China iPhone factory under lockdown boosts bonuses for workers who stay

BEIJING - The world's largest iPhone factory in central China told staff Tuesday it would quadruple their bonuses if they remained at the plant after scores of workers fled a Covid outbreak at the facility.

China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to stamp out emerging outbreaks.

But new variants have tested local officials' ability to snuff out flare-ups faster than they can spread, causing much of the country to live under an ever-changing mosaic of Covid curbs.

Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn's plant in Zhengzhou has been under lockdown since mid-October, with the company saying it is testing employees daily and keeping them in a closed loop.

But complaints from workers circulating on Chinese social media have alleged poor working conditions and inadequate virus protection for employees who are not infected.

Videos shared online over the weekend showed Foxconn employees fleeing the company's campus and returning to their hometowns on foot, in a bid to avoid Covid travel restrictions.

Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant said on its official WeChat account that, starting from Tuesday, employees will receive a daily bonus of 400 yuan ($55) for showing up to work -- quadruple the previous subsidy of 100 yuan a day.

Staff will also receive additional bonuses if they attend work for 15 days or longer in November, reaching 15,000 yuan if they record full attendance this month.

Foxconn -- which supplies iPhones to US tech firm Apple -- has promised to do more to help employees and organize buses to transport workers back to their hometowns should they wish to leave, in what it has called a "protracted battle" against the virus.

Local governments in the area surrounding the city asked fleeing workers to register with authorities if they returned home and to complete several days of quarantine upon arrival.

The southern semi-autonomous territory of Macau also announced mass testing of its 700,000 population Tuesday after a handful of cases were discovered, triggering a lockdown of one of its casinos.

It is a fresh blow for the city's struggling gambling industry, which had been poised for recovery after plans to relax travel between mainland China and the former Portuguese colony this month.

China reported more than 2,000 fresh domestic infections Tuesday for the second straight day, as curbs ramped up in response to a wave of regional outbreaks. 

The southern Chinese manufacturing hub of Guangzhou also announced partial lockdowns in several districts Monday in response to rising case numbers.

Guangzhou reported more than 520 fresh infections on Tuesday.

New outbreaks have also emerged in northern cities near China's border with Russia and North Korea as winter approaches.

Agence France-Presse

Netflix banks on vast production line to weather pandemic

LOS ANGELES - While coronavirus has brought Hollywood to a halt, Netflix has enjoyed record success. But will the streaming giant's well-stocked slate of future shows be enough to maintain that growth?

Netflix announced this week that it has finished filming the majority of movies and series due for release this year, playing down concerns that its flow of hit shows such as "Tiger King" could run dry, or the next "Unorthodox" be delayed.

"Our 2020 slate of series and films are largely shot, and are in post-production remotely in locations all over the world," said content chief Ted Sarandos.

"And we're actually pretty deep into our 2021 slate. So we're not anticipating moving things around."


Analysts say Netflix's scale, in terms of its sheer number of ongoing productions and global presence, make it best-placed to weather the pandemic storm.

"Any other studio... might have 4 or 5 films in the can, or in post-production that they can still work on. But Netflix has possibly hundreds," said Jeff Bock, senior analyst at Exhibitor Relations.

"There are so many productions that are financed by Netflix, it's almost mind-boggling. They're almost putting out as much content as all the studios put together."

The deep-pocketed platform can also turn to its vast network of overseas partners to license content -- often subtitled -- for domestic audiences.

HURT 

But even Netflix's content pipeline has inevitable limits if an unprecedented shutdown nobody could have predicted extends much longer.

"They like to put out a lot of content, each and every week," said Bock. "Maybe as we go along into the fourth or fifth month in terms of lockdowns... they certainly will be ahead of the game, but they'll certainly be hurt."

New, original programming plays a bigger part in Netflix's appeal than rival platforms like Disney+ -- home to the Mouse House's enviable 80-year back catalog. 

"People are, in a sense, distracted by all the archival content -- they can watch shows over and over," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior Comscore analyst. "There's a lot of buffer there."

With the streaming wars heating up, Netflix has lost evergreen hits like "Friends" and "The Office" to upcoming rivals HBO Max and Peacock.

The delay of this summer's entire movie theater blockbuster slate also means those films will arrive later at streamers such as Netflix, according to Steve Nason, research director at Parks Associates.

"Maybe not in the short term, but in the longer term, that hurts Netflix," he said.

