This blog has closed – thanks for following. Coverage continues at our latest coronavirus live blog.
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Good morning, good evening, hello, wherever you might be. This is Helen Davidson taking the reins of the blog for the next few hours. Thanks to my colleagues for their coverage.
We’ll be starting a new blog shortly, but in the meantime here is some more news on the vaccine front.
In Australia a potential vaccine developed by the University of Queensland is now ready to be tested on humans, Brisbane’s Sunday Mail reports.
The human testing of the “molecular clamp” vaccine candidate, to start on Monday, follows encouraging results from animal testing trials conducted in the Netherlands.
Professor Robert Booy, head of Clinical Research at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, said the animal trials would have “ticked all the boxes” allowing the human testing to go ahead.
“There is no way the research team would be able to progress from animals to humans without a complete guarantee of safety and they would likely have a confidence in its effectiveness,” he said.
Summary
Here the latest key developments at a glance:
- Infections in the US state of Texas rose by 10,351 on Saturday to 250,462 in total, the highest single-day increase in the state since the pandemic started.
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US president Donald Trump has appeared in public wearing a mask for the first time during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, after previously refusing to wear one and ridiculing some who did.
- Brazil, the world’s second biggest coronavirus hotspot after the United States, recorded 1,071 new deaths from the outbreak on Saturday, taking the total official death toll to 71,469.
- Michelle Bolsonaro, the wife of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who is sick with coronavirus, said on Saturday that she and her two daughters had tested negative for the virus.
- Thousands of Israelis were protesting in Tel Aviv on Saturday against the government’s handling of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in violent clashes with police.
- The British government has drawn up a list of 20 councils in England facing the worst coronavirus outbreaks, with Bradford, Sheffield and Kirklees identified as areas in which localised lockdowns could be imposed.
- South Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases have doubled in just two weeks to over 250,000.
- Lebanon’s number of new coronavirus infections increased for a third consecutive day to a record 86.
- Florida’s Walt Disney World opened to the public for the first time in four months, despite a surge of coronavirus cases in the state.
That’s all from me, my colleagues in Australia are going to take over now. Goodnight!
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Chinese vaccine developer CanSino Biologics is in talks with Russia, Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia to launch a Phase III trial of its experimental Covid-19 vaccine, its co-founder said on Saturday.
China’s success in driving down Covid-19 infections has made it harder to conduct large-scale vaccine trials, and so far only a few countries have agreed to work with it, Reuters reports.
“We are contacting Russia, Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia (for the Phase III trial), and it’s still in discussion,” Qiu Dongxu, executive director and co-founder of CanSino, told an anti-viral drug development conference in Suzhou, in eastern China.
He said its Phase III trial was likely to start “pretty soon,” and the company plans to recruit 40,000 participants for the test.
Its Covid-19 candidate, Ad5-nCov, became the first in China to move into human testing in March but is running behind other potential vaccines in terms of trial progress.
Two experimental vaccines developed by Sinovac Biotech and a unit of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) are already approved for Phase III trials.
Qiu said its Phase II trial involving 508 people has yielded “much better” results than the Phase I about the safety and ability to trigger immune response. He did not disclose specific evidence.
He said its new factory under construction in China will allow it to produce 100-200 million doses of coronavirus vaccines per year by early 2021.
Brazil, the world’s second biggest coronavirus hotspot after the United States, recorded 1,071 new deaths from the outbreak on Saturday, with a total of 1,839,850 confirmed cases.
Brazil has now recorded a total of 71,469 deaths, the health ministry said.
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A demonstration in Tel Aviv against the Israeli government’s handling of the pandemic, which we reported on earlier, has resulted in violent clashes between protesters and police.
This from the journalist Louis Fishman:
Following protests in Tel Aviv’s main square police clash with protesters on Rothschild Blvd. On the news a protester said we are fed up we can’t pay our bills, we can’t pay for rent. The gov is completely out of touch with dire situation of its citizens. pic.twitter.com/G1TZUdYa9M
— Louis Fishman لوي فيشمان לואי פישמן (@Istanbultelaviv) July 11, 2020
My colleagues Robin McKie and James Tapper have written a piece on whether England might follow the lead of 120 other countries and make mask wearing mandatory in public spaces.
US president Donald Trump has appeared in public wearing a mask for the first time during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, where he was set to meet wounded soldiers and front-line health care workers.
#BREAKING: President Trump visits Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He is wearing a mask. pic.twitter.com/uZOzM4Lpvs
— The Hill (@thehill) July 11, 2020
Trump had previously refused to wear masks at public engagements, although pictures showing him in a mask during a tour of the Ford Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where ventilators, masks and other medical supplies are being manufactured, emerged in May.
A state attorney general had called Trump a “petulant child” because he allegedly refused to wear the covering during the tour.
Trump later claimed he had worn a mask behind the scenes, saying: “I wore one in the back area. I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”
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Highest single-day rise in cases in Texas
Infections in the US state of Texas rose by 10,351 on Saturday to 250,462 in total, the highest single-day increase in the state since the pandemic started.
Current hospitalisations in Texas rose by 81 to a record high of 10,083 on Saturday, the state health department said.
The New York Times reported earlier that in the popular beachfront vacation spot of Corpus Christi hardly any new infections were recorded in early June, before out-of-towners brought the virus back.
Now the city of 325,000 has one of the fastest-growing outbreaks in Texas.
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Canada’s oil-producing province of Alberta, hard-hit by lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, is counting on National Hockey League (NHL) games to provide a badly needed boost to morale and business, Reuters reports.
Edmonton, the provincial capital and home to the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, will be a hub city with Toronto when games resume on 1 August, the first since the league suspended the season in March.
Each city will host 12 teams, sequestering players in so-called bubbles that encompass arenas, hotels and select restaurants. Fans will not attend the games.
The spread of coronavirus has eased in Canada, allowing the two cities to beat out rivals such as Las Vegas, which has seen increased infections, for the chance to host the games.
Alberta premier Jason Kenney said hosting games could generate C$60m ($44.16m) in economic activity.
“That alone is not going to turn around our economy, but it’s a great shot in the arm,” he said.
Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs officials abruptly postponed news conferences on Saturday to discuss the hub cities, citing incomplete talks between the Canadian government and the league.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters the league needed to finalise “a couple of details” with Ottawa.
Alberta’s unemployment rate was the second-highest in Canada in June as a crash in oil prices this spring forced energy companies to lay off workers and some businesses remained closed due to the pandemic.
Alberta’s chief medical officer has reassured the public that arriving hockey players will not accelerate the spread of the virus if they abide by certain conditions, which include daily testing and restricted movement.
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Covid-19 has killed at least 561,551 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP on Saturday.
At least 12,580,980 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 6,706,700 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
A group of 14 doctors in France called on Saturday for stricter rules on the wearing of masks to ensure there was no resurgence of the coronavirus, Agence France-Presse reports.
In an open letter published in the daily newspaper Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui, the doctors, from a range of disciplines, noted that people were beginning to neglect the basic social distancing precautions.
“It would be most unfortunate if these effective and accessible methods were not used,” they added.
They recommended the compulsory wearing of masks inside public buildings, social distancing as much as possible and the regular washing of hands.
While acknowledging that masks could be uncomfortable to wear, they insisted on their importance. “Wearing a mask is not only to protect yourself, but also to prevent the spread of the virus; as long as everyone wears it,” they wrote.
Their message echoed Friday’s appeal by the prime minister, Jean Castex, and the health minister, Olivier Veran, as the first wave of holidaymakers prepared to set off this weekend.
They called on people to stay vigilant and to keep wearing masks to avoid a second wave of the coronavirus.
France’s health authority noted on Friday that the level of infections had begun to pick up again even if, for the moment, the numbers remained low.
France’s total Covid-19 death toll rose above 30,000 on Friday.
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The British government has drawn up a list of 20 councils in England facing the worst coronavirus outbreaks, with Bradford, Sheffield and Kirklees identified as areas needing “enhanced support”, according to a classified document leaked to the Observer and the Guardian.
As evidence mounts that the relaxation of lockdown rules is leading to a resurgence of Covid-19 in some of England’s most deprived and ethnically mixed areas, councils fear the data will be used to enforce more local lockdowns of the kind imposed in Leicester, where all but essential shops must stay shut, schoolchildren have been sent home, and pubs and restaurants remain closed.
My colleague Juliette Garside has more.
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Lebanon sees new daily infection record
Lebanon’s number of new coronavirus infections increased for a third consecutive day to a record 86, the government said on Saturday.
Lebanon has recorded 2,168 infections and 36 deaths since February.
The health minister, Hamad Hassan, told Reuters on Friday the spike was partly due to expatriates who came after the airport was reopened on 1 July.
One infected 12 people at a wedding and another infected 12 at a funeral, he said.
A second cluster of infections had appeared among nurses and doctors and a third among refuse collectors, Hassan added.
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Thousands attend protest in Israel
Ten thousand Israelis are protesting in Tel Aviv on Saturday against the government’s handling of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Haaretz newspaper reports.
On Friday, leaders from hospitality, tourism, transportation, arts and culture industries declined an invitation by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to discuss the situation.
“The Israeli government and its leader are responsible for the failure in implementing aid programs,” said the organisers, who called on the government to amend its financial aid packages.
“I have 40 workers with no income, no money,” said Michal Gaist-Casif, vice president of a sound and lighting company, according to Reuters.
“We need the government to pump in money until we’re back to normal. We haven’t been working since mid-March through April, May, June and July, and August is looking to be a catastrophe.”
On Thursday, Netanyahu and the finance minister, Yisrael Katz, announced that Israel’s self-employed will receive an immediate grant of 7,500 shekels ($2,150).
Organisers of the demonstration asked that those attending the protest not give the police a reason to stop the event, urging them to comply with health ministry guidelines.
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Florida’s Walt Disney World opened to the public for the first time in four months, despite a surge of coronavirus cases in the state.
The Walt Disney Company welcomed a limited number of guests to parts of its sprawling Orlando complex, the most-visited theme park resort in the world, with a host of safety measures in place to reassure visitors and reduce the chances of catching the virus.
Executives felt confident they had developed a responsible plan for reopening in phases during the pandemic, said Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney’s parks, experiences and products division, according to Reuters.
“This is the new world that we’re operating in, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” D’Amaro said in an interview on Saturday after he greeted guests and workers at the park.
Disney’s reopening of parks in Asia helped provide assurance about moving ahead in Florida, he said. “I feel really good about our environment. We’re taking this seriously.”
At the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, the two parks that opened on Saturday, guests and employees wore face masks, underwent temperature screenings and were told to social distance everywhere, from streets to rides.
Plexiglass separated rows in lines and ground markings indicated where people should stand.
The resort suspended parades, fireworks and other activities that create crowds, as well as up-close encounters with Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and other characters. Instead, characters appeared on floats or on horseback.
Some pictures on Twitter showed people close together while waiting to enter. Disney employees, called cast members, began enforcing distancing requirements after about 30 minutes, one person said.
Florida has emerged as a centre of Covid-19 infections.
Over the past two weeks, Florida reported 109,000 new coronavirus cases, more than any other US state.
Still, many Disney fans and workers were eager for Disney World to open its gates. The resort employs 77,000 people.
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One of India’s best known movie stars, Amitabh Bachchan, has tested positive for Covid-19 together with his actor son Abhishek Bachchan, and both have been moved to a private hospital, the actors said late on Saturday.
“I have tested COVID positive ... shifted to hospital ... hospital informing authorities ... family and staff undergone tests, results awaited,” Amitabh Bachchan, 77, said in a tweet, which was shared 58,000 times in just over half an hour.
His son Abhishek Bachchan, 44, said in a tweet minutes later that he had also tested positive.
The Bollywood actors were admitted to Nanavati Hospital in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment hub, and several other members of the high-profile family were tested for the virus.
A Bollywood legend, Amitabh Bachchan has been leading the way in the country’s fight against the coronavirus, appearing in public service advertisements.
T 3590 -I have tested CoviD positive .. shifted to Hospital .. hospital informing authorities .. family and staff undergone tests , results awaited ..
— Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) July 11, 2020
All that have been in close proximity to me in the last 10 days are requested to please get themselves tested !
