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Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday again attended a public rally and attacked lockdown measures meant to fight the coronavirus, as supporters of the right-wing leader joined political motorcades around the country.Brazil has more cases of the new coronavirus than any other country in Latin America. On Sunday, confirmed cases rose to 38,654 with 2,462 deaths.Bolsonaro, who was not wearing a face mask, addressed a crowd of a few hundred in Brasilia, many of them wearing Brazil’s yellow-and-green soccer jersey.His brief address, which was punctuated by the president coughing, touched on talking points that have become his usual rallying cry.He called those in attendance “patriots” and said they were helping defend individual freedoms that he said are under threat by lockdowns imposed by authorities at the state level.”Everyone in Brazil needs to understand that they are subject to the will of the people,” Bolsonaro said.Protesters in Brasilia chanted slogans against the country’s Supreme Court, which has upheld state-organized lockdowns, and against Congress, whose opposition lawmakers have also defended quarantines.Some of the protesters also called for a return to authoritarian measures used during Brazil’s last military regime, known as AI-5.In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s richest and most populous state, Bolsonaro supporters have been demanding that governor Joao Doria resign because he has been a staunch supporter of shelter-in-place measures. 
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Some 180 migrants rescued at sea will be held in isolation on an Italian ferry off the coast of Sicily, the coast guard said Sunday.Italy has refused to take in saved migrants due to the coronavirus epidemic, saying the outbreak, which has killed over 23,000 people, meant it could no longer be considered a port of safety.Thirty-four people pulled to safety by Spanish NGO rescue vessel Aita Mari were being transferred Sunday to the Rubattino ferry, which is anchored outside the port of Palermo and staffed by 22 Red Cross volunteers.They join 146 migrants who were transferred to the ferry on Friday from the The Alan Kurdi rescue vessel, run by the German NGO Sea Eye.     They will be tested for the virus and redistributed among EU countries once the 14-day isolation period is up, according to Italian media reports.The 180-metre long Tirrenia ferry can carry 1,471 passengers, and has 289 cabins, a medical center, restaurant, bars, and a children’s play area.
 
