ANGER IN GERMANY AT REPORT TRUMP SEEKING EXCLUSIVE VACCINE DEALGerman ministers have reacted angrily following reports US president DonaldTrump offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusiverights to a Covid-19 vaccine.“Germany is not for sale,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told broadcasterARD, reacting to a front page report in Welt am Sonntag newspaper headlined“Trump vs Berlin”.The newspaper reported Trump offered $1bn to Tübingen-basedbiopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine “only for the UnitedStates”.The German government was reportedly offering its own financial incentivesfor the vaccine to stay in the country.The report prompted fury in Berlin. “German researchers are taking a leadingrole in developing medication and vaccines as part of global cooperationnetworks,” foreign minister Heiko Maas told the Funke Mediengruppe researchnetwork. “We cannot allow a situation where others want to exclusivelyacquire the results of their research,” said Maas, of the centre-left SPD.The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said a takeover of CureVac by theTrump administration was “off the table”. CureVac would only develop vaccine“for the whole world”, Spahn said, “not for individual countries”.Meanhwile, the first human trial to evaluate a candidate vaccine againstcoronavirus disease 2019 has begun in Seattle, US health officials saidMonday. "The first participant received the investigational vaccine today,"the US National Institutes of Health said in a statement.

CORONAVIRUS: FRANCE IMPOSES RESTRICTIONS ON MOVEMENT TO CONTAIN COVID-19French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday ordered stringent restrictions onpeople's movement that would last at least two weeks to slow the spread ofthe coronavirus and said the army would be drafted in to help move the sickto hospitals.France had already shut down restaurants and bars, closed schools and putski resorts off limits, but Mr. Macron said measures unprecedented inpeacetime were needed as the number of infected people doubled every threedays and deaths spiralled higher.In a sombre address to the nation, the President said that from Tuesdaymidday people should stay at home and only go out for essential activities.Anyone flouting the restrictions would be punished.“I know what I am asking of you is unprecedented but circumstances demandit. We are at war,” Mr. Macron said.Mr. Macron said he was postponing the second round of local elections onSunday and was suspending the government's reform agenda, starting with hisoverhaul of the pension system.Coronavirus infections and fatalities in France and Spain have been surgingat a pace just days behind that of Italy, the epicentre of the outbreak inEurope where hospitals in the worst-hit northern regions are stretched tobreaking point.US BEGINS FIRST HUMAN TRIAL OF CORONAVIRUS VACCINE: STATEMENTThe first human trial to evaluate a candidate vaccine against coronavirusdisease 2019 has begun in Seattle, US health officials said Monday."The open-label trial will enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 55years over approximately 6 weeks," the US National Institutes of Health(NIH) said in a statement."The first participant received the investigational vaccine today."'TEST, TEST, TEST': WHO ASKS COUNTRIES TO STEP UP TESTING AND ISOLATINGPROCESS FOR CORONAVIRUSThe World Health Organization said on Monday it was deeply concerned aboutthe spread of the coronavirus in low income countries and asked countries tostep up its process to test and isolate cases to stop the spread.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief of the WHO, said: "As the coronavirusmoves to low-income countries, we're deeply concerned about the impact itcould have among populations with high HIV prevalence or malnourishedchildren. We’re calling on every country and individual to do everythingthey can to stop transmission"."You cannot fight a fire blindfolded," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesustold reporters in Geneva, saying the WHO recommended that countries "Test,test, test. Test every suspected case"."In the past week, we have seen a rapid escalation of cases of COVID-19," hesaid, describing the pandemic as "the defining global health crisis of ourtime." More cases and deaths have now been reported in the rest of the worldthan in China, where the new coronavirus first surfaced in December, headded."We have seen a rapid escalation in social distancing measures, like closingschools and cancelling sporting events and other gatherings. But we haven’tseen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing,which is the backbone of the COVID-19 response,” he said.