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The United Kingdom’s death toll from confirmed cases of Covid-19 rose to 44,798, up 148 on the previous day, the government said on Saturday.
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Michelle Bolsonaro, the wife of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, said on Saturday that she and her two daughters had tested negative for the virus.
The president announced that he had tested positive on Tuesday, and said he was quarantining while also taking the drug hydroxychloroquine, according to Reuters.
More than 1.8 million people in Brazil have tested positive for coronavirus and more than 70,000 have died.
Only the United States has worse statistics.
Michelle Bolsonaro, whose grandmother was rushed to hospital and intubated last week, made the announcement on Instagram.
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Hundreds of holidaymakers from Germany are said to have partied at the Ballermann fun mile in Mallorca while disregarding social distancing rules in Spain.
A video published on Saturday by the Mallorca Zeitung shows people celebrating, drinking and dancing in crowds on Friday evening on the famous Bierstrasse (beer street).
People on social media reacted with outrage to the clip.
Authorities in Mallorca and the other Balearic Islands have tightened face mask requirements. They will need to be worn in all enclosed public spaces from Monday.
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The Zimbabwean embassy in London has said that at least 37 citizens of the southern African country have died in Britain during the coronavirus pandemic, Sky News reports.
Qualified nurses and doctors from Zimbabwe have long been recruited to help relieve staff shortages in the UK, but the total number of Zimbabweans working in the health sector is small.
However, the number of deaths recorded by consular officials suggests that Zimbabweans may constitute well over 10% of all frontline workers who have died in Britain during the coronavirus crisis.
This startling disclosure suggests that Zimbabweans have proven particularly vulnerable in the UK and a team of researchers and medical experts are trying to grapple with the reasons why.
“This is something that we all need to focus on and we need to do it urgently,” said Brighton Chireka, a Zimbabwean doctor who founded the Zimbabwean Diaspora Health Alliance, an organisation that has been collecting evidence and allegations from thousands of Zimbabweans and other ethnic minority health workers during the epidemic.
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Infections in South Africa top 250,000
South Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases have doubled in just two weeks to a quarter of a million as the pandemic exposes stark health inequalities in the country.
In Johannesburg, the centre of South Africa’s outbreak, badly needed oxygen concentrators, which help Covid-19 patients to breathe, are hard to find as private businesses and individuals buy up supplies, a public health specialist volunteering at a field hospital, Lynne Wilkinson, told the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, South Africas public hospitals are short on medical oxygen and they are now seeing a higher proportion of deaths than private ones, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases says.
South Africa now has more than 250,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, including more than 3,800 deaths.
To complicate matters, the country’s troubled power utility has announced electricity cuts in the dead of winter as a cold front brings freezing weather.
Many of the country’s urban poor live in shacks of scrap metal and wood.
More than 8,000 health workers across Africa have been infected, half of them in South Africa.
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The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has said during a press conference on the Covid-19 crisis that 427 additional cases of the drug Remdesivir had been delivered to Florida’s hospitals.
He said the drug was unlikely to make a difference for severely ill patients, but was likely to help many patients “as they come in” while only mildly ill with Covid-19.
The rate of coronavirus infections among care staff in the state stood at 2.4% after 70,000 tests, DeSantis said, a number he described as “very, very low”.
The governor added that 12 “Covid-only” nursing home facilities had been created across Florida, and that the state was working on expanding the number of beds in these units from 750.
DeSantis advised “vulnerable” people in high-risk groups to continue to avoid contact with others, and warned that socialising indoors with other households would increase transmission.
DeSantis emphasised the need for children to attend school again, and said online tuition could not be a substitute for in-person attendance, adding that he believes the negative impact of non-attendance outweighs the risk of transmission among pupils.
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Israeli police on Saturday said they had flooded central Tel Aviv with officers and closed main thoroughfares, ahead of a rally by critics of the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.
“Hundreds of police will be deployed in a number of security cordons,” a police statement said, according to Agence France-Presse. “The mission is protection of the participants and preservation of public order.”
Organisers of the demonstration said they expected thousands of Israel’s self-employed to turn out in protest at what they say is the government’s abandonment of them after forcing their businesses to close under coronavirus regulations.
Student unions said they would also take part in the event at the city’s Rabin Square to show their concern at the large numbers of young people made jobless by closures.
Israel imposed a broad lockdown from the middle of March, allowing only staff deemed essential to go to work and banning public assembly. Places of entertainment were closed, hitting the leisure industry hard.
Facing public and economic pressure, the government eased restrictions in late May. But infection numbers rose and rules were tightened again, including the closure of event venues, clubs, bars, gyms and public pools.
While salaried workers on furlough received unemployment benefits, the self-employed said most had been waiting months for promised government aid to reach them.
“There is a very grave crisis of confidence between us and the government,” Shai Berman, one of the protest organisers, told Israeli public radio.
“We are part of a very large public which is feeling growing distress and wants to demonstrate and simply does not believe the promises,” he added.
On Friday the health ministry announced the highest number of coronavirus infections over a 24-hour period, with nearly 1,500 new cases confirmed.
The country of roughly 9 million has registered more than 36,000 cases, including over 350 deaths.
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Infections in the US state of Arizona rose by 3,038 on Saturday to 119,930 in total.
The number of people currently hospitalised with Covid-19 in the state rose by 53 to a record of 3,485 as of Friday.
The state health department said that the occupancy rate of adult intensive care unit (ICU) beds in Arizona rose to 90% as of Friday from 89% the previous day.
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The number of recorded coronavirus infections in the US state of Florida rose by 10,360 in the 24 hours to Saturday to a total of 254,511.
As of Saturday morning, 7,239 people in the state are hospitalised with Covid-19, according to the state health department.
The state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, will be holding a press conference shortly, which can be watched live here.
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Summary
Here are the main developments so far in coronavirus-related news around the world today:
- India’s coronavirus cases have passed 800,000 with the biggest increase, of 27,114 cases, in the past 24 hours, causing nearly a dozen states to impose a partial lockdown in high-risk areas. The new confirmed cases took the national total to 820,916. The health ministry on Saturday also reported another 519 deaths for a total of 22,123.
- Russia was fast approaching three-quarters of a million coronavirus cases on Saturday, as its latest update reported 6,611 new infections, taking its nationwide tally to 720,547. The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said 188 people had died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 11,205.
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Dozens of US marines have been infected with coronavirus at two bases on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa in what is feared to be a significant outbreak. Okinawa prefectural officials said they could say only a few dozen cases had been found recently because the US military asked that the exact figure not be released.
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A Briton and a Tunisian are among 71 people arrested in Serbia after a fourth night of rioting in Belgrade and other cities against the government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic and growing authoritarianism. Thousands of people demonstrated in several cities on Friday, with protesters hurling stones at police in front of parliament in the capital.
- Bill Gates has called for Covid-19 drugs and any eventual vaccine to be made available to countries and people that need them most, not to the highest bidder, saying that relying on market forces to ensure their distribution would prolong the pandemic. He said efforts that began two decades ago to battle the global HIV/Aids crisis could serve as a model for making Covid-19 medicines widely accessible.
- The European parliament has voted to temporarily derogate certain restrictions around clinical trials of drugs containing genetically modified organisms to speed up the development of a coronavirus vaccine. MEPs on Friday used an “urgent procedure” process to adopt a new regulation to speed up the development of Covid-19 treatments and vaccines containing GMOs.
- The UK is set to make the wearing of face masks mandatory in shops, in the latest attempt to try to curb the spread of coronavirus. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, last night vowed to “get stricter” on their use and said he was “looking at ways of making sure” that more people covered their faces indoors. Wearing masks in shops is already mandatory in Scotland.
- The British pilot who spent two months on life support in Vietnam as the country’s most at-risk Covid-19 patient was on his way home on Saturday, astounding doctors who gave him just a 10% chance of survival. Stephen Cameron, 42, was the sickest Covid-19 patient medics had to treat in Vietnam, which has recorded no deaths.
- Belgium’s government has told its citizens not to travel to Leicester, the UK city currently facing tighter lockdown measures during a rise in Covid-19 infections. Advice from the Belgian foreign affairs department states that “travel is not allowed” and “quarantine is mandatory upon your return”.
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Two people in London have been arrested after protesters dyed the fountains in Trafalgar Square blood-red, in a stunt calling for the government to prevent future pandemics by ending animal farming.
The Animal Rebellion group said they staged the protest to call on the government to tell the truth about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, which they say was caused by animal exploitation.
While activists poured dye into the fountains, others staged a socially distanced protest on the square.
Stephanie Zupan, a spokesperson for Animal Rebellion, said:
The warnings from Covid-19 could not be starker. The government must now begin a transition towards a plant-based food system, or risk future zoonotic pandemics of catastrophic proportions.
Their action was coordinated with actions in 20 other cities, including Bristol, Brighton, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Amsterdam and Barcelona.
The activists said: “All of these acts of non-violent civil disobedience carried the message for governments to prevent future pandemics by ending animal farming and transitioning to a plant-based food system.”
Animal Rebellion have now dyed the Trafalgar Square fountains red, symbolising the blood that is on the hands of the UK Government. We are here today to demand that the government prevent future pandemics by ending animal farming and transitioning to a plant-based food system. pic.twitter.com/FAA6tW1wn1
— Animal Rebellion (@RebelsAnimal) July 11, 2020
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Scientists have welcomed Boris Johnson’s suggestion that face coverings may become mandatory in shops in England, a measure that they hope will help to curb the spread of coronavirus in the UK, which has one of the world’s highest death tolls from the outbreak.
The prime minister said on Friday that he wanted to be “stricter” on insisting people wear coverings in confined spaces where they are meeting people they do not normally see. Face coverings are already mandatory in shops in Scotland, whose devolved administration sets its own health policy.
Prof David Heymann, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the PA news agency that masks should be worn by “all people in a situation where no one can physically distance to prevent infection of others”.
Face masks protect others from infection by catching virus-containing droplets when a person who is infected and has a high level of virus in the nasal passage speaks, shouts, sings, coughs or sneezes.
Face masks should be worn when physical distancing cannot be assured from others, such as by carers in care homes, and by people serving others who are physically distancing but who, because of their work, cannot physically distance from them.
They should also be worn by all people in a situation where no one can physically distance to prevent infection of others – especially in closed spaces, such as public transport.
Face masks do not substitute for physical distancing if physical distancing is possible, and they do not protect the wearer from infection unless they are worn as part of personal protective equipment that also protects the eyes, a potential site of infection.
Dr Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said Johnson was right to be reviewing England’s position on face coverings.
He said it was unlikely that the scientific debate on the issue would be resolved anytime soon, but that shops may be an example of a place where it is not possible to maintain social distancing.
Hunter also cautioned: “The most important thing, however, is that anyone wearing a mask must not assume that they are automatically protected. People should still practice distancing and continue to wash their hands.”
Prof Adam Finn, of the University of Bristol, said that wearing face coverings in crowded places would reduce the likelihood of infection.
The more efficient the face covering is at catching the droplets, the better it will work. So if you are in a shop and everyone else is wearing a mask, you should feel safer than if they aren’t.
However, a University College London epidemiologist, Dr Antonio Lazzarino, said he was worried masks were “a pretence to ease the lockdown to help the economy”.
This may well happen at the expense of people’s health. Lockdown is the only measure that is proven to work.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization acknowledged there was “emerging evidence” that Covid-19 could be spread through particles in the air.
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Holiday businesses in Wales have begun adjusting to the “new normal”, with unprecedented levels of demand as lockdown restrictions ease coming as a major boost to an economy that relies heavily on tourism, according to the PA news agency.
Tourism supports around 120,000 jobs in Wales - nearly 10% of the country’s workforce - and contributes more than £3bn to the economy.
Saturday saw the reopening of tourism across the country as self-contained accommodation providers were able to open cottages, bed and breakfasts and caravans for the first time since March.
Tommy Davies runs Coed-Y-Glyn Log Cabins, a set of 5-star riverside lodges in the north Wales village of Glyndyfrdwy, Denbighshire. He told the PA news agency:
We’re doing virtual check-ins now. We’ve only got four lodges so we could usually give it quite a personal touch and either myself or another member of staff will go down and welcome the guest personally, shake their hand, ask how their journey was.
