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France Is Putting Domestic Abuse Victims in Hotels During Coronavirus Lockdown

Reports of domestic abuse have spiked by about 30% since France went into lockdown in mid-March.

by Tim Hume
Mar 31 2020, 2:45pm

France is relocating women beaten by their partners into hotels, and has created a secret code word for them to discreetly seek help in pharmacies, in response to a huge increase in domestic abuse during the coronavirus lockdown.

In France and many other affected countries, restrictions on movement during the pandemic have trapped women inside their homes with abusive partners, resulting in a sharp rise in reports of domestic violence. French officials say that reports of abuse have leaped by about one third around the country since the restrictions came into effect on March 17.

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In response, the government has launched several new initiatives to help women escape what Gender Equality Minister Marlene Schiappa has described as “a breeding ground for violence.” Schiappa announced Monday that the government would pay for up to 20,000 nights of accommodation in hotels to help women escape abusive partners, and had set up 20 support centers at shopping centers around the country where women could seek help.

"My biggest concern is to multiply the points of contact with women. As it's difficult for women to get out, we want to make sure that support systems can go to women," Schiappa told French newspaper Le Parisien.

READ: Food banks are facing a “tsunami” of people in need from the coronavirus crisis

Last week, French officials set up an “alert system” in pharmacies nationwide, where victims of domestic abuse could discreetly ask the pharmacist to call police by asking for a “mask 19.” The initiative mimics a scheme set up in Spain’s Canary Islands that uses the same code word.

Le Parisien reported that the first arrest under the scheme was made in the northeastern city of Nancy on Saturday, after a woman who was five months pregnant reported that her partner had slapped her and threatened her with a knife. The woman did not need to use the code word as she went to the pharmacy unaccompanied by her husband, prosecutors told the newspaper.

READ: European countries are throwing out “rubbish” Chinese-made masks and coronavirus tests

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Schiappa tweeted Tuesday that thousands of women were also reporting assaults using the government’s online “stop the violence” platform, which connected them with police officers trained in responding to domestic violence cases.

Officials and domestic violence services around the world have reported similar rises in abuse since their countries went into lockdown.

In Hubei, China, where the outbreak began, the founder of an anti-domestic violence nonprofit in the city of Jingzhou told the Sixth Tone website earlier this month that reports of domestic violence had nearly doubled since the lockdown. Similar spikes have been reported by domestic violence helplines and drop-in centers in Spain, Cyprus, and Brazil.

READ: Wuhan’s crematoriums are filling thousands of urns with coronavirus victims each day

Officials in other countries have taken steps of varying degrees to help domestic violence victims seek help amid the pandemic, with police in India’s Uttar Pradesh state launching a special hotline number, and Spain’s government advising women that they were exempt from strict lockdown restrictions if they needed to leave the home to flee or report abuse. In Trento, Italy, a prosecutor ruled that abusers, rather than their victims, would have to leave their homes if they committed an assault.

Cover: Daily Life in Paris, amid Covid-19 outbreak lockdown in France, on March 29, 2020. Photo by Alain Apaydin/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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Italy’s Coronavirus Death Toll Is So High That One City’s Crematorium Can’t Keep Up

Bergamo, in northern Italy, called in the military to transport its dead to crematoriums around the country.

by Tim Hume
Mar 19 2020, 2:41pm

AP Photo/Luca Bruno

Italy called in the military to transport dozens of dead bodies from a city overwhelmed by coronavirus victims Wednesday night, as the country recorded its biggest rise in the death toll so far.

The images of military vehicles lined up outside a public cemetery in Bergamo, a city in Italy’s worst affected region of Lombardy, were a chilling illustration of the deepening impact of the virus on the country, where the death toll is likely to soon surpass China’s.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Thursday that the government would extend the national lockdown beyond the current end date of April 3, after the country recorded a record number of 475 COVID-19 deaths Wednesday.

“My blood has frozen in my veins. The air has been punched out of my lungs,” tweeted Elisabetta Groppelli, an Italian virologist based in London, as she shared an image of the long convoy of army trucks.

The rising numbers of dead in Bergamo, which is about 25 miles northeast of Milan and home to about 120,000 people, have far exceeded the daily capacity of the city’s crematorium, prompting authorities to move about 60 bodies to other regions Wednesday night. Once the bodies are cremated their remains will be returned to Bergamo, according to reports.

Local officials said the city’s crematorium, which had been operating at full capacity for 24 hours a day, could process 25 bodies a day; Bergamo recorded 93 COVID-19 deaths Wednesday.

