Cities in southern China announced tens of thousands of dollars in rewards for stopping the smuggling of people infected with the Corona virus from Hong Kong into China, while the administration of US President Joe Biden warned Congress that it is running out of sufficient funding to confront future strains of the virus.

Yesterday, Thursday, the police of Huizhou City (southeast of China), not far from Hong Kong, issued a notice asking the public to help combat the smuggling of people infected with the virus, coming from Hong Kong, which is currently witnessing a rise in the number of people infected with the disease.

Those coming from Hong Kong are subject to a weeks-long quarantine in the rest of the Chinese regions.

Zero numbers

The Chinese authorities are following the strategy of zeroing the number of people infected with corona, by implementing strict closures, and imposing quarantine on entire cities when few cases of the disease are detected, and the Huizhou authorities said that those who report evidence of smuggling activities for people infected with the virus will receive a reward that may amount to 200,000 yuan (31.5) one thousand dollars).

The authorities of Huizhou (southeast of China) said that those who report evidence of smuggling activities for people infected with the virus will receive a reward of 200,000 yuan (31,500 dollars).

Similar notices were issued in at least 5 Chinese cities, with one county authorities saying they gave 10,000 yuan ($1,580) a day after the reward was announced.

This week, the authorities of Hunan Province (central China) recorded two cases of the Corona virus, and the local police said that it concerned two people who came from Hong Kong through illegal routes, and they are currently subject to a security investigation.

According to reports in Hong Kong media, 15 people have been smuggled to mainland China in recent days through a city in Guangdong Province, an autonomous province bordering Hong Kong.

Biden administration

In the United States, Bloomberg News Agency reported that it had seen a document of the Department of Health and Human Services in which it stated that the funds allocated to confront the Corona virus pandemic had already been spent or allocated for purchases, and the ministry added that these funds include covering tests, distributing vaccines, and others.

Bloomberg quoted a US administration official as saying that if Congress does not move quickly to provide additional funds, the United States will not be ready if a new strain of the Corona virus appears, as happened in the wave of the mutated “Omicron” that first appeared in late November 2021. in South Africa, and then spread to the rest of the world.

At the beginning of the term of US President Joe Biden, who took office in January 2021, Congress approved a federal aid package worth $ 1.9 trillion to provide the necessary funding to respond to the pandemic.

Canada protests

In the northern neighbor of the United States, Canadian police arrested - yesterday, Thursday - Tamara Lynch, who participated in leading the protests against measures to confront the Corona virus, and Chris Barber, one of the leaders of the protest movement, was also arrested.


The arrest of Lynch and Barber came hours before the police issued an ultimatum to the protesters camped out in the streets of the capital (Ottawa) and hundreds of trucks that were blocking the streets in refusal to impose mandatory vaccinations against the virus in order to cross the Canadian-American border, but the protesters' demands increased to include the cancellation of all precautionary health measures.

The acting Ottawa police chief, Steve Bell, said in a press conference yesterday, Thursday, that a security move to end the protest of truck drivers who have been besieging the center of the capital for 3 weeks is imminent, and the security official added that the authorities had begun to tighten the cordon in the vicinity of the protests.

As a result of the protests that led to the cutting of 6 border crossings between Canada and the United States, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the activation of the emergency law, which gives the government new and broad powers to end the protests.

New Zealand approach

In contrast to what is happening in Canada, New Zealand police said - today, Friday - that it excludes forcibly dispersing cars that block streets outside the country’s parliament as part of a protest against the compulsory vaccination against the virus, and Police Commissioner Andrew Koster explained - in press statements - that any police move to break up the sit-in protesters. It will do much more harm than the protest is currently causing.

Dozens of protesters in New Zealand, following what is happening in Canada, closed their cars in the area where the country's parliament is located in the capital (Wellington) 11 days ago, and set up tents to sit in front of the legislative institution building.

It is noteworthy that an increasing number of countries in the world - especially in Europe - began easing the restrictions imposed to confront the Corona virus in the past few weeks, and some of them lifted most of the restrictions, after the decrease in the severity of the epidemiological situation, but some countries are still recording record levels of infections, such as South Korea.

According to a statistic by Agence France-Presse until yesterday, Thursday, the Corona virus has killed more than 5 million and 848 thousand people around the world since the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of December 2019, and the United States is the most affected country, followed by Brazil and India.