Issue:

Reporting and trying to understand the spread of Covid-19 dominated the news globally. While the news industry suffered threats of closure and staff furloughs like other industries, more and more people were getting their news online, even as online ad revenues plummeted. Here are some front pages of print editions from around the world a glimpse of the coverage and its import

USA: World leader—in virus cases and unemployment, graphically represented on their broadsheet front page (March 27)
China: World leader in containment? (April 7)

To an extent that no one would have expected a month ago, Japan is the best place to be among any of the big industrialised nations, for the time being at least. It is difficult to explain and frankly difficult to believe in. As terrible news comes in from the rest of the world, Japan feels like a fairyland into which grim reality is liable to explode at any moment.

– Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times
Japan: Emergency declared for a largely voluntary lockdown (April 8)

“In the first place, we managed to find the larger clusters and get them contained. But Japanese society is really poor at switching from Plan A to Plan B. We are poor at thinking about a plan B. Bureaucrats would rather complete the plan once laid,” [professor of infectious disease at Kobe University Hospital] Iwata explained.

– Asger Røjle Christensen, reporting Kentaru Iwata’s online appearance at the FCCJ, translated from the Danish in Ræson
Dubai: Permits needed to leave home (April 6)
Canada: Routes to recovery from lockdown and its effects, in one of The Globe and Mail’s striking front pages (April 18)
UK: PM taken to intensive care and a week in hospital (April 7)
India: Managing infection and country-wide lockdowns (April 13)
Germany: Looked to loosen lockdown and toward hope (April 12)

Disagreements between Koike and Abe over how far the emergency measures should go have quickly escalated since Tokyo’s 14 million residents were asked to stay home earlier this week amid record numbers of new cases.
“Asking for residents to use self-restraint and stay home is not enough,” Koike said soon after Abe declared a state of emergency this week. “We should also restrict the use of cluster-causing facilities” such as restaurants and karaoke parlours, she said.

– Justin McCurry, The Guardian