READ: Why the U.S. could be worse off than Italy with the coronavirus

The city’s mayor, Giorgio Gori, said the true number of deaths attributable to COVID-19 were likely higher, as many people with symptoms died before they could be tested.

Bergamo has been devastated by the coronavirus: according to the Washington Post, there’s a waiting list for burials, many of which are being conducted with only a priest and funeral home worker present, due to restrictions on gathering, and widespread COVID-19 infections. The local newspaper's obituary section has swollen to 10 pages, and hospitals are overwhelmed.

Earlier this month, Daniele Macchini, an intensive care physician at the city’s Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital, posted a widely-shared account to Facebook, in which he described the dire conditions faced by doctors working to treat an unending influx of COVID-19 patients.

“I understand the need not to panic, but when the message of the danger of what is happening does not reach people… I shiver,” he wrote.

READ: Coronavirus has northern Italy’s hospital’s on the brink of collapse

Another hospital in the city, Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, has launched an appeal on GoFundMe for one million euros ($1.1 million) to buy much needed ventilators, monitors and protective equipment. The hospital posted to Facebook Thursday with an urgent call from its head of medicine, Stefano Fagiuoli, for the general population to stay at home, and to donate to their appeal.

“We are in full emergency [mode],” read the post.

Lombardy’s governor Attilio Fontana warned Wednesday that hospitals in the region would be unable to treat new patients if the number of infections continued to rise.

“Unfortunately the numbers of the contagion are not falling, they continue to be high,” he said, according to Italian news agency Ansa. “We will soon be unable to give a response to those who fall ill.”

READ: Italian inmates are looting methadone and setting prisons on fire in violent coronavirus protests

Civil Protection Chief Angelo Borrelli announced Wednesday that 2,978 coronavirus patients had died in Italy, where 28,710 people have tested positive for the virus. That brings the total death toll close to China’s, where more than 3,200 have died.

He called on the public to continue to continue to observe the lockdown, which officials hope will lead to a drop in new infections in time. Italy’s interior ministry said Wednesday that 43,000 people had been caught breaking the lockdown rules in the first week of controls.

"It is necessary to limit movements as much as possible," said Borrelli.

Cover: Relatives stand behind a hearse carrying a coffin outside the Monumentale cemetery, in Bergamo, Italy, Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Bergamo is one of the cities most hit by the new coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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Indian Doctors Are Being Thrown Out of Their Homes Over Fears They'll Spread Coronavirus

India is locked down, but some doctors are getting locked out.

by Tim Hume
Mar 25 2020, 4:16pm

AP Photo/Manish Swarup

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the world’s biggest coronavirus lockdown Tuesday night, in an attempt to prevent a devastating outbreak. But as 1.3 billion people are ordered not to leave their homes, some doctors are reporting that they’re being kicked out of theirs, due to growing fears among the public that they could infect others with the virus.

In the capital, New Delhi, a doctors association appealed to the government on Tuesday to intervene in cases of doctors being turfed out of their accommodations by landlords who worry they could be infected.

“Many doctors are now stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country,” reads the letter signed by two leaders of the Resident Doctors' Association of New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

It says that healthcare workers are being asked to vacate rented homes, and some have been forcefully evicted, “due to the fear that those healthcare professionals make [people around them] susceptible to coronavirus infection.”

The appeal drew a swift response from politicians.

Harsh Vardhan, India’s minister for health and family welfare, tweeted that he was “deeply anguished” by the reports “pouring in” of threats to evict healthcare workers, especially in cities with confirmed coronavirus cases.

“All precautions are being taken by doctors & staff on [coronavirus] duty to ensure they’re not carriers of infection in any way,” he wrote, adding that discrimination against them would “demoralize them, derail the system.”

New Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also vowed to take action. "These doctors are saving our lives, putting their lives at risk," he tweeted. “Can the docs DM me contact [numbers] of landlords? Let me try to persuade them.”

READ: Italian doctors are coming out of retirement to treat coronavirus patients, and dying

The doctors association later said that it had received assurances from Home Minister Amit Shah that action would be taken on any reports of discrimination against health workers, and Delhi’s government ordered police Wednesday to respond strictly to any landlords trying to force doctors from their homes.

Health workers worldwide have paid a heavy toll as they battle the coronavirus pandemic, responding to an overwhelming surge of infected patients, often with inadequate personal protective equipment.