It was not clear whether the migrants would be confined to individual cabins.                
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Police in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on Sunday arrested a 51-year-old gunman suspected of shooting several people, whose conditions were not specified.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the shootings occurred in the small Atlantic coastal town of Portapique, about 130 km north (80 miles) of the provincial capital Halifax.”Gabriel Wortman, suspect in active shooter investigation, is now in custody,” the force said in a tweet. It gave no details and did not say whether the victims were injured or killed.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking to reporters in Ottawa, deplored what he called “a terrible situation.”One local resident said she had come across two burning police vehicles while out driving on Sunday morning.”There was one officer we could see on scene and then all of a sudden, he went running toward one of the burning vehicles,” Darcy Sack told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.”We heard gunshots,” she said, adding that one police officer looked to have been injured.Portapique residents said the incident started late on Saturday night when police urged everyone to stay indoors. Police said Wortman was 51 years old.Police were due to give a news conference at 5 p.m. EST (2100 GMT).Police initially said Wortman was driving what appeared to be a police car and was wearing a uniform but later reported he was at the wheel of a Chevrolet sports utility vehicle.Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has tighter gun control laws than the United States.The worst incident in recent years occurred in January 2017, when a man shot dead six people at an Islamic cultural center in Quebec City.In August 2018, a man in the province of New Brunswick, which borders Nova Scotia, shot dead four people, including two police officers, in an apartment complex. In June 2014, in the same province, a man shot dead three police.
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Passengers on a luxury liner’s around-the-world cruise, begun before the globe was gripped by the coronavirus pandemic, are finally approaching the end of their odyssey after 15 weeks at sea. The ship, the Costa Deliziosa, was heading Sunday toward a port in Spain before ending its journey in Italy — both countries devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. Costa Crociere, an Italian cruise company, said that the Deliziosa, which set sail from Venice in early January with 1,831 passengers, had no cases of COVID-19 aboard.  The Deliziosa, a nearly 300-meter (1,000-foot) vessel, will disembark 168 Spanish passengers on Monday at Barcelona’s port. Then the Deliziosa will head to its final destination, Genoa, Italy, where it is expected to let off the remaining passengers, Italians and those of other nationalities, on Wednesday.  A company spokesman said a passenger left the ship earlier in the week in Marsala, Sicily, for health issues and had a COVID-19 test, which was negative. Being on the liner for weeks during the pandemic “was not surreal, it was incredible,” said passenger Carlos Paya’, who lives in Valencia, Spain, and is sailing with his wife. He added that they have family members in Spain.  “The news that was arriving from home was causing us all a lot of worry and grief,” he told The Associated Press by text message Saturday evening. “For us it was a stroke of good luck to be where we were.”  “From Perth [Australia] given the growth of the pandemic, and of course for those of us who have children in Spain, we would have preferred to return,” he added. “Other passengers, on the other hand, given their old age, wanted to stay on board knowing that the boat was safe and secure.” French authorities had rebuffed a request by Costa for permission to disembark several hundred passengers from France and nearby countries at Marseilles. “The health situation on board the ships, with 1,814 guests and 898 members of the crew, doesn’t present any problem for public health and no case of COVID-19,” Costa’s statement said.  While people infected with the coronavirus often experience mild or moderate symptoms, possible complications like pneumonia can put their lives at risk. The Deliziosa was originally due to return to Venice on April 26. After the U.N. World Health Organization pandemic alert in March, the ship, which had just made a port call in Fremantle, western Australia, made only technical and refueling stops, before the journey back toward the Mediterranean, which took it through the Suez Canal, according to the company. Passenger Jean-Pierre Escarras, from Marseilles, shot a video of their cabin that their daughters shared on social networks, in which he says: “This is our place of confinement. We are lucky to have a window.”  The couple said that after a stop in Sydney, the ship’s activities were “reduced or sometimes canceled. We haven’t been able to get out on land since March 14 — that’s 34 days.” The passengers said that ports in Oman, along the Suez Canal, as well as in the Seychelles and Indian Ocean ports, refused to let the ship dock. The Spanish passenger, Paya’ praised the captain and crew.  Costa said the passengers were confined to their cabins only for the period until the ship heard back that the ill guest who got off in Sicily had tested negative. It didn’t say how long that period lasted. The company said, because the ship is Italian-flagged, it followed Italian precautionary measures used in the pandemic, including safety distancing between guests such as managing the numbers of who could enter food areas at any one time, and transmitting entertainment to cabin TV sets.  A French woman whose in-laws are aboard the Costa Deliziosa garnered about 100 signatures on an online petition to urge the French government to intervene to get them home. But French authorities barred the Deliziosa from disembarking more than 1,000 passengers before its final destination in Italy. The regional administration for Bouches-du-Rhone in southern France cited a nationwide ban on allowing foreign cruise ships to dock, as part of France’s virus-related confinement measures. Italy has also barred foreign cruise ships as it battles the virus outbreak. The French administration has granted exemptions to six other cruise ships in recent weeks to allow French passengers to get off, but refused this time, saying the previous stops overstretched local police and health authorities already mobilized to fight France’s severe virus crisis. Last month, two other Costa cruise ships pulled into Italian ports, including one that earlier had aboard passengers who tested positive for COVID-19 before being disembarked in France. It was unclear if or where the passengers who were due to finally step aboard land after weeks of sailing aboard the Deliziosa would be quarantined as a precaution. 
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Orthodox Christians observed the Easter holiday amid extraordinary coronavirus-related restrictions on services that forced many parishioners to watch services on TV or online. Church leaders have struggled to figure out how to observe the April 19 holiday — the holiest day in the Orthodox calendar — while avoiding spreading the coronavirus. Some local parishes have defied orders from public health officials and church leaders and vowed to allow people to attend services in person. In Russia and Ukraine, two of the biggest Orthodox denominations, priests in St. Petersburg and Kyiv held services beginning late on April 18 that were televised and shown online. Police deployed outside churches in Ukraine to ensure that anyone who came remained outside and observed regulations calling for social distancing and a ban on large gatherings. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Ukrainians to celebrate from home. Most church leaders complied and agreed to broadcast their services. One exception was the famed Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, where police regulated entry to the church to one worshipper at a time. The complex was placed under quarantine after more than 90 of its monks were identified as infected with the coronavirus. At least two have died. The monastery is controlled by a rival Orthodox denomination in Ukraine that is loyal to the Russian church in Moscow. The Russian Orthodox Church ordered churches to close their doors to large groups during the week leading up to the holiday. Patriarch Kirill led the Russian church’s main service on April 18 at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. In an Easter sermon, he said Orthodox Christians should not despair in difficult circumstances and should not panic. President Vladimir Putin, who has regularly attended the nighttime rituals in the past, did not attend this year. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin stayed at his suburban presidential residence and lit a candle at a chapel on the property. The most contentious debate over Orthodox Easter occurred in Georgia, where church leaders and the government agreed to allow parishioners to attend dusk-to-dawn Easter vigil services. The agreement meant worshippers were allowed to attend overnight services in large cathedrals despite a curfew, but they were required to maintain a distance of 2 meters. Those who attend small churches had to remain outside. Dozens went to the main cathedral in Tbilisi, where Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II said that the virus had caused fear among many people. In Bulgaria, the government urged people not to attend services but didn’t ban them. Hundreds flocked to outdoor services late on April 18, but many opted to watch on television. “In the current situation, we must be better and more humble,” Prime Minister Boyko Borisov wrote in Facebook. “Let’s do everything we can to be proud of our decisions and actions in years to come.” Easter for the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christian is celebrated about a week after Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians observe the holiday.     
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Hundreds of Christian parishioners went to churches in ex-Soviet Georgia to attend Orthodox Easter Vigil despite a state of emergency and calls from the government and doctors to stay home amid outbreak of the coronavirus.Dozens went to the South Caucasus country’s main Sameba (Saint Trinity) cathedral in Tbilisi, where 87-year-old Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II held the service.More attended services in big churches across the country, although some bishops in different regions called on their flocks to stay at home, encouraging them instead to tune in to Easter services streamed live on TV or Facebook.Crowds were unusually small everywhere compared with the tens of thousands who normally attend this service every year.The Catholicos-Patriarch said in his Easter address that the problem of the new virus had caused fear among many and their gaze had turned to God.”We should not be afraid of temptation, the Christian takes problems with gratitude and sees God’s hand in everything … and at the same time tries to find the right solution in the current situation,” he said.Holy FireHoly Fire had been brought to Georgia on Saturday night by a charter flight from Jerusalem, where the ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which symbolizes the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross, was attended only by Christian clergymen for the first time in centuries.A clergyman and believers wearing protective masks hold candles outside a church during an Orthodox Easter service, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in Marneuli, Georgia, April 19, 2020.Worshippers came to the Sameba cathedral in Tbilisi before the 9 p.m. start of curfew and planned to stay on church premises until its end at 6 a.m.Violators face a 3,000-lari ($1,000) fine.”It took me more than three hours to come here and I will stay till the morning as my presence demonstrates my dedication and my belief,” Mariam, a 27-year-old Tbilisi resident, said.Almost everyone, including some priests, were wearing face masks.The Georgian Orthodox Church Patriarchy said earlier this month that all Easter services would be held in a traditional manner, but parishioners would be required to maintain social distancing between each other to stem transmission of the virus.Sacrament from same spoonThe Patriarch and majority of Georgian priests were reluctant to call on their flocks to stay at home and have continued to provide the holy sacrament from the same spoon to parishioners, which critics said threatens efforts to contain the coronavirus.Georgia has in place a state of emergency until May 10 entailing a 9 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew, closures of restaurants, cafes, shops, a ban on public transport and on gatherings of more than three people. Grocery stores, pharmacies and petrol stations remain open.Government officials and doctors have pleaded with citizens to refrain from mass gatherings and to stay at home during Easter celebrations.The Caucasus republic of 3.7 million people has reported 388 cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, and four deaths as of early Sunday.
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Fifty unaccompanied minors have been transferred from Greece to Germany. They are the second group of relocations in a week and hundreds more are expected to follow as Greece moves ahead with a plan to ease overcrowded conditions at camps on the front line of Europe’s lingering refugee crisis.
    
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was at the airport in Athens to see the minors off.  
 
The 50 are among the first of at least 350 young refugees who Germany has agreed to resettle from Greece, helping them re-unite with their families after months of separation.
 
