When China suddenly scrapped onerous zero-COVID measures in December, the country wasn’t ready for a massive onslaught of cases, with hospitals turning away ambulances and crematoriums burning bodies around the clock. Chinese state media claimed the decision to open up was based on “scientific analysis and shrewd calculation,” and “by no means impulsive." But in reality, China’s ruling Communist Party ignored repeated efforts by top medical experts to kickstart exit plans until it was too late, The Associated Press found. Instead, the reopening came suddenly at the onset of winter, when the virus spreads most easily. Many older people weren’t vaccinated, pharmacies lacked antivirals, and hospitals didn’t have adequate supplies or staff — leading to as many as hundreds of thousands of deaths that may have been avoided, according to academic modeling, more than 20 interviews with current and former China Center for Disease Control and Prevention employees, experts and government advisors, and internal reports and directives obtained by the AP. “If they had a real plan to exit earlier, so many things could have been avoided,” said Zhang Zuo-Feng, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Many deaths could have been prevented.” Experts estimate that many hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, may have died in China’s wave of COVID-19 — far higher than the official toll of under 90,000, but still a much lower death rate than in Western countries. However, 200,000 to 300,000 deaths could have been prevented if the country was better vaccinated and stocked with antivirals, according to modeling by the University of Hong Kong. Some scientists estimate even more lives could have been saved. “It wasn’t a sound public health decision at all,” said a China CDC official, declining to be named to speak candidly on a sensitive matter. “It’s absolutely bad timing … this was not a prepared opening.” For two years, China stood out for its tough but successful controls against the virus, credited with saving millions of lives as other countries struggled with stop-and-start lockdowns. But with the emergence of the highly infectious omicron variant last year, many of China’s top medical experts and officials worried zero-COVID was unsustainable. In late 2021, China’s leaders began discussing how to lift restrictions. As early as March 2022, top medical experts submitted a detailed reopening strategy to the State Council, China’s cabinet. The existence of the document is being reported for the first time by the AP. But discussions were silenced after an outbreak the same month in Shanghai, which prompted Chinese leader Xi Jinping to lock the city down. Chinese public health experts stopped speaking publicly about preparing for an exit, as they were wary of openly challenging a policy supported by Xi. By the time the Shanghai outbreak was under control, China was months away from the 20th Party Congress, the country’s most important political meeting in a decade, making reopening politically difficult. So the country stuck to mass testing and quarantining millions of people. “Everybody waits for the party congress,” said one medical expert, declining to be named to comment on a sensitive topic. “There’s inevitably a degree of everyone being very cautious.” At the Congress in mid-October, top officials differing with Xi were sidelined. Instead, six loyalists followed Xi onstage in a new leadership lineup, signaling his total domination of the party. With the congress over, some voices in the public health sector finally piped up. In an internal document published Oct. 28, obtained by The Associated Press and reported here for the first time, Wu Zunyou, China’s CDC chief epidemiologist, criticized the Beijing city government for excessive COVID-19 controls, saying it had “no scientific basis." He called it a “distortion” of the central government’s zero-COVID policy, which risked “intensifying public sentiment and causing social dissatisfaction.” Read more: Facing COVID surge, China expanding hospitals, ICUs At the same time, he called the virus policies of the central government “absolutely correct.” One former CDC official said Wu felt helpless because he was ordered to advocate for zero-COVID in public, even as he disagreed at times with its excesses in private. Wu did not respond to an email requesting comment. A person acquainted with Wu confirmed he wrote the internal report. Another who spoke up was Zhong Nanshan, a doctor renowned for raising the alarm about the original COVID outbreak Wuhan. He wrote to Xi personally, telling him that zero-COVID was not sustainable and urging a gradual reopening, said a person acquainted with Zhong. In early November, then-Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, China’s top “COVID czar,” summoned experts from sectors including health, travel and the economy to discuss adjusting Beijing’s virus policies, according to three people with direct knowledge of the meetings. On Nov. 10, Xi ordered adjustments. The next day, Beijing announced 20 new measures tweaking restrictions, such as reclassifying risk zones and reducing quarantine times. But at the same time, Xi made clear, China was sticking to zero-COVID. The government wanted order. Instead, the measures caused chaos. With conflicting signals from the top, local governments weren’t sure whether to lock down or open up. Policies changed by the day. In late November, public frustration boiled over. A deadly apartment fire in China’s far west Xinjiang region sparked nationwide protests over locked doors and other virus control measures. Some called on Xi to resign, the most direct challenge to the Communist Party’s power since pro-democracy protests in 1989. Riot police moved in and the protests were swiftly quelled. But behind the scenes, the mood was shifting. References to zero-COVID vanished from government statements. State newswire Xinhua said the pandemic was causing “fatigue, anxiety and tension,” and that the cost of controlling it was increasing day by day. Days after the protests, Sun held meetings where she told medical experts the state planned to “walk briskly” out of zero-COVID. The final decision was made suddenly, and with little direct input from public health experts, several told the AP. “None of us expected the 180-degree turn,” a government advisor said. Many in the Chinese government believe the protests accelerated Xi’s decision to scrap virus controls entirely, according to three current and former state employees. “It was the trigger,” said one, not identified because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media. On Dec. 6, Xi instructed officials to change COVID-19 controls, Xinhua reported. Read more: WHO 'continues to urge' China to share more data amid Covid surge The next day, Chinese health authorities announced 10 sweeping measures that effectively scrapped controls, canceling virus test requirements, mandatory centralized quarantine and location-tracking health QR codes. The decision to reopen so suddenly caught the country by surprise. “Even three days’ notice would have been good,” said a former China CDC official. “The way this happened was just unbelievable.”

