land is inherently speculative, so Barreto said criminals may still deforest with the hope of impunity, then sit on the land until they can sell.

Deforestation was already up 71% from a year earlier in January and February, according to preliminary government data, and researchers will be watching March and April data closely.

“My guess is that deforestation will not go down,” said Carlos Nobre, an earth systems scientist at University of Sao Paulo.

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