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Signs of Covid-19 easing in Brazil
Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll appears to be easing for the first time since May, data shows, a sign the Latin American country could be descending from a long infection plateau that has seen it suffer the world’s second-worst outbreak after the United States, Reuters reports.
With nearly 4 million confirmed cases, the virus has killed over 120,000 people in Brazil. But the level of average daily deaths dropped below 900 per day last week - the lowest in three and a half months and below the rate of both the United States and India, according to a Reuters tally.
Researchers at Imperial College London also calculate that the transmission rate in Brazil, at which each person infected with the coronavirus infects another person, is now below 1, the level required for new infections to slow.
However, the rate previously fell below 1 in August, only to rebound a week later, according to Imperial.
The government statistics are also volatile. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Brazil registered more than 1,100 deaths each day, and experts say it is too early to say the worst is over.
“We are on a downward trend compared to the previous high plateau,” said Roberto Medronho, an infectious diseases expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “But, the numbers are still high and we have to remain vigilant so that it doesn’t grow again.”
Health officials across the US have reportedly been notified that they should expect a coronavirus vaccine available to health workers and high-risk groups by November, amid concerns the accelerated vaccine development process has become politicized.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) informed health officials that “limited Covid-19 vaccine doses may be available by early November 2020”, the New York Times reported.
Meanwhile, in a letter to governors dated 27 August, Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said states “in the near future” will receive permit applications from McKesson, a company which has contracted with CDC to distribute vaccines to places including state and local health departments and hospitals:
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now.
I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next few hours. Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan – news, questions, feedback all welcome.
Summary
Here’s a recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the globe over the past few hours:
- Trump sets up fight with Congress over plan to cut dues to WHO immediately. The Trump administration is planning to cut its membership dues to the World Health Organization, in a legally controversial move that will be challenged by Congress.
- Turkey seeing second peak of Covid-19 outbreak, health minister says. Turkey is seeing a second peak of its coronavirus outbreak due to “carelessness” at weddings and other social gatherings, its health minister has said, amid a rapid rise in the number of daily cases and deaths.
- France’s new Covid-19 infections near all-time high. Daily new Covid-19 infections in France neared an all-time high on Wednesday and the number of people hospitalised in intensive care units for the disease grew at its fastest pace in almost two months.
- Nancy Pelosi claims to have been “set up” after she was photographed in a San Francisco hair salon without a face covering. “I take responsibility for trusting the word of the neighborhood salon that I’ve been to many times,” the House speaker said. “It was a setup, and I take responsibility for falling for a setup.”
- Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive for coronavirus. Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon who served as Italy’s prime minister in four governments, has tested positive for Covid-19. The 83-year-old is currently in isolation and working from home at his house in Arcore, near Milan, his staff said.
- Madrid president says most returning schoolchildren likely to contract Covid-19. The president of Madrid, the Spanish area hardest hit by the coronavirus, has said that “practically all the children” about to return to school in the region are likely to pick up the virus over the coming months.
- Major study finds steroids cut death rates among Covid-19 patients. Treating critically ill Covid-19 patients with corticosteroid drugs reduces the risk of death by 20%, an analysis of seven international trials has found, prompting the World Health Organization to update its advice on treatment.
- Nasal swab followed by antibody test may catch incorrect Covid-19 diagnoses. Testing people twice for the coronavirus, with a nasal swab followed by an antibody finger prick test, would catch most of those people who fail to get the right Covid-19 diagnosis, researchers believe.
That’s it from me, Jessica Murray, for today. I’m now handing over to my colleague Helen Sullivan in Sydney.
Nancy Pelosi has claimed to have been “set up”, after she was photographed in a San Francisco hair salon without a face covering, breaking the city’s coronavirus prevention rules.
“I take responsibility for trusting the word of the neighborhood salon that I’ve been to many times,” the House speaker said on Wednesday afternoon, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “It was a setup, and I take responsibility for falling for a setup.”
Peru will restart passenger air transport internationally on 1 October after it was suspended in March due to the coronavirus outbreak, transport and communications minister Carlos Estremadoyro said.
Estremadoyro said his team had made proposals to airlines around biosecurity protocol and would look to resume flights to countries with open borders such as the US, Mexico and Spain.
The government has also approved the transfer of 500m soles ($141.5m) into a guarantee fund for small companies working in the tourism sector.
Peru has the second-highest number of infections in South America after Brazil, rising to 652,037 on Tuesday and 28,944 deaths.
Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll appears to be easing for the first time since May, data shows, a sign the country could be descending from a long infection plateau that has seen it suffer the world’s second-worst outbreak after the US.
With nearly 4 million confirmed cases, the virus has killed over 120,000 people in Brazil.
But the level of average daily deaths dropped below 900 per day last week - the lowest in three and a half months and below the rate of both the US and India, according to a Reuters tally.
