We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for rolling coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, as cases worldwide increase by the highest one-day total so far:
UK Ministers overruled permanent secretaries 11 times during pandemic
Ministers responding to the coronavirus pandemic have on 11 occasions ordered their departments to override formal objections from their most senior civil servant, a report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.
In its first assessment of the government’s finances since responses began four months ago, the National Audit Office (NAO) disclosed that permanent secretaries challenged extraordinary spending pledges because they were conducted quickly and without the usual “value for money” checks.
Secretaries of state issued ministerial directions to force the spending pledges through and made themselves solely accountable for the decisions, auditors said. There have been only 75 such directions in the past 30 years, according to the Institute for Government.
Apple and Google release phone app to notify users of coronavirus exposure
Apple and Google have released long-awaited smartphone technology to automatically notify people if they might have been exposed to the coronavirus.
The companies had announced the unprecedented collaboration to leverage their technology to help trace and contain the spread of coronavirus last month, and say 22 countries and several US states are already planning to build voluntary phone apps using their software.
The software relies on Bluetooth wireless technology to detect when someone who downloaded the app has spent time near another app user who later tests positive for the virus.
Many governments have already tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to roll out their own phone apps to fight the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of those apps have encountered technical problems on Apple and Android phones and haven’t been widely adopted. They often use GPS to track people’s location, which Apple and Google are omitting from their new tool because of privacy and accuracy concerns.
Summary
- World sees largest daily rise in cases. The World Health Organization gave a stark warning on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over, after 106,000 new cases were recorded worldwide over the past 24 hours – the most in a single day so far. Speaking in Geneva, the WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the virus was spreading in poorer countries, just as wealthier nations were emerging from lockdown.
- Europe should brace itself for a second wave of coronavirus infections, according to the director of the EU agency responsible for advising governments on disease control. “The question is when and how big. That is the question in my view,” said Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
- Trump considers an in-person G7 meeting despite coronavirus pandemic. Donald Trump has said he may seek to revive a face-to-face meeting of Group of Seven leaders near Washington, after earlier canceling the gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.“I am considering rescheduling the G-7, on the same or similar date, in Washington, D.C., at the legendary Camp David,” the US president tweeted on Wednesday. “The other members are also beginning their COMEBACK. It would be a great sign to all – normalization!”
- International imports and exports have fallen to their lowest level for at least four years, according to World Trade Organization figures. Warning that there was little prospect of the downturn ending soon, the global authority on trade said it believed import and export activity would fall precipitously in the first half of 2020.
- Tourists will be welcomed back to Greece from 15 June, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has announced. “The tourism period begins June 15, when seasonal hotels can reopen, and direct international flights to our tourist destinations will gradually begin 1 July,” Mitsotakis said in a televised address.
- South Africa records its first neonatal coronavirus death. South Africa has recorded its first neonatal coronavirus death, the country’s health ministry has said.The two-day old baby was born prematurely and had lung difficulties that required ventilation support immediately after birth, the health minister Zweli Mkhize said.
- France is to launch a complete shake-up of its health system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world, yet exposed by the pandemic. President Macron had already promised to overhaul the “salaries, careers, speciality training and professional situation” of staff, and to invest and reform financing of the health system.
- The arrival in Bangladesh of possibly the most powerful cyclone in more than a decade complicated coronavirus containment measures. Authorities were attempting to move 2.2 million people to safety as Cyclone Amphan made landfall on Wednesday morning, after days brewing in the Bay of Bengal.
- Amnesty International has urged governments to conduct urgent search operations to find as many as 1,000 Rohingya refugees who are stranded at sea and at risk of being hit by the cyclone. Rights groups said governments were using the pandemic as an excuse to turn away boats carrying stranded refugees, who may have been at sea for months.
- The Trump administration called on the UN to remove references to sexual health from its Covid-19 humanitarian response plan. In a letter to the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, the acting administrator for the US agency for international development, John Barsa, urged the UN to “stay focused on life-saving interventions”.
- The US president, Donald Trump, lashed out at Beijing, blaming it for “mass worldwide killing”. Trump referred to an unidentified “wacko in China”, in the latest in a series of attacks aimed at the country that he appears to be trying to frame as the centrepiece of his reelection bid.
- Oxfam International is to lay off almost 1,500 staff and close operations in 18 countries – including Afghanistan where it has worked for 50 years – after it emerged that the global aid organisation had been bleeding cash during the coronavirus crisis. The NGO has seen its funding model hit by an accumulation of crises.
Trump considers an in-person G7 meeting despite coronavirus pandemic
Here is more on US president Donald Trump calling for an in-person G7 meeting.
Donald Trump has said he may seek to revive a face-to-face meeting of Group of Seven leaders near Washington, after earlier canceling the gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am considering rescheduling the G-7, on the same or similar date, in Washington, D.C., at the legendary Camp David,” the US president tweeted on Wednesday. “The other members are also beginning their COMEBACK. It would be a great sign to all – normalization!”
In March, the Republican president canceled the physical summit scheduled for June, moving to a video conference as nations grappled with the shutdown of international travel and multiple closures to fight the outbreak.
The leaders’ April and May discussions were also moved to teleconference.
But Trump, who is head of the G7 this year, said an in-person summit would be a symbol of the United States and other countries seeking to return to normal, something the president has urged should happen quickly despite concerns from public health experts.
As we reported earlier, French president, Emmanuel Macron, is open to traveling to the United States for an in-person meeting of G7 leaders if the coronavirus pandemic situation allows, an Elysee official said on Wednesday.
Hi, Helen Sullivan with you now. I’ll be bringing you all the latest – please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan at any time.
In Brazil, 888 more people have died after becoming infected, while the country’s Health Ministry has confirmed a record increase in cases, with nearly 20,000 reported. That takes the total to 291,579.
In the UK, overseas health and care workers on the coronavirus frontline have reacted with fury after Boris Johnson refused to exempt them from the NHS surcharge, insisting that it was “the right way forward”.
In interviews with the Guardian’s Sarah Marsh and Harriet Grant, migrant health workers – who face an NHS bill of as much as £2,500 a year for a family of four – spoke out over a relentless working environment, struggles to pay their rent, and a heavy toll on their family life. “We feel insulted,” one said. “We are putting our lives and our family’s lives at risk.”
The prime minister resisted pressure from Labour’s Keir Starmer to amend the policy, telling MPs that he “accepts and understands the difficulties faced by our amazing NHS staff” but added: “We must look at the realities … those contributions help us to raise about £900m.”
Later, the IFS estimated that the contribution from overseas NHS staff amounted to around £90m.
The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has appealed for the world to work together to develop a vaccine, warning against any unilateral action that could prevent access for poor countries.
Francesco Rocca, who heads the world’s largest disaster relief network, told Reuters:
The reality is that there is this risk. Everyone must have access to these lifesaving treatments.
On Tuesday, the United States rejected language in a World Health Organization resolution that was designed to ensure poor countries can have access to medicine, arguing that it sends “the wrong message to innovators who will be essential to the solutions the whole world needs”. Rocca said:
If someone would say this is the intellectual property of this company ... and putting high prices on the vaccines, so making it impossible or very difficult to have access, this of course can have an impact on the most vulnerable.
We want to prevent some unilateral decision that can effect the opportunity to have treatments and vaccines for everyone.
Neglecting indigenous people during the pandemic is a “crime against humanity”, the mayor of the largest city in the Amazon rainforest has said.
Arthur Virgilio Neto, the mayor of Manaus, said the virus is killing indigenous people and warned of a “genocide” if Brazil’s right-wing government fails to protect vulnerable tribes.
So far, 25 indigenous people have died in the rainforest as the outbreak slowly penetrates remote villages. But more than 100 have been killed by the virus in urban areas, health authorities and indigenous groups said.
“I fear a genocide,” said Neto, whose city is home to 2 million people and is the capital of Amazonas state. The mayor said the government of President Jair Bolsonaro was not concerned about the plight of indigenous people and doing nothing to save lives threatened by the outbreak.
“It is a crime against humanity what they are doing here in my state of Amazonas, in my region.” he said.
Bolsonaro’s office did not reply to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Healthcare for indigenous people is the responsibility of the federal health ministry and its indigenous health service Sesai, which does not treat members of a tribe who have migrated away from their ancestral lands.
Health experts say the outbreak that first broke out in the cities is now spreading to isolated areas where the population has no access to healthcare.
Pan American Health Organization officials said in a virtual briefing on Tuesday they were particularly concerned about contagion in the tri-border area of the Amazon between Colombia, Peru and Brazil.
South Africa records its first neonatal coronavirus death
South Africa has recorded its first neonatal coronavirus death, the country’s health ministry has said.
The two-day old baby was born prematurely and had lung difficulties that required ventilation support immediately after birth, the health minister Zweli Mkhize said.
The mother had tested positive for Covid-19 and the child subsequently tested positive for Covid-19 as well. It is important to appreciate the complexities of the underlying condition of prematurity.
South Africa, which has the highest coronavirus infections in Africa, reported 803 new cases in a 24-hour cycle, taking the total to 18,003 while 8,950 people have recovered.
Updated
Peru’s number of confirmed cases has surpassed 100,000, the country’s Ministry of Health has reported. There are 104,020 in the South American nation, which has been under nationwide lockdown since March, and the death toll rose to 3,024, the ministry said.
Capt Tom Moore, whose sponsored walks in his garden raised £33m for NHS charities, has reacted with delight after it was confirmed he is to be knighted. “I think Sir Thomas sounds very nice,” he said. But he insisted the new title wouldn’t change him.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 1,324 more deaths and 23,405 new cases; taking the totals to 91,664 and 1,528,235, respectively.
A team of nurses working in Mexico City on the pandemic were rescued from a “virtual” kidnapping, in which kidnappers threaten their victims via telephone and video calls and coerce them through deception into making extortion payments.
Investigators say the virtual kidnappers targeted the nurses – all staying in two hotels in the Mexican capital – and called their family members, saying they were being held and would be harmed if payment was not forthcoming. The nurses were warned not to try leaving their rooms; their virtual captors claimed to have control of the hotels’ security cameras and said they would attack any of the nurses if they were seen in the street.
The Mexican Social Security Institute said in a statement that 13 of the 17 nurses in the team were subjected to the virtual kidnapping and were rescued by security forces on Tuesday. None of the nurses were injured and no arrests have been made.
Judicial officials in the Mexican capital say detectives working on the case of a kidnapped Chiapas man stumbled upon the virtual kidnapping.
The case of the virtual kidnappings was but the latest in a string of indignities committed against members of the medical profession as the Covid-19 pandemic escalates.
Doctors, nurses and paramedics – all applauded in other countries – have suffered aggressions in public, including having bleach thrown on them. Many in the medical profession have stopped wearing their uniforms in public to avoid being assailed by people perceiving them as Covid-19 risks.
Virtual kidnappings have proliferated in Mexico in recent years. Gerardo Priego, a former lawmaker now running an anti-kidnapping organisation, says such virtual crimes are often “so well-planned that many people fall into them and they are tricked so that their family members pay ... It’s very profitable and the bad guys don’t run any risks.”
Brazil’s health ministry has issued new guidelines for wider use of anti-malarial drugs in mild coronavirus cases, a treatment touted by President Jair Bolsonaro in defiance of public health experts warning of possible health risks.
The interim health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an army general on active duty, authorised the modified protocol after two trained doctors left the ministry’s top job under pressure to promote early use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
The French president Emmanuel Macron is open to travelling to the United States for an in-person meeting of Group of Seven leaders if the coronavirus epidemic situation allows, an Elysee official has said.
He’s open, he’s even willing to go there, but obviously with this caveat: Only if the sanitary conditions allow.
Donald Trump, who is head of the G7 this year, had planned to hold this year’s summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David, Maryland, in June.
In the UK, the test-and-trace system could be jeopardised by delays in obtaining test results, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned, as the government’s scientific advisers prepare to assess its effectiveness.
Heather Stewart, Dan Sabbagh and Robert Booth write that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) is expected to grill the test-and-trace boss Dido Harding on Thursday amid concerns about whether the system will be robust enough to check the spread of the disease and allow the easing of lockdown measures from 1 June.
Hunt, who has repeatedly called for “test, track and isolate” to be implemented, warned that a well-functioning system required test results to be rapidly obtainable. He said:
For test and trace to work, you have to get the test results back quickly, and that will mean ironing out a lot of the problems that currently exist, with people waiting too long for their test results.
All of Egypt’s 320 general hospitals are to offer testing to people showing symptoms, local authorities have announced.
People with minor symptoms will be sent home as they await test results, while those showing serious symptoms will be kept in hospital, according to a government statement. Since 14 May, some patients with minor symptoms are being asked to self-isolate at home rather than in quarantine hospitals.
Egypt confirmed 745 new cases on Wednesday; the highest daily increase yet, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 14,229. The health ministry reported 21 more deaths, raising total deaths to 680. The number of people confirmed to have recovered stands at 3,994.
The diplomatic clash between Beijing and Washington continues as the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls China’s pledge of $2bn (£1.63bn) a “paltry” sum compared to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars of damage.
Pompeo rejected Chinese president Xi Jinping’s claim that Beijing had acted with transparency after the initial outbreak and said that, if Xi wanted to show transparency, he should hold a news conference and allow reporters to ask him anything they liked.
“President Xi claimed this week that China is acting with openness, transparency responsibility. I wish it were so,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference, accusing Beijing of continuing to withhold virus samples and access to facilities, to censor discussion, “and much, much more”. He added:
I look forward to seeing them fulfil that $2bn commitment. China’s contributions to fighting the pandemic are paltry compared to the cost that they have imposed on the world.