Earlier this week, a batch of about a dozen minors aged between 11 and 15 were transferred to Luxembourg, the European Union’s tiniest member state. Eight other EU nations, along with Switzerland, have also agreed to accept youths, resettling a total of 1,600 young migrants.
 
But with Greece hosting more than 100,000 migrants and refugees, can this make a difference? Deputy Migration Minister George Koumoutsakos expressed hope for more such relocations to come.The number of transfers, he said, may seem small. But the expectation, he explained, is that they will pave the way for more resettlements to happen, allowing other EU member states to shoulder the burden of the refugee crisis.
 
A third of the 100,000 migrants and refugees in Greece are children. And of them, more than 5,000 are unaccompanied, left to fend for themselves, living in the rough in abysmal and overcrowded camps on a host of Aegean islands.
 
Most of the 50 young migrants who left Saturday for Germany were relocated from Lesbos’ dreaded refugee camp of Moria, a facility built for some 2,000 people which now is hosting more than 20,000 in appalling conditions.
 
Most of the unaccompanied migrants are from Syria and Afghanistan. separated from their families and left behind in a bid to make the crossing to Europe
 
Koumoutsakos said the transfers will help ease overcrowded conditions in Aegean islands like Lesbos, something required so much more now during the coronavirus outbreak, when social distancing is critical to containing the pandemic.
 
Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch called on Greece to release all unaccompanied minors. It said keeping them in unhygienic detention centers increased the risk of the virus spreading.
 
While cases of COVID-19 have been documented in refugee camps here, officials insist they have managed to keep the virus from spreading to other communities because of draconian lockdown orders.
 
Because of the coronavirus outbreak, the 50 children transferred to Germany on Saturday will need to spend their first two weeks there in quarantine. 
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BREMEN, GERMANY — While countries around the world struggle with a lack of hospital beds and equipment for coronavirus patients, German cities such as Bremen have taken in patients from neighboring countries.  
 
On a recent Saturday, Bremen received its first two French coronavirus patients from Strasbourg as Germany’s neighbor France struggles with hospitals at their limits.
 
The city could theoretically take more patients from abroad, hospital group Gesundheit Nord spokeswoman Karen Matiszick told local news outlet Buten un Binnen – although the situation could rapidly change. Bremen currently has had 567 cases and 24 deaths, according to official statistics.  
 
The capacity to take in patients has been attributed to the lower number of cases that need intensive care, and Germany’s comparatively low death rate has caught the world’s attention.
 
Of the more than 130,000 diagnosed cases in Germany, about 3,900 people have died as of Friday. In contrast, the U.S., Italy, Spain and France have each recorded more than 10,000 deaths linked to the disease. In Italy alone, more than 20,000 deaths have been registered – among 160,000 cases.
 
Susanne Glasmacher, a spokesperson for government’s Robert Koch Institute, pointed to multiple factors.  
 
“At the beginning, the majority of affected people in Germany didn’t belong to a risk group, as many of the transmission paths happened during ski holidays, on international travels, carnival, and other festivities,” she told VOA.
 
The median age of diagnosed cases is comparatively low in Germany at 49, compared to Italy’s 62.  
 
The average age of those who have died from the virus in Germany is about 80, and 87% of the deceased patients were older than 70. Similarly, 83.7% of those in Italy who died were older than 70, according to the Italian National Institute of Health.
 
In recent weeks, though, an increasing number of cases in German nursing homes have raised concern. Forty-one people have died in a single nursing home in the north German city of Wolfsburg as of Thursday. Hundreds of nursing homes across the country have found their first cases.
 
“If more transmissions take place in homes for elderly people or hospitals, it’s to be feared that the rate increases,” Glasmacher said.
 
The current low median age of German cases can to an extent be explained because of the number of tests conducted. Glasmacher said that Germany had tested on a much larger scale than other countries.
 
“Infections get recognized in more people with mild symptoms than in other countries where sometimes only severely ill people in hospitals are tested,” she said.  
 
With a current weekly capacity of about 500,000 tests, Germany is also testing those only showing mild symptoms and those who have not been in known contact with coronavirus cases.FILE – Benches and tables are taped to ensure social distancing protocols, in a courtroom in Bremen, Germany, March 20, 2020.Last month, Germany ordered closure of all nonessential shops to prevent the spread of the disease. Groups of more than two people who don’t live in the same household are not allowed in public.
 
However, the number of deaths has also depended on how strained the health system is, Glasmacher said.
 
“If the hospitals become overcrowded, the ratio of those who cannot be helped will increase,” she said. “The number of deaths can, therefore, change dramatically in the future.”
 
Making similar assessments, Dietrich Rothenbacher, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry at Ulm University, said the number of deaths depends on how many hospital beds are available for intensive care.
 
He said a 2012 study found that the number of intensive care beds per 100,000 inhabitants was 29.2 in Germany, 12.5 in Italy, 11.6 in France, and 6.6 in England.
 
“This has a positive effect on the treatment options for severe cases and the lethality,” he said.
 
Yet, he, cautioned against comparing death rates among countries, as he said the numbers in different countries were highly distorted and not representative of the true picture.  
 
“Based on representative numbers, the Covid-19 pandemic would look less deadly also in Italy,” he said.  
 
However, all experts warned that death rates would rise in coming weeks as Germany is still at the beginning of the epidemic. Severe cases often lead to death only after a prolonged period of illness.
 
“In two to three weeks (or in later phases of the pandemic) the numbers might look differently in Germany,” Rothenbacher said.   
 
Bremen itself has a lower infection rate than the German average. The national average is about 161 cases per 100,000 inhabitants; Bremen has only 81 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
 
While Andreas Dotzauer, a University of Bremen virologist, said that reasons for this difference were still unclear, he speculated that the character of the city’s population – known for being reserved – might play a role.
 
“In general … it seems that the population [in Bremen] has implemented all rules and restrictions in a very disciplined manner,” he said.  
 
“Perhaps the typically more distanced, northern German, Bremen character also contributes to this.”
 
