BERLIN – Munich’s Oktoberfest, the world’s largest popular festival, where revellers from all over the globe swig beer by the litre and sing along to oompah bands, has fallen victim to the coronavirus pandemic.
Six million people flock to the Bavarian capital every year for the two-week festivities, held in packed tents with long wooden tables and benches where social distancing to avoid contagion would be both lamentable and impossible.
The event, scheduled this year for 19 September to 4 October, brings in about one billion euros (N$20,4 billion) for the city.
“This is not a normal year and it is unfortunately a year without the Oktoberfest,” said Markus Söder, premier of the southern German state, yesterday, announcing a decision that had been widely expected. “It hurts. It is a huge shame.”
Some parts of Germany have started to relax lockdown measures introduced last month to slow the spread of the virus, but big events are banned until 31 August. Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Germans to stay disciplined to avoid a relapse after some slowing of the infection rate. Several states of Germany are requiring shoppers and people on public transport to wear face masks as protection against the spread of the coronavirus.
GENEVA – The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday that all available evidence suggests the novel coronavirus originated in animals in China late last year and was not manipulated or produced in a laboratory.
US president Donald Trump said last week that his government was trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic emerged in December.
“All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing. “It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin.”
It was not clear, Chaib added, how the virus had jumped the species barrier to humans but there had “certainly” been an intermediate animal host. “It most likely has its ecological reservoir in bats but how the virus came from bats to humans is still to be seen and discovered.”
GENEVA – The number of people facing acute food insecurity could nearly double this year to 265 million due to the economic fallout of Covid-19, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday.
The impact of lost tourism revenues, falling remittances and travel and other restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic are expected to leave some 130 million people acutely hungry this year, adding to around 135 million already in that category.
“Covid-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging by a thread,” said Arif Husain, chief economist and director of research, assessment and monitoring at the WFP.
“We all need to come together to deal with this because if we don’t the cost will be too high – the global cost will be too high: many lost lives and many, many more lost livelihoods,” he told reporters at a virtual briefing in Geneva.
– Nampa-Reuters
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