This plague has cost roughly 90,000 American lives, more than 36 million Americans have lost their jobs since March; globally 300,000 lives. Could be as much as $9tn, according to our estimates, cost imposition on the world of the Chinese Communist Party’s failures.
Pundits have speculated that Donald Trump’s reelection strategy will focus on diverting attention from his own handling of the epidemic in the US by blaming China, where the pandemic started.
Updated
The plan, a roadmap for the key industry, foresees tourist resorts welcoming holidaymakers two weeks earlier than expected. Initially, Mitsotakis had said “in the best case scenario” Greece would be accepting tourists from 1 July. But seeking to capitalise on the country’s unexpectedly successful handling of the pandemic, he announced that seasonal hotels could open from 15 June.
The first tourists are expected to enter the country by car from neighbouring Balkan states that have also recorded low infection and mortality rates.
With Athens keen to attract holidaymakers from the UK, its primary market, tax cuts were also announced. In a bid to make Greece more competitive for tour operators due to seal package deals in the coming days, the centre-right leader said duties on transport will be reduced from 24% to 13 % for the next five months. That would make boat, plane and bus tickets cheaper during the tourist season. Taxes on coffee, soft drinks and tickets for open-air cinemas, a mainstay of any Greek summer, will also be slashed.
Greece has revved up the engines of its tourism industry, announcing that holidaymakers will be able to return to its beaches within weeks.
In an address to the nation, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared 15 June as the official start date of a tourist season delayed by the pandemic.
Direct flights between Greece and the UK and other international destinations will resume on 1 July, with airlines flying straight into island airports gradually thereafter. Holidaymakers will not be quarantined but they will be tested, Mitsotakis insisted in an attempt to allay fears of the virus being imported from abroad.
Summary
Here are the latest headlines in the global coronavirus crisis:
- Europe should brace itself for a second wave of coronavirus infections, according to the director of the EU agency responsible for advising governments on disease control. “The question is when and how big. That is the question in my view,” said Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
- International imports and exports have fallen to their lowest level for at least four years, according to World Trade Organization figures. Warning that there was little prospect of the downturn ending soon, the global authority on trade said it believed import and export activity would fall precipitously in the first half of 2020.
- Tourists will be welcomed back to Greece from 15 June, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has announced. “The tourism period begins June 15, when seasonal hotels can reopen, and direct international flights to our tourist destinations will gradually begin 1 July,” Mitsotakis said in a televised address.
- France is to launch a complete shake-up of its health system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world, yet exposed by the pandemic. President Macron had already promised to overhaul the “salaries, careers, speciality training and professional situation” of staff, and to invest and reform financing of the health system.
- The arrival in Bangladesh of possibly the most powerful cyclone in more than a decade complicated coronavirus containment measures. Authorities were attempting to move 2.2 million people to safety as Cyclone Amphan made landfall on Wednesday morning, after days brewing in the Bay of Bengal.
- Amnesty International has urged governments to conduct urgent search operations to find as many as 1,000 Rohingya refugees who are stranded at sea and at risk of being hit by the cyclone. Rights groups said governments were using the pandemic as an excuse to turn away boats carrying stranded refugees, who may have been at sea for months.
- The Trump administration called on the UN to remove references to sexual health from its Covid-19 humanitarian response plan. In a letter to the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, the acting administrator for the US agency for international development, John Barsa, urged the UN to “stay focused on life-saving interventions”.
- The US president, Donald Trump, lashed out at Beijing, blaming it for “mass worldwide killing”. Trump referred to an unidentified “wacko in China”, in the latest in a series of attacks aimed at the country that he appears to be trying to frame as the centrepiece of his reelection bid.
- Oxfam International is to lay off almost 1,500 staff and close operations in 18 countries – including Afghanistan where it has worked for 50 years – after it emerged that the global aid organisation had been bleeding cash during the coronavirus crisis. The NGO has seen its funding model hit by an accumulation of crises.
That’s it from me, Damien Gayle. I’ll leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Kevin Rawlinson.
The discovery of new coronavirus cases in two students has marred the reopening of schools in South Korea, Reuters reports.
Seventy-five high schools turned pupils away on Wednesday, amid fears among some teachers that it was unsafe for classes to resume.
Some students were sent home almost as soon as they had walked through their school gates for the first time this year, after the two high school seniors tested positive in Incheon on Wednesday morning, the education ministry said.
The beginning of the spring semester had been postponed several times since March as South Korea battled the first large coronavirus outbreak outside China, with classes held online.
South Korea has reported 11,110 coronavirus cases, with 263 deaths.
Oxfam to lay off 1,500 staff and withdraw from 18 countries
Oxfam International is to lay off almost 1,500 staff and close operations in 18 countries – including Afghanistan where it has worked for 50 years – after it emerged that the global aid organisation had been bleeding cash during the coronavirus crisis, writes Guardian global development reporter Peter Beaumont.
The agency has seen its funding model hit by an accumulation of crises.
Still suffering from a fall in donations from the public in the UK because of the Haiti sex abuse scandal, and heavily dependent on its shops in a number of European countries – to the tune of £5m a week – Oxfam’s other sources of funding had also begun drying up.
Oxfam Australia had already made deep cuts earlier this month, while cuts in the UK to Oxfam GB were also foreseen.
Oxfam currently operates in 66 countries and 20 affiliates. It will retain a physical presence in 48 countries, six of which it will explore as new independent affiliate members.
The UK has reported 363 more deaths from Covid-19, taking the official death toll in Europe’s worst-affected country to 35,704.
According to the daily update, out of 60,744 people tested for the coronavirus, 2,472 came back positive. There have been 248,293 officially confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK so far - the second highest number in Europe.
As of 9am 20 May, there have been 2,962,227 tests, with 177,216 tests on 19 May.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) May 20, 2020
1,996,648 people have been tested of which 248,293 tested positive.
As of 5pm on 19 May, of those tested positive for coronavirus, across all settings, 35,704 have sadly died. pic.twitter.com/E1ha8LFZRp
Greece to restart tourism industry from 15 June
Tourists will be welcomed back to Greece from 15 June, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has announced.
“The tourism period begins June 15, when seasonal hotels can reopen, and direct international flights to our tourist destinations will gradually begin 1 July,” Mitsotakis said in a televised address, according to AFP.
With Greece suffering fewer than 170 COVID-19 deaths over two months into the pandemic, Mitsotakis said the country’s prompt response to the virus would be a “passport of safety, credibility and health” to attract visitors.
“We will win the economy war just as we won the health battle,” he said.
The tourism minister, Harry Theocharis, said a list of nations resuming flights to Greece would be announced by the end of May, noting that Athens would focus on reviving a travel front “from the Balkans to the Baltic.”
Bulgarians and northern Europeans including Germans will be among the first visitors, the minister said, in addition to Israelis and Cypriots.
The country, which is still recovering from a decade-long debt crisis, badly needs tourism income that directly and indirectly accounts for over a fifth of its economy.
In Chile, political opponents, academics and health workers have demanded greater transparency over Covid-19 death tolls, writes Charis McGowan in Santiago.
With 53,617 confirmed cases of infection, Chile has the third highest number of coronavirus cases in South America.
With a case-fatality rate of around 1% (totalling 544), Chile’s Health Ministry has pointed out that the country has achieved one of the lowest fatality rates among the OECD nations, well below the global average of 6.8%.
However, a document published last week from the Civil Register revealed 4,201 deaths in caused by “respiratory disease” between 3 March and 29 April.
Compared to data from the Department of Health Statistics and Information (DEIS), this would indicate a 57.2% increase in respiratory deaths from the year before, suggesting that this year’s excess of 2,000+ respiratory-related deaths could be related to the novel coronavirus.
The information, tweeted by investigative journalist and scholar Alejandra Matus, sparked a frenzy of comment on social media.
Within hours of the post going viral, the Health Ministry clarified that numbers confirmed by the Department of Health Statistics and Information totalled 1,949 respiratory-related deaths from March to May, an 8% increase to the year before.
“Each institution maintains its responsibilities within the scope of its competence,” said the Health Ministry in a statement to the Guardian. “The Health Ministry maintains the responsibility of establishing and defining the codification of the cause of death.”
Meanwhile, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) revealed that all official death statistics in Chile must be cross-checked by the Health Ministry, the Civil Registry, and the INE — a process that takes up to two years to verify and validate before publishing.
“The Health Ministry’s numbers appeared within hours in response to a tweet,” Matus told the Guardian. “Officially, they haven’t even finished processing the numbers from 2018. So how are these new numbers any more valid than the Civil Registry ones?”
Speaking on a local radio station last Friday, the health minister, Jamie Mañalich, explained that the Civil Registry counts respiratory illness as a cause of death in combination with principal causes of death.
“It includes a person who has bronchial asthma and who died in a traffic accident,” he said.
Yet the discrepancy between the numbers has caused concern.
“It is not acceptable that Civil Registry figures are not consistent with those provided by the Ministry of Health,” said deputy Andrea Parra.
The Doctor’s Union has demanded greater transparency over death tolls, highlighting that current figures include “anomalous data”.
Updated
Switzerland has told its ministry of defence to secure adequate supplies of coronavirus vaccine, as fears grow of a global struggle over supplies when one is finally developed.
So far, no vaccine has so far been created to protect people from the virus, but it is widely thought that the crisis can only be brought to an end when one is deelopmed and rolled out to huge numbers of the world’s population.
Concerns are growing that some nations, such as the United States, could seek to hoard a successful candidate, once it comes, since manufacturing capacity is unlikely to be sufficient to supply global needs.
Even after the first wave of the pandemic is over, immunity levels around the world will be so low that vaccine will be essential, Reuters reported the Swiss government as saying, potentially sparking a race by nations to grab what they can, to the detriment of others.
“The goal is clear: The Swiss population should have the fastest possible access to a safe, effective vaccine,” Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset said. “But we also know there’s a big, global discussion going on, and need will be huge worldwide. All countries should have fair access to a vaccine.”
Switzerland’s interior ministry and defence department have been given the job of leading contract negotiations to secure enough doses to treat the nation’s 8.6 million population, the government said, estimating costs at around 300 million Swiss francs ($310.82 million) for such a supply.
Nearly two-dozen people have escaped from coronavirus quarantine centres in Zimbabwe, the Associated Press reports, citing local media.
The state-run Herald newspaper reported that 23 people had escaped in the past week, including 19 who were being held at a hotel in Beitbridge, a usually busy border town.
The Zimbabwean authorities are using schools, colleges and hotels for the mandatory isolation of people entering the country during a lockdown that is now in its sixth week.
Some returnees have complained about poor conditions at quarantine centres.
Zimbabwe has so far reported 46 cases of coronavirus, and four deaths from Covid-19.
Egypt will deduct 1% from people’s salaries for 12 months from 1 July to offset the economic repercussions of the coronavirus, according to a draft law approved by the cabinet on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
The tax will be imposed across all sectors of the economy in both the public and private sectors for net monthly salaries exceeding 2,000 Egyptian pounds ($127), the cabinet said in a statement. A tax of 0.5% will be deducted from state pensions.
The measure comes as Egypt tries to deal with the economic impact of the pandemic, which has brought tourism to a standstill, triggered major capital flight, and threatened remittances from Egyptians working overseas.
On Wednesday, Egypt reported that 745 more people had tested positive for coronavirus and 21 people had died from Covid-19. The total death toll in the country is now 680, of a total 14,229 confirmed cases.
Deaths from coronavirus in Italy rose by 161 on Wednesday, one fatality less than on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to 32,330, writes Angela Giuffrida, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent.
New infections increased by 665, down from 813 on Tuesday, according to figures from the civil protection authority.
Mayors of towns and cities across Italy threatened to close bars again after seeing images of crowds gathering for an evening drink on Tuesday, with many people not wearing masks.
Giuseppe Conte, the prime minister, warned “now is not the time for street parties”.
“Otherwise the curve starts heading back up,” he was quoted by Ansa as saying. “We lifted the need for self-declaration forms [previously required for venturing out] because the curve was under control, but nobody should think that the rules of precaution have been lifted.”
There are 62,752 people who are currently infected with the virus, 676 of whom are in intensive care.
The country has 227,364 confirmed coronavirus cases to date, including the deaths and 132,282 survivors.
Churches and other places of worship can reopen in Switzerland from next week, the government announced on Wednesday, AFP reports.
“Normal life is coming back,” the health minister, Alain Berset, said after the government brought the move forward by a week.
“Mass, worship, marriages, baptisms” and other events in places of worship will all be allowed to resume from 28 May, he told a press conference.
Switzerland stopped short of imposing strict confinement in measures introduced in mid-March aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
It has been gradually lifting its restrictions since barbers, florists, family doctors and hardware stores were allowed to reopen on 27 April.
The rates of infection, hospitalisation and death have flattened off in recent weeks, according to the health ministry.
On Wednesday, Swiss public health authorities reported one new Covid-19 death, and 40 new confirmed cases of coronavirus. The total death toll from the disease so far in the country now stands at 1,630, out of 30,658 infected patients.
Updated
The prime minister of Italy has warned that the EU’s coronavirus recovery plan needs to be more ambitious or the bloc risked fuelling nationalism and widening long-term divisions.
While he welcomed the surprise entente between Berlin and Paris to back a 500 billion euro ($550 billion) rescue plan as “a bold and significant step”, Giuseppe Conte said “much more needs to be done”.