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The top U.S. military commander for Latin America said Friday that the Trump administration isn’t looking to use military force to remove Nicolas Maduro even as it expands counternarcotics operations in the Caribbean. Adm. Craig Faller, head of U.S. Southern Command, said in an interview that the recent decision to double anti-narcotics assets in Latin America was months in the making and not directly tied to Maduro’s indictment in New York on charges of leading a narcoterrorist conspiracy that sent 250 metric tons of cocaine a year to the U.S. Faller said economic and diplomatic pressure — not the use of military force — remain the U.S.’ preferred tools for removing Maduro from power. “This is not a shift in U.S. government policy,” said Faller, who nonetheless celebrated that enhanced interdiction efforts would hurt Maduro’s finances and staying power. “It’s not an indication of some sort of new militarization in the Caribbean.”  The deployment announced this month is one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama to remove Gen. Manuel Noriega from power and bring him to the U.S. to face drug charges.It involves assets like Navy warships, AWACS surveillance aircraft and on-ground special forces seldom seen before in the region. Faller said the coronavirus did force some in the Pentagon to rethink the timing of the deployment out of concern for the safety of service members.While controls to protect the workforce have been enhanced, it was determined that over the long term, the U.S. is positioned to take advantage of the disruption in narcotics supply chains caused by the virus as drug cartels scramble to source precursor chemical and other inputs. “We thrive in uncertainty and are going to try and capitalize on that,” said Faller.  He cited two “quick wins” since the start of the deployment — a 1.7 metric ton seizure in the Pacific Ocean near Costa Rica last week and another 2.1 ton interdiction a few days ago.  He said growing instability in Venezuela is leading to an “uptick” in piracy in the Caribbean, although he didn’t cite any statistics or evidence to back the assertion. He said the recent sinking of a Venezuelan naval ship after it allegedly rammed an Antarctic-hardened cruise ship without passengers near Curacao was indicative of the readiness of Maduro’s armed forces.  “It was a bad day for them,” he said. “Their lack of seamanship and lack of integrity is indicative of how it all played out.”  
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For Orthodox Christians, this is normally a time of reflection and mourning followed by joyful release, of centuries-old ceremonies steeped in symbolism and tradition.But this year, Easter — by far the most significant religious holiday for the world’s roughly 300 million Orthodox — has essentially been canceled.There will be no Good Friday processions behind the flower-bedecked symbolic bier of Christ, to the haunting hymn of the Virgin Mary’s lament for the death of her son. No hugs and kisses, or joyous proclamations of “Christ is risen!” as church bells ring at midnight on Holy Saturday. No family gatherings over lamb roasted whole on a spit for an Easter lunch stretching into the soft spring evening.As the coronavirus rampages around the globe, claiming tens of thousands of lives, governments have imposed lockdowns in a desperate bid to halt the pandemic.  Businesses have been closed and church doors shut to prevent the virus’s insidious spread.For some, the restrictions during Easter are particularly tough.”When there was freedom and you didn’t go somewhere, it didn’t bother you,” said Christina Fenesaki, while shopping in Athens’ main meat market for lamb — to cook in the oven at home in the Greek capital instead of on a spit in her ancestral village. “But now that we have the restrictions, it bothers you a lot. It’s heavy.”In Greece, where more than 90 percent of the population is baptized into the Orthodox Church, the government has been at pains to stress that this year’s Easter cannot be normal.Greek Orthodox priests hold aloft the bier depicting Christ’s preparation for burial during the Good Friday procession of the Epitaphios, held without worshippers in an empty church in Thessaloniki, Greece, during a lockdown April 17, 2020.It imposed a lockdown early on, and so far has managed to keep the number of deaths and critically ill people low — 108 and 71 respectively as of Friday, among a population of nearly 11 million.But officials fear any slippage in social distancing could have dire consequences, particularly during a holiday that normally sees people cram into churches and flock to the countryside. Roadblocks have been set up, and fines doubled to 300 euros ($325), for anyone found driving without justification during the holiday.”This Easter is different. We will not go to our villages, we will not roast in our yards, we will not go to our churches. And of course, we will not gather in the homes of relatives and friends,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas said. “For us to continue being together, this year we stay apart.”Easter services will be held behind closed doors with only the priest and essential staff. They will be broadcast live on television and streamed on the internet.One particularly complex issue is how to handle the “Holy Light,” the flame distributed throughout the Orthodox world each year from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem to mark the resurrection of Christ.Greek and Russian authorities have arranged to pick the flame up from Israel but won’t distribute it. Cyprus won’t even pick it up; there is “no need,” the island nation’s Archbishop Chrysostomos said.”Today, faith is not at risk but the faithful are,” Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said.Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox, has urged the faithful to adhere to government measures and World Health Organization guidelines. But keeping people out of churches hasn’t proved easy.In Serbia and North Macedonia, authorities imposed nationwide curfews from Good Friday through Easter Monday. Ethiopia, with the largest Orthodox population outside Europe, also restricted access to liturgies and deployed security outside churches. Liturgies are broadcast live, although several churches outside the capital, Addis Ababa, were violating restrictions, alarming authorities.But in some Orthodox countries, such as Georgia and Bulgaria, limited church services will go ahead.In Greece, after days of delicate diplomacy with the country’s powerful Orthodox Church, the government banned the public from all services after the church’s governing body imposed restrictions but not a full shutdown. Authorities also quickly scotched a Greek mayor’s plans to distribute the “Holy Light” door-to-door throughout his municipality just after midnight on Saturday.The church of Prophet Ilias is illuminated during the Good Friday procession of the Epitaphios, held without worshippers near the port town of Lavrio about 75 kilometers south of Athens on April 17, 2020.Some priests have defied the shutdown. One recently offered communion — where the faithful sip from the same spoon — through an Athens church’s back door. On Good Friday, a handful of churches opened briefly, allowing people in.Russia’s Orthodox Church initially seemed similarly reluctant to impose restrictions. When authorities in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, banned church visits on March 26, the Moscow Patriarchate condemned the move as an infringement on religious freedom. Only three days later did Patriarch Kirill publicly urge believers to “strictly obey the regulations imposed by the health authorities” and “refrain from church visits.”On Friday, Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida said churches would stay open in some regions, even though the Church urged people to stay home.”The epidemiological situation varies in different regions, and so do rules for attending churches,” he said.Closing churches during Easter has been hard on Russians used to attending services. Many have turned to the internet and video conference prayers.”At first it was just a shock,” said believer Andrei Vasenev. “How is that possible — not go to church? But then we realized it was a matter of finding a way.”Vasenev, two dozen others and a priest from his Moscow parish have started praying via Zoom and plan to do the same during Easter. For him, going to church is about community, and Zoom prayers keep this community together.For Anna Sytina, another participant of the online prayers, the hardest part is being away from people and the warmth of human contact. “There’s a moment in a liturgy when you kiss each other three times,” Sytina said. “Now we see each other on monitors and displays.”Greek Orthodox priests hold aloft the bier depicting Christ’s preparation for burial during the Good Friday procession of the Epitaphios, held in an empty church in Thessaloniki, Greece, April 17, 2020.Both are prepared to pray at home for as long as it takes. “It is a sacrifice in the life of every believer, but it is necessary,” Sytina said.It is a sentiment echoed in Greece.”Each person has the church inside of them,” said Kleanthis Tsironis, who heads Athens’ main meat market. He will spend Easter at home with his wife and two daughters and will miss the resurrection liturgy. But churches will eventually open, he said, and Easter traditions will return.”Souls are being lost,” he said of the virus deaths across the world. “And we’re going to sit and cry because we didn’t roast on a spit? We’ll do that later, when the measures are over.”  
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MANCHESTER/TENNESSEE — Two professors at Middle Tennessee State University are helping indigenous filmmakers in Brazil tell the story of their efforts to save the Amazon rainforest, according to a news release from the school.The professors previously created a film with the indigenous Kayapó people about the descent of the Star Goddess and the origin of agriculture. Then Richard Pace, with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, helped write a grant request for National Geographic, according to the release. That resulted in about $70,000 in funding for Kayapó filmmaker Pat-i and his colleagues for a project called “Indigenous Filmmaker Warriors in Defense of Biocultural Conservation.” It will consist of two short films and a film series for social media that will document the struggles of the Kayapó to protect the rainforest, according to the release.Paul Chilsen, associate professor of video and film production at MTSU’s Department of Media Arts, is also involved in the project. He hopes to travel to Brazil this summer to conduct workshops in writing for film, operating cameras, designing sets and costumes, and acting. “They want to speak to an outside world in a language that the outside world understands,” Chilsen said in the news release. “The language of the screen is a global language.” 
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Two U.S. space agency NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut landed Friday in Kazakhstan after months on board the International Space Station.
 
NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir and Russian space agency Roscosmos Cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka undocked from the ISS in the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft early Friday.
 
Just over three hours later, the trio parachuted to Earth in the steppe of Kazakhstan, outside the remote town of Dzhezkazgan. Following post-landing checks, the three were taken by helicopter to the Russian-owned spaceport in Baikonur.
 
Morgan’s 272-day mission began on July 20, 2019, while Meir and Skripochka left Earth Sept. 25 last year.
 
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A public health professor said Friday the British government responded too slowly to the COVID-19 outbreak, and the nation could see as many as 40,000 deaths before the pandemic is over.Speaking remotely, University College London Global Health Professor Anthony Costello told a parliamentary committee the government needs to identify the “system errors” that slowed Britain’s response.Britain imposed a lockdown on business and daily life March 23, about a week after other European countries, and Thursday announced a three-week extension on those measures.Costello told the committee he expects a second wave of the virus to hit the country and urged the government to have a system in place to rapidly test people in the community and get the results back quickly.Costello did say that an Oxford University researcher is 80 percent certain she could have a vaccine to treat the virus as early as September.As of Thursday, Britain reported 13,729 people had died from the virus.
 
 
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Forty-four Guatemalans deported on one flight from the United States this week have tested positive for COVID-19, a Guatemalan government official with knowledge of the situation said, amid rising rejection of deportees due to virus fears.
Later Thursday, Guatemala Foreign Affairs Minister Pedro Brolo told The Associated Press the government had again suspended deportation flights. He did not explain why, but said the move was temporary.  
“We’re working on the details,” Brolo said, adding that he did not know when the flights would resume.  
Presidential spokesman Carlos Sandoval said that “Guatemala is working with United States authorities to revalidate the health of Guatemalans returned in recent days.” He said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Guatemala’s national laboratory would retest all those who were found positive and negative.  
Asked for a response, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the CDC had representatives in Guatemala reviewing the COVID-19 tests and attempting to confirm the results. Once results are available, the immigration agency said it would determine whether it needed to work with the CDC to re-evaluate its medical procedures.  
“The health and welfare of detainees in ICE custody is of the highest priority to the agency,” ICE said in a statement to the AP.  
The flight with the infected deportees arrived in Guatemala’s capital Monday carrying 76 Guatemalans. Three deportees displaying coronavirus symptoms were immediately taken for testing. When one of those tests came back positive others who had been quarantined at the airport were tested and 43 more resulted positive, said the official with knowledge of the situation who had not been authorized to share the information publicly and requested anonymity.
There was confusion over where the flight originated.  
On Monday, Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s National Immigration Institute, told reporters two flights of deportees had arrived. Initially, she said they came from Alexandria, Louisiana and El Paso, Texas, then immediately corrected herself to say they came from Brownsville, Texas and El Paso. She reconfirmed that information Thursday, saying that is what the agency has officially recorded.
But according to the flight tracking site FlightAware, two flights from a U.S. government contractor that operates deportation flights arrived in Guatemala City Monday. One came from Alexandria, Louisiana and the other came from El Paso, Texas, which departed shortly after another flight by the contractor arrived in El Paso from Brownsville. It’s not unusual for the deportation flights to stop in multiple U.S. cities.
The unreconciled number of infected deportees was the latest sign that the president’s office and health authorities might not be on the same page.
On Tuesday, the government’s accounting of deportees with COVID-19 was drawn into question when Health Minister Hugo Monroy said that on a March deportation flight from the U.S., more than 50% of the deportees had later tested positive for the new coronavirus. The president’s office later confirmed that Monroy was talking about a March 26 flight from Mesa, Arizona with 41 passengers, but said the official number of infected deportees had still not been adjusted.  
Ursula Roldán, an immigration expert at Rafael Landívar University, said Guatemala was under great pressure to continue receiving deportees at the same time deportees were becoming a flashpoint in the country.
“It’s very clear there is pressure from Washington,” she said. “If before there was an immigrant problem, now it’s a triple problem. They don’t want them.”
She said Guatemala needed to start quarantining all deportees in government facilities with proper medical attention rather then telling them to self-isolate in their homes with their families.
“If we want containment, this is the point of containment,” Roldán said.
Monday’s flight arrived after Guatemala lifted a one-week suspension on deportation flights from the U.S., imposed because three other deportees had earlier tested positive.
Monroy has said the deportees are a worrisome factor driving up the country’s COVID-19 caseload. The government said Wednesday that this week it had started testing all deportees, regardless of whether they showed symptoms, when anyone on a flight tested positive.
ICE has said that 100 detainees in its custody have tested positive for the virus, including 17 at a detention facility in San Diego and 12 at one in Batavia, New York. It said 25 employees at detention centers have tested positive for the virus, including 13 at a removal staging facility at the airport in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Deportees and their potential to carry the virus into Guatemala are a sensitive topic. The U.S. government has continued deportations through the pandemic. But some Guatemalan communities are beginning to reject deportees returning home out of fear that they could carry the virus.
On Wednesday evening, President Alejandro Giammattei referenced an incident in which townspeople fearing the virus had allegedly organized to burn deportees.  
Videos circulated on social media showed hundreds of angry residents gathered in a community in Quetzaltenango west of the capital. They accused deportees who were staying in quarantine in a government facility of leaving it in a threat to the community.  
Giammattei said five community councils had organized “to try to go burn the center, because they want to burn the people.” In a televised address, he said those 80 deportees had arrived earlier in the week and all had been tested. So far, none had come back positive.  
“It’s already guaranteed they don’t pose a risk to anyone,” he said.
Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s consul in Del Rio, Texas, said Guatemalans who are stopped by Border Patrol agents are returned to Mexico within a half-hour without any medical exam and often without having their photos or fingerprints taken under rules that took effect March 21 to combat the virus’ spread.  
“They aren’t registered or anything,” Paniagua said.
Byron Milian, a 25-year-old deportee who returned to Guatemala earlier this month, said he tried to quietly come home without neighbors noticing because he was worried about their reaction amid the pandemic.
