德国州长（不知翻译得对不对）：德国需要“数十亿个口罩”才能抗击冠状病毒

[lindamy]

6 hr 24 min ago
Germany needs "billions of masks" to fight coronavirus, state premier says
From Nadine Schmidt in Berlin

Bavarian state premier Markus Soder arrives for a state dinner during the 2020 Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on February 15. Johannes Simon/Getty Images

Germany will need “billions of masks” to fight its coronavirus outbreak, the Bavarian state premier Markus Soder said Thursday.

“In the long run, we will need enormous amounts of masks,” Soder said. “I believe that in the end we will need billions of masks in Germany.”

He said the masks would initially be needed by medical staff and then the elderly people in nursing homes.

Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn wants the country to become less dependent on masks made elsewhere, advocating that Germany should make more.

“We must become more independent of the world market, for the security of our citizens. That is one of the lessons of these weeks. We want to encourage companies with a purchase guarantee until the end of 2021 to set up production of protective masks in Germany,” he said on Twitter.

The number of coronavirus cases in Germany is continuing to rise rapidly. The worse-affected region is Bavaria, which has more than 18,000 confirmed cases and 268 deaths, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute.

Bavaria became the first German state to implement a lockdown on public life in an attempt to curb coronavirus spread.

 

[lindamy]

世界其他地区正在逐渐改变对亚洲戴口罩的看法

13 hr 46 min ago
The rest of the world is coming around to Asia's point of view on face masks
Analysis by CNN's James Griffiths

In the coming weeks, if they have not already, your government is likely to begin advising you to wear a face mask to protect against coronavirus.

For those living in Asia, such announcements will be a vindication of a tactic that has been adopted across much of the region since the beginning of the crisis and appears to have been borne out by lower rates of infection and faster containment of outbreaks.

In other parts of the world, this message may be confusing, coming after weeks of public health authorities, politicians and media figures confidently claiming masks do not help and urging people instead to focus on washing their hands and maintaining social distancing.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appeared before lawmakers in late February. Asked if people should wear masks, he had a straightforward answer: "No."

Now he's not so sure. On Monday, Redfield told NPR that the CDC was reviewing its guidelines and may recommend general mask use to guard against community infection. It's likely only a matter of time before other mask holdouts, most prominently the World Health Organization, follow suit.

Writing last month, Adrien Burch, an expert in microbiology at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that "despite hearing that face masks 'don't work,' you probably haven't seen any strong evidence to support that claim. That's because it doesn't exist."

In fact, there is evidence of the exact opposite: that masks help prevent viral infections like the current pandemic.

Many countries and territories across Asia have been wearing masks for the entire length of the pandemic, and this strategy has been borne out by lower infection rates and more easily contained outbreaks. Now the rest of the world is finally coming around to this strategy.

Read the full analysis here:


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Asia may have been right about coronavirus and face masks, and the rest of the world is coming round