Researchers at Imperial College London also calculate that the transmission rate in Brazil, at which each person infected with the coronavirus infects another person, is now below 1, the level required for new infections to slow.
However, the rate previously fell below 1 in August, only to rebound a week later, according to Imperial.
The government statistics are also volatile. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Brazil registered more than 1,100 deaths each day, and experts say it is too early to say the worst is over.
“We are on a downward trend compared to the previous high plateau,” said Roberto Medronho, an infectious diseases expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “But, the numbers are still high and we have to remain vigilant so that it doesn’t grow again.”
Confidence in the way Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven and his government have handled the coronavirus pandemic has dropped sharply over the last three months, a poll in daily Dagens Nyheter showed.
Sweden has followed its own path in fighting the coronavirus, rejecting a strict lockdown and relying mainly on voluntary measures focused on social distancing. Most schools and many businesses have remained open.
Around 34% of Swedes believe Social Democrat PM Lofven has handled the crisis well against 49% in May, a survey by pollsters IPSOS showed.The government’s numbers also fell as did those for the political opposition.
But Swedes do not appear to have lost faith in the overall strategy for fighting the coronavirus, with confidence in the Public Health Agency and its chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell - who has become the public face of the country’s response - remaining relatively strong.
In April, 69% of Swedes had very or quite strong confidence in the Agency, with that falling to 58% in August. Tegnell’s figures dropped from 69% to 63% over the period.
The death toll in Sweden has been much higher in relation to the size of its population than its Nordic neighbours, who all took much more stringent lockdown measures, though lower than in countries like Britain and Spain.
More than 5,800 Swedes have died against around 260 in Norway, which has around half the population.
US business activity and employment ticked up through late August, the Federal Reserve said, but economic growth was generally sluggish as Covid-19 hotspots hampered reopening efforts that fuelled an early-summer rebound.
The Fed, in its “Beige Book” report, highlighted the uneven rebound underway in the US economy, with some areas such as residential real estate surging with the help of low interest rates, but other sectors, such as commercial construction and agriculture, struggling to rebound.
“Economic activity increased among most Districts, but gains were generally modest and activity remained well below levels prior to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the Fed said in the report, which is based on anecdotal information collected from business contacts across the country.
Manufacturing rose in most districts and consumer spending continued to rise, helped by strong car sales and some gains in retail and tourism.
The Fed’s survey was conducted in its 12 districts from July through 24 August.
The report showed economic progress was not spread equally across the nation, with the New York Fed district reporting economic activity had stalled, the Chicago Fed district reporting it had increased strongly, the Atlanta Fed district seeing mixed signals, and the San Francisco Fed saying activity expanded slightly.
Nationally, the number of new coronavirus infections is down to about 41,000 a day, from 77,000 in July, but some states are still struggling to contain the virus.
Households and businesses also received less federal support in August, which marked the end of a $600 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits and the expiration of the Paycheck Protection Program, which offered forgivable loans to small businesses.
United Airlines said it is preparing to furlough 16,370 workers when federal aid expires on 1 October as the coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate the airline industry, though one union said many more people will be without pay.
United’s cuts include 6,920 flight attendants, but the union representing them said 14,000 will not have a paycheck in October unless Congress acts to extend $25bn in aid.
This is because many have opted for leaves that will provide healthcare but no money, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International president Sara Nelson said.
“United’s furlough announcement does not tell the full story,” she said.
Airlines have been lobbying Washington for a second stimulus package to protect jobs through March while the industry awaits a recovery.
The first $25bn, which covered airline payrolls, expires this month, but talks have stalled as Congress has struggled to reach agreement on a broader coronavirus assistance package.
Chicago-based United had over 90,000 employees before the pandemic brought the industry to a near standstill in March. It warned in July that 36,000 jobs were at risk of involuntary furloughs as demand remained weak.
US passenger airlines are still collectively losing more than $5bn a month as 30% of planes remain parked. Passenger travel demand is down about 70% and, on average, planes that are flying are half-full.
Some 7,400 United employees have opted to take early retirement or departure packages and the company is working through several other voluntary temporary leave programs to further reduce the number of furloughs, United officials said.
Rival American Airlines last week said it would lay off 19,000 workers without federal aid. Including voluntary departures or leaves, its 140,000 pre-pandemic workforce will shrink by 30%.
Delta Air Lines plans to lay off nearly 2,000 pilots, but has not yet numbered potential cuts for its other workers.
The Bank of England has cast doubt on the UK government drive to get workers back to offices, after a senior official warned it was impossible for large numbers of staff to return to central London and other big cities while risks from Covid-19 remained.
