Raphael Stevens

A patient receives oxygen while she waits outside a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal on May 13, 2021. Government hospitals in the country lack beds for Covid-19 patients.Sunil Pradhan | Anadolu Agency | Getty ImagesIndia is currently at the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic — but it is not the only country with a worsening Covid-19 outbreak.From Argentina in Latin America to Nepal in Asia, many other countries have also reported record increases in Covid cases in the last few weeks, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, has expressed concerns over the raging health crisis around the world.”India remains hugely concerning … but it’s not only India that has emergency needs,” he said at a news briefing this month.The increase in infections has come as progress of vaccinations remains uneven across the world. Generally, developed countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. are ahead in vaccinating their populations while poorer nations in Africa and parts of Asia are lagging due to limited supply of shots.Here’s a look at some places where Covid cases are surging.ArgentinaCumulative cases: More than 3.5 million as of May 23, according to Hopkins data.Cumulative deaths: More than 74,000 as of May 23, Hopkins data showed.Vaccination: Around 19.25% of population received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data.Argentina has in the last few weeks reported record-breaking numbers of daily cases and deaths, leading authorities to impose fresh lockdown measures that will last until end-May.The measures, which came into force over the weekend, include closing schools and non-essential businesses, as well as banning social, religious and sporting events, reported Reuters.  Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsReported cases rapidly rose from below 5,000 a day in early-March to a record-high of more than 39,000 last Wednesday, Hopkins data showed. The number of deaths also surged from 112 on March 1 to a record 744 last Tuesday, according to the data.The worsening outbreak has swamped Argentina’s health-care system, and President Alberto Fernandez was quoted as saying last Thursday that “we are living the worst moment since the pandemic began.”Vaccination is progressing slowly in the country, with around 19% of the roughly 45 million population having received at least one dose, according to statistics site Our World in Data.NepalCumulative cases: More than 513,000 as of May 23, according to Hopkins data.Cumulative deaths: More than 6,300 as of May 23, Hopkins data showed.Vaccination: Around 7.3% of population received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data.In Asia, surging Covid cases are overloading Nepal’s fragile health-care system.  “Our medical infrastructure is in crisis. The oxygen supply-demand gap is huge. We also have no more vaccines,” Dr. Samir Kumar Adhikari, the health ministry’s chief spokesperson, reportedly said.Nepal, a landlocked country with a population of roughly 29 million, shares a border with India which has been experiencing a devastating second wave. India is now the world’s second worst affected country by cases reported.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsMany people in Nepal blamed returning migrant workers from India for the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases, reported NBC News. Many of the returning Nepalese had lost their jobs and income when parts of India went into lockdown to curb the second wave of infections there, the report said.  That caused Nepal’s daily cases to accelerate from below 200 at the start of April to a record-high of more than 9,300 in mid-May, Hopkins data showed.Nepal is scrambling to secure Covid vaccines. The country started vaccinating its people in January with the AstraZeneca vaccine provided by India and Covax, a global alliance aimed at fairly distributing vaccines, reported Reuters. However, the South Asian nation has run out of shots with the Serum Institute of India yet to deliver the doses that Nepal ordered, the report said.India has halted exports of Covid vaccines as it prioritizes its domestic needs.BahrainCumulative cases: More than 218,000 as of May 23, according to Hopkins data.Cumulative deaths: At least 820 as of May 23, Hopkins data showed.Vaccination: Around 51.8% of population received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data.Among countries with surging coronavirus cases, Bahrain stood out as one of the few that have vaccinated a relatively large proportion of its population.Reported cases in Bahrain jumped from around 600 a day in early-March to above 2,000 a day last week, according to Hopkins data.Bahrain has approved several Covid vaccines for use, including Pfizer-BioNTech, China National Pharmaceutical Group or Sinopharm, and Russia’s Sputnik vaccine.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsThe country’s latest outbreak has contributed to concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines from Sinopharm and Sputnik. That’s especially so as other highly vaccinated countries — such as Israel and the U.K. — which rely mostly on western-developed shots, are reporting a decline in cases.China, on its part, appeared to suggest last month that Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates.” The official who made the remark later tried to walk back on those comments, and said he was misunderstood.But within Bahrain, the number of deaths reported daily — while increasing — has largely remained low even as infections are rising rapidly.TaiwanCumulative cases: More than 4,300 as of May 23, according to Hopkins data.Cumulative deaths: At least 23 as of May 23, Hopkins data showed.Vaccination: Around 0.14% of population received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data.Before the latest resurgence, Taiwan was widely applauded for its success in containing the spread of Covid-19 without a full lockdown.The island with a population of roughly 24 million recorded just 1,128 cases — of which a large majority were imported — and 12 deaths by end-April, Hopkins data showed. But the number of daily cases surged past 200 in the last week, the data showed.