Read News 2020.03.20: Global Focus Topics and Events

March 20, 2020 (ROC year 109): a daily roundup of trending global news topics, covering technology, life, travel, transportation, industry and finance, business, companies, stocks, foreign exchange markets, investment, real estate, automobiles, breaking news, sports, entertainment gossip, art, design, politics, society, Taiwan, mainland China, cross-strait affairs, weather, natural disasters, current affairs, and many other areas.

The “Read News” section collects the headline events and brief summaries of the most important key news from around the world that deserve your attention in recent days, letting you see the pulse of social trends through the flow of quickly listed news events.

Global Focus Topics on March 20, 2020

• International and Social Focus
• Technology and Information
• Business and Investment
• Science and Health
• Travel and Leisure

International and Social Focus

Statistics compiled by Agence France-Presse based on official data show that the death toll from the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19, commonly known as the Wuhan virus) pneumonia pandemic (abbreviated as COVID-19) worldwide surpassed 9,000 today, and Europe has become the region where the epidemic is spreading fastest.

After reports of people rushing to buy supplies at domestic supermarkets, Chen Shih-chung, commander of the Central Epidemic Command Center of the Republic of China, said today that there are few domestic cases, and compared with the case density abroad that is dozens of times higher, there is “no reason to panic” on the island of Taiwan.

US President Trump and the White House both refer to the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese Virus,” to which the WHO responded, arguing that this is discriminatory, and even brought up the past H1N1 epidemic, noting that H1N1 originated in North America but no one called it “North American flu.”

As confirmed COVID-19 cases have soared recently, the government announced strengthened epidemic prevention measures and full control over the entry of non-nationals, triggering public expectations, and stores and online shopping platforms have once again seen a rush to buy — toilet paper, instant noodles, ready-to-eat meals, and more are selling wildly. PChome 24h Shopping, due to the recent massive volume of warehousing and logistics orders in a short period, has temporarily suspended 24-hour delivery service for food and daily necessities that consumers buy in large quantities, and will flexibly adjust delivery policy based on order conditions later, but stresses that supply of goods on the site is sufficient and asks the public not to panic excessively.

Technology and Information

Audi Taiwan has begun pre-sales of the all-new generation Audi Q3 compact SUV and Q3 Sportback compact coupe SUV, offering five powertrain and model configurations. For pre-sale prices, the Audi Q3 35 TFSI is NT$1.82 million, the Audi Q3 35 TFSI advanced is NT$1.93 million, and the Audi Q3 40 TFSI quattro S line is NT$2.18 million; the Audi Q3 Sportback 35 TFSI is NT$1.91 million, and the Audi Q3 Sportback 35 TFSI S line is NT$2.08 million.

Business and Investment

EVA Air recently issued an internal notice that, after reducing flights in March, it will offer incentives for long-haul routes to Europe and America — guaranteeing 75 flight hours and 220 hours of per-diem allowance — to raise flight attendants’ willingness to work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global economy, and Taiwan’s central bank took bold action today, using both price and quantity measures to stabilize market confidence and help businesses through the crisis. Central bank governor Yang Chin-long said that, just like the US Federal Reserve’s emergency rate cut, the central bank “must be fast and brave,” so in addition to cutting rates by 0.25 percentage points, it also injected an additional NT$200 billion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered panic in global markets, and the National Stabilization Fund Management Committee today authorized entry to support the market. Reviewing the fund’s past six interventions, it once spent more than NT$120 billion in a single rescue, with large-cap weighted stocks such as TSMC most favored.

As Taiwan stocks keep falling, the Financial Supervisory Commission today (the 19th) again rolled out market rescue measures, announcing that short selling below the previous closing price is banned from today, hoping to curb the continuous decline of Taiwan stocks.

Favipiravir (brand name: Avigan), an anti-influenza drug developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm Holdings, is reported to have completed clinical research and shown efficacy against COVID-19, sending Fujifilm’s stock price up 15% at today’s close.

Science and Health

US government officials told The Associated Press that the US side has officially launched a vaccine and drug trial program through the National Institutes of Health, with the first novel coronavirus vaccine clinical trial to be conducted on the 16th, in which one subject will receive the experimental dose.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 to observe the solar system asteroid “Ryugu” and bring back its debris, believing it to be one of the oldest objects and hoping to understand how Earth evolved from it. It found that “Ryugu” is composed of piled-up rubble with gaps all over its surface, surmising that it collided with another asteroid and shattered, then reaggregated due to gravity.

The UK government is currently encouraging people to maintain daily life as much as possible with a “low-intensity epidemic prevention” approach, expecting to build “herd immunity.” But according to the current basic reproduction number (R0) of COVID-19, 29–74% of the population would need to be infected to stop the virus from spreading — that is, of the UK’s 66 million people, 19–49 million would need to be infected. Even if only severe cases (20%) were tested for the virus, there would still be 3.8–9.8 million confirmed cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the death toll would still be the world’s highest.