Pouring cold water on the government campaign, Alex Brazier, the Bank’s executive director for financial stability strategy and risk, said it was “not possible” for a mass return to city centre offices across Britain this autumn due to Covid guidelines, concerns over the health risks, and transport capacity issues. He said:
With Covid safe guidelines, it’s not possible to use office space – particularly in central London and dense places like that – with the intensity that we used to use it. So it’s actually not possible to bring lots of people back very suddenly.
Testing people twice for the coronavirus, with a nasal swab followed by an antibody finger prick test, would catch most of those people who fail to get the right Covid-19 diagnosis, researchers believe.
Nose and throat swabs miss around 30% to 50% of infections, say the University of Cambridge team, as the virus can disappear from the upper respiratory tract into the lungs. But they say adding an antibody test can plug that gap. Antibodies show up from about six days after infection.
A team at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge has piloted the use of combined tests for patients arriving at the hospital. Many arrive with flu-like symptoms and need an accurate diagnosis to ensure they are put on the right wards, so that there is no risk of Covid-19 patients infecting others.
Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, said:
We still do not have a gold standard test for diagnosing Covid-19. This poses a challenge to healthcare workers, who need to make quick and safe decisions about how and where to treat patients.
The two main types of test – PCR and antibody tests – both have limitations because of the nature of coronavirus infection and how our body responds. But we’ve shown that if you combine them and carry out both at point of care, their reliability can be hugely increased.
Trump sets up fight with Congress over plan to cut dues to WHO immediately
The Trump administration is planning to cut its membership dues to the World Health Organization, in a legally controversial move that will be challenged by Congress.
The US issued its formal notice of withdrawal from the WHO in July, after Donald Trump accused the body of being pro-China and of failing to contain the coronavirus pandemic. However, the withdrawal does not take effect until next July, and until then – according to a 72-year-old agreement with Congress – the US is obliged to maintain its financial contributions.
By the time of the withdrawal notice, the first tranche of $58m of its “assessed contributions” – national membership dues – had already been paid, leaving a second tranche of $65m due this month. That will now be diverted, according to a state department briefing to Congress.
The notes said “the US is reprogramming the balance of its planned Fiscal Year 2020 assessed WHO contributions to partially pay an assessment to the UN, earlier than it would have otherwise”.
The rise of the kidult helped boost UK toy sales during the coronavirus lockdown, with Lego the latest business to benefit from parents joining their children on the playmat while pubs, cinemas and playgrounds were closed.
Lego said on Wednesday that a rise in sales and profits in the first six months of the year was due to more families playing together and “more adults than ever before” playing its harder-to-build sets.
Purchases of jigsaws and board games have also soared during the pandemic as families spend more time together.
Retail figures also point to a market gain from adult buyers. Sales of toys rose 7% in the UK in the first seven months of the year after two or three years of decline, according to market research firm NPD, with expensive construction kits joining collectible dolls among the bestsellers.
South Africa’s multi-billion dollar coronavirus budget is marred with “frightening” levels of corruption, fraud and inflated prices, auditor general Kimi Makwetu said.
As part of a campaign to clean up government, president Cyril Ramaphosa had instructed Makwetu to scrutinise the disbursement of funds earmarked for pandemic relief in June.
This came after public outrage over revelations that politically connected companies were given contracts to supply personal protective equipment (PPE).
The fund totalling 147.4bn rand ($8.7bn) was meant to be used by state departments to provide food aid, PPE and social grants to the unemployed among other relief measures.
Makwetu and his team have identified a string of procurement payments for referral to law enforcement for further investigation, including instances of overpayment to individuals and entities, with some prices of PPE inflated by as much as 200%.
“Based on what was audited to date, there are clear signs of overpricing, unfair processes, potential fraud and supply chain management legislation being sidestepped,” the comptroller said as he delivered the first of a series of reports on South Africa’s Covid-19 response.
“Our analyses of orders placed by health departments identified that some items were priced at more than double and even five times the prescribed price,” he said during a televised hearing.
He added that the education sector experienced similar patterns of price inflation.
The auditor general, whose term in office ends in November, warned that investigations had revealed “a number of frightening findings that require to be followed up very quickly”.
Makwetu also unearthed numerous gaps, risks, inadequate controls and serious violations including illegal payments and overpayment of unemployment funds by state agencies.
In response to the report, labour minister Thulas Nxesi said 38 criminal cases had been opened.
He said the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) commissioner, Teboho Maruping, has been placed on precautionary suspension after he was flagged in the auditor-general’s probe.
Nxesi said Maruping’s poor leadership had resulted in illegal payments to recipients of other state grants, including ineligible public servants and even inmates, deceased persons and minors.
Skip kissing and consider wearing a mask when having sex to protect yourself from catching the coronavirus, Canada’s chief medical officer has said, adding that going solo remains the lowest-risk sexual option in a pandemic.