In an op-ed on the politico.eu news website, Conte said:
It has quickly become clear that the economic cost of this pandemic is going to be as unprecedented as its impact to public health, putting in danger not just jobs and business in EU member countries but also threatening the fundamental pillars of our union, starting with the single market and the supply chains it facilitates.
By its nature, the coronavirus crisis is a symmetric shock, affecting all countries and regions, that cannot be effectively faced by individual countries alone. It did not take me long to be convinced of this, and I have been raising awareness among other European leaders about the urgent need for a coordinated economic response.
The risk has long been clear: Europe cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past by doing too little or reacting too slowly. Failure to act swiftly will result in a sharp widening of divergences among EU member countries.
Four European countries - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden - are expected to propose an alternative to the Franco-German recovery plan, asking for more guarantees that states receiving aid will adopt reforms, AFP reports.
They will also say aid should take the form of loans rather than grants, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Wednesday.
Amnesty calls for urgent search for Rohingya at sea
Amnesty International has urged governments to conduct urgent search operations to find as many as 1,000 Rohingya refugees who are stranded at sea and at risk of being hit by super-cyclone Amphan, writes Rebecca Ratcliffe, the Guardian’s south-east Asia correspondent.
Rights groups say governments are using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to turn away boats carrying stranded refugees, and warn those on board may have been at sea for months. Amnesty said the refugees’ lives are at immediate risk, as the Bay of Bengal, where some boats were recently rescued, is facing its biggest storm for decades.
It’s thought that some of the boats are carrying refugees attempting to flee the desperate conditions in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, where 1 million Rohingya refugees have sheltered for years after fleeing persecution in Myanmar.
The location of the boats is not known, though last week it was reported that at least two vessels carrying Rohingya were believed to have been spotted off the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh.
“They are in rickety boats, these are fishing trawlers that they use to take a very dangerous route in the hope of a better life. The Bangladesh government and others must do everything to save their lives,” said Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s south Asia campaigner.
Louise Donovan, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency, added that it is not clear how exactly many people remain adrift but that the storm could be devastating for those stranded. “The sea is extremely rough at the moment, and if there are any boats that are trying to disembark we would ask governments in the region to assist them,” she said.
Earlier this month, hundreds of Rohingya Muslims, including children, were rescued from another boat and escorted by Bangladesh to Bhasan Char, an uninhabited silt island that aid groups warn is isolated and prone to flooding and cyclones. The UN has offered to conduct a risk assessment of the island prior to any refugees being relocated, but this is yet to happen.
On Wednesday, authorities in Bangladesh said the 306 Rohingya who remain on the island have been taken to cyclone centres. Officials have previously said that rescued Rohingya were being taken to Bhasan Char as a quarantine measure, to prevent the risk of people bringing coronavirus into the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Just last week, the virus had been detected for the first time in the crowded camps, prompting agencies to warn of a looming humanitarian disaster.
In Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday morning, a third red flag was raised as a warning sign that extreme weather is approaching and that all refugees must stay inside.
It is hoped that the eye of the cyclone will miss the camp, though agencies still fear flooding, tidal surges and strong winds that could tear apart the flimsy shelters in which families live.
There are no cyclone shelters available to refugees in the camps, instead, communities have been given “tie-down kits”, sets of pegs and ropes, to try to strengthen the structures that do exist.
“We’re as prepared as we can be in a very difficult situation and also when dealing with Covid-19 at the same time it is very, very challenging,” added Donovan.
Updated
“The United States continues to demonstrate global leadership in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the US state department has insisted.
A lengthy press release published the USAID website, but in the name of the department of state, says that, despite Donald Trump’s threats to permanently end US funding of the World Health Organization, the US government is still distributing billions to countries and NGOs for coronavirus relief efforts. It says:
Through the American people’s generosity and the U.S. Government’s action, the United States continues to demonstrate global leadership in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The American people have given more than $10 billion that will benefit the global Covid-19 response, and we continue to ensure that the substantial U.S. funding and scientific efforts on this front remain a central and coordinated part of the worldwide effort against Covid-19. Months into fighting this pandemic at home and abroad, the United States continues to lead a global response—building on decades of leadership in life-saving health and humanitarian assistance.
Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the US Government has committed more than $900 million in State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) emergency health, humanitarian, economic, and development assistance specifically aimed at helping governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) fight the pandemic. This funding, provided by Congress, will save lives by improving public health education; protecting healthcare facilities; and increasing laboratory, disease-surveillance, and rapid-response capacity in more than 120 countries.
The United States has mobilized as a nation to make this an impressive global effort. Working with the private sector, we have begun to fulfill President Trump’s commitment to provide ventilators to our partners and allies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. The first shipment of ventilators donated by the United States, through USAID, arrived in the Republic of South Africa on May 11, 2020. Our foreign assistance funding to date for the response to the COVID-19 pandemic includes an initial $23 million specifically to provide ventilators to some of these partners and allies. We expect to make future additional purchases and shipments of ventilators and related supplies.
Peru seemed to be doing everything right.
Its president, Martín Vizcarra, announced one of the earliest coronavirus lockdowns in Latin America on 16 March.
In stark contrast to his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro – who has deliberately undermined social distancing and quarantine measures – Peru’s leader strictly adhered to the World Health Organization’s coronavirus recommendations and mobilised the police and army to enforce a stringent quarantine.
But more than two months later the country is one of the region’s worst hit by Covid-19 and has been unable to flatten the curve of infections. Peru now ranks second only to Brazil in Latin America with more than 99,483 cases and a death toll of 2,914 according to official figures on Tuesday.
Dan Collyns, the Guardian’s man in Lima, looks into the reasons why:
Just over 7% of people in Stockholm are carrying antibodies that would protect them against coronavirus infection, a survey by Sweden’s public health authority has found.
The findings come from the first results of the agency’s investigation into the presence of antibodies against the virus in the population. They will be likely to be seized upon by critics of Sweden’s “herd immunity” strategy. The country has eschewed the kinds of lockdowns imposed by government’s elsewhere in the world to curb the spread of the virus, in favour of allowing it to spread throughout the population in the hope that natural immunity will be achieved.
So far Sweden has recorded 3,831 deaths from Covid-19, a far higher total death toll than its neighbours, which brought in strict lockdown measures. Stockholm, the capital, has been the worst hit region.
According to the public health authority’s press release on the study (rendered into English by Google Translate):
The analyses for week 18 (a total of 1,104 analysed samples) show, as expected, the largest proportion of positive antibody tests in Stockholm. A total of 7.3% of the blood samples collected from people in Stockholm were positive in the antibody study, which can be compared with a total of 4.2% in Skåne and 3.7% in Västra Götaland.
The numbers reflect the state of the epidemic earlier in April, as it takes a few weeks for the body’s immune system to develop antibodies.
Regarding age differences, the results show that Covid-19 antibodies were most common among people between 20 and 64 years. In total, 6.7% of the samples in this group were positive, which can be compared with 4.7% in the age group 0-19 years and 2.7% in the age group 65-70 years.
Updated
France to launch shake-up of health system
France is to launch a complete shake-up of the country’s health system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world, but whose failings have been revealed by the coronavirus crisis, writes Kim Willsher, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent.
President Macron had already promised to overhaul the “salaries, careers, speciality training and professional situation” of staff in hospitals and state-run nursing homes and to invest and reform financing of the health system. After a council of ministers (cabinet) meeting this morning, it was announced the plan will be launched next Monday (25 May) with a national consultation.
This is Macron’s way of saying thank you to underpaid, overworked hospital and care home staff at the frontline of dealing with Covid-19, Olivier Véran, the French health minister, speaking after the meeting, said. “Nothing will be as it was before. France has seen what it owes its nurses and carers … their work is the pride of the whole nation.”
In a brief mea culpa, he said the government had not acted “quickly or strongly enough” in its hospital reforms in recent years.
He said “radical measures” were needed to combat the nurses’ “malaise”, and not just pay rises. He said France needed a “health system that was renewed and rearmed and capable of dealing with all risks, all threats”.
Updated
Thousands of delegates streaming into Beijing for China’s most important political event of the year have undergone nucleic acid tests and quarantines amid what state media have called “wartime measures”, writes Lily Kuo, the Guardian’s Beijing correspondent.
The National People’s Congress is usually a two-week affair of pomp and pageantry but this year’s event has been shortened and some sessions will be held over video link.
Railway stations have implemented extra screening for travellers coming to the capital and residential communities are meant to maintain strict “close management” – allowing only registered residents in and out. Officials have temporarily banned the sale of petrol in bulk, as well as firecrackers. Balloons for sporting events or other types of aerial advertising are also barred.
Even more so than other years, it is critical that the parliamentary session – which coincides with the meeting of an advisory body, collectively known as “two sessions” – goes off without a hitch. The event, a time for China’s political elite to rubber-stamp policies and indicate new policy directions, was delayed for two months because of the coronavirus.
In holding the two sessions, which begin on Thursday and Friday, Beijing is not only signalling its victory over the virus but is trying to emphasise control and leadership as it tries to move on from the pandemic. China is in unchartered territory of economic struggle and discontent at home and increased hostility from abroad, which makes the event especially important for its leader, Xi Jinping, who over the years has centralised power and embodies the government’s response to crises.
A US drug company has said its experimental coronavirus vaccine has been shown to produce protective antibodies and immune responses in mice and guinea pigs, Reuters reports.
Inovio is one of dozens of companies and teams around the world racing to produce a vaccine for the virus. Experts predict a safe and effective vaccine could take 12 to 18 months to develop.
David Weiner, director of the vaccine and immunotherapy centre at the Wistar institute, which has collaborated with Inovio, said:
We saw antibody responses that do many of the things we would want to see in an eventual vaccine. We are able to target things that would prevent the virus from having a safe harbour in the body.
Inovio, which began human testing of its vaccine in April, said preliminary results from that trial are expected in June.
Human development - the combination of rises in education, health and living standards - could decline this year for the first time since the concept was introduced in 1990, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has said.
UNDP said the impact was being felt all over the world, in both rich and poor countries, but added that the pandemic, and the crisis it had caused, was acting as “a magnifying glass for inequalities.”
UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said:
The world has seen many crises over the past 30 years, including the global financial crisis of 2007-09. Each has hit human development hard but, overall, development gains accrued globally year-on-year.
COVID-19 – with its triple hit to health, education, and income – may change this trend.
Countries that are less able to cope with the social and economic fallout of worldwide lockdown would be likely to face a much steeper drop in development, the agency said.
Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, said:
This crisis shows that if we fail to bring equity into the policy toolkit, many will fall further behind. This is particularly important for the ‘new necessities’ of the 21st century, such as access to the Internet, which is helping us to benefit from tele-education, tele-medicine, and to work from home.
More than a million people in South Africa could be infected by coronavirus, causing at least 40,000 deaths, by the time the disease reaches a likely peak in the country in November, scientists have said.
A consortium called the Modelling and Simulation Hub Africa (MASHA), comprising experts from the University of Cape Town and the Department of Health, released its first projections of the impact of the pandemic late Tuesday, according to a report by AFP.
In an optimistic scenario there would be just over 40,000 deaths by November, said MASHA’s head, Sheetal Silal. In a pessimistic scenario, the death toll would be 45,000-48,000, she said.
Silal stressed the wide degree of uncertainty for making forecasts at this stage.
“Here we are trying to make projections on the entire span of the epidemic for the next six to eight months, so there is considerable uncertainty,” she said.
South Africa reported its first coronavirus case on 5 March. Its registered tally now stands at 17,200 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 312 deaths, in a country of 57 million.
Updated
This is Damien Gayle taking the reins back on the live blog now, with thanks to Simon Murphy for holding the course while I was having my break. Remember, you can contact me with any tips, comments or suggestions for coverage either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
In the United States, where Donald Trump continues to point the finger at China, a new nationally-representative survey has shown that the vast majority of the country’s nurses say they have not been tested for Covid-19, are reusing personal protective equipment, or have exposed skin or clothing while caring for coronavirus patients.
The survey finds that “dangerous health care workplace conditions have become the norm” since Covid-19 spread widely within the United States, said the union which conducted the survey. More than 100 nurses have died since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We’ve known for years we’re behind,” said Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United.
Not because we couldn’t have what we needed – because we are the richest country on the planet – but because of greed, because of the profit system that doesn’t really look out for the welfare of patients, therefore it couldn’t possibly look out for the welfare of workers.”
The survey asked more than 23,000 nurses across all 50 states and Washington DC about their working conditions since the pandemic started. The survey represents the period between 15 April and 10 May, and was conducted by National Nurses United. It included both union and non-union nurses.
Updated
Trump lashes out at China, blaming it for "mass worldwide killing" over Covid-19 pandemic
Donald Trump has lashed out at China over the Covid-19 pandemic, blaming Beijing for “mass Worldwide killing”.
In a tweet, the US president referred to an unidentified “wacko in China,” in the latest of a series of attacks aimed at the country which he appears to be framing as the centrepiece of his reelection bid.
Trump, who initially played down the seriousness of the threat, later changed course and blamed China for allowing the international spread of coronavirus. The worldwide Covid-19 death toll stands at 323,000.
Trump wrote: “Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the “incompetence of China”, and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!”
Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the “incompetence of China”, and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2020
Trump did not specify which statement he was referring to but it follows a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman hitting back after Trump sent a lengthy letter outlining America’s belief that the World Health Organization had not been sufficiently independent of China, and had been too willing to accept its explanations for the origins of the coronavirus outbreak.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, described Trump’s letter as slanderous. “The US leadership’s open letter is … trying to mislead the public … to achieve the goal of smearing and slandering China’s efforts in epidemic prevention and to shift responsibility in its own incompetence in handling the epidemic,” Zhao said.