“Social distancing measures can help to reduce COVID-19 transmission andenable health systems to cope. Handwashing and coughing into your elbow canreduce the risk for yourself and others. But on their own, they aren’tenough to extinguish this COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the combination that makesthe difference. As I keep saying, all countries must take a comprehensiveapproach,” Ghebreyesus said.He said countries that were stretched to their capacity to care for the sickshould prioritise their patients.CORONAVIRUS: CHINA TIGHTENS MEASURES FOR INTERNATIONAL PASSENGERSChina tightened quarantine measures for international arrivals on Monday asthe country worries about a rise in imported cases of the coronavirus(SARS-CoV-2) and anger raged online at how Europe and the U.S. are handlingthe pandemic.After declaring they had “basically curbed” the spread of the disease withinChina, where the virus first emerged, authorities have now orderedinternational arrivals to Beijing to go into centralised quarantine for 14days. About 20,000 people — one-tenth of them foreigners — have enteredChina by plane daily since the World Health Organization declared a pandemicon March 11, according to an immigration official.New arrivals are now being transferred to an exhibition centre nearBeijing’s main international airport for screening before heading toquarantine facilities. Officials in protective suits and police officersguarded the centre on Monday, while ambulances waited outside on standby.Jacob Gunter, who arrived from the US on Monday morning, described hisjourney as “a bit of an Odyssey”.Authorities have given few details but at least three hotels said they weredesignated to receive quarantined passengers. Staff wearing medical suitswaited at hotel entrances.Minors, pregnant women, the elderly and people living alone — or those withunderlying medical conditions — can still quarantine at home, Beijing cityofficials said. Outside the transfer centre, some passengers from Germanyand the Democratic Republic of the Congo told AFP they were exempt from thecentralised quarantine because they were diplomats.At least two other regions in China have also imposed a 14-day centralisedquarantine on foreign arrivals, State media reported Sunday, while Shanghaipreviously imposed isolation period at home or in centres for those arrivingfrom virus-hit countries. A total of 123 cases from abroad have now beenreported in China after 12 more were discovered Monday.PAKISTAN BUILDS BORDER FENCE, LIMITING MILITANTS AND FAMILIES ALIKEAbove the trucks and travelers lining up at the main eastern gateway betweenAfghanistan and Pakistan, a glinting new landmark scales the dun-coloredmountains: Parallel mesh fences, a couple of feet apart and topped withcoils of razor wire, climb from the border crossing up over the dizzyingcrags.The section of fence overlooking Torkham is just a glimpse of a 1,600-milebarrier begun four years ago by Pakistan’s military and set to be completedthis year.Nearly 9,000 miles from President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico,Pakistan has quietly been building its own version to try to control whathas long been one of the world’s most porous and lawless frontiers.The Pakistani army credits the fence with helping to transform security inthe country, sharply cutting terrorist attacks after a sustained armyoffensive pushed many militants — and tens of thousands of civilian refugees— into Afghanistan.Yet the barrier is also a projection of hard power in its own right, to thedetriment of diplomacy with Afghanistan and the life of Pashtun tribes thathad functionally ignored the border for generations.Afghanistan disputes the border that the fence follows, drawn by Britishcolonial officials in 1893 and known as the Durand Line. And as the wireunfurls over hundreds of miles, it is cutting off routes through themountains used by smugglers, militants, traders and families alike,according to interviews with government officials, tribal leaders anddiplomats.Some 800 miles of the $450 million fence are now complete, and more than1,000 border forts are being built, according to a statement from thePakistani military’s information wing.The vast majority of the work has been out of view of the public or othergovernments.Despite that difficulty, senior officers said it has had an appreciableeffect on security even though it has not been finished. They cite a sharpdrop in attacks by militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban, known asTehrik-e-Taliban, after many were driven into Afghanistan.CORONAVIRUS: SRI LANKA OPPOSITION PARTIES ASK PRESIDENT TO POSTPONE ELECTIONMany Opposition parties in Sri Lanka have called for postponing the generalelection scheduled for April 25, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in thecountry. Their request comes a day after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa toldSAARC leaders — who connected on a video call to discuss regional strategiesto combat COVID 19 — that Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election will be held asscheduled.Sri Lanka has so far 28 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The first case — aChinese tourist who tested positive in February — has since recovered andreturned to China while all other patients are currently undergoingtreatment at government hospitals. One patient, officials said, had returnedfrom Kerala recently.Prominent Opposition politician Sajith Premadasa, who now leads an allianceof a faction of the United National Party (UNP), and its allies, urged thegovernment to utilise funds allocated for polls to step up Sri Lanka’sresponse to the virus. Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has urgedthe President to convene an all-parties meeting to discuss ways to mitigatethe impact of COVID-19 and possibly postpone poll in the wake of such ahealth crisis, the Daily FT newspaper here reported.