READ: British doctors are begging the government to test them for the coronavirus

In Italy, which has seen the world’s deadliest outbreak, the country’s 6,820 coronavirus deaths includes 29 doctors, according to the federation of Italian doctors guilds. In Spain, which overtook China as the world’s second-deadliest outbreak Wednesday with 3,434 deaths, nearly 14 percent of infections have been among medical workers.

Health workers have overwhelmingly been hailed as heroes for their bravery in responding to the crisis, although in Hong Kong, there has been strong opposition from local communities to the establishment of coronavirus clinics in populated areas.

READ: Hong Kong protesters want to close the border with China over the coronavirus

Modi announced India’s 21-day lockdown in a televised speech Tuesday night, only four hours before it took effect, following a sharp increase in cases there in recent days.

India has 562 confirmed infections and 10 deaths, but experts believe the true numbers of infected are likely much higher, and have warned that India will face a devastating outbreak unless drastic steps are taken.

Already politicians have expressed concerns about how Indians — the vast majority of whom work in the informal economy and do not have sick leave, paid leave, or health insurance — will fare if they are unable to work during the unprecedented lockdown.

But Modi stressed in Tuesday’s announcement that the measures were essential, warning that if India did not “handle these 21 days well, then our country... will go backwards by 21 years.”

Cover: Civil defense volunteers on a scooter ask people to go inside their houses during a lockdown to control coronavirus spread in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, March 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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‘We Are at War’: France Just Went Into Coronavirus Lockdown

The strict new rules will be enforced by 100,000 police officers, who are handing out fines to people who leave the house without a valid excuse.

by Tim Hume
Mar 17 2020, 1:45pm

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France’s 65 million people were put under lockdown Tuesday, with 100,000 police officers deployed to enforce harsh new restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus.

From midday Tuesday (7 a.m. ET), French residents are forbidden from leaving their homes except for essential trips, such as to buy food or medicine, or for necessary travel for work. The measures will last for at least 15 days, and will be enforced with fines of up to 135 euros ($151).

French President Emmanuel Macron announced the unprecedented lockdown in a somber televised address Monday night, watched by a record 35.3 million people.

"We are at war," he said. "We are not fighting against an army, or another nation. But the enemy is here. It is invisible, elusive and it is progressing. And this requires our general mobilization."

READ: Italy may soon be forced to stop treating coronavirus patients over 80

France had already shuttered all bars, restaurants, and shops deemed “non-essential,” along with all nurseries, schools and universities. But Macron said those measures had proved insufficient, as the number of infected people continued to surge: France has recorded 148 deaths from COVID-19, the third-highest in Europe, with 6,655 confirmed infections.

"Even while medics were warning about the gravity of the situation, we saw people get together in the parks, busy markets and restaurants and bars that did not respect the order to close,” he said.

“There can be no more outside meetings, no more seeing family or friends on the street or in the park.”

READ: Coronavirus has northern Italy’s hospitals on the brink of collapse

To enforce the lockdown, fixed checkpoints will be set up across the country. In other emergency measures, the French military will move coronavirus patients from overwhelmed regions to other parts of the country, and a military hospital with 30 intensive-care beds will be established in Alsace, one of the hardest-hit regions.

The government will also guarantee billions in loans to businesses, and suspend rent and utility bills to help them survive the economic impact of the crisis.

"No French company, whatever its size, will be exposed to the risk of collapse," Macron said, promising “unlimited” state aid for businesses.

The French decrees came amid a raft of radical restrictions announced across Europe Monday, as the Continent weathers the pandemic. On Monday night, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was planning to impose a ban on non-essential travel into Europe.

READ: How to stop your boomer parents from spreading fake coronavirus news

The proposed ban, which von der Leyen will ask European leaders to implement Tuesday, would last for 30 days initially but may be extended. European Union citizens and permanent residents, family members of EU nationals, diplomats, doctors and medical researchers would be exempted, she said.

“The less travel, the more we can contain the virus,” she said. “We think non-essential travel should be reduced right now in order to not spread the virus further, be it within the EU or by leaving the EU.”

Elsewhere on the Continent, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government would impose a ban on all travel "domestically or abroad" except for urgent work trips, and would close bars, museums, cinemas and non-essential shops. A number of other countries declared states of emergency Monday, including Switzerland, Finland, and Romania.

Police officers talks to tourists on the Champs-Elysees avenue Tuesday, March 17, 2020 in Paris. French President Emmanuel Macron announced strong restrictions on freedom of movement in a bid to counter the new coronavirus, as the European Union closed its external borders to foreign travelers. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.