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsSuch numbers remain a lot smaller compared to most countries and territories around the world, but are a milestone for Taiwan where daily life had largely continued as normal before the latest spike.Some media reports blamed Taiwan’s complacency for the renewed outbreak.Taiwanese authorities had relaxed quarantine requirements for airline crew members in mid-April; and a hotel near Taoyuan International Airport was found housing flight crews on quarantine with other visitors — which led to a cluster of infections in the latest outbreak.Authorities have since imposed new social-distancing rules that limited social gatherings, closed some businesses and tightened border restrictions.Taiwan, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates globally, is also trying to ramp up efforts to vaccinate its population. More

A healthcare worker wearing a personal protective equipment (PPE) attends to Covid-19 patient inside a Covid-19 care center set up at shehnai banquet hall attached with Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP) one of the largest COVID-19 facilities.Naveen Sharma | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty ImagesAs India’s devastating second wave of coronavirus outbreak overwhelmed the health-care system, desperate users turned to social media to seek help from the public as hospital beds and oxygen supplies ran out.People in need of assistance, either for themselves or their relatives, posted requests on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Others collated information on the availability of beds in hospitals as well as contact details of vendors with oxygen cylinders and other resources in short supply. In many instances, the efforts helped save lives.”We quite often hear only a very dystopian narrative for social media in which, it is increasing political polarization and causing a deep degree of social damage,” Apar Gupta, executive director at the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital liberties organization in India, told CNBC.”But, social media also has the potential of bringing people together,” he said and explained that is why it’s important to fight for the right kind of incentives-based system design and algorithmic accountability around social media.”I think this Covid disaster that is continuing in India is showing the promise of social media to be used as a tool for organizing relief and also demanding greater amounts of political accountability at all levels — from our health-care officials to decision-makers who set budgets,” Gupta said.Social media can’t replace the core responsibility of the state to help the citizens in the time of crisis.Ankur BisenTechnopak Advisors#CovidSOSTwitter hashtags like #CovidSOS and #CovidEmergency became popular among users searching for hospital beds, ventilators and oxygen cylinders. The retweet function helped amplify their requests.Strangers banded together to help one another weather the unprecedented crisis.Volunteers collated up-to-date information on Google spreadsheets that have been shared widely on social platforms.Some set up websites to track vaccine availability while others created apps that generated links to Twitter search that help users find Covid-19 resources in their cities. Many people also volunteered to make home-cooked meals for patients quarantining at home while others offered assistance with tasks like grocery shopping.For its part, Twitter added a Covid-19 resources page to broaden the visibility of information.Social media influencers, celebrities and politicians also got involved in the crowdsourcing effort, with some of them helping to arrange for beds and oxygen cylinders as India’s daily case count spiked in April and early May.Though Twitter became the most visible social media platform in India’s crowdsourcing efforts because of its ability to amplify requests and tag influencers and politicians, Gupta said other platforms were also used to a large extent.He said volunteers also came together in WhatsApp groups to focus on more granular communities such as housing societies and alumni groups. Gen-Z — or those born between 1996 and the early 2010s — and younger millennials turned to Instagram, he said.Daily cases in India have come off a peak of more than 414,000 new daily infections that was reached on May 7. Still, experts say the virus is spreading in rural India, where the health infrastructure is not equipped to handle unexpected surges.On Twitter, which has greater influence in India’s urban centers compared to rural areas, users have already started collating resources and initiatives to respond to the outbreak in India’s countryside.Shortcomings of India’s health-care systemUsers turning to social media for help was also a reflection of how ill-prepared India’s health-care system was in responding to a sudden surge in cases. Mounting case counts and an increasing death toll laid bare the deep-rooted problems that exist in India’s public health system after decades of neglect and underinvestment.”Social media can’t replace the core responsibility of the state to help the citizens in the time of crisis,” Ankur Bisen, a senior vice president at Indian management consulting firm Technopak Advisors, told CNBC. It can only act as a complementary channel and cannot replace the core functions of the state such as disaster management and health-care delivery, he said.Bisen added that in this case, social media is becoming the only option for many because the other mediums are lacking — it is a poor reflection of how the central and state governments have struggled to address the Covid-19 crisis, he said.”The state often has to address disaster and make sure it communicates and gives comfort to the citizens that the state is watching their back, which has not been the case here,” Bisen said. He added that social media is “always a complementary medium, it can never become the principal driver to address disasters.”Gupta from Internet Freedom Foundation said some of the volunteers have been threatened by authorities