Obviously we can’t do that any more. Now we give them pre-arrival emails with all the stuff they would normally get, and FaceTime them when they arrive. So what we can’t do is the personal touch, in every sense of the word. So we’ll have to adapt and change.
This is the new normal.
The reopening also came as a huge relief to Three Cliffs Bay Holiday Park, near the sandy beach of the same name in Gower, Swansea, which relies heavily on its summer trade.
Due to the current restrictions, the site will only be operating at 15% capacity at first, with 23 motor home and caravan pitches and space for more than 110 tents once shared camping facilities are allowed in Wales from 25 July.
Its owner, Tom Beynon, said he felt “blessed” after taking 300 bookings on Friday alone, leading to him having to employ an extra person to staff the company’s phone, while his website also crashed due to demand. He said:
Being closed has been pretty damaging. We’re one of these businesses that plough on in the winter getting ready to recoup near the summer.
We, as a family, have worked over a long time to build up the businesses we’ve crafted, but people have really looked after us. You began to wonder would they go to England instead or do something else, because everyone’s had a tough time.
We’ve had 300 bookings Friday, five nights per booking, people have really backed us and are booking it as their main holiday. It’s phenomenal, we’ve never experienced demand like that.
We’re very pleased, and in a lot better shape now than we were on Thursday.
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Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has welcomed figures showing there were no Covid-19 deaths in Scotland in the last 24 hours.
Positive cases in past 24 hrs back in single figures (7) after yesterday’s increase 👍. Also, another day with no registered deaths amongst people who had tested positive. Progress still good - but with significant easing of lockdown next week, we all must take care #StaySafe https://t.co/qIHh2HddQf
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) July 11, 2020
Thirty-eight people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 29,051, according to the PA Media news agency.
The patients were aged between 40 and 98 and three patients, aged 65 to 86 years, had no known underlying health conditions, NHS England said. Another seven deaths were reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.
Meanwhile, Scotland reported no new coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Scottish government.
A total of 2,490 patients have died in Scotland after testing positive for coronavirus, no change on Friday’s figure. The latest figures show that 18,340 people have tested positive for the virus in Scotland, up by seven from 18,333 the day before.
A total of six patients are in intensive care with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, a fall of six on the previous day.
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Belgium’s government has told its citizens not to travel to Leicester, the UK city currently facing tighter lockdown measures during a rise in Covid-19 infections, the PA Media news agency reports.
Advice from the Belgian foreign affairs department states that “travel is not allowed” and “quarantine is mandatory upon your return”.
Leicester has been put in a “red zone” of risky destinations in Belgium’s travel advice, alongside regions in Portugal and Spain.
The city became the first in England to have tighter restrictions reimposed on June 30, after an increase in Covid-19 infections was recorded. The regularly updated Belgian advice is based on “currently available information”, according to a note on the government’s website.
It also gives the go-ahead for travel to other areas of the EU, the Schengen zone and other parts of the United Kingdom.
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Briton among 71 arrested in Serbia over Covid-19 protests
A Briton and a Tunisian are among 71 people arrested in Serbia after a fourth night of rioting in Belgrade and other cities against the government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic and growing authoritarianism, according to AFP.
Thousands of people demonstrated in several cities on Friday, with protesters hurling stones at police in front of parliament in the capital. Some protesters also threw firecrackers and chanted nationalist slogans in Belgrade, according to AFP journalists.
“Among those arrested are many foreign nationals from Bosnia, Montenegro but also from Great Britain and Tunisia,” the police chief, Vladimir Rebic, said at a press conference.
Photographs of the British and Tunisian passports of two men were shown on a screen. According to local media, mostly tabloids close to power, the Briton is 24 years old, while the Tunisian is 54.
“These are the documents with which they entered Serbia,” said Rebic, who added that he intends to examine the influence of “these foreign factors on the violence of the demonstrations”.
“Serbia welcomed them hoping that they would come to have a good time with us, but they came to destroy and attack the police.”
Fourteen police officers were injured in Friday’s clashes, and 130 since the protests began on Tuesday, the police chief said. No figures have been given for the number of injured protesters.
The protesters have vented their frustration with President Aleksandar Vucic, who is seen by many as having facilitated a second wave of the virus by lifting an initial lockdown so that elections could be held on 21 June in which his Serbian Progressive party (SNS) largely won.
The first demonstration on Tuesday was triggered after Vucic announced the return of a weekend curfew to combat a second wave of coronavirus infections that has overwhelmed hospitals in Belgrade.
While the government backtracked on the curfew, the protests have continued against a leader accused of trampling on Serbia’s democratic institutions.
“The pressure cooker is now exploding,” Nemanja Rujevic, a Bonn-based Serbian journalist, told AFP, adding that the “unhinged” management of the health crisis compounded long-running frustration over Vucic’s authoritarian rule.
On Friday, the Serbian prime minister announced the highest daily number of deaths, 18, since the start of the pandemic in the Balkan country. The country has recorded more than 17,300 confirmed cases and 352 deaths since March and health authorities have warned that hospitals are almost full due to the latest surge in cases.
Updated
This is Damien Gayle back at the controls now, with thanks to Aaron for covering me while I took a break. As ever you can contact me via email at damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Dubai has announced a new package to help the economy cope with the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, worth 1.5 billion dirhams ($408 million).
The crown prince of the emirate, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al-Maktoum, made the announcement via his Twitter account on Saturday:
بتوجيهات صاحب السمو الشيخ محمد بن راشد.. اعتمدنا اليوم حزمة تحفيزية جديدة بقيمة 1.5 مليار درهم ليصل مجموع الحزم التحفيزية إلى 6.3 مليار درهم.. نهدف إلى تعزيز سيولة الشركات ودعم استمرارية أعمالها والتخفيف من تكلفة ممارسة الأعمال وتسهيل الإجراءات.. pic.twitter.com/Gpgih3Ut78
— Hamdan bin Mohammed (@HamdanMohammed) July 11, 2020
The package is the third announced by Dubai, the second largest and wealthiest member of the United Arab Emirates federation.
The three packages are worth a total of 6.3 billion dirhams, Sheikh Hamdan said.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has called for big gatherings such as weddings and wakes to be banned to stem a rise in coronavirus infections.
During a televised address, Rouhani said: “We must ban ceremonies and gatherings all over the country, whether it be wakes, weddings or parties.”
He said that “now is not the time for festivals or seminars”, adding that even university entrance exams may have to be suspended.
Shortly after the address, a police official in Tehran announced the closure of all wedding and mourning venues in the capital until further notice.
Iran has been gradually relaxing its lockdown since mid-April, but has recently reported a sharp rise in the infection rate.
The death toll on Saturday rose by 188 over the previous 24 hours to 12,635, while the total number of diagnosed cases reached 255,117, up by 2,397 during the same period, the health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on state TV.
Rouhani and other officials have blamed the rise in infections partly on wedding parties, wakes and other public gatherings.
During the same televised speech, Rouhani insisted the nation cannot afford to shut-down its sanctions-hit economy.
Updated
Dozens of US marines have been infected with coronavirus at two bases on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa in what is feared to be a significant outbreak, the Associated Press reports.
Okinawa prefectural officials said they could say only that a few dozen cases had been found recently because the US military asked that the exact figure not be released.
The outbreaks occurred at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is at the centre of a relocation dispute, and Camp Hansen, Okinawan officials said.
Local media, citing unnamed sources, said about 60 people had been infected.
“Okinawans are shocked by what we were told [by the US military],” governor Denny Tamaki told a news conference.
He questioned disease prevention measures taken by the US military and renewed his demand for transparency regarding the latest development.
Okinawan officials asked the US military on Friday to provide the number of cases and other details in order to address growing concerns among local residents, Tamaki said.
The marines said in a statement on Friday that troops were taking additional protective measures to limit the spread of the virus and were restricting off-base activities.
The statement said the measures “are to protect our forces, our families, and the local community”, without providing details on the infections.
Okinawa is home to more than half of about 50,000 American troops based in Japan under a bilateral security pact, and the residents are sensitive to US base-related problems.
Many Okinawans have long complained about pollution, noise and crime related to US bases.
Updated
Emirates, the Middle East’s largest air carrier, has cut a tenth of its workforce during the pandemic in layoffs that could rise to 15%, or 9,000 jobs, its president said.
The airline, which operates a fleet of 270 wide-bodied aircraft, halted operations in late March as part of global shutdowns to stem the spread of the virus.
It resumed two weeks later on a limited network and plans to fly to 58 cities by mid-August, down from about 157 before the crisis.
However, its president, Tim Clark, has said previously that it could take up to four years for operations to return to “some degree of normality”, and the airline has been staging rounds of layoffs, as recently as last week, without disclosing numbers.
Before the crisis hit, Emirates employed some 60,000 staff, including 4,300 pilots and nearly 22,000 cabin crew, according to its annual report.
Clark said in an interview with the BBC that the airline had already cut a tenth of its staff and that Emirates “will probably have to let go of a few more, probably up to 15%”.
A company spokeswoman told AFP the airline had nothing to add to the report.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said that airlines are in line to make a combined net loss of more than $84bn this year in the wake of the pandemic crisis, the biggest in the industry’s history.
Clark said in the interview that Emirates was “not as badly off as others” but that the crisis hit just as it was “heading for one of our best years ever”.
The Dubai-based airline had reported a bumper 21% rise in annual profits in March.
Updated
Bosnian Muslims have held a memorial ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre – the worst atrocity on European soil since the second world war.
Proceedings got under way on Saturday morning, with many mourners braving the tighter restrictions put in place to stem the spread of Covid-19.
A ceremony laying to rest the remains of nine victims identified over the past year took place at the memorial cemetery in Potočari, a village just outside Srebrenica which served as the base for the UN protection force during the conflict.
On 11 July, 1995, after capturing the town, Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in a few days.
Sehad Hasanovic, 27, has a two-year-old daughter - the same age he was when he lost his father in the violence.
“It’s difficult when you see someone calling their father and you don’t have one,” Hasanovic told AFP in tears, not dissuaded from attending the commemorations in spite of the virus.
His father, Semso, “left to go into the forest and never returned. Only a few bones have been found,” said Hasanovic.
Like his brother Sefik and father Sevko, Semso was killed when Bosnian Serb troops led by Ratko Mladić entered the Srebrenica enclave before systematically massacring Bosnian men and adolescents.
Updated
Good afternoon, it’s Aaron Walawalkar in London here. I’ll be taking over the global coronavirus live blog while my colleague Damien Gayle has a break. Please share your updates with me via Twitter DM on @AaronWala. I may not be able respond to all of them, but will read them.
Updated
Summary
Here are the main developments so far in coronavirus-related news around the world today:
India’s coronavirus cases have passed 800,000 with the biggest increase, of 27,114 cases, in the past 24 hours, causing nearly a dozen states to impose a partial lockdown in high-risk areas. The new confirmed cases took the national total to 820,916. The health ministry on Saturday also reported another 519 deaths for a total of 22,123.
Russia was fast approaching three-quarters of a million coronavirus cases on Saturday, as its latest update reported 6,611 new infections, taking its nationwide tally to 720,547. The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said 188 people had died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 11,205.
Bill Gates has called for Covid-19 drugs and any eventual vaccine to be made available to countries and people that need them most, not to the highest bidder, saying that relying on market forces to ensure their distribution would prolong the pandemic. He said efforts which began two decades ago to battle the global HIV/Aids crisis could serve as a model for making Covid-19 medicines widely accessible.
The European parliament has voted to temporarily derogate certain restrictions around clinical trials of drugs containing genetically modified organisms to speed up the development of a coronavirus vaccine. MEPs on Friday used an “urgent procedure” process to adopt a new regulation to speed up the development of Covid-19 treatments and vaccines containing GMOs.
The UK is set to make the wearing of face masks mandatory in shops, in the latest bid to try to curb the spread of coronavirus. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, last night vowed to “get stricter” on their use and said he was “looking at ways of making sure” that more people covered their faces indoors. Wearing masks in shops is already mandatory in Scotland.
The British pilot who spent two months on life support in Vietnam as the country’s most at-risk Covid-19 patient was on his way home on Saturday, astounding doctors who gave him just a 10% chance of survival. Stephen Cameron, 42, was the sickest Covid-19 patient medics had to treat in Vietnam, which has recorded no deaths.