'BETTER SHAPE' 

But Netflix has another tool at its disposal: its ability to find ways to keep making new content.

Thanks to rapid global expansion, Netflix is now ramping up production in countries that are easing restrictions -- namely Iceland and South Korea -- while Hollywood remains closed.

"Certainly the Netflix brand is worldwide -- there's no reason why they can't buy their own island honestly and shoot things there," Bock told AFP.

Its recent successes in reality TV, such as "Love is Blind" and "Too Hot to Handle," point to avenues requiring smaller crews and with rapid turnaround times.

Netflix quickly capitalized on the phenomenal success of surreal zookeeper documentary "Tiger King" with a follow-up episode featuring interviews with show alumni conducted via low-budget video calls.

"A lot of different content distributors are looking into (documentary programming) in the short term, to fill some of those holes," said Nason. "Netflix has already done that."

"If the production halt goes on nine to 12 months, everyone is going to be hurt," he added. "But compared to some of their competitors... (Netflix) are going to be in much better shape."

Agence France-Presse 

‘Will we die hungry?’ A teeming Metro Manila slum chafes under lockdown

MANILA, Philippines — Even before the coronavirus arrived in Metro Manila, a saying in the capital’s sprawling San Roque slum — “No one dies from a fever” — crystallized the many threats that its residents faced in their daily lives.

Drug-fueled petty crime. Food shortages. Overcrowding and poor sanitation. Fever, body aches and coughs were commonplace long before the virus came.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s lockdown of Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island and home to Manila, is moving into its second month, plunging San Roque’s people even deeper into poverty as the virus continues to rage. Yet the restrictions have not stopped runny-nosed children from playing tag in the slum’s labyrinth of alleyways as parents shout halfhearted admonitions to stay away from one another.

Home to roughly 6,000 families — conservatively, about 35,000 people — San Roque, in Manila’s northern suburb of Quezon, has for years been home to some of the poorest people on the fringes of Philippine society.

Many of the men are day laborers who work at construction sites in the ever-expanding metropolis. Others are provincial migrants whose journeys took them to the slum’s squalid shanties, made from dilapidated cardboard and rusting iron sheet roofing.

“Now it is a nightmare for people like us,” said Susana Baldoza, a grandmother of four who has lived nearly half her 59 years in San Roque, subsisting on odd jobs. “Now that there is a lockdown, we can’t go outside to look for jobs, to survive.”

She said she does not doubt that the virus is a killer but believes that many are likelier to die of hunger because government aid has been slow to trickle in. Now neighbors are helping neighbors as the community turns inward to feed its poorest residents.

Frustration over the lockdown recently exploded into violence. An April 1 gathering in San Roque became an impromptu rally, with dozens taking to the streets demanding answers from the government about when they would receive promised relief.

Police officers in riot gear and fatigues responded with force, scuffling with protesters and sending 21 people to jail. Duterte accused Kadamay, a group that advocates for the poor, of inciting the violence and warned that his government would not be lenient toward those who challenged it.

“Now is the time to set an example to everybody,” Duterte said, telling police to “shoot them dead” if they believed protesters were endangering their lives. “I am not used to being challenged. Not me. Let this be a warning to all.”

So far, there have been no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in San Roque, although Baldoza is almost sure that residents have been infected.

“I pray to God that there won’t be any, but how could there be none?” she said.

As of Wednesday, 349 people had died in the Philippines from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 5,453 infections had been confirmed. But that figure is likely to rise sharply, with the Philippine government having just begun mass testing this week.

Community leaders in San Roque have been tacking up cardboard signs reminding people not to spit. Some people have started wearing face masks, but most don’t. Wearing them in the city’s stifling heat can be suffocating, some said; others said they would rather spend what little money they had on food.

Yumi Castillo, a volunteer social worker with Kadamay, said it was hard to explain the concept of social distancing to people who spend their lives crammed into small, makeshift spaces.

Her group had printed out information about the virus for volunteers to distribute. But judging from the many children playing in congested alleyways and streets, the message didn’t seem to be getting through.

“There are practically no health services here. No one teaches them,” Castillo said at a community center where rice, food, drinking water and rubbing alcohol were sorted and stored.

Baldoza, the grandmother of four, was volunteering as a cook for a community kitchen in San Roque, serving fried herring over rice, courtesy of the Catholic Church and a civic group that has been helping residents weather the crisis.