for their efforts, both informally and through legal means.Local media reported last month that some Covid-19 relief groups providing information on hospital beds and oxygen via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Discord and Telegram disbanded, while some online trackers for resources were deleted.India’s Covid crisisRead CNBC’s latest coverage of India’s battle with the coronavirus pandemic:WHO labels a Covid strain in India as a ‘variant of concern’ — here’s what we knowIndia’s worsening Covid crisis could spiral into a problem for the worldIndia is the home of the world’s biggest producer of Covid vaccines. But it’s facing a major internal shortageIndia’s economy will likely contract this quarter as Covid cases soar, economists warnVolunteers complained of threats from police that demanded they shut down — but the police have denied making such demands. In Uttar Pradesh, the BBC reported police charged a man who used Twitter to try and find oxygen for his dying grandfather.India’s supreme court reportedly said there should be no clampdown if people aired their grievances around issues like oxygen shortage and others on social platforms. It came after the federal government, under new regulations, ordered social platforms to take down posts that were critical of how it was handling the pandemic, according to the New York Times.Social media scamsAnother unfortunate outcome has been the prevalence of a black market for resources, where bad faith actors on social media have swindled vulnerable people, according to Gupta.”While on the whole, social media — especially Twitter — has come and mitigated the harmful impact of the present wave, I would say even led to saving lives, it has also demonstrated that there is a very low tolerance for freedom of speech and expression,” he said.In addition to that, “there are law and order issues, which always emerge due to social interaction … and certain participants may use it in bad faith,” he added.Gupta added that while efforts are still continuing today among volunteer groups, state services have also caught up to an extent. More

A worker works on a production line to produce electrical products for domestic and Southeast Asian markets in Hai ‘an city, east China’s Jiangsu province, March 29, 2021.Costfoto | Barcroft Media | Getty ImagesThe Covid-19 resurgence in some parts of Asia could lead to a change in fortunes for China, according to an economist.Previously, the U.S.-China trade war caused companies to move their supply chains out of China, shifting their production and distribution networks for products and services. As a result, countries like Vietnam and India benefited as companies moved to set up shop in their countries.But the situation appears to be changing, and supply chains could pivot back to China as cases spike in India and Vietnam, according to Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.Read more about China from CNBC ProMorgan Stanley picks China stocks for the second half of the yearGoldman Sachs picks the Chinese cloud stocks to buy as internet users soarForget high-flying tech stocks. Here’s a ‘safer way’ to play China’s fintech boom, fund manager says”Before the pandemic, we saw factories moving out of China — Samsung, Foxconn these big name companies — setting up factories in Vietnam, India,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Monday.The spike in cases in those two countries has forced factories owned by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, to shut down facilities in India and Vietnam, he said.”This could put the relocation of supply chains on hold for quite some time. The key issue here is that international travel is suspended, so multinational companies can’t send their staff to India and Vietnam to set up new factories,” Zhang added.Cases in India surged to record-breaking highs in April and shows little signs of abating significantly —economists have predicted the South Asian economy will likely contract this quarter.In Vietnam, the northern province of Bac Giang on Tuesday ordered four industrial parks — including three that house production facilities of Taiwan’s Foxconn — to temporarily shut down due to an outbreak of Covid-19.The situation could benefit China, Zhang suggested. However, he pointed out that the extent of how much China could stand to gain will depend on how long the situation in India and Vietnam continues for.Right now, export growth in China is between 20% to 40% a month, he said. If the factories in India and Vietnam return to production very soon, China’s exports would be expected to slow down in the second half of the year as companies move their manufacturing to those two countries.”But if supply chain (in India and Vietnam) is disrupted for a long time, we could see this kind of 20%, 30% export growth (in China) to continue into next year,” Zhang said. More

The U.S. should be playing a larger role in getting to the bottom of the theory that Covid-19 first leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan, China, Atlantic Council senior fellow Jamie Metzl told CNBC on Monday.”Right now, the World Health Assembly is meeting, and the United States should be doing everything possible with our allies to demand a comprehensive investigation into Covid origins with full access to all the records, samples, and personnel in China and beyond,” Metzl, a former national security official in the Clinton administration, said on “The News with Shepard Smith.”  “If China wants to thumb its nose at the rest of the world, in spite of more than 3 million people dead, let them make that statement,” he said.