EU coronavirus response chief: 'Europe should brace itself for second wave'
The prospect of a second wave of coronavirus infection across Europe is no longer a distant theory, according to the director of the EU agency responsible for advising governments – including the UK – on disease control.
“The question is when and how big, that is the question in my view”, says Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
It has been the unenviable task of scientists to tell it as it is through the coronavirus pandemic. While politicians have been caught offering empty reassurances, the epidemiologists, a job description fresh to many, have emerged as the straight shooters of the crisis, sometimes to their detriment.
Ammon, a former adviser to the German government, is frank in her views in her first interview with a UK newspaper since the crisis began.
“Looking at the characteristics of the virus, looking at what now emerges in from the different countries in terms of population immunity – which isn’t all that exciting between 2% and 14%, that leaves still 85% to 90% of the population susceptible – the virus is around us, circulating much more than January and February … I don’t want to draw a doomsday picture but I think we have to be realistic. That it’s not the time now to completely relax.”
Updated
In Hong Kong, where authorities have effectively banned an annual vigil for the Tiananmen Square massacre by extending Covid-19 physical distancing measures for another 14 days, people are being urged to instead light candles.
Following months of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, the 4 June anniversary of the Chinese military’s slaughter of innocent student protesters in 1989 is likely to be particularly poignant.
Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong have joined sombre and peaceful candlelit vigils in years gone as part of the world’s biggest commemoration of the 1989 crackdown in Beijing, when Chinese troops opened fire on student-led protesters.
But after Hong Kong authorities said on Tuesday that the limit on group gatherings to no more than eight people would be extended at least until 4 June, an organiser is calling for a different approach.
Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organises the annual vigils, told Reuters he believed the motive for the extension was “political suppression”.
“We have to have a plan B,” Lee said. “Instead of one point, we will do it everywhere, still with the powerful candlelight to condemn the massacre and mourn for those who died in 1989.”
Police have still to respond to an application for the vigil to be held in Victoria Park, Lee said, adding that he was not optimistic. Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday health measures were not based on political considerations.
Updated
Hello, readers. This is Simon Murphy now covering the global live blog while my colleague, Damien Gayle, takes a break.
US tells UN to cut sexual health from Covid-19 plan
The Trump administration has called on the UN to remove references to sexual and reproductive health from its Covid-19 humanitarian response plan (HRP), writes Liz Ford, deputy editor of the Guardian’s Global development website.
In a letter to the UN secretary-general António Guterres on Monday, John Barsa, the acting administrator for the US agency for international development (USAid), called on the UN to “stay focused on life-saving interventions” and not include abortion as an essential service.
Barsa’s letter said the plan “unfortunately … does just this, by cynically placing the provision of ‘sexual and reproductive health services’ on the same level of importance as food insecurity, essential health care, malnutrition, shelter, and sanitation”. He highlighted the $650.7m (£530m) USAid had contributed to pandemic funding.
It was essential the UN’s response avoided creating controversy, it read. “Therefore, I ask that you remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health’, and its derivatives from the Global HRP, and drop the provision of abortion as an essential component of the UN’s priorities to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has suggested employers consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options as a way to boost tourism and help employees address persistent work/life balance issues.
Ardern said people had suggested everything from the shorter work week to more public holidays as a means to stimulate the economy and encourage domestic tourism, while the borders remain closed to foreign nationals.
World trade at a four-year low
International imports and exports have fallen to their lowest level for at least four years, according to World Trade Organization figures revealing the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, writes Richard Partington, the Guardian’s economics correspondent.
Warning that there was little evidence of the downturn ending soon as Covid-19 brings the world economy to an effective standstill, the global authority on trade said it believed import and export activity would fall “precipitously” in the first-half of 2020.
The WTO’s quarterly goods trades barometer, which provides real-time information on the trajectory of world merchandise trade relative to recent trends, slumped to 87.6 on a scale where anything below 100 indicates a downturn in activity. Suggesting a sharp contraction in world trade extending into the second-quarter of 2020, the reading was the lowest value on record since the indicator was launched in July 2016.
The Netherlands reported thirty-three new deaths from Covid-19 on Wednesday, as 198 more people tested positive for the coronavirus.
According to the Dutch national institute for public health and the environment (RIVM), 44,447 people have so far been diagnosed as infected with the virus, of whom 5,748 have died.
There have been 11,627 patients treated in hospital as a result of the outbreak, with 14 new admissions reported by RIVM on Wednesday.
Eighty-eight more people have been recorded as dying from Covid-19 in Sweden, bringing the country’s total death toll to 3,831.
The latest update from Sweden’s health authority also showed that 724 more people had tested positive for the coronavirus that causes the disease.
Sweden has not followed the rest of the world in imposing strict restrictive measures and business closures to contain the spread of the virus.
The reality TV star Kim Kardashian West is the latest designer to capitalise on the coronavirus crisis by launching a line of face masks – and has sparked a race row in the process, writes Morwenna Ferrier, the Guardian’s acting joint fashion editor.
Launched over the weekend under the celebrity’s shapewear label, Skims, the non-medical seamless masks come in five skin tones and reportedly sold out in less than 30 minutes. There is now a waiting list for them.
But their runaway success came hand in hand with accusations of “casual racism”, according to some on social media, who pointed out that one of the masks was not the right nude shade for a black model. The Skims site has now changed the model and the mask she wears. Skims had not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment at time of publication.
you’d think this family would know shades of black skin tones considering their kids are black too and you’d think by now they would know that this is not a black nude tone but go off kimberly with your profiteering on casual racism...... https://t.co/4aX2IfZaFQ
— 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓁𝓊𝓀𝓎𝒶 (@balenciogre) May 17, 2020
Police in Sri Lanka have arrested more than 60,000 people over the past two months for breaking a curfew imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus, Xinhua reports.
A 24-hour curfew has been in force in the capital, Colombo, and its outskirts since 20 March, while the rest of the country is under nighttime curfew. An end date to movement restrictions has not been specified.
According to a statement published on Wednesday by the Sri Lankan police, seen by Xinhua, China’s official news agency, 60,425 people had been arrested since the curfew was imposed, for infractions such as loitering on the roads, gathering and consuming alcohol at public grounds, travelling by vehicle on the roads and behaving in an unruly manner while intoxicated.
The epidemiology unit of Sri Lanka’s ministry of health on Wednesday reported four new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total in the country to 1,027. Of those, 584 patients have recovered and 434 were under medical care. Nine people have died from Covid-19.
Greece to unveil tourism plan
With Greece about to unveil its much-awaited tourism plan, some are gearing up with a gusto for the season, writes Helena Smith, the Guardian’s Athens correspondent.
As the country gradually emerges into the post-lockdown age and restrictions are eased, beaches have been opened up. But some bathers - extending the notion of the “new normal” to the sea - are taking no chances.
Spotted on a beach at Mykonos this afternoon. #greece #mykonos pic.twitter.com/eGru6yMoWU
— Ioannis Alexopoulos (@ioannisAlexopo3) May 19, 2020
On Mykonos, one swimmer was snapped in masks and gloves as he had a paddle in the waters off the Cycladic isle - which is, like all Greek islands, still mercifully coronavirus-free. Hats off to Ioannis Alexopoulos.
In a rare success story Greece has virtually eradicated the virus after enforcing draconian measures to curb the spread of the virus early on.
Updated
Nigeria’s largest medical union has instructed its health staff in Lagos to end their hospital shifts at 6pm each day, 2-hours before the city-wide curfew, in response to rising reports of police harassment, writes Emmanuel Akinwotu, the Guardian’s West Africa correspondent.
There is an 8pm curfew in Lagos under its gradually easing lockdown measures, but in recent days reports have been rife of harassment and abuse by police officers to essential workers, after 8pm.
The Nigerian Medical Association president, Dr. Francis Faduyile, told The Guardian that authorities were policing the lockdown curfew indiscriminately.
“Yesterday a lot of senior doctors were stopped from going home after hours by police,” he said. “We should be asking them why they are doing this.”
“Doctors will stay at home after 6pm to prevent themselves from being embarrassed and molested by police officers,” he added.
Lagos’ lockdown curfew exempts essential workers, yet there is insufficient clarity between different agencies on who qualifies. Faduyile said the government needed to clarify to police that health workers were essential.
Yesterday videos and pictures showed police in different parts of Nigeria’s most populous city, mounting roadblocks after 8pm for hours before letting commuters go.
Security agencies policing the lockdowns in Nigeria have come under scrutiny amid reports of abuses.
Lagos is the most affected city in Nigeria’s Covid-19 outbreak, with 2,750 of Nigeria’s 6,400 infections. Cases in the country continue to rise, doubling in just over a fortnight, but test capacity has only marginally improved over that time.
Africa’s most populous country has administered just 37,000 tests, “a far cry from what is needed” Faduyile said, and low compared to other African countries. Neighbouring Ghana and South Africa have tested 170,000 and 475,000 respectively.
Compounding challenges with the availability of test kits, poor infrastructure had made it hard to distribute its limited supply, and to transport test samples around the country, Faduyile said.
More than 90,000 people in Africa have been infected with the coronavirus, according to the latest daily update from the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.
On Wednesday, Antonio Guterres praised the “brave prevention measures” imposed by African governments to curb the spread of the virus, after a the kind of widespread outbreak predicted across the continent failed to materialise.
However there have been consistent criticisms of civil rights abuses, police brutality, and millions left unable to make ends meet.
Over 90,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 35,000 recoveries & 2,885 deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTg pic.twitter.com/9qgRXDc1Wz
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) May 20, 2020
The South Korean football club FC Seoul are facing penalties, including expulsion from their own stadium, for putting sex dolls in empty seats during a match last weekend, according to the Associated Press.
The K-League is one of the few football leagues operating during the coronavirus pandemic, with games being played in empty stadiums but FC Seoul’s attempts to increase the atmosphere at Seoul World Cup Stadium backfired after their 1-0 win over Gwangju on Sunday. The club expressed their sincere remorse as a public backlash intensified, but said they were assured by a supplier that they were using mannequins not sex dolls to mimic a home crowd.
About 25 mannequins were supplied by a local company and dressed in FC Seoul colours and wearing masks. The Yonhap news agency reported that fans posted suspicions about the life-size dolls on social media during the match and one banner showed the names of an adult toy manufacturer and of models who had inspired those dolls.
Summary
Here are the latest headlines in our global coronavirus coverage:
- The global confirmed cases of coronavirus has topped 4.9 million, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. According to their tally, at least 323,653 people are known to have died from Covid-19 while at least 4,915,004 are confirmed as having been infected.
- The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Russia passed 300,000. The number, already the second highest in the world, now stands at 308,705, after 8,764 coronavirus infections were reported on Wednesday, but the daily increase was the lowest since 1 May.
- The Spanish government has confirmed that the wearing of face masks will be compulsory from Thursday in enclosed areas and on streets when the required two-metre social distancing protocols cannot be followed. While children under six will be exempt from the order, masks are recommended for children aged three to five.
- The aerospace manufacturer Rolls-Royce is to cut at least 9,000 jobs from its global staff of 52,000, due to an anticipated fall in air travel following the coronavirus pandemic. The British company said the job losses would predominantly affect its civil aerospace business, plus its central support functions.
- UN secretary general António Guterres said that the developed world could learn lessons from African countries’ preventative measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus. There have been fewer than 3,000 Covid-19 deaths from 88,000 cases of the disease registered throughout the African continent.
- Brazil confirmed a record 17,408 cases in the last 24 hours and a record 1,179 deaths. The country has 271,628 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 17,971 people have died. Hospital officials say more than 85% of intensive care beds in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are full.
- New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has suggested employers consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options as a way to boost tourism and help employees address persistent work/life balance issues.
- South Korean high schools opened on Wednesday for the first time since the pandemic began, with mask-wearing seniors returning to class in the vanguard of a phased plan to reopen all schools under strict protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Fierce cyclone complicates disease prevention efforts in Bangladesh
Sixteen more people have died from Covid-19 in Bangladesh, as the arrival of what could be the most powerful cyclone in more than a decade complicates efforts to maintain measures to curb the spread of the disease.
Authorities were attempting to move 2.2 million people to safety, officials said, as Cyclone Amphan made landfall on Wednesday morning, after days brewing in the Bay of Bengal. The highest level of alert was raised at 6am, said Enamur Rahman, the junior minister for disaster management and relief.
It came as the latest update from the Bangladesh’s institute of epidemiology, disease control and research (IEDCR), reported that 1,617 more people had tested positive for the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since widespread testing began in the country. So far Bangladesh has recorded 26,738 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 386 deaths from the Covid-19 respiratory disease it can cause.
Videos and photos showed people heading to shelters, some carrying bags with their belongings and all wearing masks to protect against coronavirus. Officials went from village to village with loudspeakers warning people to take shelter.
In Sathira district, the local chief government administrator, SM Mostafa Kamal, said evacuees were given dry food, baby food and medicine. He said officials were distributing masks and other safety equipment to keep coronavirus from spreading while people stay in thousands of shelters.
The cyclone slowed slightly as it reached cooler waters near the coast. But with wind speeds ranging between 160 and 170 km/h, the storm could cause extensive damage: winds and heavy rain battering flimsy houses, a storm surge that may push seawater 25km inland and the possibility of flooding in crowded cities.
The cyclone is occurring during the Islamic holy month Ramadan, and reports from Muslim-majority Bangladesh said many villagers were fasting all day Tuesday, then eating at night before heading for the shelters early Wednesday.