Forensic experts have determined that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died of poisoning nearly 50 years ago, a family member of the Nobel Prize winner said Monday. The revelation by Rodolfo Reyes, a Neruda nephew, is the latest turn in one of the great debates of post-coup Chile. The long-stated official position has been that Neruda died of complications from prostate cancer, but the poet's driver argued for decades that he was poisoned. There was no confirmation of Reyes' comments from forensic experts from Canada, Denmark and Chile who are scheduled to publicly release a report Wednesday on the cause of Neruda's death. The public release of the group's finding has been delayed twice this year, first due to internet connectivity issues of one of the experts and then again because a judge said the panel had yet to reach a consensus. International forensics experts several years ago rejected the official cause of death as cachexia, or weakness and wasting of the body due to chronic illness — in this case cancer. But at that time they said they had not determined what did kill Neruda. In an interview with The Associated Press, Reyes said forensic tests carried out in Danish and Canadian labs indicated a presence of “a great quantity of Cloristridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life.” The powerful toxin can cause paralysis in the nervous system and death. Reyes first revealed the information to the Spanish news agency EFE earlier Monday. As a lawyer in the judicial case over his uncle’s death, Reyes said he has access to the forensic report, which was carried out after the same group of experts said in 2017 that there were indications of a toxin in the late poet’s bones and a molar. The lab tests concluded that the toxin was administered when the poet was alive, Reyes said. The report is set to be released almost 50 years after the death of the poet and Communist Party member and 12 years after the start of a judicial investigation into whether he was poisoned, as his driver Manuel Araya maintains. Araya told AP earlier this month he was confident that the forensic findings would support his assertion the poet died after being given “an injection in the stomach” at the clinic where he was hospitalized. Araya said he first heard that version of events from a nurse. Neruda, who was 69 and suffering from prostate cancer, died in the chaos that followed Chile’s Sept. 11, 1973, coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende and put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power. Neruda’s body was exhumed in 2013 to determine the cause of his death but those tests showed no toxic agents or poisons in his bone. His family and driver demanded further investigation. In 2015, Chile’s government said it was “highly probable that a third party” was responsible for Neruda's death. Neruda was reburied in his favorite home overlooking the Pacific Coast last year. In 2017, a team of international scientists determined that Neruda did not die of cancer or malnutrition, rejecting the official cause of death but not saying what he did die of. “The fundamental conclusions are the invalidity of the death certificate when it comes to cachexia as a cause of death,” Aurelio Luna, one of the panel’s experts, said at that time. “We still can’t exclude nor affirm the natural or violent cause of Pablo Neruda’s death.” Neruda, who was best known for his love poems, was a friend of Allende, who killed himself rather than surrender to troops during the coup led by Pinochet. Neruda was traumatized by the military takeover and the persecution and killing of his friends. He planned to go into exile, where he would have been an influential voice against the dictatorship. But a day before his planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to a clinic in Chile's capital of Santiago where he had been treated for cancer and other ailments. Neruda officially died there Sept. 23, 1973, from natural causes. But suspicions that the dictatorship had a hand in the death remained long after Chile returned to democracy in 1990. The former Mexican ambassador to Chile at the time of the bloody military coup, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, told AP on two occasions that he saw Neruda the day before his death and that his body weight was close to 100 kilos (220 pounds). Martínez spoke to AP by phone in 2017, a few days before his death. Araya told AP last month he still thinks that if Neruda “hadn’t been left alone in the clinic, they wouldn’t have killed him.” He recalled that on Neruda’s instructions, on Sunday, Sept. 23, the poet’s wife, Matilde Urrutia, and he were at the mansion to pick up the suitcases that would be taken to Mexico the following day. In the middle of the afternoon Neruda asked them to come back quickly. He died that same night. During his life, Neruda accumulated dozens of prizes, including the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, but in recent years criticism has appeared from feminist groups over a rape he committed in the 1930s and which he recounted in his book “I Confess That I Have Lived.” He also is criticized for abandoning his only daughter, Malva Marina, because she was born with hydrocephalus

