 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you some of the major news developments from across the world, our headlines. The number of cases of COVID-19 or coronavirus has crossed over 720,000 worldwide as the U.S. sees a dramatic rise in reported infections. Dispossessed in India and South Africa suffered due to harsh public lockdowns, U.S.-led NATO forces in Iraq vacate third base, and Chileans pay homage to the victims of the military dictatorship with the virtual candle march. We begin with an update on the coronavirus pandemic. The number of cases as of 9.30 am GMT was about 725,000 with over 30,000 deaths. The U.S. continues to be the worst hit with 143,000 cases. Nearly 18,000 cases were recorded yesterday alone. Or 40% of the cases were recorded in New York State alone, where the death toll has crossed 1,000. However, no quarantine has been declared and only strong travel advisories are in place. The worst may be yet to come for the U.S. with President Donald Trump declaring that the death toll could peak two weeks from now. Europe continued to suffer too. Spain, where the number of cases crossed China, recorded over 800 deaths on Sunday. Italy recorded over 750 deaths, although the number of new cases has declined. In China, concerns remain about the number of infections that are being imported. On Sunday, China reported 31 new cases of which 30 were imported. We are going to discuss some of the issues which today are really making people rather worried about the future of the COVID-19 pandemic. So I'm not going to discuss specifically the Indian scenario that we will reserve for another day. But broadly, when we look at the COVID-19 pandemic, the two questions that come to mind is that, is there a quick solution we are going to get, either in terms of prophylactic or in terms of a treatment? And the second is, of course, that when are we going to get the vaccine? So these are two questions I'm going to discuss with you. First is the question of the prophylactic curative part of it, which I think has a shorter timeline if we can get it. Yeah, keep in mind that a vaccine itself is, of course, the best prophylactic. Of course. That said, if one leaves out the vaccine for the moment from prophylaxis, then what one is talking about is the kind of drug prophylaxis. And the example that everybody is hyping currently, based on our experience with malaria, is, of course, chlorozoin. And the famous British drinking gin and tonic. You would need a very, very substantial quantity, shall we say politely, of a multitude of gin and tonics every day in order to get the dose that you need. But that apart, there are three issues because of which people are talking about chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis. One is that, as I said, we have some experience with chloroquine prophylaxis in malaria. So we are used to thinking about chloroquine in a drug-based prophylactic arrangement. The second is that chloroquine is known to be an odd molecule that works on a wide variety of biological processes. And one of those happens to be broadly related to inflammation. You will remember that chloroquine is used at least in some efforts to limit the symptoms of immune inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. And the basis for that seems to be that it has some sort of an anti-inflammatory activity put it very broadly. There are speculations about how it works, although there's no really hard proof of how it works in those situations. And the third has come about because people have been trying drug repurposing for antiviral effects in a variety of contexts ever since the first of the three major coronavirus family outbreaks began close on 20 years ago, which is with what we used to call then as the SARS coronavirus or SARS-CoV and now have begun to call SARS-CoV-1. And there was some evidence that when you took a situation where you took human cells, you put the SARS coronavirus onto human cells. It grew and you could stop that growth with a whole range of repurposable drugs that included chloroquine. And it's on that basis that people over the last two months, three months have been trying chloroquine for those sorts of tests. And it is as a result of that usage that the clinical use of chloroquine in patients has been attempted and reported. And you will note that I'm not using the face clinical trials because there has been no proper clinical trial of chloroquine. Simply clinical usage has been reported. The thing to remember is that typically in order to work well as a drug with a defined test tube efficacy, the potency of a drug has to be pretty high. The potency of chloroquine for SARS-CoV-2, which is our current epidemic virus, it's not very high, the reported potency. And we can get into the technicalities of just how much, but the reality is it's not very high. So it's not a viral property that could help in this case, but it could be the anti-inflammatory property. We don't know. Now, let me press that further. There are two separate time windows during the infection of an individual with SARS-CoV-2 in which we can intervene. The first is very early during infection. And what we would like early during infection is for the relatively limited virus load to be rapidly eliminated. And it's in that situation that you would like an antiviral effect, either a direct antiviral effect or an effect that increases the body's own antiviral inflammatory response. Excellent, so to say. So chloroquine's anti-direct antiviral effect may work at that point, but as I said, for that the potency seems to be fairly low. On the other hand, we also want people who are in hospital with severe infections to be treated with something other than simply supportive therapy. And that's a situation in which chloroquine will have two separate effects, if at all it is effective. One effect will be the direct antiviral effect, but the other effect will be this more nebulous anti-inflammatory effect. And because people's lungs are being inflamed and affected, limiting the inflammation as well as controlling virus