Updated
The president of Iran has said the country cannot afford to shut down its sanctions-hit economy, even as the nation reels from a second-wave coronavirus outbreak that has brought rising infections and record high death tolls.
Iran must continue “economic, social and cultural activities while observing health protocols”, Hassan Rouhani said during a televised virus taskforce meeting on Saturday, according to AP.
“The simplest solution is to close down all activities, (but) the next day, people would come out to protest the (resulting) chaos, hunger, hardship and pressure,” he added.
Rouhani’s comments came as the health ministry reported 2,397 new cases over the past 24 hours on Saturday, taking the country’s total confirmed coronavirus cases to 255,117.
Sima Sadat Lari, the health ministry spokeswoman, said 188 more people had died, taking the country’s total death toll to 12,635.
So far, 217,666 have recovered and 3,338 remain in critical condition, said Lari.
#Iran's Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on Saturday that some 188 more Iranians have died from #coronavirus disease (#COVID19) over the past 24 hours bringing the total deaths to 12,635 https://t.co/O7HRvyl1Kr pic.twitter.com/5DBgc2gQhy
— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) July 11, 2020
Iran has been struggling since late February to contain the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, the deadliest in the Middle East. The daily death toll has topped 100 since around mid-June, with a record single-day tally of 221 reported on Thursday.
The outbreak’s rising toll has prompted authorities to make wearing masks mandatory in enclosed public spaces and to allow the hardest hit provinces to reimpose restrictive measures.
Iran closed schools, cancelled public events and banned movement between its 31 provinces in March, but Rouhani’s government progressively lifted restrictions from April to reopen its sanctions-hit economy.
“It is not possible to keep businesses and economic activities shut down in the long-term,” Rouhani said, emphasising that “the people will not accept this”.
The health minister, Said Namaki, warned on Wednesday of a potential “revolt over poverty” and blamed US sanctions for the government’s “empty coffers”.
The reopening of the economy “was not over our ignorance (of the virus’ dangers), but it was due to us being on our knees against an economy that could take no more”, Namaki said on state television.
Vietnam's sickest Covid-19 patient returning to UK
The British pilot who spent two months on life support in Vietnam as the country’s most at-risk Covid-19 patient was on his way home on Saturday, astounding doctors who gave him just a 10% chance of survival, AFP reports.
Stephen Cameron, 42, was the sickest patient medics had had to treat during the coronavirus outbreak in Vietnam, which has recorded no official deaths following a fast and aggressive response to the pandemic.
Little more than six weeks ago, they warned that Cameron would need a double transplant for his lungs, which were only functioning at around 10%.
But after nearly four months in hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, including 10 weeks on a ventilator, the Vietnam Airlines pilot from Motherwell, Scotland, was discharged on Saturday and was due to fly back to the UK within hours.
“I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of the Vietnamese people, the dedication and professionalism of the doctors and nurses ... the odds say that I shouldn’t be here so I can only thank everybody here for what they’ve done,” Cameron said as he left Cho Ray hospital. “I go home with a happy heart because I’m going home, but a sad one because I’m leaving so many people here that I’ve made friends with.”
Known as Patient 91, Cameron became the focus of media attention as the country’s top medical professionals met to brainstorm treatment options. The news that he would need a lung transplant was met with 59 donation offers, according to the health ministry.
But after waking from a coma at the end of May, there were small signs of improvement – a thumbs-up sign for an attentive doctor, a trip on to the balcony to catch some sunshine and a video of him holding a Motherwell Football Club scarf aloft.
On Saturday – as state media said his treatment bill had reached at least $150,000 – he was well enough to catch a repatriation flight to London, accompanied by three doctors.
His return home comes as Vietnam celebrated 85 days with no community transmission of the coronavirus. The country has just 370 confirmed cases and zero deaths, but its borders remain largely shut. More than 10,000 people are in mandatory quarantine.
Updated
At least two doctors in Syria’s north-west have been infected with the coronavirus, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the overcrowded rebel enclave to three, a monitoring group has told the Associated Press.
Syrian opposition and militant groups control the Idlib area, which is home to more than 3 million people, most of them displaced by the war and living in tent camps and overcrowded facilities. Local health facilities have been targeted in Syrian government attacks that have recently displaced nearly another million people.
The Early Warning and Alert Response Network, which reports on the virus, said the two doctors had been in touch with patient zero, another doctor who works in a hospital in Idlib.
The first case was reported on Thursday and the hospital where the doctor works has since suspended its operations and quarantined patients and support staff to carry out testing.
The enclave is now under threat of losing crucial humanitarian aid access. Moves by Russia, a major ally of the Syrian government, at the UN security council are threatening to shut down border crossings between the rebel-held enclave and Turkey.
A divided security council failed for a second time on Friday to agree on extending humanitarian aid deliveries to the area from Turkey as the current UN mandate to do so ended.
Updated
British tourists can expect “90% of normality” as flights and holidays restart for the UK’s biggest tour operator, but they need to be prepared for some changes and to follow local coronavirus rules, said Andrew Andrew Flintham, the managing director of Tui UK and Northern Ireland.
Starting this weekend, the company will run a limited number of flights and holidays to the Spanish destinations of Ibiza, Lanzarote, Palma and Tenerife, the PA news agency reports.
While new British quarantine rules mean travellers will no longer need to self-isolate when returning to or visiting the UK from certain countries, there are still foreign coronavirus regulations to consider.
From Monday, the Balearic government has ruled that face masks must be worn on its islands at all times, apart from at beaches, swimming pools and while doing sports.
Anyone breaking the rule in public spaces risks receiving a €100 fine.
Travellers arriving in Ibiza have to fill in health check forms in advance and will have their temperature screened at the airport.
Flintham acknowledge peopled would need to observe local rules said they would still “be able to enjoy the major amenities and the things that you really, really want”.
He said: “The 90%, or the 85%, of the normality of your holiday is going to be there.”
Under Covid-19 related changes, travellers can expect to see Tui cabin crew wearing masks and gloves while in the air as well as providing sachets of hand gel to passengers. Current flight service on planes does not include hot food or duty free sales.
Updated
Indonesia reported 1,671 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, bringing the total count to 74,018, a health ministry official, Achmad Yurianto, told a televised news briefing, according to Reuters.
Deaths from the virus rose by 66 on Saturday, bringing the total tally to 3,535, he said, while 34,719 people have recovered.
The European parliament has voted to temporarily derogate certain restrictions around clinical trials of drugs containing genetically modified organisms to speed up the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
MEPs on Friday used an “urgent procedure” process to adopt a new regulation to speed up the development of Covid-19 treatments and vaccines containing GMOs, which would otherwise be restricted by EU GMO directives, according to a European parliament press release.
The regulation was passed by 505 votes to 67, with 109 abstentions. According to “background” cited in the statement:
The commission has proposed a regulation to derogate temporarily - only for the period during which Covid-19 is a public health emergency – from certain provisions of the GMO directive for clinical trials on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments that contain or consist of GMOs. The derogation should apply only to operations necessary to conduct the clinical trial phase and for compassionate or emergency use in the context of Covid-19.
The derogation will facilitate the development, authorisation and consequently availability of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. When debated last week in the committee on the environment, public health and food safety, members agreed on the need to adapt the rules but stressed that standards for vaccine quality, safety and efficacy must be maintained.
Updated
South Korea has reported 35 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing its caseload to 13,373 infections and 288 deaths, the Associated Press reports.
South Korea’s centres for disease control and prevention said on Saturday that 13 of the new cases were in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, which has been at the centre of a virus resurgence since late May.
Infections were also reported in other major cities, such as Daejeon and Gwangju, where patients have been linked to various places, including churches, a Buddhist temple, nursing homes and a sauna.
Fifteen of the new cases were linked to international arrivals.
Updated
Bill Gates has called for Covid-19 drugs and any eventual vaccine to be made available to countries and people that need them most, not to the highest bidder, saying that relying on market forces to ensure their distribution would prolong the pandemic, according to Reuters.
The Microsoft tycoon said in a video released on Saturday:
If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we’ll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic.
We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity, not just on market-driven factors.
Gates made his money through the Microsoft software company, whose operating systems and Office software have dominated the market for decades. In recent years he has become one of the world’s biggest philanthropic givers, through his foundation becoming the largest private donor to the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance, among other organisations. Gates’s foundation also provides funding to the Guardian’s global development desk.
Speaking in the video, which was released for a virtual Covid-19 conference organised by the International Aids Society, Gates said efforts which began two decades ago to battle the global HIV/Aids crisis – when countries came together to eventually make medicines available in most of the world including Africa – could serve as a model for making Covid-19 medicines widely accessible.
As examples he pointed to the 2002-created Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the US-based President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief to get medicines to people to combat some of the world’s deadliest diseases.
“One of the best lessons in the fight against HIV/Aids is the importance of building this large, fair global distribution system to get the drugs out to everyone,” Gates said.
Updated
In the US, the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a surge in RV or motorhome purchasing and rental, and enthusiastic camping and “glamping” bookings as Americans attempt to escape months of quarantine for a summer break while avoiding flights and keeping their distance, writes Miranda Bryant in New York for the Guardian US.
The pandemic, which continues to rage across the US, has made many traditional holiday activities either impossible or unappealing, putting millions off flying abroad, going to crowded resort hotels, group holidays or cruises. But experts say the apparent lower risk of transmission in the open is putting outdoor holidays in demand – and attracting new fans.
Camping and glamping booking services report huge spikes in business, with some being 400% busier than the same time last year, following the reopening of states for business. RV companies said business is “booming” in rental and sales.
Meanwhile, the outdoors retailer REI said it has seen record growth in its camping department in the last six weeks as people rush to buy equipment.
Updated
The UK government is poised to launch an emergency drive to slim down the nation and reduce the incidence of conditions such as type 2 diabetes before an expected second wave of coronavirus, writes Peter Walker, the Guardian’s political correspondent.
Downing Street is planning what has been billed as a “war against obesity” after Boris Johnson needed intensive care treatment for Covid-19, which the prime minister reportedly blamed on his weight.
As well as longer-term proposals to reduce the incidence of obesity, government officials are having urgent discussions about how to persuade people to lose weight in the next few months, before an anticipated resurgence in coronavirus cases in the autumn.
The UK has experienced the highest death rate from coronavirus in Europe, and one potential factor may be high rates of obesity and associated lifestyle-linked conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, which are strongly associated with worse Covid-19 outcomes.
India passes 800,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus
India’s coronavirus cases have passed 800,000 with the biggest spike of 27,114 cases in the past 24 hours, causing nearly a dozen states to impose a partial lockdown in high-risk areas, the Associated Press reports.
The new confirmed cases took the national total to 820,916. The health ministry on Saturday also reported another 519 deaths for a total of 22,123.
As reported earlier, India is now the world’s third-worst affected country by case load.
A surge in infections saw the cases jumping from 600,000 to more than 800,000 in nine days. The ministry said the recovery rate was continuing to improve at more than 62%.
Eight of India’s 28 states, including the worst-hit Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi, account for nearly 90% of all infections.
The most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, with nearly 230 million people, imposed a weekend lockdown while several others announced restrictions in districts reporting major spikes.
Updated
Metropolitan Melbourne returned to lockdown on 8 July after Victoria recorded 191 new cases of coronavirus since the start of the week, which was, at the time, the highest daily increase since the pandemic began.
Guardian Australia’s Melissa Davey explains why the stage 3 stay-at-home orders were announced, how the latest lockdown has been met with a mixture of fury and acceptance, and whether this apparent second wave could have been avoided.
Updated
In Bangladesh, thousands of beds for coronavirus patients are lying empty, despite a rising caseload, because people are to scared to go to hospitals, officials and patients say, according to Agence France-Presse.
Some patients have told health workers they would “rather die at home than die in a hospital”, an official for a medical charity told AFP. Bangladesh has registered about 180,000 Covid-19 infections, and around 3,000 new cases are being added each day, while the death toll stood at 2,275 by Friday.
But medical experts say the real figures are likely to be much higher because so little testing has been carried out.