Dr Theresa Tam said in a statement there is little chance of catching Covid-19 from semen or vaginal fluid, but sexual activity with new partners does increase the risk of contracting the virus, particularly if there is close contact like kissing.
“Like other activities during Covid-19 that involve physical closeness, there are some things you can do to minimise the risk of getting infected and spreading the virus,” she said.
Skip kissing, avoid face-to-face closeness, wear a mask that covers your mouth and nose, and monitor yourself and your partner for symptoms ahead of any sexual activity, Tam said.
“The lowest-risk sexual activity during Covid-19 involves yourself alone,” she added.
Sexual health is an important part of overall health, Tam said, and by taking precautions, “Canadians can find ways to enjoy physical intimacy while safeguarding the progress we have all made containing Covid-19.”
Canada has reported 129,425 cases of Covid-19 and 9,132 deaths, as of 1 September. New daily cases are far below peak volumes, but there has been a recent uptick, driven by more infections in certain western Canadian provinces.
Updated
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, I’ll be steering the live blog for the next few hours.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any story tips or personal experiences you would like to share.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
Summary
Here’s a summary of the key global coronavirus developments over the last few hours:
- Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has tested positive for Covid-19. The 83-year-old is isolating and working from his home near Milan, according to a statement made by his staff.
- Madrid’s president has said most children returning to schools are likely to catch coronavirus. Isabel Díaz Ayuso insisted that the necessary steps had been taken to make the Spanish capital’s schools “very safe places”, but that such measures were not in place away from the classroom.
- Steroids cut death rates among critical Covid-19 patients, a major study has found. The analysis – which pooled data from separate trials of low dose hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone – found that steroids reduced the risk of death by 20% in those sick enough to be in intensive care in hospital.
- The pandemic will widen the gender poverty gap, pushing 47 million more women and girls into poverty by next year, according to the UN. Worldwide more women than men will be made poor by the economic fallout and massive job losses caused by coronavirus, with informal workers worst hit in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, according to UN estimates.
- German prosecutors have ruled that anti-lockdown protesters can be called “Covidiots”. The ruling came after legal complaints against Social Democrat co-leader Saskia Esken, who used the term on Twitter, were dismissed.
- Germany has ruled out a winter lockdown despite rising coronavirus infections. The health minister, Jens Spahn, said the country would not need another nationwide lockdown to keep the virus under control.
- Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful elected US Democrat, has been pictured without a face covering in a hair salon. Footage obtained by Fox News shows Pelosi breaking San Francisco rules that only allow hairdressing services outdoors.
Updated
Turkey seeing second peak of Covid-19 outbreak, health minister says
Turkey is seeing a second peak of its coronavirus outbreak due to “carelessness” at weddings and other social gatherings, its health minister has said, amid a rapid rise in the number of daily cases and deaths.
Coronavirus deaths have jumped to their highest since mid-May, when lockdowns were in place, and new cases have risen to mid-June levels, at almost 1,600. Ankara mostly reopened the economy and lifted weekend and age-specific lockdowns in early June.
Fahrettin Koca said the capital Ankara had seen the most rapid rise in infections lately.
He added that 29,865 healthcare workers in the country had contracted the virus so far, with 52 of them dying.
“The outbreak is increasingly continuing. The virus is spreading to more people each day.
“Our test numbers are rising every day, our new patient numbers are not falling,” Koca said.
The number of new Covid-19 cases rose by 1,596 to 273,301 in the last 24 hours, according to Turkish health ministry data, while the death toll from the virus rose by 45 to 6,462.
Total recoveries stood at 246,876, the data showed.
Updated
Authorities in Madrid have shut down a coronavirus testing centre for teachers after large crowds formed outside.
With the new academic year starting next week, the Madrid region is screening all its teachers for coronavirus antibodies, with further tests for those with a positive result.
But the programme got off to a rocky start, as footage from the EFE news agency showed hundreds of people queuing around the block outside the Virgen de la Paloma school in the north-west of the city, with little space to observe social distancing.
A spokeswoman for the regional education department said the centre was shut at around 2pm, and those who missed their test would be given a new appointment later this week.
Along with mandatory mask use for children over six and a strict hand-washing regimen, authorities hope the testing will ensure a safe return to school and assuage the fears of concerned parents.
Updated
Venice film festival has opened with a display of solidarity for an industry hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Although film festivals are often in competition to show the most hotly-anticipated releases, the directors of the Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Locarno, Karlovy Vary and London film festivals have made the trip to Italy for the first such international event to take place since the crisis all but shut down the movie world.
Australian actor Cate Blanchett, who heads the prize-awarding jury in Venice this year, said she also wanted to show support for film-makers who had to complete their movies in challenging circumstances.
“It’s so great that there’s so many heads of festivals all over the world coming to support Venice and realising that, in fact, it’s ... supporting various different facets of the same industry,” she said.