Updated
Iran reported a further 64 deaths from Covid-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total death toll in the Islamic republic to 7,183, with 2,735 people in a critical condition in hospital with the disease.
In his daily update, Kianoush Jahanpour, the health ministry spokesman, said 2,346 more people had tested positive for the virus since Tuesday. Iran has so far counted 126,949 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, of whom 98,808 people had recovered.
Jahanpour said that 731,213 tests have so far been carried out in Iran, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Updated
New York faces enormous challenges in its attempts to implement one of the largest contact tracing schemes in the US, as the city prepares to reopen after nearly two months of coronavirus lockdown, writes Miranda Bryant for the Guardian US.
The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, has said the state is recruiting an “army of people to trace each person who tested positive” for an “unprecedented, nation-leading contact-tracing programme”. The New York city mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced a new test and trace corps, which he said would “lead the way in creating testing and tracing on a level we’ve never seen before in this city or this country”.
Contact tracing is considered to be a key pillar of safely lifting stay-at-home orders, and involves asking Covid-19 patients to recall everyone they have had close contact with while they may have been infectious, and asking those people to quarantine themselves to help prevent the virus from spreading. In countries such as South Korea and Germany, early contact tracing has been credited with successfully minimising outbreaks.
But as New York authorities roll out their plans to hire and train thousands of contact tracers, experts warn of the difficulties of pulling it off in the city of 8.6 million in which the pandemic has killed more than 20,000 people.
Updated
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, an anti-Asian sentiment has been on the rise – and now the fashion community is putting itself at the forefront in tackling the hate, writes Priya Elan, the Guardian’s deputy fashion editor.
In the UK, racist incidents have rocketed and hate crimes have increased by 21%, while in the US, there has been an increase in racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans.
“The upturn of violence and discrimination really hit way too close to home for all of us,” says the US designer Phillip Lim. “When we see people who look like us, our friends and family members, colleagues being attacked, we can’t be silent.”
Lim’s 3.1 Phillip Lim label and Prabal Gurung are among the fashion brands contributing clothing, including T-shirts and hats, with proceeds going to the All Americans Movement, a campaign to help those from marginalised communities who have been affected by Covid-19.
“It’s a cross-cultural movement, which reinforces the idea that there are many different ways to be American,” says Gurung, the Nepalese-American fashion designer who is based in New York. “It is an idea: a confluence of different cultures, communities and dreams. When different minority groups stand up and stand together, there is an astounding level of support that can change the tides for a more equitable and peaceful future.”
Updated
Holidaymakers will be welcomed back to Spain “as soon as possible”, but only when safe to do so, the country’s foreign minister has said, PA Media reports.
Foreign minister Arancha González Laya said cities with high concentrations of Covid-19 infection – such as Madrid and Barcelona – remain under stricter rules than more rural areas, but that the country will reopen to visitors at the earliest possible opportunity. González told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
We are hoping to get tourists back as soon as possible but we are also conscious that, when we welcome them, we want to provide the safest destination in Europe.
We want to make sure when they come they can continue to experience the amazing stay in Spain, whether they love sports or culture or cuisine or simply like our weather.
But we want to make sure that at this moment, when every country is suffering from this pandemic, we can provide them with a safe and healthy experience – that’s top of our priorities right now.
Lockdown measures in Spain have reflected its high numbers of casualties, with children confined indoors for six weeks between March and the end of April.
Updated
Coronavirus cases in Afghanistan pass 8,000
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases has passed 8,000 in Afghanistan, as about half of tests done in a 24-hour period came back positive for the second day straight and Kabul recorded its worst day of the crisis, writes Akhtar Mohammad Makoii for the Guardian in Herat.
The health ministry confirmed 492 new cases out of 1,003 tests and 10 deaths from Covid-19 over past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 8,145 and death toll to 187.
The ministry has pledged to increase number of daily tests. So far, 25,700 suspected patients have been tested. The country received 250 RNA extraction kits from the World Health Organization on Tuesday.
Health officials asked the nation to avoid gathering for Eid, which is scheduled for the end of this week, and warned that the Eid gatherings will bring a surge in transmission as the country is yet to reach the peak of the pandemic.
Kabul, the capital, recorded its worst day, after 262 of 522 tests came back positive. The city is the country’s worst-affected area by confirmed cases and, despite a government authorised lockdown, streets are still crowded.
The northern province of Balkh exceeded Kabul in number of deaths, with three of the latest Covid-19 deaths reported in the province. Balkh has so far recorded 27 deaths and 622 cases. Four of the new deaths were reported in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
The western province of Herat recorded 59 new confirmed cases. Afghanistan’s first case of Covid-19 was in Herat, when thousands of Afghan migrants poured back from Iran, the scene of one of the earliest outbreaks outside China, in February and March, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined. The total number of infections in Herat stands at 1,345, with 25 deaths.
Parwan province recorded nine new coronavirus cases. At least seven people were killed in the province Tuesday night when “unknown” gunmen stormed a mosque.
The northern Takhar province, which was also a battlefield last night, reported 28 new cases. At least nine members of local police force were killed and six were wounded in a clash with the Taliban in Takhar on Tuesday night.
War is raging on with full intensity across the country as president Ashraf Ghani, in response to an attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul, ordered resumption of a full offensive against the Taliban and other militant groups.
At least eight security forces were killed when Taliban fighters tried to overrun northern province of Kunduz Tuesday. According to the defence ministry more 40 Taliban fighters were also killed in the attack.
The UN mission in Afghanistan asked asked warring sides on Tuesday to halt the fighting and to “respect humanitarian law”.
Updated
Hello, this is Damien Gayle taking on the live blog now, and bringing you the latest in coronavirus-related world news for the next eight hours or so.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions about what we could be covering, please feel free to drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Thanks everyone, I’m signing off now and handing over to my colleague Damien Gayle. Thanks for reading and for your mails too.
Open-air swimming pools in Germany are beginning to reopen from today, as virologists say they are confident the coronavirus will be killed off by chlorine levels in the water.
Authorities in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia have granted the 340 lidos in the region permission to open their doors from today as long as they abide by new hygiene rules that include an online-only booking system and a daily cap of visitors.
In Berlin, swimming pools are set to open from 25 May, while other states will follow suit in June.
“All existing findings indicate that the virus is certain to be killed off by chlorine”, the German Society for Bathing said in a statement. “Therefore there is no higher risk of infection in swimming pools than in other establishments”.
“In indoor and outdoor swimming pools the virus will be killed off by the chlorine”, virologist Jürgen Rissland told regional broadcaster Saarländischer Rundfunk. The risk areas at lidos were therefore not in the water but the adjacent facilities.
Berlin is therefore planning to open its outdoor swimming pools without showers and changing rooms, advising visitors to arrive at the pool in their swimwear.
Updated
Further aiding Spain’s fight against the coronavirus is a new development in Seville: Beer Cart, a robotic arm trained to pull contactless pints.
With lockdown measures being applied at a regional level in the country, some parts of Spain have moved to “phase one” of reopening. This includes the capability for bars and cafes to open at reduced capacity and with strict hygiene measures, ideal for robotic staff.
Beer Cart has been employed at La Gitana Loca, a bar in Seville, where it has become a local sensation. The bar’s owner, Alberto Martinez, said he had bought the robot before the epidemic took hold, hoping mechanical manpower would increase sales.
Because of the crisis, it was never put into use – although he realised it would be perfect in the new environment where people need to stay apart.
“We thought it would be ideal for reopening in phase one,” he said. “As the aim is to avoid contact between customers and items (in the bar) … we realised the robot would be good using (disposable) plastic cups to serve beer, so it’s all very self-service.”
Even so, the bar is far from making a profit, with only 12 customers allowed at one time on the outdoor terrace.
“At the moment, it’s not profitable to open for the few seats we’re allowed. Now that we have to compete with other bars we have to do something different,” he said.
“So (with the robot on show) people can see that the bar on the corner is open and that we’re doing something different.”
Updated
Face masks to be compulsory in Spain
The Spanish government has confirmed that the wearing of face masks will be compulsory from Thursday in enclosed areas and on the streets when the required 2-metre social distancing protocols cannot be followed.
While children under six will be exempt from the order, masks are recommended for children aged three to five. People with breathing difficulties are also exempt from using masks.
Fernando Simón, the head of Spain’s centre for health emergencies, said the measure was intended to protect both the wearer and those around them. He also said there were clear differences between going for a solitary walk in the countryside and navigating busy city streets.
“The rules aren’t that complicated: you need to keep a distance from others of around 2 metres,” he said. “If logically, you’re on the street and realised that won’t be possible, you put on your mask and that’s that.”
Until now, face masks – which are being handed out at train and metro stations – have been compulsory only on public transport.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, addressed MPs in congress on Wednesday morning to seek their approval for a fifth, two-week extension of the state-of-emergency that has been in force since 14 March.
The prime minister apologised for the mistakes his Socialist-led coalition had made during the pandemic, but said the progress made over the past two months needed to be consolidated with another extension of one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.
“It is the people who have beaten the curve,” he said. “Spaniards have come together to stop the virus and no one has the right to squander what we’ve achieved with the lockdown.”
His arguments were given short shrift by Pablo Casado, the leader of the conservative People’s party.
“You’re trying to get us to choose between you and chaos, but that’s impossible because you are chaos,” said Casado. “You have no way of protecting the Spanish people except with this brutal confinement.”
Updated
Russia passes 300,000 case milestone
The total number of coronavirus cases in Russia, already the second highest in the world, has passed 300,000.
8,764 new novel coronavirus infections reported on Wednesday took the nationwide total to 308,705. The daily increase was the lowest since 1 May, however.
Dr Melita Vujnovich, the WHO’s Russia representative, said she believed the situation in the country had entered a stabilisation phase, the Tass news agency cited her as saying.
Only the US has reported more cases than Russia, though the Russian death rate remains much lower than many other countries, something that has been questioned by some critics and relatives of those who have died.
Russia says the way it counts deaths is more accurate than others however and has defended its approach.
The overall death toll edged up to 2,972 on Wednesday, with 135 new fatalities reported in the past 24 hours, the country’s coronavirus response centre said.
Updated
Indonesia reports biggest daily rise in cases
Indonesia reported 693 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, its biggest daily rise and taking the total number of cases to 19,189, according to the website of Indonesia*s Covid-19 taskforce.
There were 21 additional deaths reported, taking the total to 1,242, while 4,575 people have recovered.
Indonesia reported its first case of Coronavirus on 2 March.
Updated
The head of Uefa, European football’s governing body, has given an interview to the Guardian discussing the effect of Covid-19 on the sport.
Among the highlights, he suggests live matches with fans will be back “very soon”.
How would you describe the current situation and your feelings about it? There’s a lot of work still to be done. I was in Switzerland last week for the first time in two months and had meetings from 9am to 11pm. There is so much information [to take in] and so many calendar issues – and so many millions and millions, dozens of millions of dollars, that we will lose. It is then hard to fall asleep at night. You would be quite irresponsible if you could fall asleep immediately after a day like that. The situation for Uefa is not that alarming, we’re not in a dangerous situation, but we still care about the clubs and the leagues and the stakeholders so it is a lot of work.
Would you bet a million dollars that Euro 2020 will be played in 2021? Yes, I would … I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. I don’t think that this virus will last for ever. I think it will [change] sooner than many think.
What gives you that impression? It’s a serious situation but it is going down now and we are being more cautious. We know more about the virus and in general I’m an optimistic person. I don’t like this apocalyptic view that we have to wait for the second and third waves or even a fifth wave … people you know are likely to die one day, but do we have to be worried today? I don’t think so. We are ready and we will follow the recommendations of the authorities but I’m absolutely sure, personally, that good old football with fans will come back very soon.
Updated
Police in the Philippines have raided an illegal hospital that had been secretly treating Chinese coronavirus patients.
Two people were arrested and one patient was found during the raid on Tuesday at a residential villa that had been turned into a hospital with seven beds and its own chemists, authorities said.
More than 200 suspected coronavirus rapid test kits and syringes were recovered from the villa, which was in the Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone on the site of a former American air base. At the entrance to the building was a small canteen with stacks of beer cases and a red sign welcoming visitors with well wishes in Chinese.
The Chinese male patient was moved to a legal hospital. Those arrested were the Chinese administrator of the illegal hospital, which may have been operating secretly for about three months, and a compatriot who manned the drugstore.
Police told the Associated Press that the patients were likely to have come from a large number of Chinese nationals working for online gambling companies in the area.
The Philippines, backed by the Chinese government, has launched a crackdown on Chinese citizens who enter the country as tourists and then work for gambling operations, which are illegal in China. The patients are believed to have avoided visiting public hospitals for fear of being arrested.
The Philippines has reported nearly 13,000 coronavirus infections, including 837 deaths, among the highest in south-east Asia.
Updated
China will have to ‘rapidly activate domestic demand’, according to the country’s minister for industry, as the coronavirus cuts into global trade.
The communist state has been for decades been the world’s factory, manufacturing much of its goods, but despite a recent rebound the effects of the pandemic has cut into China’s ability to sell.
The Chinese minister for industry and information technology, Miao Wei told a news conference on Wednesday that “although our imports and exports in renminbi terms from January to April have increased moderately, I think that if the global pandemic cannot come under effective control, this is unsustainable”.
To drive economic growth, the country will “rapidly activate domestic demand” to make up for weakness in the international markets, he said.
China had already been trying to boost consumption as a key driver of domestic growth in a drive to recalibrate the economy from one driven by exports and state investment.