Under orders from the health ministry he has self-quarantined for two weeks. He said health officials check on him every other day.
Milian was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol in Arizona in early March.
He and a few other migrants were briefly held, during which time they took his temperature. Then they were loaded back into a truck, driven to the border and handed over to Mexican authorities.
Within a week Mexico had delivered him back to Guatemala. In Guatemala, authorities took his temperature, listened to his lungs and stuck a tongue depressor in his mouth.  
“On Sunday my quarantine ends,” he said. “Thank God everything is normal.”
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On a national discrimination hotline that she helps manage, Rafaelle Parlier hears troubling reports: a veiled woman fined by police for using her veil as a face mask, and a man of North African descent similarly sanctioned for picking up his wife, a nurse, from her hospital shift — although both had appropriate justifications.“These are practices we usually denounce,” said Parlier, who works for anti-discrimination group Stop le Contrôle au Faciès (Stop Racial Profiling). “The confinement just makes it easier.”A woman walks in front of a hotel of the Accor group in Paris, April 16, 2020, during a nationwide confinement to counter the coronavirus. The Accor facilities are taking in people with COVID-19 who show no symptoms but risk infecting others.If COVID-19 touches all of France, its effects are not being felt equally. Poor, ethnically diverse residents are suffering disproportionately, rights activists and local officials say. The fallout varies, from reports of police intimidation and violence to more arduous conditions under lockdown and potentially more coronavirus cases than elsewhere in the country.“The problem with this epidemic is that it underscores all the other pre-existing inequalities,” said Laurent Russier, mayor of Saint-Denis, a working-class Paris suburb with a large immigrant population. “And Saint-Denis is marked by sharp inequalities.”Few areas manifest the national disparities more sharply than the broader Seine-Saint-Denis department, France’s poorest region, where Russier’s town is located. A recent government report found a sharp spike in deaths during the last half of March, when the COVID-19 lockdown began — higher than in neighboring departments.While the government has not linked the uptick to coronavirus, local officials list a raft of underlying weaknesses in the banlieues, as the gritty, working-class suburbs are called.Disparities ‘that kill’In an op-ed piece, Russier joined a half-dozen mayors and elected officials in outlining several disparities “that kill” in the Seine-Saint-Denis department — in justice, security, health, education and jobs.While some Parisians headed to country houses to wait out the pandemic, and a number are telecommuting for work, many of Russier’s residents have “front-line” jobs as health aides, supermarket cashiers and delivery workers, sometimes without protective masks.  Peeling housing projects sometimes pack large, intergenerational families into tiny, unhealthy spaces, creating coronavirus clusters in some cases.“So if someone catches COVID-19 in an apartment that’s multigenerational, the contagion is more rapid,” Russier said, “and the confinement is harder.”Some banlieue graveyards report they are close to saturation, a situation that has not been helped by the recent uptick in deaths.“Usually, I sign three or four burial certificates a week. But over the last few weeks, I’m signing three or four a day,” Sylvine Thomassin, mayor of another working-class suburb, told Le Monde newspaper.FILE – A family watches French President Emmanuel Macron’s televised speech, April 13, 2020, in Lyon, central France. Macron announced an extension of France’s nationwide lockdown until May 11.The message seems to have hit home with the French government. Addressing the nation Monday, President Emmanuel Macron — who has earned underwhelming marks for addressing banlieue grievances — promised nearly $1 billion more in financial aid for poor families.France’s banlieues have long been considered flashpoints for unresolved social and economic grievances. In 2005, they exploded into rioting — a theme of the recent hit movie “Les Miserables” — revealing the tense and violent relationship between police and banlieue youngsters.Old story, new context Today, the coronavirus simply offers a new context for discriminatory treatment, some activists say. Several videos posted on social media show police slapping and otherwise harassing youngsters for allegedly violating tough lockdown measures. In some cases, the young people have filed legal complaints.“The issue of police violence is not new.  It’s the usual targets, this time with the pretext of enforcing the confinement,” said Lanna Hollo, senior legal officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative in Paris.”There are young people terrified to go out,” she added. “They may be the ones charged with the shopping or who have to go to work, and they’re afraid of being abused.”In the Seine-Saint-Denis department, mayors and other officials say residents are largely following lockdown measures. Russier is among them.But he denies excessive police behavior — at least in his town.”There are some youngsters who don’t respect confinement, in some cases, defiantly,” he said. “But police are being careful. The idea is to avoid confrontation. They are very, very vigilant not to pour oil into the fire.”
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A new Panama City, Panama, hospital will solely treat COVID-19 patients.President Laurentino Cortizo on Thursday inaugurated the $6 million Panama Solidario hospital, which has 100 intensive care beds and a camera system to allow doctors and nurses to monitor patients while minimizing exposure.  It is unclear when the facility will begin accepting patients.Cortizo said the new hospital is part of a broader strategy, which includes an aggressive testing program that helps authorities identify people with the virus and devise a plan to begin treating them.Panama has so far confirmed more than 4,000 infections and reported 109 deaths. 
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The United Nations, the European Union and the United States welcomed the release and exchange of prisoners in eastern Ukraine, which has been torn by a 6-year-old armed conflict.The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he remained hopeful this “humanitarian action” ahead of Orthodox Easter “will serve as a positive step toward more progress, including a permanent cease-fire,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.“Further disengagement of forces and unimpeded humanitarian access across the contact line is expected as part of ongoing peace efforts of international actors,” added Dujarric.Guterres urged all parties engaged in the conflict “to take further measures in order to enable progress” in the implementation of peace agreements.“Full implementation of the Minsk agreements is the only way to reach a sustainable and peaceful solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine,” said Peter Stano, lead spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the EU.“Russia and the armed formations that it backs must also ensure freedom of movement across the contact line for the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission” and other humanitarian actors, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, to reach all those still in detention, the statement reads.The EU also reaffirmed its strong support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.Foreign ministers of France and Germany said in a joint statement that the release and exchange of prisoners related to the conflict in eastern Ukraine “represents significant progress” for the implementation of the Minsk agreements, and the conclusions of the summit in Paris on December 9, 2019, “with respect to upholding the cease-fire, mine clearance, the opening of new crossing points and the identification of new disengagement zones.”In a Twitter message, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine welcomed the move and commended the country’s government on its “continued efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution to the Russia-instigated conflict in Ukraine.”It is also called on Russia “to immediately release all other Ukrainians who remain unjustly imprisoned and fully withdraw its forces from Ukrainian territory.”Thursday’s prisoner exchange was the third since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected in a landslide last year on promises to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which began in 2014. More than 14,000 people have been killed, and it has heightened tensions between Russia and the West.