Venice director Alberto Barbera highlighted the growth of streaming platforms during months of lockdown and the negative effect this could have on cinemas. Barbera said:
Today we risk going towards a progressive reduction of the role of movie theatres.”
With coronavirus cases rising again in Italy and elsewhere, a strict safety protocol has been put in place, including the wearing of face masks while watching films.
France's new Covid-19 infections near all-time high
Daily new Covid-19 infections in France neared an all-time high on Wednesday and the number of people hospitalised in intensive care units for the disease grew at its fastest pace in almost two months.
“The virus keeps spreading in the country,” French health authorities said in a statement, adding roughly a fifth of France’s departments - or administrative districts - were affected by an “active circulation of the disease”.
There were 7,017 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday, just below the 31 March peak of 7,578 and only the third time since the beginning of the outbreak that the daily tally has stood above 7,000.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which smoothes out reporting irregularities, stood at a record of 5,634 and remained above the 5,000 threshold for the fourth day in a row, versus a low of 272 on 27 May - two weeks after authorities lifted a two-month-long lockdown.
The cumulative number of cases now totals 293,024.
As the surge in infections has mainly affected young people, who are less likely to develop complications linked to the disease, there has been no new strain on the French hospital system, which was almost overwhelmed at the end of March.
But after steadily declining for months after a 14 April peak of 32,292, the number of people hospitalised for the disease was up by 28 on Wednesday, at 4,632, increasing for a fifth day in a row, a rise unseen since seen mid-April.
And, among those new cases, the number of people in ICUs for Covid-19 rose by 22 to 446, far below the 8 April record of 7,148 but rising for the sixth consecutive day.
The number of people in France who have died from Covid-19 infections rose on Wednesday by 25 to 30,686, above the seven-day moving average of 20.
Updated
Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive for coronavirus
Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon who served as Italy’s prime minister in four governments, has tested positive for Covid-19.
The 83-year-old is currently in isolation and working from home at his house in Arcore, near Milan, his staff said in a statement on Wednesday.
The statement added that Berlusconi will still contribute to the electoral campaigns of candidates from his Forza Italia party at local elections scheduled for September despite his diagnosis.
Updated
The European Union is warning governments not to reduce the 14-day quarantine for people infected with Covid-19 as some develop the infection even after two weeks, the head of the bloc’s health agency said, signalling a new surge in cases in Europe.
Germany, the EU’s largest country, informed EU authorities that it planned to shorten the quarantine length, following similar moves by the Netherlands and Norway, minutes of a late-August meeting show.
“We are looking to provide some evidence to decision makers on what kind of risks they would take if quarantine was shorter,” Andrea Ammon, head of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), told EU lawmakers in a regular hearing on Wednesday.
She cautioned that in 3-4% of cases, infections emerge only after 14 days, which is currently the standard length of the Covid-19 quarantine.
This week’s data showed that across Europe there were 46 cases per 100,000 people.
Ammon told lawmakers:
The virus has not been sleeping over the summer. It did not take vacation.
“We are almost back to numbers that we have seen in March.”
Spain has now recorded 479,554 cases of the virus, up from 470,973 on Tuesday, according to the latest figures from the health ministry.
The figures also show that 3,663 new cases have been diagnosed over the past 24 hours, while the total number of new cases logged over the past two weeks is 99,621.
There have been 177 deaths from the virus in Spain over the past seven days.
Madrid continues to be the hardest-hit region of the country, accounting for more than a third of the cases diagnosed over the past 24 hours and a similar proportion of those diagnosed over the past fortnight.
🔎 Actualización de datos de #COVID19 en España https://t.co/XpcrH99kiH
— Ministerio de Sanidad (@sanidadgob) September 2, 2020
📌 Materiales de información sobre el #coronavirus https://t.co/3JRZJojRhC #NoLoTiresPorLaBorda pic.twitter.com/B3FSfk5PcR
While the health ministry figures show that 3,663 new cases have been diagnosed over the past 24 hours, more cases will have been officially recorded since yesterday - hence the additional 8,581 cases reported today.
Much of the apparent confusion is down to the fact that Spain’s 17 regions collect their own Covid data on a daily basis and then supply it to the national health ministry. The daily figures tend to be submitted by early afternoon, meaning many cases are not reported until the following day and so there is a lag.
Updated
Three children taken into care after being locked up by their parents for nearly five months in case they caught the coronavirus should not be allowed to return home, an administrative court in Sweden has ruled.
From March until early July, the children, aged between 10 and 17, were prevented from leaving the family’s apartment, whose door was “nailed shut with planks”, and also kept isolated from each other, according to the court verdict in Jönköping county.