Updated
Rolls Royce to cut 9,000 jobs
The aerospace manufacturer Rolls-Royce is to cut at least 9,000 jobs from its global staff of 52,000, due to an anticipated fall in air travel following the coronavirus pandemic.
The British company, which supplies engines for large aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350, said the job losses would predominantly affect its civil aerospace business, plus its central support functions.
Air travel has slumped since March because of travel restrictions and future flight schedules may not return to their previous peak, hurting Rolls-Royce, which earns revenues from the number of hours its engines fly.
Updated
The total number of Covid-19 cases worldwide has passed 4.9m, according to the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The latest figures show 4,900,253 global cases and 323,341 deaths. The US continues to show the most cases, with nearly a third of the global total at 1,528,566 and 91,921 deaths.
Updated
Photograph: Igor Onuchin/TASS
The International Energy Agency has warned that countries must redouble their efforts to increase renewable energy supply as the world recovers from the coronavirus crisis.
The agency predicts that renewables are set to see a drop in growth for the first time in two decades following the pandemic. While capacity within the power sector is expected to continue to grow, the use of renewables in transport will likely fall due to a drop in travel and the crash in the price of oil.
The agency, which had expected 2020 to be a marquee year for green energy, cut its two-year forecast for growth in renewable capacity by nearly 10%t.
“Putting emissions into a structural decline needed renewables to grow much faster across all sectors even before the Covid-19 crisis,” the IEA said in an updated forecast.
“To regain and exceed the growth rates seen in the years before the pandemic, policymakers need to put clean energy – including renewables and energy efficiency – at the centre of recovery efforts.”
Revising downwards a prediction made in October, the IEA now expects 167GW of renewable capacity to become operational this year – a decline of 13% from 2019 and the first downward trend since 2000.
However, this will still add 6% to the global renewable capacity total this year – more than the combined size of power systems in both North America and Europe – with solar and wind accounting for the vast majority of new installations.
Updated
Hallo there, this is Paul MacInnes and I’m taking over from Helen for the next four hours. Any questions or tips feel free to email me: paul.macinnes@theguardian.com
Updated
Summary
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. Thank you for following along – and, always, to those of you who reached out on Twitter and via email.
Here are the most important developments from the last few hours:
- Global confirmed cases near 4.9 million. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, at least 323,286 people are known to have died from Covid-19 while at least 4,897,567 are confirmed as having been infected since the outbreak began. The figures, which are based on official and media reports, are likely to significantly underestimate the scale of the pandemic due to differing testing and statistical recording regimes, as well as suspected undercounting.
- Trump says the US having the highest cases worldwide is a ‘badge of honour’. The US president told reporters at a cabinet meeting that the high number of cases in the US – far higher than any other country – is a “badge of honour”, because it means the US is testing the most. Trump told reporters: “You know when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else.” He said he looks at the number “in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
- Singapore sentences man to death via Zoom call. A man has been sentenced to death in Singapore via a Zoom video-call for his role in a drug deal, the city-state’s first case where capital punishment has been delivered remotely.Punithan Genasan, a 37-year-old Malaysian, received the sentence for his role in a 2011 heroin transaction on Friday, court documents showed, with the country under lockdown to try to curb one of the highest coronavirus rates in Asia.
- UN chief praises Africa’s efforts to stem virus. UN secretary general António Guterres said on Wednesday that the developed world could learn lessons from the preventative measures taken by many African countries to stem the spread of the coronavirus. There have been fewer than 3,000 Covid-19 deaths from 88,000 cases of the disease registered throughout the African continent, relatively low numbers compared with over 320,000 deaths worldwide.
- Brazil confirms record daily rise in deaths and cases. Brazil has confirmed a record 17,408 cases in the last 24 hours and a record 1,179 deaths. The country has 271,628 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 17,971 people have died. Hospital officials say more than 85% of intensive care beds in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are full.
- Covid-19 crisis will push 60m into poverty says World Bank chief. Coronavirus shutdowns around the world could undo three years of gains in alleviating poverty, the president of the World Bank has said. David Malpass said that up to 60 million people could be pushed below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates, as the global economy shrinks by around 5%.
- US president claims hydroxychloroquine study is ‘Trump enemy statement’. Trump claimed a recent US study indicating hydroxychloroquine was not an effective coronavirus treatment was a “Trump enemy statement”. “If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape,” Trump said. “They were very old. Almost dead. It was a Trump enemy statement.” There have only been limited studies on the drug in relation to Covid-19 so far.
- New Zealand PM flags four-day working week. New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has suggested employers to consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options as a way to boost tourism and help employees address persistent work/life balance issues.
- High schools open in South Korea. South Korean high schools opened on Wednesday for the first time since the pandemic began, with mask-wearing seniors returning to class in the vanguard of a phased plan to reopen all schools under strict protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
- China gears up for annual congress. China’s biggest political event of the year opens Friday after months of delay over coronavirus fears, with President Xi Jinping determined to project strength and control over the outbreak despite international criticism and a wounded economy.
- WHO assembly passes a resolution to investigate global pandemic response. Member states have backed a resolution strongly supportive of the World Health Organization, after Donald Trump issued a fresh broadside against the UN body, giving it 30 days to make unspecified reforms or lose out on US funding. None of the WHO’s 194 member states raised objections to the resolution brought by the EU on behalf of more than 100 countries. The resolution backs the WHO’s leadership and said there needed to be an investigation into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Updated
Public trust in the travel industry has plunged to an all-time low as airlines and holiday companies continue to deny and delay refunds for coronavirus cancellations, in breach of the law, according to new research from a UK consumer group.
The latest consumer insight tracker from Which? reveals that trust in airlines and holiday companies has slumped from a net score of nine in February 2020 to -12 in May 2020, a fall of 21 points and the lowest in the seven years of collecting the data.
Global report: Brazil’s deadliest day as Trump calls US cases a ‘badge of honour’
Brazil has seen its most deadly day since the coronavirus outbreak began, prompting Donald Trump to consider a ban on travel to the US from Brazil as he declared the huge number of US cases of coronavirus was “a badge of honour”.
After a cabinet meeting on Tuesday at the White House, Trump said: “I don’t want people coming over here and infecting our people. I don’t want people over there sick either,” in relation to Brazil.
When asked if about the possibility of a travel ban, the president said he was considering it and went on to say he saw the large number of US cases as a “badge of honour”.
The US has by far the highest number of cases in the world, at more than 1.5 million with nearly 92,000 deaths, followed by Russia and then Brazil, according to the Johns Hopkins university tracker.
The death toll in Brazil reached a total of 17,971 on Tuesday, after a record 1,179 people died in one day. The highest daily toll before Tuesday had been 881 deaths, on 12 May. More than 85% of intensive care beds are full in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Singapore sentences man to death via Zoom call
A man has been sentenced to death in Singapore via a Zoom video-call for his role in a drug deal, the city-state’s first case where capital punishment has been delivered remotely.
Punithan Genasan, a 37-year-old Malaysian, received the sentence for his role in a 2011 heroin transaction on Friday, court documents showed, with the country under lockdown to try to curb one of the highest coronavirus rates in Asia.
“For the safety of all involved in the proceedings, the hearing for Public Prosecutor v Punithan A/L Genasan was conducted by video-conferencing,” a spokesperson for Singapore’s supreme court said in response to Reuters’ questions, citing restrictions imposed to minimise virus spread.
It was the first criminal case where a death sentence has been pronounced by remote hearing in Singapore, the spokesperson added.
Genasan’s lawyer, Peter Fernando, said his client received the judge’s verdict on a Zoom call and is considering an appeal.
UK front pages, Wednesday 20 May 2020
GUARDIAN: Number 10 retreats as rebellion over schools gathers pace #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/cQ9EyDIl0q
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 19, 2020
THE TIMES: doubt cast over date for school reopening #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/rjuO9E9vzK
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 19, 2020
INDEPENDENT DIGITAL: no quick bounceback for economy admits @RishiSunak #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/JbP5UUFcgB
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 19, 2020
Tomorrow’s Telegraph front page: “BMA drops opposition to schools reopening”#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/PEAQqCFJT1
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 19, 2020
FT: @RishiSunak dashes bounceback hopes #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/2GTE34m5I6
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 19, 2020
The global growth of renewable energy will slow for the first time in 20 years due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which will “hurt but not halt” the rise of clean energy.
The world’s energy watchdog has warned that developers will build fewer wind farms and solar energy projects this year compared with a record roll out of renewables in 2019.
But a rebound is possible in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), if critical government decisions made within the next few months support a green economic recovery from the pandemic.
New figures from the IEA predict that the world will grow its capacity of renewable energy by 6% or 167 GW this year. The forecast growth is 13% less than the amount of new capacity which started up in 2019.
The slowdown is likely to be more severe in Europe. The IEA expects the amount of new renewable energy rolling out this year to fall by a third to its lowest annual growth rate since 1996.
Contact tracers lack knowledge about Covid-19 job
They were hailed as stepping up to serve their country, with all the “rigorous” and “detailed” instruction needed for such an important role – but a programme to train thousands of contact-tracers to help control the spread of coronavirus has been described as shambolic and inadequate by recruits.
People hired to contact those exposed to someone with Covid-19 and advise them to self-isolate have reported spending days just trying to log into the online system, and virtual training sessions that left participants unclear about their roles.
New contact tracers have been told to rely on a two-page script and a list of frequently asked questions, both seen by the Guardian. When one taking part in a training session, run by contact centre company Sitel, asked for guidance on how to speak with somebody whose loved one had died of coronavirus, they were reportedly told to look at YouTube videos on the topic.
UK plans for contact-tracing in doubt as app not ready until June
The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh, Frances Perraudin, Heather Stewart and Peter Walker report:
Plans to introduce coronavirus tracing have been hit by fresh uncertainty as it emerged that a mobile tracking app will not be ready until June.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said last week that the app would be “rolling out in mid May” across England, but on Tuesday ministerial sources tried to downplay a system considered critical to control the disease as the country emerges from lockdown.
It came as the deputy chief scientific adviser acknowledged the decision to abandon track-and-trace in March was made because of a lack of testing capacity, but said it was “the right thing to do” in the circumstances.
Prof Angela McLean told the No 10 press briefing: “The advice that we gave certainly took account of what testing was available. It was what was the best thing to do with the tests that we had. We could not have people in hospital with Covid symptoms not knowing whether or not they had Covid.”
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Lebanon is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades, as well as a coronavirus lockdown.
Some Lebanese families have started paying their home help in the depreciating local currency, while others are now unable to pay them at all, with increasing reports of domestic workers being thrown into the street, AFP reports.
Lebanon is to start repatriation flights from its closed airport on Wednesday, at first for Ethiopians and mostly male migrants from Egypt. Outside the Ethiopian consulate in Beirut on Monday, dozens of Ethiopian women and Lebanese employers tried to secure seats on Wednesday’s flight.
But Lebanese security forces turned them away at the door, telling them to return in nine days and employers that they would have to pay for the flight.
An estimated 250,000 domestic workers live in Lebanon, the large majority Ethiopian, many in conditions condemned by rights groups.
A sponsorship system known as “kafala” excludes maids, nannies and carers from Lebanon’s labour law, and leaves them at the mercy of their employers, who pay wages as low as $150 a month.
With staff obtained at high fees from recruitment agencies even before being paid wages, and unhappy workers unable to resign without their employer’s permission, some have likened the system to slavery.
Activists say calls for help have increased in recent weeks, especially as live-in workers have been in lockdown with families.
Summary
Here are the most important developments from the last few hours:
-
Global confirmed cases near 4.9 million. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, at least 323,286 people are known to have died while at least 4,897,567 are confirmed as having been infected since the outbreak began. The figures, which are based on official and media reports, are likely to significantly underestimate the scale of the pandemic due to differing testing and statistical recording regimes, as well as suspected undercounting.
- Donald Trump claimed scientists carried out hydroxychloroquine study because they oppose him politically. The study of hundreds of patients at US veterans health administration medical centers showed that those who took hydroxychloroquine had a 27.8% death rate, while those who did not had an 11.4% death rate. Trump said: “That was a false study done. Where they gave it very sick people. Extremely sick people. People that were ready to die. It was given by obviously not friends of the administration” .
- Trump also said the US having the highest cases worldwide is a ‘badge of honour’. The US President told reporters at a cabinet meeting that the high number of cases in the US – far higher than any other country – is a “badge of honour”, because it means the US is testing the most.Trump told reporters: “You know when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else.”He said he looks at the number “in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
- UN chief praises Africa’s efforts to stem virus. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that the developed world could learn lessons from the preventative measures taken by many African countries to stem the spread of the coronavirus. There have been fewer than 3,000 Covid-19 deaths from 88,000 cases of the disease registered throughout the African continent, relatively low numbers compared to over 320,000 deaths worldwide.
- Brazil confirms record daily rise in deaths and cases. Brazil has confirmed a record 17,408 cases in the last 24 hours and a record 1,179 deaths. The country now has 271,628 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 17,971 people have died. Hospital officials say more than 85% of intensive care beds in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are full.
- Covid-19 crisis will push 60m into poverty says World Bank chief. Coronavirus shutdowns around the world could undo three years of gains in alleviating poverty, the president of the World Bank has said.In the latest apocalyptic prediction by a member of the global financial elite, David Malpass said that up to 60 million people could be pushed below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates, as the global economy shrinks by around 5%.
