French voters head to the polls on March 15 and 22 to elect some 35,000 mayors and more than ten times as many councilors. Just over 500,000 council seats are up for grabs in the country’s 34,970 municipalities. All mayoral candidates are required to present gender-balanced “lists”, or tickets, for their council. The seats are allocated on a proportional basis, with a “majority bonus” for towns of more than 1,000 inhabitants. If a single ticket wins more than 50% of votes in the first round, there is no need for a run-off.

Declaring Spain to be in a “state of alert is a measure included in article 116 of the Constitution and is the first of three levels that can be declared, the next being state of emergency and the highest level a state of siege. 

The state of alert in Spain allows the government to take wide-ranging measures for up to 15 days, including

1. Austria: Austria is setting aside € 4 billion euros in liquidity and subsidies to support the economy against the impact of the coronavirus,
2. Belgium: No announced measures so far.
3. Bulgaria: No measures so far.
4. Croatia: No measures announced yet, but the government is assessing the impact of the virus.
5. Cyprus: The government of the Republic of Cyprus is preparing a financial stimulus package to mitigate the virus’ impact on the island’s tourism and travel sectors.
6. Czech Republic: No measures so far.

There is no  strong evidence that travel bans work to stop the spread of the disease. Instead, travel restrictions can cause more harm than good by hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies. These types of measures have been shown to be ineffective at halting the spread of viruses. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay pathogens from moving — but they don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Rather, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease.

1. Establish an objective process to identify and assess health threats, independent of international health authorities and develop a robust policy for handling advisors’ conflicts of interest in relation to decisions about medicines or other therapies intended for use in health emergencies.
2. Epidemiological surveillance needs to be improved in terms of enhanced coordination amongst different organizations; harmonization of data collection; communication and most of all capacity building and preparedness planning for emergency situations.

Definitions

Outbreak

When a disease infects a lot of people in one area in a short period of time, that’s an outbreak.

Epidemic

Source: Worldometers, March 11, 2020

Confirmed Cases- Top 13 countries

1. Italy: 10,149
2. Spain: 2,179
3. France: 1,784
4. Germany: 1,622
5. Switzerland: 652
6. Netherlands: 503
7. Norway: 440
8. Sweden: 436
9. United Kingdom: 383
10. Denmark: 340
11. Belgium: 314
12. Austria: 206
13. Greece: 90

Source: The Atlantic Council

Source: Worlddometers, March 9, 2020

Confirmed Cases

As many as 100,000 Japanese people were killed and another million injured, most of them civilians, when more than 300 American B-29 bombers dropped 1,500 tons of firebombs on the Japanese capital that night. The inferno the bombs created reduced an area of 15.8 square miles to ash. And, by some estimates, a million people were left homeless.