The children’s lawyer, Mikael Svegfors, told local radio the family did not speak or understand Swedish fluently and followed the news about Covid-19 from the parents’ home country, which had imposed much tighter restrictions than Sweden. He said:
It is an absolute clash between how people think in different parts of the world. The children got caught up in this, and in the fear of a pandemic we should all be afraid of in one way or another.
Health authorities in the Netherlands have reported a sharp rise in new cases. Officials said a further 734 people tested positive in the last 24 hours, the largest one-day total since mid-August.
The Netherlands Institute for Health (RIVM) reported the numbers in a daily update. On Tuesday, the RIVM’s weekly summary had shown new cases approximately flat at about 500 per day over the previous two weeks.
Updated
The US Food and Drug Administration will organise meetings with independent groups of experts to review data on coronavirus vaccine candidates and advise the agency, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said on Wednesday.
“The meetings will reinforce the transparency of the process as FDA reviews data from trials now underway,” Hahn said in a post on Twitter.
The meetings will reinforce the transparency of the process as FDA reviews data from trials now underway. The entire FDA scientific and medical staff is firmly committed to an objective review of the data.
— Dr. Stephen M. Hahn (@SteveFDA) September 2, 2020
The statement comes after president Donald Trump accused members, without evidence, of a so-called “deep state” working within the FDA of complicating efforts to test Covid-19 vaccines in order to delay results until after the 3 November presidential election.
Last week, the FDA said it will hold a meeting of its advisory committee to address the general development of coronavirus vaccines on 22 October.
While several drugmakers including AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna Inc are conducting late-stage studies of their experimental coronavirus vaccines, there are no US-approved vaccines for Covid-19.
More on the major study that found steroids cut death rates among critically ill coronavirus patients from our health editor, Sarah Boseley.
In June, the Recovery trial run in most NHS hospitals and led by Oxford University found that the lives of one in eight people sick enough from Covid-19 to need a ventilator could be saved by a steroid called dexamethasone.
Now, combined results from that trial and six others have confirmed those findings and established that at least one other equally cheap and widely available steroid, hydrocortisone, also saves lives.
The drugs reduce the risk of death in these seriously ill patients by 20%, according to a meta-analysis of the results of the seven trials covering a total of 1,703 patients, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Three of the trials have also been published separately in the journal.
You can read her full report here:
Updated
Madrid president says most returning schoolchildren likely to contract Covid-19
The president of Madrid, the Spanish area hardest hit by the coronavirus, has said that “practically all the children” about to return to school in the region are likely to pick up the virus over the coming months.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso insisted that the necessary steps had been taken to make schools “very safe places”, but said such measures were not in place away from the classroom.
“Over the course of the school year, it’s likely that practically all the kids will get it one way or another,” she told esRadio on Wednesday.
“That’ll probably be because they pick it up over the weekend at a family gathering, or in the park in the afternoon, or from a classmate. We just don’t know because the virus can be anywhere.”
On Wednesday, the regional government contracted a private company to begin testing 100,000 school staff for Covid-19 antibodies as families prepare for a staggered return to school over the coming days.
Teaching unions criticised the short notice given for the test, which led to huge queues as staff lined up around test centres.
Spain recorded 8,115 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday evening, 2,731 of them diagnosed in the previous 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the national health ministry.
Over the past seven days, 159 people have died from the virus, bringing the death toll to 29,152.
The latest statistics bring the country’s total to 470,973 cases, of which 99,889 have been logged over the past fortnight. Of those 99,899 cases, 31,947 are in the Madrid region.
Both the prime minister and the centre of Spain’s centre for health emergencies have expressed concern over the situation in Madrid this week.
On Tuesday, Madrid’s city council announced that the capital’s 3,800 parks and green spaces would be closed from 10pm until 6am in an effort to halt the spread of the virus. Police in Madrid are also cracking down on botellónes, or street drinking parties, which can facilitate the spread of the virus.
Updated
Major study finds steroids cut death rates among Covid-19 patients
Treating critically ill Covid-19 patients with corticosteroid drugs reduces the risk of death by 20%, an analysis of seven international trials has found, prompting the World Health Organization to update its advice on treatment.
The analysis – which pooled data from separate trials of low dose hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone – found that steroids improved survival rates of coronavirus patients sick enough to be in intensive care in hospital.
“This is equivalent to around 68% of [the sickest Covid-19] patients surviving after treatment with corticosteroids, compared to around 60% surviving in the absence of corticosteroids,” the researchers said in a statement.
Jonathan Sterne, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Britain’s Bristol University, who worked on the analysis, said:
Steroids are a cheap and readily available medication, and our analysis has confirmed that they are effective in reducing deaths amongst the people most severely affected by Covid-19.
He said the trials – conducted by researchers in Britain, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Spain, and the US – gave a consistent message throughout, showing the drugs were beneficial in the sickest patients regardless of age or sex or how long patients had been ill.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reinforce results that were hailed as a major breakthrough and announced in June, when dexamethasone became the first drug shown to be able to reduce death rates among severely sick Covid-19 patients.