In the capital, Dhaka, about 4,750 of 6,305 beds set aside for coronavirus patients are not being used, the government’s health department acknowledged. At a new 2,000-bed field hospital built specially to care for coronavrus patients, only about 100 people are inside.
Authorities in the second city of Chittagong, which has emerged as a virus hotspot, say only half of its dedicated hospital beds are currently filled.
The two cities have a combined population of 25 million and account for around 80% of Bangladesh’s 87,000 active cases.
The health department said the beds were not being used because many sufferers were being treated at home.
Updated
Russia was fast approaching three quarters of a million coronavirus cases on Saturday, as its latest update reported 6,611 new infections, taking its nationwide tally to 720,547, according to Reuters.
The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said 188 people had died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 11,205.
So far 497,446 people have recovered from the virus.
Updated
The former UK health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is spreading the message that Britons should wear face coverings in shops, in an appearance on the radio this morning.
Three UK papers carried front page stories this morning suggesting that a move to make masks mandatory indoors was imminent. Hunt, chairman of the house of commons health and social care committee, called for simple government messaging.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
I’m afraid I do go all ‘nanny’ on that one.
I understand the public health advice, which is that if there’s a risk of being less than two metres close to someone then you should wear it but if not you don’t have to.
But it doesn’t answer the basic question which is: ‘If I’m going shopping, should I wear a face mask or not?’
And I think with public health advice in a pandemic you just need simplicity, so I would favour saying we should wear face masks in shops.
Updated
Philip Alston, the outgoing special rapporteur on extreme poverty at the UN High Commission for Human Rights, has written for the Guardian on how the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed a hidden pandemic of poverty that had been masked by wishful thinking and a misleading benchmark set by the World Bank. He writes:
Poverty is suddenly all over the front page. As coronavirus ravages the globe, its wholly disproportionate impact on poor people and marginalised communities is inescapable. Hundreds of millions of people are being pushed into poverty and unemployment, with woeful support in most places, alongside a huge expansion in hunger, homelessness, and dangerous work.
How could the poverty narrative have turned on a dime? Until just a few months ago, many were celebrating the imminent end of poverty; now it’s everywhere. The explanation is simple. Over the past decade, world leaders, philanthropists and pundits have embraced a deceptively optimistic narrative about the world’s progress against poverty. It has been lauded as one of the “greatest human achievements”, a feat seen “never before in human history” and an “unprecedented” accomplishment. But the success story was always highly misleading.
As I show in my final report as UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, almost all of these rosy accounts rely on one measure – the World Bank’s $1.90 (£1.50) a day international poverty line – which is widely misunderstood, flawed and yields a deceptively positive picture. It has generated an undue sense of satisfaction and a dangerous complacency with the status quo.
Under that line, the number of people in “extreme poverty” fell from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 736 million in 2015. But the dramatic drop is only possible with a scandalously unambitious benchmark, which aims to ensure a mere miserable subsistence. The best evidence shows it doesn’t even cover the cost of food or housing in many countries. And it obscures poverty among women and those often excluded from official surveys, such as migrant workers and refugees. Much of the touted decline is due to rising incomes in a single country, China.
The consequences of this highly unrealistic picture of progress against poverty have been devastating.
Click through to read more - it is worth reading in full.
Updated
There is no single story dominating the headlines on the newstands in the UK on Saturday morning.
The Guardian reports an exclusive on a “radical and politically risky reorganisation of the NHS” which comes as the government grows increasingly frustrated at the health service’s chief executive, Simon Stevens.
Guardian front page, Saturday 11 July 2020: Johnson gambles on radical NHS overhaul pic.twitter.com/dAtfLJXcDV
— The Guardian (@guardian) July 10, 2020
Denis Campbell, our health policy correspondent, writes:
The prime minister has set up a taskforce to devise plans for how ministers can regain much of the direct control over the NHS they lost in 2012 under a controversial shake-up masterminded by Andrew Lansley, the then coalition government health secretary ...
In the summer, the taskforce will present Johnson with a set of detailed options to achieve those goals, and that will be followed by a parliamentary bill to enact the proposals, it is understood.
The Times, the Telegraph and the Independent all go with the story that the wearing of facemasks may become mandatory in shops, in the latest bid to try to curb the spread of coronavirus, which has been particularly disastrous in the UK.
Saturday's Times: "'Wear masks in shops'" (via @MsHelicat) #TomorrowsPapersToday #BBCPapers pic.twitter.com/Nh7AqQG1n7
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 10, 2020
Tomorrow’s Telegraph front page: “Face masks to be compulsory in shops”#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/yeg6LJpkga
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 10, 2020
Tomorrow's @independent front page #tomorrowspaperstoday To subscribe to the Daily Edition https://t.co/XF8VnDpHYF pic.twitter.com/xThAjT211l
— The Independent (@Independent) July 11, 2020
According to the Times:
Boris Johnson is poised to make face coverings compulsory in shops after mounting evidence that they slow the spread of coronavirus.
The prime minister promised last night to get “stricter” on their use and said he was “looking at ways of making sure” that more people covered their faces indoors.
A government source said it was a “fair assumption” that masks would become mandatory in shops and other indoor settings within a few weeks.
The Financial Times reports on a fall in UK government borrowing costs, which will come in handy for the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, given that he has had to borrow so much money for the government’s stimulus packages to ameliorate the effects of the coronavirus lockdown.
Just published: front page of the Financial Times UK edition, https://t.co/5gXWtrt5I2 pic.twitter.com/d1nwuJ3lyq
— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) July 10, 2020
Unfortunately the FT doesn’t give much away for free so you’ll have to subscribe for a taste of what it is they have found out.
At the Daily Mail, interest in the coronavirus has apparently waned, and they have a Covid-19-free front page. Instead the paper reports on an alleged honours scandal.
Saturday's @DailyMailUK #MailFrontPages pic.twitter.com/VAA5xD7KN0
— Daily Mail U.K. (@DailyMailUK) July 10, 2020
The Mail reports:
A firm boasted it could win a gong for a celebrity author for £80,000, the Daily Mail reveals today.
Leaked emails expose a cynical offer to help Barbara Taylor Bradford become a dame by getting direct feedback from ‘the people that matter’.
The brazen messages stated: ‘Basically our fee is 80K plus VAT ... we bill half up front and half once the damehood has been awarded.’ Hundreds of applicants have used fee-paying companies to help win honours - a practice critics say devalues the entire system.
The Daily Express returns to a favoured bugbear - TV licences. Their “Great TV licence revolt” story reports on the fallout from the decision to take free TV licences away from pensioners.
Saturday's Express: "The great TV licence revolt" (via @MsHelicat) #TomorrowsPapersToday #BBCPapers pic.twitter.com/ZCafqtbeIg
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 10, 2020
Says the Express:
MILLIONS of pensioners are threatening a revolt over the BBC’s “heartless” decision to axe free TV licences for over-75s.
Furious older viewers plan to paralyse the Beeb’s system by cancelling direct debits and standing orders and paying by cheque instead.
The revolt has already resulted in 40,000 messages being sent to BBC director-general Tony Hall. Now millions are being asked to bombard the Prime Minister’s Twitter account to protest at the over-75s losing the perk next month.
The Mirror has a story about hunting. The US dentist who drew worldwide revulsion and fury for killing a much-loved lion is reportedly back on the prowl, killing more wild animals.
Tomorrow's front page: Bloodlust #tomorrowspaperstoday
— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) July 10, 2020
https://t.co/vbN25BQGJ2 pic.twitter.com/imi98U3X9E
“THE dentist who slayed Cecil the lion five years ago is hunting again,” according to the Mirror.
Walter Palmer, 60, paid up to £80,000 to slaughter a huge ram in Mongolia.
But after the outrage over the death of Cecil, the American “driller killer’s” face is hidden on photos boasting of the hunt.
Humane Society International said: “Clearly the killing for kicks continues”.
And the i leads on the prime minister’s demand that the plebs go back to work. “Get back to the office, says PM.”
i weekend: "Get back to the office, says PM" (via @MsHelicat) #TomorrowsPapersToday #BBCPapers pic.twitter.com/CmBn2QCvi7
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 10, 2020
According to its story:
Boris Johnson called for workers to return to the factory or office if they can in a major shift of emphasis in the Government’s coronavirus strategy.
The Prime Minister said “the faster we can get back to the status quo ante the better” for industries such as hospitality, manufacturing and academia as he signalled he is keen to speed up the UK’s exit from lockdown.
Official Government guidelines state everyone should “work from home if you can” and “stay at home as much as possible” in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Updated
Good evening, good afternoon, good morning.
This is Damien Gayle in London taking you through the next few hours of coronavirus-related updates and headlines from around the world.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions, please feel free to drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Summary
I will be handing the blog over to my colleagues in the UK now. Thank you for following us here in Sydney and Melbourne today. Here is a wrap of the day so far:
- Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration granted provisional approval for the use of the drug remdesivir in the treatment of Covid-19, making Australia one of the first countries to authorise its use for coronavirus, after regulators in Japan, Singapore and the EU.
- The Australian state of Victoria recorded 216 new cases of Covid-19 and one death, a man in his 90s who died in hospital. Some 186 of those cases are under investigation.
- Meanwhile the state of New South Wales recorded seven new cases, including one of the two confirmed cases linked to the Crossroads Hotel in Casula. Three close contacts of the man who attended the Sydney pub on 3 July have also tested positive, and their results will be reflected in Sunday’s figures for NSW.
- The number of daily cases in the United States hit record levels again, increasing by nearly 69,000.
- Serbia announced a record Covid-19 death toll for a single day on Friday, with the prime minister, Ana Brnabic, saying the Balkan state recorded 18 fatalities and 386 new cases over 24 hours in what she described as a “dramatic increase”.
- India is now the world’s third-worst affected country, based on data from Johns Hopkins University. The country has tallied 793,802 infections and more than 21,600 deaths, with cases doubling every three weeks.
Stay safe everyone.
Updated
Update | Pakenham police station is also closed due to #COVID19. I'm told incidents are being redirected to Dandenong, 32km away @theheraldsun https://t.co/3z9lCYySmu
— Aneeka Simonis (@AneekaSimonis) July 11, 2020
From AFP:
Conservationists have warned a sudden change in Myanmar’s law allowing the commercial farming of tigers, pangolins and other endangered species risks further fuelling demand in China for rare wildlife products.
The south-east Asian nation is already a hub for the illegal trafficking of wildlife, a trade driven by demand from neighbouring China and worth an estimated $20bn worldwide.
In June, Myanmar’s Forest Department quietly gave the green light to private zoos to apply for licences to breed 90 species, more than 20 of which are endangered or critically endangered.
It was an unexpected move that caught conservation groups off guard but was explained by the Forest Department as a way to help reduce poaching of wild species and illegal breeding.
Tigers – thought to number just 22 in Myanmar – pangolins, elephants and various vulture species as well as the critically endangered Ayeyarwady dolphin and Siamese crocodile can now also be bred for their meat and skin.
But conservationists say commercial farming in the long term legitimises the use of endangered species and fuels market demand.
“Commercial trade has been shown to increase illegal trade in wildlife by creating a parallel market and boosting overall demand for wild animal products,” conservation groups WWF and Fauna & Flora International said in a joint statement.
Experts also fear Myanmar’s lack of capacity to regulate the trade raises the risk of disease spillover to humans from animals and even the “next Covid-19”.
John Goodrich from global wild cat conservation organisation Panthera warned farming can also “provide a means for laundering wild specimens”, complicating efforts to police the trade.
Updated
Here is a little more on the situation in Queensland where the border has just reopened to tourists, except for Victorians.
From AAP:
Tourists continue to stream into Queensland as the state recorded two new cases of Covid-19.
But premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says the new cases are ADF personnel who have been in isolation since returning recently from overseas.
“They are not considered a risk to the public,” she said.
The new cases reported on Saturday came after three days without any cases being detected in Queensland.
They bring the number of active cases in Queensland to three.
The Sunshine state opened its borders on Friday to interstate travellers, apart from those who have been in Victoria during the past 14 days, for the first time since 25 March.
Carloads of tourists were backed up on Gold Coast roads on Saturday as police checked border passes.
But the queues were far shorter than the 12km lines reported by the Australian Traffic Network on Friday.
Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate welcomed the travellers, saying “without the traffic you wouldn’t have the tourism influx”.
He said the average hotel occupancy was already surpassing 75 per cent in a much-needed boost for the tourism industry.
“The signals are out there that the Gold Coast is open for business,” Tate said on Saturday.
Police commissioner Katarina Carroll said police had intercepted 32,000 vehicles entering Queensland since 3 July and turned away 1,542 people.
Queensland’s airports are also teeming with interstate arrivals keen to soak up the sun and warmer weather, with another 4,500 expected to touch down over the weekend.
On Friday, there had been almost 314,000 downloads of the week-long border pass needed to enter the state.
Anyone who experiences symptoms within two weeks of their arrival in Queensland must get tested or face a $4,004 fine.
Updated
On that note I’m signing off from lockdown in Victoria, Australia, and handing this liveblog over to Lisa Cox in Sydney, who is still able to enjoy such pleasures as pub meals.
However, Sydney and the entire state of New South Wales remain on high alert given the situation in Victoria. Some have expressed concern that as NSW returns slowly to normal, it may experience a similar situation to its neighbour state. In the meantime, the state border is closed. Two Covid-19 cases in NSW, a man and a woman, have been linked to the same Sydney pub. Three people who have had close contact with the man have also contracted coronavirus. So everyone must remain vigilant, no matter where they live.
Thanks for joining me throughout our coverage so far. Stay safe.
Updated
I’ve had many teachers in Victoria, Australia, contact me today saying they are concerned because they will be returning to the workplace on Monday without updated written safety procedures and guidance.
The Victorian Education Department has not provided schools with the updated Operations Guide the premier committed to earlier this week. Yet the government has also told teachers they will need to implement a temperature checking regime for students when students return.
So far the only guidance teachers have received about implementing this has come from their own school leadership and from the education union. I chased this up with the Victorian government today and was told by a spokesman for the education minister: “An updated operations guide will be issued to Victorian government schools imminently.”
The government has had to grapple with a rise in cases, lockdown and a massively expanding testing regime in recent weeks as well as changes to the way schools will run, so it’s understandable it’s been a bit of a scramble for them to get the guidance and sign-off required to develop the guidelines. Big thanks to all of the teachers and principals throughout the state for all the work you do, and all the best for the return to school on Monday.
Updated
Dr Nick Coatsworth is addressing the issue of masks in Australia, and makes the important point they are really only significantly effective when there are large amounts of community transmission. He said it would not be useful to advise people in Western Australia, for example, to wear masks, where there appears to be no community transmission.
They key methods of containing Covid-19 remained hand washing and hygiene, social distancing, and staying at home when sick and getting tested. There have been many misleading statements made by some in the past couple of weeks about masks, including that they are the most effective way to prevent spread.
“Masks are part of a suite of protective measures,” Coatsworth said.
While it’s challenging what’s happening in Victoria at the moment ... all it took in New Zealand was one or two cases to cause a significant amount of concern in the community. We have to learn to live with Covid-19.
Victorians have been advised to wear masks in situations where social distancing is not possible, but it is not an order – just guidance at this stage.
He was asked about Victoria and at what point there would be so many cases the contact tracing system would become overwhelmed.
This is a national response to Covid-19 so contact tracers are being mobilised nationally to assist colleagues in Victoria who have been working night and day on this ... there’s some fantastic work being done in Victoria.
Updated
Covid-19 drug remdesivir not a silver bullet, Australia's deputy medical chief says
Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, is holding a press conference, highlighting the 227 new cases in Australia over the past 24 hours.
We know of those, the bulk – 216 – were from Victoria. Most of the rest were from returned travellers from overseas now in other states and territories and being kept in hotel quarantine. However, New South Wales also has three cases acquired in the community, close contacts of a known case. Australia-wide, 16 patients are in intensive care.
Coatsworth is speaking about Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, granting provisional approval for the antiviral drug remdesivir to be used as the first treatment option for Covid-19. It has received provisional approval for use in adults and adolescent patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms in hospital.
“It stops the virus from multiplying further in the body,” he said. “The important thing to note is none [of the drugs available] are a silver bullet. None of the international trials that have been conducted have shown marked results but they have shown some results that indicate remdesivir might be effective in patients with moderate to severe disease.”
He said the drug seemed to be associated with a reduction in length of hospital stay due to reduction of severe adverse events.
“What we don’t know yet is whether it has a conclusive effect on mortality,” he said.
Australians should understand that our key defence against severe Covid 19-case was the work of it’s highly qualified intensive care nurses and doctors, Coatsworth said. It was this team, not drugs, that meant Australians should feel safe.
“Remdesivir is very certainly good news but the best thing we have is skilled doctors and nurses,” he said.
The current stockpile of remdesivir in Australia is enough for coming weeks in Australia, Coatsworth said. The US bought up most global supply of the drug back in June. But as I reported a couple of weeks ago, the manufacturer of the drug, Gilead, donated a significant amount of the drug to the national medical stockpile, which Coatsworth said he was confident would last for several weeks, until more supply could be secured.
Updated
Thanks to one of our readers Tom, from Ukraine, who alerted me to the latest figures there. Yesterday’s coronavirus death count for Ukraine brought its weekly total to a new record. There have been 1,345 deaths overall there, and a record 118 deaths in the past week.
Updated
More details on the latest figures from Victoria, Australia.
Asked about cluster details, Daniel Andrews said there'd be a full press release from the health department later today. It lists numbers by LGA - but there's no link to what cluster current cases are connected with. pic.twitter.com/TtgWG5B8kv
— Karen Sweeney (@karenlsweeney) July 11, 2020
Western Australia has reported two new cases of Covid-19 overnight, as well as two historical cases, bringing the state’s total to 634. The two new cases are returned overseas travellers currently in hotel quarantine. The two historical cases were based on serology – these cases were linked to cruise ship travel.
India now third hardest-hit country
In just three weeks, India went from the worlds sixth worst-affected country by the coronavirus to the third, AP reports, based on data from Johns Hopkins University.
India’s fragile health system was bolstered during a stringent months-long lockdown, but could still be overwhelmed by an exponential rise in infections.
India has tallied 793,802 infections and more than 21,600 deaths, with cases doubling every three weeks. It’s testing more than 250,000 samples daily after months of sluggishness, but experts say this is insufficient for a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
“This whole thing about the peak is a false bogey because we won’t have one peak in India, but a series of peaks,” said Dr Anant Bhan, a bioethics and global health researcher. He pointed out that the capital of New Delhi and India’s financial capital, Mumbai, had already seen surges, while infections had now begun spreading to smaller cities as governments eased restrictions.
The actual toll would be unknown, he said, unless India made testing more accessible.
Updated
From AFP:
The World Health Organization has urged countries grappling with coronavirus to step up control measures, saying it is still possible to rein it in, as some nations clamp fresh restrictions on citizens.
With case numbers worldwide more than doubling in the past six weeks, Uzbekistan on Friday returned to lockdown and Hong Kong said schools would close from Monday after the city recorded “exponential growth” in locally transmitted infections.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries to adopt an aggressive approach, highlighting Italy, Spain, South Korea and India’s biggest slum to show it was possible to stop the spread, no matter how bad the outbreak.
The health agency’s comments came as US president Donald Trump was forced to cancel an election rally in New Hampshire, citing an approaching storm. Trump has pushed to hold large gatherings against health advice as epidemiologists warn of the dangers posed by the virus moving through the air in crowded and confined spaces.
On a visit to Florida on Friday, Trump hit out at Beijing over the pandemic.
“(The) relationship with China has been severely damaged. They could have stopped the plague ... They didn’t stop it,” he told reporters.
The virus has killed at least 556,140 people worldwide since it emerged in China last December. The US, the country worst hit by the illness, reported almost 64,000 new cases Friday and the death toll now stands at just under 134,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil, the second-hardest hit, surpassed 70,000 deaths and reported 45,000 new infections, the health ministry said.
In Uzbekistan, citizens were from Friday facing lockdown restrictions again that were originally imposed in March but lifted gradually over the past two months.
The central Asian country’s return to confinement followed a decision by Australia to lock down its second-biggest city Melbourne from Thursday.
Updated
French bus driver dies after attack over mask-wearing rules
A French bus driver who was badly beaten by passengers after asking them to wear face masks in line with coronavirus rules has died, his family said, sparking tributes from political leaders who condemned his “cowardly” attackers.
AFP reports that Philippe Monguillot, 59, was left brain dead by the attack in the southwestern town of Bayonne last weekend and died in hospital on Friday, his daughter Marie said, after his family decided to switch off his life-support system.
“We decided to let him go. The doctors were in favour and we were as well,” she told AFP.
Two men have been charged with attempted murder over the attack and prosecutor Jerome Bourrier told AFP that he would ask for the charges to be upgraded following Monguillot’s death.
France’s prime minister Jean Castex led tributes to Monguillot.
“The Republic recognises him as an exemplary citizen and will not forget him. The law will punish the perpetrators of this despicable crime,” he tweeted, describing the attack as “cowardly”.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who was due to meet some of Bayonne’s bus drivers on Saturday and discuss the security situation, labelled it an “abhorrent act”.
“The coward responsible must not go unpunished,” he added.
Monguillot’s family had organised a silent march in his honour on Wednesday, departing from the bus stop where the assault took place.
His colleagues refused to work after the attack but will resume work on Monday under stepped-up security arrangements, the local operator Keolis said.
This will include security agents being deployed on the long buses that operate in Bayonne and its surrounding area.
Three other people have been charged in connection with the attack, two for failing to assist a person in danger and another for attempting to hide a suspect, the prosecutor’s office said.
The two charged with attempted murder are aged 22 and 23 and were previously known to police.
Thanks to Lisa Cox for handling the blog for me while I had a little break, Melissa Davey back here with you now reporting from Melbourne.
It’s just been announced that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 378 to 198,556, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. The reported death toll rose by six to 9,060, the tally showed.
Victoria has a breakdown of today’s Covid-19 numbers.
The total number of cases in the state since the start of the pandemic is now 3,560. Of today’s 216 cases, 181 are new, with 35 reclassified.
There are 1,249 active cases and 535 may indicate community transmission.
There is still no new detail on which of the cases are linked to known outbreaks and clusters.
By local government area, the areas with the highest numbers of cases are Hume (354 cases, 176 of them active), Melbourne (318 cases, 203 of them active) and Wyndham (263 cases, 175 of them active).
Updated
And here is that how-to guide on masks that the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, mentioned this morning.
When Victoria's CHO Professor Brett Sutton said he'd made a video about masks, I sort of hoped to see him making his own. But this is good too. #coronavirusvic #COVID19Aushttps://t.co/Y0gAaxN1pz
— Karen Sweeney (@karenlsweeney) July 11, 2020
Just a little more from that Victorian media conference earlier today. Late in the press conference, the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, was asked about the current suppression approach to the pandemic and whether an elimination strategy should be considered. He said the suppression approach was a decision by national cabinet. Here are his comments:
As a public health person, I’d be happy if elimination were a feasible thing to achieve because it has its challenges.
You absolutely need to not reintroduce virus at any point, once you’ve eliminated it. It will take off.
The challenges of suppression are very substantial as well, especially if the vaccine is 18 months or more away.
I think it’s [elimination] not the national decision at the moment. I would hope that as we move through this phase in Victoria, and, look at everything occurring across the rest of Australia, that we don’t close ourselves off to a reevaluation and reappraisal of what the pros and cons are.
Updated
Afternoon recap
I’m taking a short break to refill the coffee cup before I return to take you through the rest of the afternoon. In the meantime I’m handing the blog over to my colleague Lisa Cox in Sydney.
To recap events so far:
- Australia’s drugs regulator has granted provisional approval for the drug remdesivir to be used as the first treatment option for Covid-19. Australia is the one of the first regulators to authorise the use of remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19, following on from recent approvals in European Union, Japan, and Singapore.
- New cases of Covid-19 rose by nearly 69,000 across the US on Friday. Meanwhile, the US has welcomed the World Health Organization’s probe into the origins of virus.
- The premier of the state of Victoria, Australia, has announced 216 new cases of Covid-19 and one death as the state grapples with a second wave of the virus as the rest of the country has the virus largely contained.
