According to DC Watch, Canon has announced that they are delaying the ship date for the Canon EOS Rebel T8i/850D which was announced back in February.
The original shipping month was April, but it looks like the new Rebel won't begin shipping until June at the earliest.
I have no up to date information about manufacturing challenges currently facing Canon amid the pandemic, but I would think that the Canon EOS R5 and Canon EOS R6 may see some delays and/or minimal quantities available at launch.
It wouldn't make sense for them to ship any to countries that are still under lockdowns. They'll sell what they can in China first, and the rest of the world will wait.
You might be a vegetarian but without all the burger sales you couldn't buy your McFluffy.
Well, that at least partly depends on the kind of lockdown. In Denmark there are no restrictions on going out as long as you keep distance, and are not staying in big groups somewhere.
Of course traveling is a bit more complicated (read: practically impossible) and professionals are probably very low on assignments and income. But still, I'm sure there would be some hobby or pro photographers that would be very interested...
Unlikely based on how the post-quarantine life in China is in reality.
While people are allowed to go out of their homes again, they are strongly deterred by the phone tracking measures the government put in place to try to prevent new outbreaks. Each citizen is forced to display the status of the government app when they walk into work, businesses, public transportation etc. which will identify whether or not they were in the vicinity of anyone who tested positive within the last 14 days. If the app identifies them as such, they will be denied entry to just about everything and forced to quarantine. Because of how damaged their economy is after the last few months, neither the government or employers are offering the average citizen paid leave anymore so anyone who finds themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time may see themselves out of work for 2 weeks at a time. Hence, even if the quarantine is "lifted", in reality everyone is still in prison.
How China's Covid-19 tracking app works - CNN Video
I like Dunkin' Donuts coffee, being able to get it depends on their ability to sell donuts, which I don't buy.
EDIT: It appears there is a McFlurry, but according to the urban dictionary a McFluffy is a cat that looks so cute you could eat it, so maybe my analogy is flawed! :ROFLMAO:
This is a gross exaggeration of what is really going on. Prison? That's quite far from what I heard from my friends living in China. For the last month since the quarantine-lift, new covid-19 cases in China has been kept below a couple hundred cases a day. So besides an insignificant proportion of China's population receiving quarantine, everyone else in China are happily getting their normal lives back.
And if you read international news, you'd know that the vast majority of Chinese covid-19 cases found in the last month were imported from other countries, which further limits the quarantined cases to international travelers within a handful of Chinese cities.
About the tracking app, it works really well against covid-19, because it actually allows people live their lives while keeping the virus in check. So please, spare the evil China spin.. Also, South Korea government was the first one doing citizen tracking against covid-19 using APPs and big data, early in February, and it's been proven to be hugely successful. Now China recognized its effectiveness and adopted it. In the US, Google and Apple are both talking about doing something similar.
The "game" over the next six months is going to be getting supply chain and production levels back on track, restoring profitability and hitting (reduced) sales targets. The effects of putting world economies on hold will be felt well into 2021. Canon's bottom line is a lot more dependent on Rebels than on the R series, so I doubt they made this decision lightly.
Normal distribution channels aren't working at the moment, traditional camera shops are closed and the marketing effort required to launch and promote a new camera the traditional way isn't available - except that it's coming back now in China and a few other countries.
Canon have a problem here. They could ignore their traditional channels and ship stuff only to B&H, Amazon, etc in the west, but by doing so what damage will they do long term to their traditional distribution network? They may feel they have to hold back on releasing until there is a chance the bricks & mortar shop network is open.
Of course, releasing in China first would encourage huge grey market sales of such a popular camera.
So, I think what's likely is a VERY limited release, enough to satisfy pre-orders only, but not enough that the distribution network would consider to undermine them. They could get away with this by saying production is limited, delays, etc, and it would do nothing but increase the demand for the camera once it finally gets open distribution.
If I was a greedy person I'd put affiliate links in right now to pre-order on the major resellers, but I'm not, so find the links that CR has posted and use those if you want to pre-order.