Updated
Coronavirus pandemic will widen gender poverty gap, says United Nations
The Covid-19 pandemic will make the poverty gap between men and woman wider, pushing 47 million more women and girls into poverty by next year, and undoing progress made in recent decades, the United Nations has said.
Worldwide more women than men will be made poor by the economic fallout and massive job losses caused by coronavirus, with informal workers worst hit in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, according to UN estimates.
In a statement, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of UN Women, said:
The increases in women’s extreme poverty … are a stark indictment of deep flaws in the ways we have constructed our societies and economies.
During the pandemic, women have lost their jobs at a faster rate than men have, as they are more likely to be employed in sectors hardest hit by long lockdowns such as retail, restaurants and hotels, it said.
Women are also more likely to work in the informal economy, typically in jobs as domestic workers and cleaners that often come with little or no health care, unemployment benefits or other protections.
According to the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), about 70% of domestic workers globally had lost their jobs as a result of Covid-19 by June this year.
“We know that women take most of the responsibility for caring for the family; they earn less, save less and hold much less secure jobs,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
Overall, the pandemic will push an additional 96 million people into extreme poverty by next year, of whom nearly half are women and girls, according to estimates by the UN.
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Tens of thousands of young people headed to sports arenas across Uzbekistan on Wednesday to sit university entrance exams in the open air due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The massive exercise, which will span two weeks, will see more than 1.4 million applicants take a three-hour test while seated at desks on the running tracks or walkways of the stadiums.
They are competing for some 150,000 university places under a centralised admissions system.
Hundreds of young men and women attended the first session at one of the stadiums in Tashkent on Wednesday morning, wearing masks.
The Central Asian nation of 34 million has just ended its second national lockdown after a mid-summer surge in cases stretched its healthcare system to the limit. Uzbekistan has confirmed 42,370 Covid-19 cases with 324 deaths.
Courses at local universities will commence online rather than in person and schools will reopen in the country on 14 September, two weeks later than usual, with lessons reverting to distance learning depending on local circumstances.
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Ireland has adjusted its exam grading system to avoid repeating the UK’s A-level results fiasco.
The government this week decided to leave teachers’ estimated grades largely unchanged and to not rely on a school’s previous performance in the calculated grades process.
The decisions will leave the estimated grades of 79% of Leaving Certificate students unchanged, according to initial data from the department of education. Some 17% will have have grades reduced, in most cases by one grade, and 4% will have grades increased.
The 60,000 students are to receive their final results next Monday, after which college places will be allocated.
Teachers awarded more than twice the number of the top H1 grades than would have been expected in normal Leaving Cert results, producing grade inflation, but Irish officials refrained from major intervention after the UK’s bungled attempt to produce results that conformed with previous years.
The revised methodology gives Ireland a route map through the “minefield” that blew up the UK’s exams process, Brian Mooney, a former teacher and guidance counsellor, wrote in the Irish Times.
In case you missed it earlier, the US’ most powerful elected Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, has been photographed in a San Francisco hair salon without a face covering, breaking the city’s Covid-19 prevention rules.
Footage captured on a security camera obtained by Fox News, showed the Democrat House speaker without a mask as she walked through the salon.
Salons in San Francisco have been closed during the coronavirus pandemic, with limited outdoor operations beginning only on Tuesday. The footage, showing Pelosi walking through the eSalon with a face mask around her neck, was filmed during an appointment on Monday.
You can read my colleague Nazia Parveen’s full report on this here:
Anti-lockdown protesters can be called "Covidiots", German prosecutors rule
Anti-lockdown protesters and face-mask refusers can be called “Covidiots”, German prosecutors have said, dismissing legal complaints against Social Democrat co-leader Saskia Esken who used the term on Twitter.
Prosecutors in Berlin, who had received hundreds of complaints accusing Esken of slander, said she was exercising her constitutional right to express her opinion.
Esken’s SPD party is the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative-led ruling coalition.
In a 1 August tweet, Esken said protesters at a Berlin march threatened the health of others by violating social distancing rules and ignoring requirements to wear face masks.
Tausende #Covidioten feiern sich in #Berlin als „die zweite Welle“, ohne Abstand, ohne Maske. Sie gefährden damit nicht nur unsere Gesundheit, sie gefährden unsere Erfolge gegen die Pandemie und für die Belebung von Wirtschaft, Bildung und Gesellschaft. Unverantwortlich!
— Saskia Esken (@EskenSaskia) August 1, 2020
Prosecutors said:
The pointed term ‘Covidiot’ is, as an expression of opinion in the political discourse in the coronavirus pandemic, not liable for prosecution and is covered by the constitutionally protected freedom of speech,”
Germany has seen mass protests in the past few weeks against curbs imposed by authorities to contain the spread of the new coronavirus and so limit the damage caused by Covid-19.