growth is useful. So keep in mind that what you are saying is that the SARS-CoV-2 has really these two phases. One in which you have a viral infection, that's a primary issue at that point. Later, when you get an inflammation of the lung, you could also have co-bacterial infection at that point. So at that point, the regime might change because you need to address the issue of the bacterial infection, any other infection, as well as take care of the inflammation of the lung, which is what is causing the seriousness of the pneumonia, which probably you are in at that point. That's absolutely correct. Those all become major contributory factors that need to be dealt with at that stage. What ravaged Syria reported its first death from the novel coronavirus on Sunday, that's March 29th. The patient was a woman who died a few minutes after she was admitted to a hospital in the capital Damascus. Syria has reported a total of nine cases of COVID-19 infection so far. The government is imposed a nationwide lockdown and stringent night curfews to check the further spread of the virus. It has closed down universities and mosques, shut down all businesses except essential supplies and restricted the movement of people and government officials till April 16th. In other parts of the global south, lockdowns are having a huge impact on the poor. In India, poor planning saw tens of thousands of migrant workers fleeing the cities as they were left with no food and money. Workers either formed huge queues at transport hubs, hoping for some way to go home, or began walking for hundreds of kilometers. Media reports say that as many as 22 people who were heading home have died over the weekend. Meanwhile, the government has passed strict orders asking the states to ensure that migrants do not leave. At least one state is considering using indoor stadiums as temporary jails to house migrant workers. Meanwhile, in South Africa, the Shahgula's movement Abhalali Basema Jandolu said that evictions by the Ithakwini municipality in Durban continued on Sunday, despite a promise by the national government that there would be no evictions as long as a national shutdown is in place. Earlier, right after the shutdown was announced, eight shacks were demolished in the municipality. South African President Sel Ramaphosa announced a 21-day shutdown on Friday. Meanwhile, Brazil has been on the other end of the spectrum. President Jair Bolsonaro has been actively underplaying the issue, claiming that business must go on as usual. In fact, Twitter even took down two of his videos, in which he is questioning the need for stern measures and is wandering around surrounded by people. In our next story, U.S. troops in Iraq withdrew from another base in the country on March 29, Sunday. The K-1 base, located in the northern Kirkuk province, had around 300 coalition personnel, and was used since 2017 as a northern base in the fight against the Islamic State of the ISIS. It was at K-1 that the U.S. contractor was killed in December last year, leading to U.S. retaliation on the Kateb Hispulla basis and the killing of more than 30 carers of the popular mobilization forces, a semi-official militia in Iraq. Later, the U.S. also assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi PMF commander Abu-Pahedi al-Muhandis in an attack on January 3. K-1 is the third base vacated by the U.S. and NATO coalition troops in Iraq after withdrawing from the Kaira base in Nineveh province and the K-M base from Anbar province near the Syria-Iraq border earlier this month. According to reports, all the U.S. and NATO coalition forces in Iraq will be redeployed at two military bases in Baghdad and the nearby An Al-Assad airbase. Last week, the spokesperson for the U.S. operations in Iraq, Khalil Meir's co-ordinates, claimed that the deployment is due to the COVID-19 threat and not due to the rising threat of attacks. Iraq is around 550 cases of novel coronavirus infection, with 42 deaths as of March 30. The redeployment of troops under the cover of the COVID-19 threat, experts point out, highlights the fact that the presence of U.S. and foreign troops in Iraq has increasingly become untenable post the assassination of Soleimani and al-Muhandis. Both the Iraqi parliament and the government have asked these forces to leave the country and militias such as Qateb Hispullah have issued open threat seconds. Five U.S. personnel have been killed in attacks on different bases in the last few months. And our last story, March 29 marked the 35th anniversary of the day of the young combatant, a non-official day to commemorate the victims of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship in Chile, led by General Augusto Pinochet. On March 29, 1985, the brothers, Rafael Vergara Toledo and Eduardo Vergara Toledo, were assassinated by the officials of the National Security Forces, serving the dictator. The Vergara Toledo brothers were student activists associated with the Marxist anti-dictatorship insurgent movement called the movement of the revolutionary left. The same day, security officials also kidnapped communist party members Jose Manuel Parada, Manuel Guerrero Caballos and Latino Alende, and murdered them the next morning. Every year on March 29, Chileans celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the young brothers as well as of the thousands of other rebels, with massive demonstrations to honor the popular resistance during the dictatorship. However, this year, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of Chileans paid tribute to the victims via the Internet. Pinochet assumed power following a coup d'etat on September 11, 1973, that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende. His regime was characterized by a systematic separation of left-wing parties and the persecution of all dissidents. His dictatorship is considered one of the most brutal ones in Latin America. That's all we have time for in this episode of the International Daily Roundup. To know more about these stories, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks for watching.