[NYPOST] Though coronavirus has only begun to show up in America, it’s already exposed the nation’s serious over-reliance on China for pharmaceutical production. As Washington looks to address that, it should consider killing two birds with one stone by using the issue as a chance to give Puerto Rico a leg up.After all, the island was for decades a central hub of US drug manufacturing. It would do the commonwealth and the mainland a world of good to restore that preeminence.
About 90 percent of the active ingredients (manufactured “precursors”) used by US drugmakers now come from China. With that country’s factories largely shut down by the outbreak, America’s pharmaceutical supplies are at risk even as the virus hits here. The Food and Drug Administration fears a shortage of widely used generic drugs.
Moving to ensure some domestic capacity for future crises is a no-brainer. And boosting Puerto Rico, now struggling with a debt crisis plus hurricane and earthquake damage, should be one, too.
In the 1970s, Congress passed tax breaks for companies that set up shop in Puerto Rico. Drugmakers took advantage and soon made the island one of the world’s top pharma-production centers.
But President Bill Clinton signed a law to start phasing out the tax breaks in the 1990s. Once they expired fully in 2006, the industry began a major pullout from the island.
#Coronavirus deaths in #Iraq rise to six: state news agency#BaghdadPost https://t.co/f0XVqoIVgV
— The Baghdad Post (@BaghdadPostPlus) March 8, 2020
Italy Imposes China-style Quarantine on 16m People In Attempt to Contain Coronavirus
[BREITBART]
A team of #Chinese experts arrived in #Iraq's capital #Baghdad as part of #China's assistance in confronting the outbreak of the novel #coronavirus in the country.#BaghdadPost #CoronaVirusUpdates #COVID19 #CoronaAlert pic.twitter.com/kbhqIefr8l
— The Baghdad Post (@BaghdadPostPlus) March 8, 2020
#BreakingNews | #Bahrain reports new cases of #coronavirus, total 85.#BaghdadPost #CoronaVirusUpdates #COVID19 #CoronaAlert
— The Baghdad Post (@BaghdadPostPlus) March 8, 2020
Telegram Channel: https://t.co/GR0dAAA4Wi pic.twitter.com/WEeJNlo4PU
Coronavirus patient tells relative 'I'm going to spread the virus' then goes on bar crawl in Japanese city
- [Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] The man had coronavirus but showed no symptoms in Gamagori City, Japan
- Sent home by medics and told to self-isolate and would later be taken to hospital
- He told relative he was 'going to spread the virus' before taking a taxi to a bar
France records more than 1,000 coronavirus cases, death toll rises to 19
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] French health authorities reported three new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, taking the country's corpse count from the outbreak to 19, as the number of reported infections also rose to 1,126 cases.
The spike in COVID-19 cases came as French President Emmanuel Macron was holding an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the response to the outbreak.
La Belle La Belle France is currently at a coronavirus alert level 2 although officials have said it would inevitably rise to Stage 3.
On Saturday, the National Assembly announced a third coronavirus case in La Belle La Belle France’s lower house of parliament.
The National Assembly did not name the politician who recently caught the disease, but said the third case was a female parliamentarian.
A politician from the eastern Alsace region was hospitalised in intensive care on Thursday after contracting the disease and a snack bar worker in the National Assembly building had also caught the virus.
The jump in infections in La Belle La Belle France mirrored the global trend with the more than 100,000 cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In La Belle La Belle France, the virus has circulated with greater intensity in some areas, notably the northern Oise and the northeastern Haut-Rhin departments, where schools, nurseries and kindergartens will be shut for two weeks starting Monday.
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#Italy has the second-highest #coronavirus toll in the world, after reporting a sharp jump in both deaths and number of infected people, according to an AFP count.https://t.co/X6ULsUYL7N
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 8, 2020
The number of confirmed cases of #coronavirus in the #UnitedKingdom has risen to 273, says the Department of Health and Social Care, up from 209 a day earlier, and the biggest one-day increase so far.#COVID_19https://t.co/BHM2iNFlSY
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 8, 2020
#Qatar bans arrivals from 14 countries, including #Iran, Lebanon and Iraq, due to concerns over the #coronavirus outbreak, according to a government statement.#COVID_19https://t.co/KlFpEprwwW pic.twitter.com/PxCWqDeKfA
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 8, 2020
A patient infected with the #coronavirus dies in a hospital in #Switzerland, bringing the national death toll to two.https://t.co/7QrZXEX4dv
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 8, 2020
The scene outside Egypt's Ministry of Health's lab seeking coronavirus test. This situation is going to be a major stress on government's with fragile public health infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/foVUVV4eaE
— Steven A. Cook (@stevenacook) March 8, 2020
Claudia Rosett: Why Is the CDC Lowballing Numbers for the Coronavirus?
[PJMedia] The CDC is America's lead agency for expertise and guidance on the Wuhan virus, so the CDC web site is where you'd look for up-to-the-minute data on this outbreak, right? Umm, nope, don't even think about it. As confirmed case numbers nation-wide soared over the weekend, the numbers posted Friday on the CDC web site didn't budge: 164 total cases, 11 deaths. No change. In CDC-world, the virus took a break over the weekend. Meantime, in the real world, the far more timely and accurate online dashboard provided by Johns Hopkins was reporting on the soaring case numbers for this virus, which by Sunday afternoon had topped 500 (more than triple the CDC's number) and 21 deaths (almost double the CDC figure).
| Not exactly soaring numbers in the absolute, but definitely trending strongly upward. |