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that determining the origins of Covid-19 is up to an international investigation led by the World Health Organization, and that the U.S. cannot lead a probe on its own.Metzl organized last year a group of scientists and academics to call for a deeper investigation into Covid’s origins. He told host Shepard Smith that it’s “critically important” to find answers about the pandemic’s origins because if we don’t, it puts everyone “unnecessarily at risk.” The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. A previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report found that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care after falling ill “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, quoting from the report.The World Health Organization has repeatedly said the virus most likely jumped from bats to humans through another animal. It has described the theory that the virus leaked from a lab as “extremely unlikely,” but has not ruled it out. Metzl said he thinks the theory is a “likely hypothesis.” “Why would you have a bat coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan and not in southern China, where the horseshoe bats are located? And what we know that they do have in Wuhan, is China’s only level 4 virology institute, with the world’s largest collection of bat coronaviruses, that was doing aggressive research designed to make those pathogens more dangerous,” Metzl said. More

In this articleHWINYour Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J.Google EarthSales jumped nearly a whopping 50% in the first quarter of 2021 at that mystery $100 million New Jersey deli company — but that amounted to only a measly $5,305 worth of sandwiches, sodas and chips, a new financial filing revealed Monday.Losses also jumped big-time at deli owner Hometown International, rising to $173,658 for the first three months of this year. That’s about $97,000 more in losses than in the same period last year.Hometown International’s latest filing also shows a series of previously unreported developments at that odd corporation.The moves, like other recent ones, seem designed to clean house and make the company an attractive takeover candidate by a private company. That seems to be the real reason that investors in Hong Kong and Macao have taken big stakes in Hometown International, as opposed to a love of selling cheesesteaks.Those developments include the decision not to renew a $25,000-per-month consulting agreement with a Macao-based entity that is a major investor in Hometown International, the company’s 10-Q quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed.They also include the full repayment to the deli owner of two curious $150,000 loans it made to shell companies closely linked to the father of Hometown International’s chairman and new president, Peter Coker Jr., the 10-Q shows.Hometown International began drawing public attention in mid-April when hedge-fund manager David Einhorn noted in a client letter that the company had recently had a stock market capitalization of more than $100 million despite having combined sales of less than $37,000 in 2019 and 2020 combined at its Paulsboro eatery.CNBC since then has detailed the criminal histories and regulatory sanctions of a number of individuals linked to the company and other curious details about the deli owner.On the heels of those articles, Hometown International’s controlling shareholders terminated a $15,000-per-month consulting deal the company had with Tryon Capital, a North Carolina firm controlled by Peter Coker Sr., who is a major investor in the deli owner.Hometown International then fired its president, Paul Morina, who by day is principal and head wrestling coach at nearby Paulsboro High School. The company also canned its only other executive officer, Christine Lindenmuth, who is an administrator at that same high school.Both Hometown International and a related shell company, E-Waste, have disavowed their sky-high market capitalizations, saying their share prices on the over-the-counter market are unjustified by any financial rationale.The 10-Q, whose filing was delayed for about a week, like other filings by the deli owner, contains details that are incongruous for most companies that have almost 8 million common shares outstanding.The company’s stock closed at $12.10 per share on Monday, down 40 cents per share, with just 423 shares changing hands. On paper, at least, Hometown International’s market capitalization based on common shares alone is more than $97 million, while its intrinsic value when factoring in tens of millions of shares available through share warrants is a whopping $1.8 billion.Among the odd details in the new filing is the fact the deli had labor costs of $126 for the first quarter.During the same period a year ago, it reported no labor costs at all.Sales, which were just $3,577 for the first quarter in 2020, skyrocketed to $5,305.”The increase in revenue is mainly attributed to an increase in customer’s [sic] visits following the re-opening of our delicatessen as a result of the easing of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the 10-Q filing states.That filing also shows that on April 30, Hometown International’s consulting agreement with VCH Limited, an investor in the company, expired and was “not renewed.”That deal had been paying VCH Limited $25,000 per month.VCH Limited is one of four entities that are among Hometown International’s biggest shareholders, whose mailing addresses are in Macao, a special administrative region of China.The 10-Q filing notes that $120,000 of the $178,963 in operating expenses for the first quarter were chewed up by the consulting agreements Hometown International had with VCH Limited and Tryon Capital.The filing reveals that as of April 14, Hometown International had received the full principal payments and more than $1,000 in accrued interest for a $150,000 loan to the shell company E-Waste, which is closely linked to Coker Sr. The loan was only issued in November.In a move that mirrored the firing of Molina, E-Waste’s president, John Rollo, recently resigned from the company on the heels of CNBC articles about E-Waste, which has no operating business but does have a market capitalization that tops $112 million.Hometown International in February lent $150,000 to another company connected to Coker Sr. — Med Spa Vacations Inc. — of which Rollo remains the head.The deli owner’s 10-Q filing shows that on May 12 “the full principal of the note receivable and $2,250 of related accrued interest receivable were fully paid by the noteholder,” Med Spa Vacations.Both loans had an interest rate of 6%. More