The experts have said education has to be modernised and technology-based to get a skilled workforce to face the 5th industrial revolution. They were speaking at the webinar "5th industrial revolution and importance of entrepreneurship in Bangladesh's perspective" organised by the Dhaka School of Economics, a constituent institution of Dhaka University, Sunday. Professor Muhammad Mahboob Ali, the coordinator of the entrepreneurial economics programme at the Dhaka School of Economics, chaired the webinar. Read: In search of future entrepreneurs: iDEA Project to launch Startup Compass Tuesday The 5th industrial revolution is helpful for the present government's vision of building a Smart Bangladesh, where a smart humanistic approach may be included as the fifth pillar, he said. Sardana Khan, a lecturer at Australia's CQUniversity, said the job market should be thought of internationally. "The students should not limit their choices to the local job market only." Professor KS Gupta, a higher education expert from India's Bangalore, was present at the event as the chief guest. Shamima Haque, assistant professor at Techno Main Saltlake in India, delivered the keynote presentation at the event.

Experts have said it is imperative to take realistic steps to enhance the quality of services and development of business for increasing productivity in the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSMEs) sector.    They suggested increasing direct investment for expanding business for women, easy availability of loans from banks and other financial institutions, and increasing the amount of loans for the private sector to overcome challenges in the MSMEs sector. Read: BB revises cluster credit guidelines to boost small enterprises The experts were speaking at the programme "Corporate Connect Event for MSMEs" at the city hotel Wednesday. They also called for making the process of getting a trade licence easier and arranging training for entrepreneurs.

Everyone hates fans. The cricket establishment hates it most as they are on social media, always ranting and abusing when things go bad. Nobody likes to hear that one is not doing  good not even when one is not playing good. Here is a message I got on my chatbox.     “Please try to understand Cricket. Have you ever played Cricket? Always talk negatively when Bangladeshi players plays bad. But it is Cricket & T20,  so you never predict. Always think positively before going for criticize players. You are a professional writer, so try to respect other professionals. “. It’s true that I am a professional writer but when it comes to sports I am not a professional. Since I have never played cricket, I can’t say anything as a fan. In other words, only experts can comment and fans must stay shut and only pay and cheer the team no matter what. Yet it’s the fans who keep the game and the team alive. Whether on the field, in front of the TV set or the website ticker, it’s the fans that enjoy and suffer the most. It’s they who care and they are probably the only group who make no money from the business of cricket. They are the only ones who pay to be fans, others get paid to be administrators, experts or of course players. Read:Asia Cup 2022: Group standings, where to watch live on App, OTT, TV The migrants in the gallery and the stars on the ground What was very interesting in the Afghanistan- Bangladesh match was that the crowd was made of migrant workers from both countries. Everyone knows how migrants are treated in their place of work so the team becomes a symbol of the homeland in a foreign place.  For them to watch their teams play and win or lose is far deeper than anything the local fan in Dhaka can feel. It gives them a sense of value and self-worth that nothing else can.    In the 10th over the winner predictor had shifted to Bangladesh and to the crowd it was sensational. The way they cheered reminds one of the South African ODIs when Bangladesh won two in a row. It’s the same crowd who was there cheering the team won in a largely crowd free stadium.  To the South Africans it was a duel with an opponent which didn’t matter but to the Bangladeshis there, it was their homeland visiting them. When the match shifted, the Afghan migrant worker cheered once more.   This is the big difference between the expert and the fan.  To the wise man who discusses a match, he is also trying to prove how good he is at understanding the game. But to a fan, it’s just about the land of his and his emotions. When it wins or loses, he himself does. The fan doesn’t claim to be an expert. He just loves the game and the flag.