- Two Covid-19 cases in New South Wales, Australia, a man and a woman, have been linked to the same pub. Three people who have had close contact with the man have also contracted coronavirus.
- Serbia announced a record Covid-19 death toll for a single day on Friday, with prime minister Ana Brnabic saying the Balkan state recorded 18 fatalities and 386 new cases over 24 hours in what she described as a “dramatic increase”.
- France has become the sixth country to report a death toll of more than 30,000.
- The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Friday, with the total rising by 228,102 in 24 hours.
Updated
In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), no new cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in the past 24 hours, leaving the territory’s total at 113. There are five active cases in the ACT.
ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman reminded those in Canberra that given the situation in Victoria, the ACT is likely to have more cases and everybody has a responsibility to minimise their potential exposure:
It’s important to acknowledge that while we are in a very strong position in the ACT that this pandemic is still ongoing.
Canberrans should take appropriate steps to reduce the spread of the virus when they are out and about. That means keeping 1.5m away from others where possible, washing or sanitising their hands regularly, avoiding touching their face, and coughing or sneezing into a tissue or into the crook of their elbow.
Coleman also reminded people who have been in Victoria within the past 14 days that they must notify ACT Health before returning to the ACT, and encouraged them to do so now if they hadn’t already. Non-ACT residents should not be travelling to the ACT. Those who have an exceptional need to do so must apply for an exemption.
Updated
Fourth day of virus protests in Serbia as virus cases spike
Thousands have protested for a fourth day across Serbia over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as officials condemned the demonstrations and announced a record jump in cases.
Some demonstrators threw firecrackers and chanted nationalist slogans, according to AFP journalists. The protests were held as the Balkan nation announced a record daily death toll from Covid-19.
Prime minister Ana Brnabic said on Friday the Balkan state recorded 18 fatalities and 386 new cases over 24 hours in what she described as a “dramatic increase”.
At the same time, Brnabic condemned as “irresponsible” protests held in Belgrade and other cities on Thursday, after demonstrations in the capital on the previous two days had spilled over into violence.
“With regard to the demonstrations, there is no more irresponsible behaviour right now,” said Brnabic. “We shall see the results of the protests in three to four days,” she said and called on people to respect measures to restrict the spread of the virus.
President Aleksandar Vucic condemned the actions of demonstrators who had blocked the main road into the second-largest city of Novi Sad as “pure terrorism”, speaking on national TV:
We are in this situation because of the irresponsibility of those who are calling for people to be on the streets.
I am begging people not to protest because they will end up seeking medical help.
Vucic also said the demonstrations were unlawful.
Protesters have given vent to their frustration with Vucic, who is seen by many as having facilitated a virus second wave by lifting an initial lockdown so that elections could be held on 21 June and which his Serbian Progressive Party largely won.
The first demonstration on Tuesday was triggered after Vucic announced the return of a weekend curfew to combat a second wave of coronavirus infections that has overwhelmed hospitals in Belgrade.
Updated
New cases of Covid-19 rose by nearly 69,000 across the United States on Friday, according to Reuters, setting a record for the third consecutive day as Walt Disney Co. stuck to its plans to reopen its flagship theme park in hard-hit Florida.
A total of eight US states - Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, Ohio, Utah and Wisconsin - also reached records for single-day infections.
In Texas, another hot zone, governor Greg Abbott warned he may have to impose new clampdowns if the state cannot stem its record-setting caseloads and hospital numbers through masks and social distancing.
“If we don’t adopt this best practice it could lead to a shutdown of business,” the Republican governor told local KLBK-TV in Lubbock, adding it was the last thing he wanted.
Readers from around the world have been contacting me quite interested in the lockdown now in place of most of Victoria, Australia, where I live. While a concerning number of cases of Covid-19 were announced in the state today, the premier Daniel Andrews began introducing lockdowns in targeted areas at the end of June when new cases were in the double-digits, before the much broader lockdown was announced last week and took effect on Thursday. Strong measures were taken long before we got to this point.
But we are seeing cities around the world reporting hundreds or even thousands of new cases each day that are persevering with reopening. And while it seems most Australians support lockdowns as authorities deem necessary, elsewhere, such as in the US, the worst-affected country with more than 3.1 million diagnosed cases and at least 134,000 deaths, some people are outraged by even wearing a mask, seeing it as impacting on their freedom rather than a health protection measure.
I asked Victorians how they are coping returning to lockdown for the second time as the state works to contain the spread, and as other Australian jurisdictions work to keep the virus out. Here are some of the responses:
I was buying cute face masks on Etsy at 1am, and considering a monthly (weekly?) cheese delivery. Then woken up before 7am by my littlies. Safe to say I'm up and down.
— Martina (@strawberrymojo) July 11, 2020
Back to the pot-luck that is supermarket home delivery, otherwise no change here. We’re a high risk household and I didn’t like those odd cases popping up in Hume when the state was reopening, so we remained ‘locked down’ . Gardening, tend to chickens, baking cookies planned 2day
— Carmel Apicella (@ApicellaCarmel) July 11, 2020
It is what it is. We must follow the rules and make the best of it. The better we adhere, the more likely that this will come under control, so I'm feeling more hopeful now that we are acting.
— Ivy (@ivyleaf_3) July 11, 2020
Emotionally flattened. Very concerned for people’s mental health. There’s going to be a huge mental health crisis that will play out for years because of all this. This is the silent pandemic
— Elle Hanover (@joy_hanover) July 11, 2020
Much more prepared this time than last time. Online ordered masks, groceries, coffee beans and beer at the start of the week, when it looked like we were heading for a lockdown. But feeling the guilt of privilege, knowing others are doing it much tougher than us.
— Michael Bell (@Xtrackka) July 11, 2020
And a public service announcement:
Woolworth's have @benandjerrys 25% off so I brought 2. No regrets.
— Lois (@myquirky_corner) July 11, 2020
Updated
More on the two infected Covid-19 cases who went to the same pub in New South Wales, Australia. The pair were not known to each other, but visited the Crossroads Hotel on the same day, 3 July. The pub/hotel is located in Casula, about 35km south-west of the Sydney central business district and has now been closed for deep cleaning.
Three new cases have been identified in household contacts of one of those infected people who went to the pub. A pop-up clinic has set up in the pub/hotel’s carpark and will be open until 4pm Saturday.
NSW Health’s Dr Jeremy McAnulty said:
There’s been recent community transmission of Covid-19 in NSW and so we’re at a critical point in the fight to contain the virus.
Dr Jeremy McAnulty provides a #COVID19 update for Saturday 11 July 2020https://t.co/KqOiU88yAy
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) July 11, 2020
Updated
Queensland, Australia, has two new overseas-acquired cases of Covid-19, bringing the total cases there since the epidemic began to 1,070.
Both cases recently returned from overseas and have been in isolation since arrival. They are therefore not currently considered be a risk to the public. As of 11 July, Queensland has three active Covid-19 cases. A previous case announced on 7 July has now recovered.
The chief health officer of Victoria, Australia, Prof Brett Sutton, was just asked whether Victoria has enough supply of the drug remdesivir, after Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, granted provisional approval overnight for the drug to be used as the first treatment option for Covid-19. It can now be used in adults and adolescent patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms in hospital in Australia.
But in June the US bought up virtually all the stocks of the drug for the next three months, leaving none for most of the rest of the world.
“The US really went very hard in gobbling up the entire global supply almost,” Sutton said.
Companies have been asked to put in place 24*7 helpline for #covid19 drug availability, put in place distributors contacts on websites so that patients can seek help and helps stop black marketing. #remdesivir #tocilizumab 👇 https://t.co/DFmZt0zacH
— Teena Thacker (@Teensthack) July 9, 2020
I looked into how this would affect Australian supply a couple of weeks ago. The Australian government told me US pharmaceutical giant Gilead has donated a supply of remdesivir to Australia’s national medical stockpile. The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, told me there will be enough of the drug to meet Covid-19 patient demand.
A spokesman for Hunt told me:
The Australian government has received from Gilead a donated supply of remdesivir to the national medical stockpile, which will be available for use in eligible patients prescribed by a medical practitioner. Australia currently has sufficient supply of remdesivir to meet current patient needs on the basis of our expert medical advice.
However given the ongoing rise in Victorian cases this will be worth keeping an eye on over coming weeks.
Updated
World Health Organization director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has launched the ‘Access Initiative for Quitting Tobacco,’ which aims to help the world’s 1.3bn tobacco users quit during the pandemic.
Smoking kills eight million people a year, but if users need more motivation to kick the habit, the pandemic provides the right incentive. Evidence reveals that smokers are more vulnerable than non-smokers to developing a severe case of Covid-19.
In the past 12 hours the world recorded 12m Covid-19 cases, he said. In the last six weeks cases have more than doubled.
Updated
Victoria had more outbreaks in aged care than any other Australian jurisdiction
The chief health officer of Victoria, Australia, Prof Brett Sutton, has just said it is getting harder to quickly identify which new cases are linked with known outbreaks, and which are new clusters. He said there have been “single cases with staff members in aged care facilities”. However, unlike aged care outbreaks in other states, which saw the virus spread within homes with tragic repercussions for elderly residents, Victoria has so far managed to contain the virus within those aged care homes.
That’s the workforce that we have to be really mindful of. The response in each and every aged care facility is to going to lockdown for those residents and all staff to be tested and for them to go into a quarantine period of 14 days and to have that testing before that quarantine is lifted for all residents and staff members. But it flags the dangers in aged care facilities. Victoria had more outbreaks there than any jurisdiction, but we haven’t had an aged care facility that has had a substantial outbreak. I think that’s in large part because we had the early robust response in terms of testing everyone and going into lockdown.
Meanwhile premier Daniel Andrews won’t be drawn into debates about whether his state or the federal government should have done, or should be doing, more:
If I need something, I ring the prime minister, the answer is ‘yes’. That’s how it works. If he needs something from me, that’s the same thing, that how it works, that’s the nature of our partnership.
Updated
As Victoria, Australia, has just announced new cases in the hundreds, the state’s health minister Jenny Mikakos has moved to reassure people that the health system is prepared for the ongoing struggle to contain the virus. The virus is largely contained in other Australian jurisdictions, where most new cases, when there are any, are from returned travellers from overseas who go straight into mandatory hotel quarantine.
With 216 new cases confirmed in Victoria overnight, all due to community transmission, Mikakos said: “As a government we have never hesitated to put in the resources that are needed to support our efforts in this pandemic.”
“Our hospitals are well prepared,” she said.
They have been working since January to respond to this pandemic. Even when the numbers came down, they never paused in their efforts. They are well-resourced and well trained to respond. We have ventilators in our warehouse. We have medical equipment in our warehouse and being distributed to our health services all the time, and personal protective equipment ... 32m masks are sitting in our warehouse as we speak.
I take this opportunity to reassure the community that our hospitals remain safe for them to visit. They should not hesitate to present to our emergency departments if they need that support or to call for an ambulance... Please do not put off your regular [health] screenings. If you get contacted by one of our cancer services for your biannual, regular checkup, please continue to take up those opportunities. It’s very important people do not defer medical treatment.
Just to reiterate, it is permissible to leave your home to seek medical care or healthcare, and that includes to present for testing for coronavirus.
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216 Covid-19 cases in Victoria, Australia
The premier of the state of Victoria, Australia, has announced 216 new cases of Covid-19 and one death as the state grapples with a second wave of the virus as the rest of the country has the virus largely contained. The man who died in hospital was in his 90s.
Premier Daniel Andrews just told reporters:
This is not an ordinary weekend. It is anything but that. You’ve got to be in your home if you are in the metropolitan Melbourne or Mitchell Shire areas, and only for those four reasons.
Those reasons are for healthcare and other essential services like groceries, exercise, work and study [if they can’t be done fro home], or childcare.
It comes as the state of New South Wales closed its border with Victoria last week for the first time in a century in a bid to contain the virus. Other measures taken in the past few days to stop the spread beyond Victoria have included placing a cap the number of incoming flights allowed in Australia.
The change means at least 4,000 fewer Australians will return home each week. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, acknowledged the change meant “it will be more difficult” for Australians to return home. States and territories will also begin charging Australians for their mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine when they do return.
