The number of new Covid-19 infections in China has already started to fall, from 5,300 on Tuesday (15) to 3,000 on Wednesday and 2,400 on Thursday.
And Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) highlighted, as well as the Wall Street Journal (image below), that Xi Jinping led a meeting of the country’s leadership this Thursday, when he “emphasized that it is necessary to maintain production and normal life”.
That “it is necessary to maintain the strategic focus, to coordinate the prevention and control of the epidemic with economic and social development”.
In the United States, the New York Times and Washington Post highlighted that the rise of the Omicron’s BA.2 subvariant, especially in Germany, “may be a sign” for the country – which in the pandemic has been following Europe after “a few weeks”.
Germany and South Korea broke their national records for new infections on Thursday, 295,000 and 621,000 respectively. Deaths are also on the rise.
the american doctor Eric Topolwhich became a reference on Covid with its profiles on Twitter and Substack, warned the government of Joe Biden, noting that BA.2 has 30% “more transmissibility” than the original omicron.
And that the US is now facing it, “without mitigation measures, with low vaccine coverage and destroying funding” for actions to combat the pandemic.
INDIA & CHINA
Indian newspapers such as the Hindustan Times and Hindu report that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi “may visit India” by the end of this month, which “would mark a turning point in relations between the two neighbours”.
HAS BEGUN
Indian financier Business Standard reports that the country’s energy companies have started buying Russian oil, circumventing sanctions with a “rupee for ruble” scheme highlighted even in the Financial Times.
The FT also published the report “Pakistan advances with gas pipeline built by Russia”. The country, fifth in population in the world, “plans to complete the North-South Project, despite pressure to isolate Moscow economically”, by the US.
It is “almost ready”, the finance minister told the newspaper, “and it was obviously made before Ukraine”.
AGAINST WAR, AFTER ALL
the journalist Alan MacLeodfrom the American left-wing website MintPress, gathered covers from The Economist magazine (above) to conclude that she “finally found a war she doesn’t like” in Ukraine.
On Thursday, the new weekly edition published its sixth cover vilifying Vladimir Putin at the beginning of the year, now seeking to involve Xi Jinping as well.