- Jacinda Ardern flags four-day working week as way to rebuild country. New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has suggested employers to consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options as a way to boost tourism and help employees address persistent work/life balance issues.In a Facebook live video Ardern said people had suggested everything from the shorter work week to more public holidays as a means to stimulate the economy and encourage domestic tourism, while the borders remain closed to foreign nationals.
- High schools open in South Korea. South Korean high schools opened on Wednesday for the first time this year, with mask-wearing seniors returning to class in the vanguard of a phased plan to reopen all schools under strict protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
- China gears up for annual congress. China’s biggest political event of the year opens Friday after months of delay over coronavirus fears, with President Xi Jinping determined to project strength and control over the outbreak despite international criticism and a wounded economy, AFP reports.
- The World Health Organization annual assembly passes a resolution to investigate global response to the pandemic. None of the WHO’s 194 member states raised objections to the resolution brought by the EU on behalf of more than 100 countries.
- First UAE flight to Israel, with virus aid for Palestinians. The United Arab Emirates flew its first publicly announced flight to Israel on Tuesday when Etihad Airways sent medical supplies to help the Palestinians cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Except for Jordan and Egypt, Arab countries have no official relations with Israel but Gulf Arab nations like the UAE and the Jewish state have been warming ties recently amid shared concern over Iran.
- California’s undocumented relief fund sees chaotic start. Last month, California made headlines when it announced a first-in-the-nation plan to create a $125m coronavirus relief fund for undocumented workers. But its rollout got off to a chaotic start this week, with thousands of calls flooding phone lines, creating huge delays, and so many visitors to the official website that it crashed for hours.
- South Africa eased its lockdown measures, resume classes for some pupils on 1 June.Those in grades seven and 12, usually aged 13 and 18, will return to class and the country’s minister of basic education Angie Motshekga said that, under strict social distancing rules, other grades would be able to attend lessons in schools with fewer than 150 pupils. Larger schools will open for other grades at a later date.
- The Netherlands will press ahead with a further easing of lockdown measures in June due to a steadily declining number of infections and hospital admissions, its prime minister Mark Rutte has said.The country’s 17 million inhabitants have been living under the lockdown measures for about two and a half months.
- Rishi Sunak, the UK’s chancellor, said the country is facing “a severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen”. Giving evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee, he said he expects the unemployment rate to be in double figures by the end of the year.
- Cambridge University will not hold traditional lectures in the 2020/21 academic year.There will be no “face-to-face lectures” at the University of Cambridge in the 2020/21 academic year, the institution has said. Lectures will continue virtually, while it may be possible for smaller teaching groups to take place in person if it conforms to social distancing requirements.
- Afghanistan recorded its biggest one-day rise in infections as about half of tests done in a 24-hour period came back positive. The health ministry confirmed 581 new cases out of 1,200 tests, marking the country’s worst day of the crisis – the previous high was 414.
- The border between Canada and the US will remain closed to non-essential travel until 21 June. The closure was set to expire this week after the two governments announced a 30-day extension of the restrictions last month.
China gears up for annual congress
China’s biggest political event of the year opens Friday after months of delay over coronavirus fears, with President Xi Jinping determined to project strength and control over the outbreak despite international criticism and a wounded economy, AFP reports.
The 3,000 members of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature, will gather in Beijing this week. The annual gatherings have been occasions for the Communist Party to tout its achievements, set the country’s economic agenda and consolidate Xi’s power.
But this year’s congress comes on the back of the biggest challenge of Xi’s political life, with a virus that has killed thousands of people, paralysed the world’s second-biggest economy and sparked a bout of online criticism of the government.
The Communist Party put off the “Two Sessions”, originally scheduled for March, for the first time since the Cultural Revolution as the country battled the coronavirus, which surfaced in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
Since then, China’s official case numbers have dwindled even as millions were infected abroad, with Beijing now positioning itself as a success story and potential saviour for the world, offering billions of dollars in aid to fight the virus.
But the atmosphere will continue to be “solemn and tense” amid fears of new infections, Gu Su, a professor of law and philosophy at Nanjing University, said.
The congress is expected to span seven days this year instead of the usual two weeks, state media reported.
Lights, camera, no action: Thai films banned from shooting love scenes during Covid-19
Thailand’s film industry has been instructed not to shoot any love scenes, fighting or acts that involve close contact, to avoid the spread of the coronavirus.
As officials continued to relax lockdown measures across Thailand, production companies were told to adapt their work to comply with social distancing rules.
Under guidance issued by Yupha Thawiwattanakit Bowon, deputy permanent secretary of culture, filmmakers must work in well-ventilated spaces, with no more than 50 crew members present. Special effects and camera angles can be used to help depict scenes that would usually require intimacy or contact, and all people off-camera must wear a mask.
Trump says having highest cases is a 'badge of honour'
The US President told reporters at a cabinet meeting that the high number of cases in the US – far higher than any other country – is a “badge of honour”, because it means the US is testing the most.
Trump told reporters: “You know when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else.”
He said he looks at the number “in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
The US has 1,527,895 cases. The country with the next-highest number of cases is Russia, with 299,941.
Trump added: “So I view it as a badge of honour. Really, it’s a badge of honour. It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.”
The US also has the highest number of deaths worldwide, with 91,921. The next worst official death toll, in the UK, is 35,422, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.
The US testing rates are high, but not the highest worldwide.
Its total tests per 1,000 people are the fourteenth-highest worldwide, according to Our World in Data.
Updated
Sweden has taken a soft approach to virus restrictions and although its rules are likely to be in place longer than in other countries, officials are adamant their strategy is a winner in the long term, AFP reports.
“This fight against Covid-19 is a marathon,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said recently, adding that his officials “strongly believe” their measures are viable for the long haul.
While people in other European countries have gradually begun returning to their workplaces in recent weeks, Swedes have been strongly advised to continue working from home, and possibly not just for weeks, but for months to come.
However, Sweden never imposed full lockdown measures – under-16s have continued to go to school, patrons have not been stopped from going to cafes, bars and restaurants.
Sweden has 30,799 confirmed cases and a death toll of 3,743.
Some have accused Sweden of playing Russian roulette with citizens’ lives by allowing the virus to circulate slowly in society, with the main goal being to ensure the public healthcare system can keep pace.
The consequences are difficult to miss - Sweden’s death rate stood at 371 per million inhabitants on Tuesday, roughly eight times the rate in Norway and Finland, according to the Worldometer website.
However, although Sweden’s hospitals have reported strained conditions, they have not been overwhelmed.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 797 to 176,007, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 83 to 8,090, the tally showed.
Australians in the country’s most populous state will be able to vacation within its borders next month, when art galleries and museums will also reopen, as officials seek to boost an economy hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
The move will allow New South Wales state, home to Sydney, to open up tourist regions on its southern coast that were badly damaged by huge bushfires before the virus wreaked further havoc.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said people would still need to adapt to a “new normal” as officials maintain some of the social distancing measures that have been credited with keeping both Covid-19 cases and deaths relatively low.
Australia has reported just over 7,000 infections, including 100 deaths, among its population of 25 million.
NSW, the hardest hit state, logged just four new cases over the past 24 hours, all international travellers already in quarantine. More than 7,000 test results over the same period showed no community transmission, Berejiklian said.
Cases worldwide near 4.9 million
There are almost 4.9 million cases of coronavirus globally, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with 4,897,492 currently confirmed.
The current number of deaths is 323,285.
Both cases and deaths are likely to be higher due to differing testing rates and underreporting.
The 15 worst-affected countries in terms of cases are:
- US: 1,527,895
- Russia: 299,941
- Brazil: 271,885
- United Kingdom: 250,138
- Spain: 232,037
- Italy: 226,699
- France: 180,933
- Germany: 177,778
- Turkey: 151,615
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Iran: 124,603
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India: 106,475
- Peru: 99,483
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China: 84,063
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Canada: 80,493
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Saudi Arabia: 59,854
Venezuela imposed new curfews in a handful of towns along its borders with Colombia and Brazil in response to a jump in coronavirus cases which officials attributed mainly to returning migrants, Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Tuesday.
In a state television address, Rodriguez said the South American country had detected 131 new cases in the past 24 hours, the most it has registered in a single day to date. He said that included 110 people who had contracted the virus abroad, bringing the total to 749, with 10 deaths.
Millions of Venezuelans have emigrated in recent years due to an economic breakdown and humanitarian crisis, with many settling in nearby Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. But with lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus in those countries now hurting their economies, thousands have returned.
Migrants returning to Venezuela are required to spend a 14-day quarantine period at shelters at the border, rather than in their home states.
Venezuela has so far registered far fewer coronavirus cases than most major Latin American countries, but the daily case count has grown at a brisk rate in each of the last four days. Hospital workers warn that their facilities are unprepared for a major outbreak after years of underfunding
High schools open in South Korea
South Korean high schools opened on Wednesday for the first time this year, with mask-wearing seniors returning to class in the vanguard of a phased plan to reopen all schools under strict protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, Reuters reports.
The beginning of the spring semester has been postponed several times since March as South Korea battled the first large coronavirus outbreak outside China, with classes held online.
But with daily coronavirus cases sharply down since a February peak, teachers with thermometers and hand sanitisers welcomed seniors in masks at their high schools on Wednesday.
Under new health guidelines for schools, students and teachers must wear masks except at mealtimes, and are asked to wipe down their desks. Windows will be open to improve air-flow, and desks spaced 1 metre (3 feet) apart.
Starting with high school seniors, schools will reopen in stages between 20 May and 1 June for all 5.5 million elementary, middle and high school students.
Share your experiences: how do you think New Zealand should change after Covid-19?
A week into New Zealand’s loosened lockdown laws and the country is beginning to return to a semblance of normality. Office workers are up early heading out for their commute in smart clothes, while children are lugging around schoolbags full of homework, and hairdressers are heaving with colours, cuts and trims.
Has anything changed, and what changes should stick? During lockdown it seemed that New Zealand would collapse and be rebuilt after the pandemic. Many workers found they were unexpectedly productive at home, and relished ditching the expensive and climate-destroying commute, while many children enjoyed learning in less structured ways. Many families spent more time together, dogs were walked excessively, and home-cooking become the latest fashion.
Get in touch on the form here:
Jacinda Ardern flags four-day working week as way to rebuild country
New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has suggested employers to consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options as a way to boost tourism and help employees address persistent work/life balance issues.
In a Facebook live video Ardern said people had suggested everything from the shorter work week to more public holidays as a means to stimulate the economy and encourage domestic tourism, while the borders remain closed to foreign nationals.
The prime minister’s informal comments have excited New Zealanders, many of whom are questioning whether seismic, systemic change will result from the pandemic – or whether life will return to normal; with its associated problems.
Speaking from Rotorua, one of the country’s tourist hubs, Ardern said many New Zealanders said they would travel more domestically if they had more flexibility in their working lives. The country’s tourism market has taken a massive downturn after the pandemic, with all borders remaining closed to foreign nationals and many New Zealanders taking pay-cuts or tightening their belt in case of lay-offs.
“I hear lots of people suggesting we should have a four-day workweek. Ultimately that really sits between employers and employees. But as I’ve said there’s just so much we’ve learnt about Covid and that flexibility of people working from home, the productivity that can be driven out of that,” Ardern said.
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First UAE flight to Israel, with virus aid for Palestinians
The United Arab Emirates flew its first publicly announced flight to Israel on Tuesday when Etihad Airways sent medical supplies to help the Palestinians cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Except for Jordan and Egypt, Arab countries have no official relations with Israel but Gulf Arab nations like the UAE and the Jewish state have been warming ties recently amid shared concern over Iran.
“Etihad Airways operated a dedicated humanitarian cargo flight from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv on 19 May to provide medical supplies to the Palestinians,” an Etihad spokesperson said. “The flight had no passengers on board.”
The official UAE news agency WAM said the flight involved the delivery of 14 tonnes of urgent medical supplies that “will support the efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 pandemic and its impact in the occupied Palestinian territory”.
Israel controls access to the Palestinian territories.
The Etihad delivery was described as part of broader humanitarian efforts.
UN chief Guterres praises Africa's efforts to stem virus
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that the developed world could learn lessons from the preventative measures taken by many African countries to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
“Covid-19 has made much slower progress [in Africa] than the predictions that were made at the beginning” of the crisis, Guterres said in an interview with RFL radio in France.
This has been largely thanks to the fact that “most African governments and organisations took in time very brave prevention measures which provide a lesson for some developed nations that did not,” he added.
There have been fewer than 3,000 Covid-19 deaths from 88,000 cases of the disease registered throughout the African continent, relatively low numbers compared to over 320,000 deaths worldwide.
Updated
Podcast: The scientific race to understand Covid-19
In the five months since the world learned about Covid-19, it has killed hundreds of thousands of people. In that time, what have scientists found out – and what do they still not know?
Coronavirus cases and deaths over time: how countries compare around the world
The Guardian’s Nick Evershed and Trent Nixon have created handy this handy set of epidemic curves for most countries, based on data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and compiled by Our World in Data.
It shows, approximately, which countries have managed to suppress the virus, which countries are only now being hit badly, and which countries are experiencing a second wave of infections:
California's undocumented relief fund sees chaotic start
Last month, California made headlines when it announced a first-in-the-nation plan to create a $125m coronavirus relief fund for undocumented workers. But its rollout got off to a chaotic start this week, with thousands of calls flooding phone lines, creating huge delays, and so many visitors to the official website that it crashed for hours.
Adding to already overwhelmed telephone systems, the state issued last-minute directives that said callers needed to reach a live person in order to apply for aid.