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday fired Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta over disagreements about how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.Bolsonaro has argued that lockdowns and putting restrictions on business would harm the economy.Mandetta’s dismissal follows a statement by a Brazilian governor, São Paulo Governor João Dori, that he had increased security for his wife and moved his children after receiving threats he said are tied to his criticism of Bolsonaro’s handling of the  outbreak.Nelson Teich, a leading Brazilian cancer specialist who has a working relationship with Bolsonaro, replaces orthopedist Mandetta, who clashed with the president over issues such as social isolation.Teich, however, like Mandetta, supports social isolation as a means of containing the spread of the virus. But Bolsonaro has repeatedly said social isolation measures are bad for the economy.Bolsonaro played down Mandetta’s departure, reportedly saying it was a mutual decision.Mandetta’s dismissal ends weeks of bitterness between the two over the national response to the outbreak, which world experts believe is weeks away from peaking.During a news conference Thursday, Mandetta told his former coworkers they had put forth a good effort up until this point.On Thursday, Bolsanaro attempted to remind citizens he is sensitive to the crisis, saying life is priceless, but he went on to repeat his mantra that the economy and employment need to get back to some form of normal.Medical experts in Brazil and abroad have criticized Bolsonaro for not taking a serious approach to dealing with the nation’s coronavirus outbreak, which as of Thursday had more than 30,000 people infected and just shy of 2,000 dead.
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The International Monetary Fund on Thursday said the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, combined with other problems in recent years, meant Latin America and the Caribbean would likely see “no growth” in from 2015 to 2025.Alejandro Werner, who heads the IMF’s Western Hemisphere department, said the global lender was racing to process 16 requests for emergency assistance, about half of which were from Caribbean nations devastated by a halt in tourism.Other countries, including Barbados and Honduras, had asked about traditional IMF programs or extensions of existing financing arrangements, he said.Likely to contract 5.2 percentIn its 2020 World Economic Outlook, the IMF this week forecast the economy of Latin America, where outbreaks have continued to rise, was likely to contract 5.2 percent.Werner told reporters in a videoconference briefing that countries in the region were facing the worst economic recession since they started producing national accounts statistics in the 1950s.Given the dramatic contraction forecast for this year, and the impact of policies aimed at containing the pandemic, a sharp recovery was expected in 2021, as long as the pandemic could be contained, he said.But that would not be sufficient to compensate for the current crisis, coupled with other events and problems in recent years.“It’s not only this shock; it’s the cumulative negative shock that the region will have gone through in the decade going from 2015 and 2025,” Werner said. “On average, our expectation is that it is highly likely that in the decade from 2015 to 2025 there will be no growth.”While individual countries would see some growth over the decade, the region as a whole would not, he added.Social unrest possibleWerner said the Fund would analyze a $70 billion debt restructuring proposal unveiled by Argentina on Thursday and was working with Argentine authorities to schedule an Article IV consultation.The Fund was processing Ecuador’s request for emergency aid and would send it to the executive board for approval as soon as possible, he said.Werner said the IMF was concerned about the possibility that the pandemic could spark social unrest in Latin America, which had already seen some protests last year.To guard against potential disruptions, Latin American countries should be attentive to societal fault lines in structuring their responses to the pandemic, he said. 
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Canada’s border restrictions with the United States will remain in place “for a significant time” as the two nations fight the coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday. Washington and Ottawa agreed last month to clamp down on non-essential travel while allowing massive trade flows to continue across their long shared frontier. “There’s a recognition that as we move forward there will be special thought given to this relationship. But at the same time we know that there is a significant amount of time, still, before we can talk about loosening such restrictions,” Trudeau told a daily briefing. FILE – Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 14, 2020.U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday told reporters the two nations were “doing well” and said, “It will be one of the early borders to be released.” The two nations’ economies are highly integrated, and allowing trade to continue avoided major problems for the auto sector as well as the transportation of food and medicines. Although Trudeau’s government has enjoyed good relations with the Trump administration over the last 18 months, tensions still remain. Last month, Ottawa slammed a U.S. proposal to deploy troops along the border to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, prompting Washington to drop the plan. A total of 1,048 people in Canada had died from the coronavirus by 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), slightly less than 10% higher than the death toll a day ago, official data posted by the public health agency showed. The total number of those diagnosed with the coronavirus had climbed to 28,899. The respective figures at the same time on Wednesday were 954 deaths and 27,540 positive diagnoses. FILE – A woman walks past the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, March 24, 2020.Medical officials now expect the death toll to be between 1,200 and 1,620 by April 21, Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer, told a briefing. She repeated comments she made Wednesday about being cautiously optimistic the outbreak could be slowing down. The Canadian government has already announced more than C$110 billion in direct spending on measures to help people and businesses deal with the economic damage from the outbreak. Trudeau said Ottawa would expand loans to firms that paid between C$20,000 and C$1.5 million in total payroll in 2019, and also planned to help commercial property owners cut or even forgive rent to small businesses. The Pacific province of British Columbia said it would reduce property taxes by 25% and allow municipalities greater flexibility in taking on debt. 
 