“People here are very poor, as you can see,” said Baldoza, frying fish outdoors in a wok. “We don’t have money and the luxury of going to the supermarkets. We haven’t received help from the government, no help from the outside, except the donations that they give us. And people can’t work.”

Her neighbor Analyn Mikunog was waiting for the food to be served. Mikunog’s partner has no permanent job, although sometimes he is lucky enough to find work on construction sites. He had just been hired as a day laborer when Duterte imposed the lockdown.

Now the family’s future is bleak. With four young children to feed, the gaunt-looking Mikunog, 28, said she was at her wits’ end trying to figure out how they would survive.

“Sometimes we talk and wonder how long this lockdown will last,” she said. “Will we die hungry?”

Priests in clerical collars and rugged jeans were busily making lunches, but their camaraderie belied the seriousness of the situation. As the meals were being prepared, riot police officers moved in to break up the feeding program. They accused leftist organizations of using it to recruit people to campaign against the government.

The officers, some in black uniforms and others in combat fatigues, carried batons and long firearms. They confiscated signs that read, “Help, Not Jail.” After tense negotiations, a commander, who refused to identify himself, finally relented. But he warned the group to break up after the food was distributed and to practice social distancing.

“We are just serving the people,” said King Garcia, a 39-year-old priest.

“The government has left them in the fringes at a time when they needed help the most,” he said. “If the virus does not kill them, hunger will.”

The New York Times (Jason Gutierrez)

Millions ordered into lockdown in India over virus fears

NEW DELHI - Hundreds of millions of Indians were ordered into lockdowns Sunday in the world's second-most populous nation, which stepped up measures to halt the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus.

Crowds gathered on balconies across the country in the afternoon to clap, ring bells and blow horns in a heart-warming tribute to the health care and emergency workers on the frontlines battling the COVID-19 illness.

The raft of state shutdowns in the nation of 1.3 billion people came during a 14-hour voluntary curfew that Prime Minister Narendra Modi said would test India's ability to fight the pandemic.

"This is the start of a long fight," Modi tweeted as the curfew came to an end.

"The people of this country have announced it today that we can take on and defeat as big a challenge as possible if we decide."

Normally bustling streets in the capital New Delhi and financial hub of Mumbai were mostly deserted as many people stayed indoors.

'STAY AT HOME' 

With the end of the voluntary curfew the government appealed to states late Sunday to impose mandatory lockdowns on virus-affected districts.

A growing number of states and territories, including the capital New Delhi, heeded the call and banned all activity except for essential services.

Delhi, with a population of almost 20 million, will seal its land borders from early Monday, and close shops and private sector offices until March 31.

Other states imposed partial or full lockdowns, with many closing borders, restricting movement and halting most public transport.

Some, like West Bengal with a population of more than 90 million, locked down major cities but not rural areas.

Indian Railways cancelled all services except suburban and goods trains until March 31.

Incoming international flights were already barred for a week, while schools, entertainment facilities and monuments such as the iconic Taj Mahal have been shut.

The curfew -- seen as a rehearsal for longer lockdowns -- came as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India surged past 360, with seven deaths.

Experts say a lack of testing may be hiding the true scale of the health crisis.

Testing for the virus was expanded to private laboratories and will now include asymptomatic people who had contact with confirmed cases, officials said.

'WE ARE AT WAR' 

Modi urged Indians to thank medical workers and other emergency personnel by clapping or banging pots and pans for five minutes at 5:00 pm -- and many in the cities responded with enthusiasm.

Neighbourhoods silent during the curfew burst into life as the sounds of clapping, cookware being hit and the bellow of conch shells -- an auspicious Hindu ritual -- filled the air from people's balconies.

"The enemy is there, invisible and elusive... We are trying to defeat it. We are at war, a public health war certainly," schoolteacher Sumita Dutta told AFP in Kolkata as she clapped her hands in front of her home.

South Asia is the world's most densely populated region, while India has an overburdened public health system that suffers from a lack of doctors and hospitals.

Experts warn that the country would not escape the highly infectious disease.

"We are in for a very long fight," warned virologist Shahid Jameel of biomedical research charity Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance.

In Mumbai's Dharavi, one of the world's biggest slums, residents said there was growing fears about the virus.

"We live by adjusting with each other in small confined spaces. But now we are not allowed to step out at all and police officials are enforcing it strictly. So it's a challenging situation," Raju Shaikh told AFP.

Agence France-Presse