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Seven new cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in the Australian state of New South Wales overnight, bringing the total number of cases there since the pandemic began to 3,285. Of the new cases, five are returned travellers in hotel quarantine. The other two cases are the man who visited Casula’s Crossroads Hotel on 3 July and the traveller from Melbourne reported on earlier in this blog.
NSW Health is urging anyone who visited the Crossroads Hotel, Casula on the evening of Friday 3 July to immediately self-isolate, come forward for testing and monitor for symptoms. A pop-up clinic has been operational in the carpark of the hotel from 5pm last night and is opened today until 4pm.
Extended-hours testing is also available at Liverpool, Campbelltown and Fairfield Hospitals at these locations: https://www.swslhd.health.nsw.gov.au/mediacentre/coronavirus/clinic_factsheet.pdf. Testing is also available through GP clinics.
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From Reuters:
Healthcare systems worldwide need to upgrade to control disease transmission and cope with large numbers of sick people during the coronavirus pandemic as well as future outbreaks, the head of the World Health Organisation’s emergencies program has warned.
Dr Michael Ryan, speaking during a video panel session organised by the International AIDS Society, said world leaders grappling with the current pandemic “need to take a leaf out of the HIV/AIDS activist book” and make sure access to healthcare is equitable and evidence-based.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has not yet peaked in many parts of the world, has exposed weaknesses and left billions of people without reliable and affordable access to essential health services, he said.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, was often a fatal infection when it emerged in the 1980s, but today is considered manageable with antiretroviral drugs. There is no vaccine to protect against HIV, which is highly variable and cannot be eliminated by the body’s own immune response.
But researchers do expect to eventually have vaccines effective against the novel coronavirus, which people can recover from on their own.
The WHO official said the two viruses are “different in scope and nature, but are comparable in so many other ways”, exposing the same inequities and generating similar injustices and denial.
“We cannot become distracted with retrospection and finger-pointing ... We need to look ahead,” Ryan said.
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Queensland, Australia, has two new cases of Covid-19 as authorities engage in a balancing act, trying to let hordes of visitors into the newly reopened state while keeping Covid-19 out.
The new confirmed cases were people returning from overseas, according to premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
This brings the number of active cases in Queensland to three. The latest cases come as the Sunshine State opened its borders on Friday to interstate travellers, except those from Victoria, for the first time since March 25.
It meant carloads of tourists were bumper to bumper as police scanned thousands of border passes on the Gold Coast. Authorities are taking an educational rather than an enforcement approach at border checkpoints, Gold Coast chief superintendent Mark Wheeler said.
“We’re trying to balance the need to get people into Queensland, but also to keep Covid-19 out of Queensland,” he said.
But anyone travelling from Victoria, which recorded a record number of new cases on Friday, must prove they left the state more than two weeks ago. Wheeler said a Victorian caravanner who had been in NSW for three weeks could use an accommodation receipt as proof.
Queensland’s airports are also teeming with interstate arrivals keen to soak up the sun and warmer weather, with another 4500 expected to touch down on the weekend.
On Friday there had been almost 314,000 downloads of the week-long border pass that is needed to enter the state.
Anyone who experiences symptoms within two weeks of their arrival in Queensland must get tested or face a AUS$4004 fine.
US welcomes the World Health Organization’s probe into the origins of virus
US ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Bremberg, has told reporters in Geneva that he welcomes the World Health Organization’s probe into the origins of the novel coronavirus in China.
“We view the scientific investigation as a necessary step to having a complete and transparent understanding of how this virus has spread throughout the world,” Bremberg said.
AFP reports that it was an unexpected endorsement, given that the World Health Organization has faced fierce US criticism over its handling of the coronavirus crisis.
On Friday, an epidemiologist and an animal health specialist from the World Health Organization left for China to try and identify the animal source of the new coronavirus pandemic as part of a team in Beijing for the weekend as they lay the groundwork for a wider mission aimed at identifying how the virus jumped from animal to humans.
Mexico’s health ministry on Friday reported 6,891 new confirmed Covid-19 infections and 665 additional deaths, bringing the total in the country to 289,174 cases and 34,191 deaths.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Former NZ prime minister says vaccine may be 2.5 years away
Guardian reporter Eleanor Ainge Roy writes that the former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark has been told a vaccine for Covid-19 may be years away;
This isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I am told by informed sources in Geneva that it will be at least two-and-a-half years until there could be a widely available vaccine – at least. That’s not very encouraging really.
I’ve made it clear in accepting it that it will be virtual for the foreseeable future – which could be quite a long time.”
Clark sat down with WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva in mid-February. She said he felt “helpless” to stop the pandemic.
I think when we replay the record, most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement. China was locking down Wuhan and Beijing and thinking back to January and early February it was kind of like that’s happening over there. Dr Tedros said to me, ‘There is a very narrow window to avoid a pandemic – but it’s closing fast’. And he said ‘I don’t know what else I can do – I am screaming every day but no one is listening’. That really chills me … this is the health nuclear accident.”
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My colleague Christopher Knaus has written about how Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest used his Chinese connections to help secure a remarkable quantity of diagnostic equipment for Australia.
But problems soon emerged, Knaus writes;
The tests were to be used by public health units, who would use them throughout 2020. The tests and associated platforms would also be deployed in 11 private pathology laboratories.
The uptake, certainly among public health pathology, was patchy at best.
Watching on in shock was the rest of Australia’s diagnostics industry.
Not long before the announcement, Pathology Technology Australia, the peak body, handed the government an audit of Australia’s existing testing technology to conduct the kind of nucleic acid testing used for Covid-19 detection.
“We had determined there was more than enough technology already in the field to significantly ramp up testing,” Dean Whiting, the PTA chief executive, said.
The introduction of BGI tests brought in a new technology mid-pandemic, without any real sense of how it would fit into Australia’s existing laboratory structures.
Experts warned the busiest pathology providers simply would not be able to use the devices.
Read more about the saga here:
Texas governor Greg Abbott has warned residents of the US state that “the worst is yet to come” after a week that saw new coronavirus diagnoses exceed 10,000 new cases per day on Tuesday and total people in hospital with the virus surpass 10,000 on Friday.
The governor who oversaw one of the US’s fastest attempts to reopen is now urging residents to wear masks and warning that he might impose a new lockdown.
“Things will get worse,” Abbott told a local television station. “The worst is yet to come as we work our way through that massive increase in people testing positive.”
The premier of Victoria, Australia, Daniel Andrews, will hold a press conference at 11am AEST as the state grapples a second-wave of Covid-19.
A record new 288 new cases were reported in the state on Friday – the single highest daily rise in any Australian jurisdiction since the pandemic began. Andrews warned that those numbers were likely to increase in the coming days. They are particularly concerning given all were acquired in the community, rather than being cases in travellers returned from overseas.
By the way the Victorian premier Daniel Andrews will hold the daily press conference at 11am today. For the first time in a while, yesterday's breakdown of new cases didn't give expanded detail on those cases linked to known outbreaks and where new cases and clusters had emerged.
— Melissa Davey (@MelissaLDavey) July 10, 2020
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Remdesivir provisionally approved in Australia for hospital use
Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration [TGA], has granted provisional approval for the drug remdesivir to be used as the first treatment option for Covid-19. It has received provisional approval for use in adults and adolescent patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms in hospital.
“Remdesivir is the most promising treatment option so far to reduce hospitalisation time for those suffering from severe coronavirus infections,” the TGA said. “Remdesivir offers the potential to reduce the strain on Australia’s health care system. By reducing recovery times patients will be able to leave hospital earlier, freeing beds for those in need. Remdesivir will not be available to Australians unless they are severely unwell, requiring oxygen or high level support to breathe, and in hospital care.”
While this is a major milestone in Australia’s struggle against the pandemic, it is important to emphasise that the product has not been shown to prevent coronavirus infection or relieve milder cases of infection.
Australia is the one of the first regulators to authorise the use of remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19, following on from recent approvals in European Union, Japan, and Singapore.
Provisional approval, which is limited to a maximum of six years, was made on the basis of preliminary clinical data, as there is the potential for substantial benefit to Australian patients. The manufacturer of the drug, pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences Pty Ltd, may apply for full registration when additional clinical data -- required by the TGA to confirm the safety and efficacy of the medicine - are available.
Coronavirus cases are rising across the US, some regional hospitals are filling up and some of America’s most populous places are seeing record deaths as the pandemic surges.
At the same time, as some states reverse reopening plans, public health interventions such as encouraging people to wear public face coverings and closing schools have become increasingly politicised and divisive.
Sunbelt states such as Arizona, Florida and Texas have been especially hard-hit after pushing to reopen their economies earlier in the pandemic. Cases a day have nearly doubled in Florida, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 40 hospitals across the state maxed out their intensive care unit capacity, NBC News reported.
“We’re putting ourselves at risk and other people aren’t willing to do anything and in fact go the other way and be aggressive to promote the disease,” Dr Andrew Pastewski, said.
Two Covid-19 cases in New South Wales, Australia, linked to the same pub
There are now 47 people in hospital in Victoria, including 12 in intensive care as the state announced a record 288 new cases Friday. The vast majority of those cases have now been locally acquired.
By comparison, New South Wales reported just 14 new cases on Friday, with 12 of those in returned travellers now in hotel quarantine. A newly diagnosed man was at the Crossroads Hotel in Casula while he may have been infected, authorities say. It’s concerning because another recently confirmed New South Wales case -- a woman from South Western Sydney -- also visited the Crossroads Hotel on the same day, 3 July, though the two people aren’t known to each other.
The Hotel has been closed for deep cleaning while contacts are traced.
New South Wales chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant is urging anyone who visited the Crossroads Hotel on the evening of 3 July to self-isolate, monitor for symptoms and come forward for testing should they develop even the mildest of symptoms.
Meanwhile, another newly confirmed New South Wales case is in a traveller from Victoria. The man drove from Melbourne and entered the state on 7 July, and has reported minimal contact with anyone in New South Wales apart from his partner and two friends. The man subsequently tested positive and is in hotel isolation and the three contacts are in quarantine. His partner has tested negative.
Chant urged the community to be extra vigilant at this critical point following the closure of the Victorian/ New South Wales border on Wednesday. The border will remain shut for at least six weeks as part of an effort to stop the virus spreading to other states.
Hello and welcome
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the latest Covid-19 news from around the world. Here is a summary of the latest events over the last 24 hours or so;
- The majority of Victorians are waking up this morning to their first weekend back in lockdown, which came into effect on Thursday. Bordering states -- especially New South Wales – are on high alert after the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced a record new 288 cases on Friday – the single highest daily rise in any state since the pandemic began. He warned those numbers would increase in the coming days.
- By comparison, New South Wales reported 14 new cases on Friday, with 12 of those in returned travellers now in hotel quarantine. The state remains on high alert following the closure of the New South Wales/ Victoria border last week. They don’t want spread into the state, after a traveller from Victoria entered New South Wales on 7 July, and subsequently tested positive. He is now in hotel isolation.
- Australians will now have to cover the costs of their own two-week compulsory hotel quarantine if they return from overseas. The national cabinet decided to cap the number of incoming flights allowed in Australia. The change means at least 4,000 fewer Australians will return home each week.
- One of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the US has created a humanitarian crisis at San Quentin state prison, where almost 1,500 people have tested positive for Covid-19 and seven have died. Guardian reporter Abené Clayton has written about the crisis here, and California has announced a plan to release up to 8,000 people from the state’s prisons.
- Serbia announced a record Covid-19 death toll for a single day on Friday, with prime minister Ana Brnabic saying the Balkan state recorded 18 fatalities and 386 new cases over 24 hours in what she described as a “dramatic increase.
- France has become the sixth country to report a death toll of more than 30,000.
- The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Friday, with the total rising by 228,102 in 24 hours.
Melissa Davey here with you in Melbourne, Victoria, to take you through the morning from lockdown. The suburb I live in was one of the “hotspot suburbs” identified by the state government on 30 June, so I’m among a few hundred thousand Victorians who have had a head-start in this latest lockdown.
Share your lockdown tips [please don’t suggest bread-baking] and let me know if I miss anything over on Twitter or email melissa.davey@theguardian.com
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