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday the border between Canada and the United States isn’t opening any time soon for nonessential travel.Trudeau said it will still be a “significant amount of time” before Canada can loosen such a restriction.The U.S. and Canada agreed last month to limit border crossings to essential travel amid the pandemic but that agreement is due to expire April 19.U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday the U.S. and Canada are “doing well” amid the pandemic and said the U.S. Canada border will be among the first borders to open.”It will be one of the early borders to be released,” Trump said.Nearly 200,000 people cross that border everyday in normal times. Canada sends 75% of its exports to the U.S. and about 18% of American exports go to Canada.Truck drivers and Canadians who live in the U.S. for part of the year and are returning to Canada are among those who are exempted from the current travel ban.Canada has more than 29,826 confirmed cases, including 1,048 deaths. Almost half of the deaths are linked to nursing homes.The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world.
 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the postponement of May 9 celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany in World War II, citing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Speaking at a security meeting on Thursday, Putin said events including a massive military parade in Red Square would be postponed until a later date. “In order for the parade to be held on May 9, the preparations need to begin right now, but the risks associated with the epidemic, whose peak has not been passed yet, are still extremely high and that does not give me the right to start preparations for the parade and other mass events now,” the president said. Events marking Victory Day in other regions of the country were also postponed. Russia has implemented a partial lockdown across the country until April 30 as coronavirus infections continue to rise. There have been some 28,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 232 deaths, according to official data. Critics say the number of infections and deaths is likely much higher.  
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The British government Thursday said it will extend for three weeks its nationwide lockdown intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Speaking at a remote news briefing in London, Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies warned that relaxing any of the safety measures currently in place would risk damage to both public health and the British economy. Raab reported 13,729 people in Britain have now died from the virus, with 103,093 confirmed cases.The foreign minister continues to lead the government response to the pandemic while British Prime Minster Boris Johnson continues to recover from his bout with coronavirus. Britain’s lockdown has been in place since March 23. 
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Elvis Francois, the orthopedic surgery resident who has gone viral with his top-notch live performances at hospitals, knew from adolescence he wanted to help heal the world through medicine.But through music? Not so much.Two years after becoming an unlikely singing sensation, the 34-year-old doctor with a golden voice is releasing his first-ever EP on Friday and all the proceeds will be donated to The Center of Disaster Philanthropy COVID-19 Response Fund.
“It’s been such a unique time in all of our lives. I’m just honored to be able to share a bit of music with people, especially during these trying times,” Francois said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. “What we do as surgeons, what we do as physicians goes a very long way, but music moves people in a way that medicine can’t.”
Francois has appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” CNN, “Good Morning America” and more programs after becoming popular for singing booming covers of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me,” but just weeks ago he got a call from two executives from the Nashville-based Big Machine Label Group, asking how they could help him spread his message of hope and joy through music.
Jake Basden and Allison Jones pulled their resources together, helping Francois get into a recording studio to record the four-song EP called “Music Is Medicine,” which is being independently released on the newly formed Doctor Elvis Records. Fellow resident William Robinson, who usually accompanies Francois on piano during his performances, joined in for the recording sessions of “Imagine,” “Lean on Me,” Andra Day’s “Rise Up” and Mike Yung’s “Alright.”
“It’s just been a group of people trying to use music to help people,” Francois said of all the help he’s received to make the EP. “I think that’s probably the most special thing about it.”
Francois also knew the EP could be a good way to help raise funds to fight the spreading coronavirus and honor the health care workers on the frontlines.
“We see health care providers who are getting impacted. We see our colleagues who are in the ICUs. We see our colleagues who are in the emergency department. We see how much need there is on the side of patients and on the side of providers. … I felt like the one thing we could do, if anything, was to use this momentum and use this energy to give,” he said.
Francois, who is in his last year of residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, began singing in high school and in church but he never took it seriously. Medicine, however, was always on his mind.
He grew up in Miami and New York and said trips to Haiti, where his family is from, really helped him find his life goal.
“I just always remember seeing long lines of people and how grateful they were to get Tylenol for free, or how grateful they were being able to just literally speak to a doctor and get their advice,” he recalled. “Since then, maybe when I was like 7 or 8, I’ve always looked at that as being something that I’d want to give the rest of my life to.”
But singing has helped him to connect to patients, and fans around the world, in a different way. He remembers going viral after posting a cover of “Imagine,” surprised that people outside of the U.S. saw and enjoyed the clip.
“My dad got a phone call from a relative in France who came across the video and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh wow!’ It hadn’t even been 24 hours,” he recalled. “I’ll get messages from nurses in Italy or messages from other residents and other health care providers or patients … A little bit of good can literally cross oceans and move people across the world.”
Once Francois finishes his residency, he’s heading to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, to complete a fellowship in spine surgery. Still, it feels surreal that he will have an album out on digital platforms next to releases from pop, rap and rock stars.
“Spotify, iTunes, Amazon? That’s just crazy. Literally if you asked me a month ago, I would probably laugh at you. Like, I’ve never even recorded a song,” Francois said.
“I’ve had to pinch myself, ‘Is this actually real?’ Seeing it all come together, it just feels like a dream,” he added. “I think the coolest thing about it is it’s a dream where we are all able to give our small parts to make the world better.”
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