Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Patrick Lane, filling in for Jason Palmer this week.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

The Middle East and North Africa have so far been spared the worst of COVID-19, with a terrible

exception of Iran.

Across the region, astonishingly tight restrictions are in force, but will authoritarian regimes

loosen their grip when the health crisis passes?

And African art is enjoying a golden age, encompassing artists in all mediums from across the continent.

Auctions, online, naturally, are attracting more interest than ever.

We report on a boom that seems likely to last.

But first... Yesterday, the USNS Comfort slowly made its way around the Statue of Liberty to dock in New York City's harbour.

With 12 operating rooms and a thousand hospital beds,

the enormous Navy hospital ship has been hailed as a beacon of hope

for a beleaguered city.

The arrival of comfort, this is like adding a whole another hospital to New York City.

It's like think of all the big hospitals in New York City, Bellevue and all the other

famous hospitals we think of. It's like another one of them just floated right up to help us right now.

Although the ship won't be treating coronavirus patients, spent to add hospital capacity to a city

that's rapidly become the global center of the pandemic. New York State has had 7% of the world's cases in recent days,

and more than 1,200 deaths,

with most of those infections and fatalities in the city itself.

I think it's important for the rest of the nation to watch New York

...