Experts have emphasised creating an independent commission to bring those involved in the killing of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family on August 15, 1975, to justice. A commission will have to be formed with retired judges, senior advocates, senior journalists and people who actively participated in the Liberation War of 1971, they added. The experts called for completing the execution procedure of the absconders living abroad. They were speaking at the discussion "The Killing of Bangabandhu: The Conspirators, the Executors and the Ultimate Justice" organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA) and Bangla Worldwide jointly Saturday in Dhaka. Read: August 15: Remembering the Father of the Nation on Mourning Day Author of the Proclamation of Independence Barrister M Amir-ul Islam, chairman of BILIA, Professor Mizanur Rahman, director of BILIA, Barrister Tania Amir, Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury, Professor Muntassir Mamun, Professor Harun-Ur-Rashid, Ali Wazed Zafar, Ishfaq Ilahi Choudhury, Rokeya Kabir, Professor Kamrul Hasan Khan and Professor Biswajit Chanda spoke at the event.

Experts Thursday stressed the need to collaborate on the promotion of fair and ethical recruitment to ensure decent work and safe migration across South and Southeast Asia. They were speaking at the two-day meeting of the Thematic Area Working Group (TAWG) of the Colombo Process (CP) on fostering ethical recruitment practices in Dhaka. CP is a regional consultative process of 12 Asian countries that focuses on the protection of and provision of services to migrant workers and optimising the benefits of organised labour migration for both sending and receiving countries for both migrants and their families. During the 9th meeting of the TAWG, member states finalised their four-year work plan to further the goals of transforming the recruitment industry from the employee-pay model to an employer-pay model; ensuring informal recruitment actors are encompassed under the regulatory framework and equipping migrant workers with the information necessary for decent work and safe migration. Read: Bangladesh truly a champion of migration management: IOM

The progress in ensuring justice for the Rohingya is moving at a snail's pace, experts said Tuesday while reflecting on the fifth year of the Myanmar nationals' exodus to Bangladesh. Creative solutions are yet to be found, they added. The experts were speaking at the discussion "Rohingya Influx: Uncertainties at Hope" organised by ActionAid Bangladesh in partnership with, the Centre for Genocide Studies of the University of Dhaka,  and the Centre for Peace and Justice of Brac University. Despite some major decisions made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the last couple of years, there has been little progress in furthering their cause for justice and accountability, Manzoor Hasan, chairperson of ActionAid International Bangladesh Society, said. "The role of the UN bodies and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) could have been far more robust, to say the least. The coup and current situation in Myanmar have only furthered the impunity enjoyed by the military," he added.   Read: UN Human Rights Council adopts resolution to end Rohingya crisis