Nonprofits across the state selected to distribute the money reported huge demand as people rushed to secure a spot for the first-come, first-served program.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or Chirla, one of 12 nonprofits tapped by the state to distribute the funds, received more than 1.1m phone calls on day one of the program – 630,000 calls just within the first 90 minutes of opening the hotline.
Rare UK wildlife thriving in lockdown, reveals UK’s National Trust
First came the goats. During the first days of lockdown the bearded, ghostly white creatures wandered down from their north Wales clifftop home into the town of Llandudno and made headlines around the globe.
Now the National Trust is reporting that emboldened wildlife, from raptors and warblers to badgers, otters and even orcas, appear to be enjoying the disappearance of humans from its gardens, castles and waterways across the UK.
The charity is asking people to be aware that when they eventually return to the countryside they should take care not to disturb wildlife they would not usually expect to encounter.
Reports from rangers and gardeners include peregrine falcons nesting in the ancient ruins of Corfe Castle in Dorset, English partridges rootling around an empty car park near Cambridge, and a cuckoo calling at Osterley Park in west London, having not been heard there for 20 years.
‘We do not feel safe’: Samoan seafarers plead for right to return home
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson reports for the Guardian:
Samoans trapped at sea due to coronavirus have pleaded with their government to allow them to return home. The 321 Samoan seafarers working on commercial and cruise ships around the world have been told by their government to be patient, since Samoa closed its borders in March to all travellers including returning citizens.
Thirty-five of the seafarers whose contracts ended at the beginning of the pandemic are concerned for their families as their sources of income have stopped. Twelve of them are stranded on MSC Armonia, a cruise ship moored off the coast of the Bahamas.
Jorge Contesse, law professor and director of the Center for Transnational Law, Rutgers University said the seafarers had the right to return to their home country and were protected under the 2006 maritime labour convention (MLC). “Under this convention seafarers are entitled to be repatriated at no cost to themselves.” Samoa ratified the convention in 2013. Contesse said: “Samoa has a duty to protect its citizens and therefore it should activate diplomatic communications and legal proceedings if necessary.”
The Pan-American Health Organization said Tuesday that Nicaragua’s government has denied its personnel access to the nation’s hospitals despite having offered access, a move adding to the widespread belief President Daniel Ortega is trying to underplay the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, AP reports.
Up to this week, Nicaragua had reported only 25 confirmed Covid-19 cases and eight related deaths. Those numbers became more difficult to defend as more Nicaraguans spoke out about the deaths of their relatives and reports mounted of near-clandestine burials.
On Tuesday, Nicaragua’s Health Ministry suddenly increased the case count tenfold, to 254, and said the number of deaths had grown to 17.
But there is evidence suggesting that might still be a vast under-count. Victims’ relatives claim that some cases are simply listed as atypical pneumonia or respiratory failure.
On Monday, Ortega acknowledged that some of the 309 cases of people who have died of pneumonia since January might have involved Covid-19. Interestingly, on May 3 the health ministry had reported only 86 pneumonia deaths so far this year, suggesting there were 223 such deaths between 3 May and 15 May.
Ortega’s government has not implemented social distancing measures used elsewhere and continues to promote mass gatherings. Schools remain open and professional sporting events still draw fans.
A registry of death certificates in Mexico City suggests there were 4,577 cases where doctors mentioned coronavirus or Covid-19 as a possible or probable cause of death, more than three times the official death toll in the city, AP reports.
The federal government acknowledges only 1,332 confirmed deaths in Mexico City since the pandemic began, less than a third as many as the investigation revealed.
The anti-corruption group Mexicans Against Corruption said in a report Monday that it got access to a database of death certificates issued in Mexico City between 18 March and 12 May. It showed that in explanatory notes attached to 4,577 death certificates, doctors included the words SARS, COV2, COV, Covid 19, or new coronavirus.
The virus’ technical name is SARS-CoV-2. The notes the group counted included terms like suspected, “probable, or possible role of the virus in the deaths. In 3,209 of the certificates, it was listed as a suspected contributing factor along with other causes of death, like pneumonia, respiratory failure, septic shock or multiple organ failure.
Only 323 certificates list confirmed coronavirus as a cause of death; 1,045 other death certificates listed Covid-19 but didn’t specify if it was suspected or confirmed.
The group did not say how it accessed the database, which was kept by local courts. But it noted that official counts showed only 1,060 coronavirus deaths during that 18 March-12 May period.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has acknowledged there are more deaths than have officially been reported, and has said a special team of epidemiologists will review the death figures.
US births continued to fall last year, leading to the fewest number of newborns in 35 years, AP reports.
The decline is the latest sign of a prolonged national baby bust that’s been going on for more than a decade. And some experts believe the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the economy will suppress the numbers further.
Experts say there are a number of causes, but chief among them are shifting attitudes about motherhood: Many women and couples delay childbearing and have fewer kids once they start.
The economy is a factor, because many jobs are low-paying and unstable, and that coupled with high rents and other factors have caused women and couples to be much more cautious about having kids, said John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health.
Santelli said it’s possible births will go up this year, at least among some groups. Access to birth control and abortion has become more difficult, and some homebound couples may find themselves with greater opportunity to conceive, he said.
But others say it’s more likely births will plummet. The idea that there will be a lot of coronababies is widely is widely perceived as a myth, said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania fertility researcher.
The debate most demographers are having is not about whether there will be a decline, but whether it will be lasting, he said.
The decline due to Covid-19 might be different given the extent and severity of the crisis, and the long-lasting uncertainty that is caused by it, Kohler wrote in an email.
Video: The US president has defended his use of the anti-malaria drug, dismissing a study indicating it was not an effective coronavirus treatment as a ‘Trump enemy statement’. He also attacked Nancy Pelosi after she publicly expressed concern, claiming she had ‘mental problems’:
Bolsonaro says interim health minister will sign new chloroquine protocol
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro says that his interim health minister will on Wednesday sign a new chloroquine protocol, Reuters reports.
Bolsonaro said his own mother is 93 and he keeps a box of chloroquine in case she needs it. He also said that he saw Trump say he was taking chloroquine.
Interim health minister General Eduardo Pazuello would stay on for the time being, Bolsonaro said.
Last week, my colleague Dom Phillips reported, Brazil’s health minister abruptly resigned after less than a month on the job. Teich was Brazil’s second health minister to leave office in less than a month.
In the weeks leading up to the resignation Teich had increasingly disagreed with Bolsonaro over social isolation and the use of the malaria drug chloroquine to treat coronavirus.
The Brazilian president has enthusiastically backed using the drug, despite a string of medical studies showing that it has no positive effect on people suffering Covid-19, and can possibly cause other health complications.
More on the resignation last week below:
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In case you missed it: beyond the hot spots of Brazil and Mexico, the coronavirus is threatening to overwhelm Latin American cities large and small in an alarming sign that the pandemic may be only at the start of its destructive march through the region.
More than 90% of intensive care beds were full last week in Chile’s capital, Santiago, whose main cemetery dug 1,000 emergency graves to prepare for a wave of deaths, AP reports.
In Lima, Peru, patients took up 80% of intensive care beds as of Friday. Peru has the world’s 12th-highest number of confirmed cases, with more than 90,000.“Were in bad shape,” said Pilar Mazzetti, head of the Peruvian governments Covid-19 task force. “This is war.”
In some cities, doctors say patients are dying because of a lack of ventilators or because they couldn’t get to a hospital fast enough. With intensive care units swamped, officials plan to move patients from capitals like Lima and Santiago to hospitals in smaller cities that aren’t as busy running the risk of spreading the disease further.
A month after swamping the Ecuadorian coastal city of Guayaquil in one of the first serious blows to Latin America, Covid-19 is sickening thousands in the capital of Quito, where 80% of intensive care beds were occupied as of Friday.
In terms of intensive care, we’re stripped bare,” city health secretary Lenín Mantilla said.
In Mexico, intensive care occupancy is below 50% in most cities, although deaths have begun to overwhelm funeral homes and crematoriums in the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa.
Covid-19 crisis will push 60m into poverty says World Bank chief
Coronavirus shutdowns around the world could undo three years of gains in alleviating poverty, the president of the World Bank has said.In the latest apocalyptic prediction by a member of the global financial elite, David Malpass said that up to 60 million people could be pushed below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates, as the global economy shrinks by around 5%.
Malpass said that the World Bank group had so far loaned money for emergency programmes in 100 countries, accounting for about 70% of the world’s population, in response to the crisis. He said the money would “reinforce healthcare systems” as well as pay for medical equipment and supplies.According to a transcript of his speech on the World Bank website, he said:
The health and economic impacts that the Covid-19 pandemic and shut down have inflicted on developing countries are severe. Our estimate is that up to 60 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty – that erases all the progress made in poverty alleviation in the past three years. And our forecasts indicate deep recession this year as much as minus five percent recession for the global economy. Families have lost loved ones, millions of jobs and livelihoods are lost, the health systems are under enormous strain worldwide.
Updated
In the UK, thousands of people with cancer could die early because so many hospitals have suspended surgery for the disease while the NHS battles the coronavirus, experts warn today.
The pandemic will have “a terrible indirect impact on the lives of cancer patients” for months to come, on top of the devastation for families who have lost a loved one to Covid-19, according to research by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).
The authors say that the disruption to NHS cancer treatment, and especially delays to operations to remove tumours, will lead directly to some people’s disease having become incurable.
Updated
Brazil confirms record daily rise in deaths and cases
Brazil has confirmed a record 17,408 cases in the last 24 hours and a record 1,179 deaths. The country now has 271,628 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 17,971 people have died.
This week Brazil overtook the United Kingdom to become the country with the third-highest number of confirmed coronavirus infections, amid warnings from its former health minister that three painful months lie ahead.
Hospital officials say more than 85% of intensive care beds in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are full.
Brazil accounts for more cases than any other country in Latin America, which has seen 480,000-plus cases and 31,000 dead. Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has snubbed physical distancing rules and has called for gyms, hair salons and other businesses to reopen.
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Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s global live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m Helen Sullivan and I’ll be taking you through the latest news from around the world for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any comments, questions, tips, stories or jokes on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com.
The World Bank estimates that 60 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty, World Bank chief David Malpass said in a speech, as the global economy shrinks by around 5%.
Meanwhile Brazil has confirmed a record 17,408 cases in the last 24 hours and a record 1,179 deaths. The country now has 271,628 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 17,971 people have died.
Here are the main developments from the last few hours:
- Global confirmed death toll passes 322,000. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, at least 322,457 people are known to have died while at least 4,881,619 are confirmed as having been infected since the outbreak began.The figures, which are based on official and media reports, are likely to significantly underestimate the scale of the pandemic due to differing testing and statistical recording regimes, as well as suspected undercounting.
- Donald Trump claimed scientists carried out hydroxychloroquine study because they oppose him politically. The study of hundreds of patients at US veterans health administration medical centers showed that those who took hydroxychloroquine had a 27.8% death rate, while those who did not had an 11.4% death rate. Trump said: “That was a false study done. Where they gave it very sick people. Extremely sick people. People that were ready to die. It was given by obviously not friends of the administration” .
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The Covid-19 crisis could push 60 million people into poverty, the head of the World Bank, David Malpass, said. Malpass said his bank had so far loaned money to about 100 countries, accounting for 70% of the world’s population.
- The World Health Organization’s annual assembly passed a resolution on the need to investigate the global response to the pandemic. None of the WHO’s 194 member states raised objections to the resolution brought by the EU on behalf of more than 100 countries.
- South Africa eased its lockdown measures, resume classes for some pupils on 1 June.Those in grades seven and 12, usually aged 13 and 18, will return to class and the country’s minister of basic education Angie Motshekga said that, under strict social distancing rules, other grades would be able to attend lessons in schools with fewer than 150 pupils. Larger schools will open for other grades at a later date.
- The Netherlands will press ahead with a further easing of lockdown measures in June due to a steadily declining number of infections and hospital admissions, its prime minister Mark Rutte has said.The country’s 17 million inhabitants have been living under the lockdown measures for about two and a half months.
- Rishi Sunak, the UK’s chancellor, said the country is facing “a severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen”. Giving evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee, he said he expects the unemployment rate to be in double figures by the end of the year.
- Cambridge University will not hold traditional lectures in the 2020/21 academic year.There will be no “face-to-face lectures” at the University of Cambridge in the 2020/21 academic year, the institution has said. Lectures will continue virtually, while it may be possible for smaller teaching groups to take place in person if it conforms to social distancing requirements.
- Afghanistan recorded its biggest one-day rise in infections as about half of tests done in a 24-hour period came back positive. The health ministry confirmed 581 new cases out of 1,200 tests, marking the country’s worst day of the crisis – the previous high was 414.
- The border between Canada and the US will remain closed to non-essential travel until 21 June. The closure was set to expire this week after the two governments announced a 30-day extension of the restrictions last month.
- Spain reported a death toll below 100 for the third consecutive day, confirming 83 deaths from coronavirus in the past 24 hours. The latest figures from the health ministry showed the majority of the latest deaths were in some of the hardest-hit areas of the country.
- The Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, will reopen next week, authorities said. The Islamic endowment overseeing the site in Jerusalem under Jordanian custodianship had taken the unprecedented step of closing it to worshippers in March.
- People living within a kilometre of Barcelona’s beaches will be able to return to the sand from Wednesday, as the local lockdown eases. People will be able to make “recreational use” of the Catalan capital’s beaches as long as they respect physical distancing.
- Half a dozen people from three English Premier League football clubs tested positive for Covid-19 in the space of two days, dealing a blow to hopes of top-flight English football resuming next month.
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