Dhaka, Aug 06 (UNB) – Experts have called for more engagement of the private sector to attain the goals of the Bangladesh Delta Plan (BDP) 2100. They were speaking at the "Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100: Private Sector Involvement to achieve a Safe, Climate-Resilient and Prosperous Delta" organised by the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) in Dhaka Saturday. FBCCI President Md Jashim Uddin called for direct involvement of the private sector for the effective implementation of the BDP 2100. Private sector engagement will enhance the pace and improve the quality of river management, water supply in urban and rural areas, waste management, flood control and drainage management, Jashim said. Read: PM seeks international support for Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 The BDP 2100 aims to ensure long-term water and food security, economic growth and environmental sustainability while effectively reducing vulnerability to natural disasters and building resilience to climate change and other delta challenges issues through robust, adaptive and integrated strategies and equitable water governance. And dredgers and other heavy machinery used in the implementation of the projects undertaken to achieve the Delta goals are heavily dependent on import. So, the FBCCI president urged the government to keep the tariff rate of these products at a reasonable level. "The total duty on dredgers is now 31 percent, which was earlier 1 percent." Planning State Minister Shamsul Alam also called for a review of the import duty on dredgers. "The government has only 30 dredgers, but more than 200 dredgers are needed for this work. So, the entire dredging work should be left to the private sector," he said. Brac University Emeritus Professor of Ainun Nishat suggested revising the BDP 2100 every five years. Environment, Forest and Climate Change Secretary Farhina Ahmed said a $230 billion private investment is needed to implement the BDP 2100. "So, more involvement of the private sector is a must."

Speakers at a workshop on Monday called upon the government, development partners and private sector for enabling an environment for inclusive insurance and risk financing for the country’s sustainable development, leaving no one behind.  The event titled ‘Inception workshop on Country Diagnostic on Inclusive Insurance and Risk Finance for Bangladesh‘ “was organized at a hotel in Dhaka, by the Financial Institutions Division (FID), Ministry of Finance, Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Sheikh Mohammad Salim Ullah, Secretary, FID, Ministry of Finance, attended the workshop as the chief guest, while Mohammad Joynul Bari, Chairman, IDRA and Van Nguyen, Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP Bangladesh were the special guests.  Among others, Dr. Baqui Khalily, Chairman Risk Management Committee, Bank Asia and Abdullah Harun Pasha, Additional Secretary, FID, Ministry of Finance were also present.     Also read: Default loans cross over 126 crore: Finance Minister  Sheikh Mohammad Salim Ullah said, “There is an increasing need for decision makers to be involved in developing the insurance products. They also need to understand how climate change risks could affect their investments and how to mitigate those risks through proper planning, incentive structures and financial instruments. In this context, to achieve the mission of developing an efficient, inclusive and robust financial market and services system, FID is continuously working on many projects. Being a part of this project is another milestone for our institution to enter the groundwork in inert-related areas of insurance and risk finance. ” A.K.M. Mamunur Rashid, Climate Change Specialist, UNDP Bangladesh set the tone of the event.  He provided a brief overview of why inclusive insurance and risk financing are essential for Bangladesh to cover the risks of the most vulnerable communities. Jan Kellett, Team Leader, Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRFF), UNDP delivered a presentation on “Initiatives of the Insurance and Risk Finance Facility, UNDP and several best practices in the space of inclusive insurance and risk financing”.  Van Nguyen from UNDP said, “ I hope that under the leadership of FID, MoF and IDRA as the regulatory authorities, strong representation of the insurance industry and relevant key stakeholders – the country diagnostic will provide us with a clear direction for creating enabling environment for mainstreaming inclusive insurance and risk financing in the country. We are committed to continuing our support in the future to strengthen the legislative frameworks, institutional capacity and insurance industry for enhancing the resilience of the most vulnerable communities and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Bangladesh.” Dr. M. Baqui Khalily, Chairman, Risk Management Committee, Bank Asia,  Nasir Uddin Ahmed, First Vice President, Bangladesh Insurance Association, Netai Dey Sarker, Director, Department of Disaster Management, Government of Bangladesh also spoke at the event. Also read:Commit 2% of GDP to climate finance each year: civil society organisations Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries due to its low-lying delta ecosystem that exposes the country to several disasters such as flash floods, monsoon floods, cyclones, storm surges, salinity intrusion, draught and unpredictable rainfall, said UNDP.  The government of Bangladesh (GoB) is keen to explore the insurance industry to consider it as a risk transfer mechanism. UNDP is conducting a country diagnostic that will document and assess the risks and vulnerability in Bangladesh considering the existing enabling environment and financial instruments.  The diagnostic study will highlight challenges, opportunities, and areas where UNDP can, together with partners, provide the necessary support for the government and private stakeholders to improve the enabling environment for inclusive insurance and risk financing.