The marches have attracted a mixed crowd of civil rights activists and people who oppose vaccinations, as well as neo-Nazis and members of far-right groups including the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
On Saturday, Berlin police broke up a mass protest against coronavirus curbs and arrested 300 people after demonstrators failed to keep their distance and wear masks as instructed.
The UK has reimposed local Covid-19 restrictions on parts of northern England, just as they were being lifted on Wednesday – the latest in a series of government U-turns on coronavirus.
Health secretary Matt Hancock said restrictions would remain in place in the boroughs of Bolton and Trafford in Greater Manchester, contrary to his announcement on 28 August that they would be lifted today.
In a statement, Hancock said:
Following a significant change in the level of infection rates over the last few days, a decision has been taken that Bolton and Trafford will now remain under existing restrictions.
We have always been clear we will take swift and decisive action where needed to contain outbreaks.
You can read more on this development over on our UK coronavirus blog:
Updated
Hong Kong will relax some coronavirus restrictions but has cancelled the annual firework display to mark China’s national day on 1 October for a second year in a row.
Last year, the celebrations were cancelled due to pro-democracy protests.
“In response to the latest situation of the Covid-19 epidemic, the national day fireworks … will be cancelled,” the government said in a statement on the celebrations, which usually take place near the picturesque Victoria Harbour.
As part of the relaxation of Covid restrictions, gyms, amusement centres and massage parlours in Hong Kong will be able to reopen on Friday and restaurants can stay open an hour beyond the current limit of 9pm as new daily infections in the Asian financial hub drop into the single digits.
However, a ban on gatherings of more than two people stays in place, health secretary Sophia Chan said.
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Remarks by Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, admitting that the knowledge that has been gained about the virus in the past few months meant the government would handle it differently in future, has triggered a renewed debate about the prevention measures.
“With the knowledge we have today, I can tell you we won’t need to close hairdressers and shops again,” he had told members of the public in Bottrop on Monday, where he was received with aggression and spat at.
Seeking to clarify his statement at a press conference this morning, he said: “Every day we are learning better how to achieve a balance.”
Not only had medical therapies improved, but scientists were now better able to judge the virus, and it was now possible to react either regionally or more locally to outbreaks, he said.
We are better now at weighing up these decisions between protection and everyday life, because we know more, because we have more experience.”
He said the measures currently in place to dampen the spread of the virus, such as mask wearing, reducing the size of gatherings, keeping distance and maintaining hygiene rules such as handwashing and airing rooms, were appropriate.
But in March it was the right thing to do “to be careful” and to introduce “harsh measures” such as closing schools and kindergartens and preventing people from visiting care homes.
Spahn has received both praise and opprobrium for his handling of the pandemic, which has seen him far more in the spotlight than the chancellor, Angela Merkel, in recent months.
He condemned the protesters who had heckled him and refused his invitation to talk, as well as those who refused to wear a mask attending protests in Berlin at the weekend, at the close of which some participants rushed the steps of the Reichstag, calling them a “loud and aggressive minority who essentially have a very different point of view”.
Germany has 16,400 registered active cases of the virus, with 1,256 new cases having been reported overnight. More than 9,400 people have died.
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Ireland’s “green list” of countries exempt from travel restrictions is under review after a spike in the number of Irish Covid-19 cases made adding countries with a similar or slightly better incidence rate too risky, the country’s health minister said.
Ireland dropped a 14-day quarantine requirement for arrivals from an initial list of 15 European countries in late July and cut that down to 10 on 4 August, when an increase in cases in the likes of Malta and Cyprus struck them off the list.
More countries were due to be added or removed every two weeks, but the list has not been amended since Ireland’s 14-day cumulative cases per 100,000 of population rose above 30 from around three cases when the measure was introduced.
Stephen Donnelly told the Newstalk radio station:
If we essentially pegged the countries that qualify to our own rate, we would have something perverse happening, which is as the prevalence of Covid increased in Ireland, we would be opening ourselves up to more and more countries with high rates of Covid.
“If we were simply to do that, it would self-evidently lead to a higher spread of the virus in the country. That’s why we have it under review at the moment.”
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Pope Francis held his weekly general audience in public for the first time in six months on Wednesday following the coronavirus lockdown.
The audience, at which the pope announced a day of prayer and fasting for Lebanon, was held in the San Damaso courtyard of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
About 500 visitors, who sat in socially distanced seats, had their temperatures checked as they entered the Vatican, while nearly everyone wore face masks.
Pope Francis told the audience:
After so many months, we resume our encounters face to face and not screen to screen, face to face, and this is beautiful.”
Updated
Older people in South Korea are driving the surge in new critical coronavirus infections.
More than 40% of new cases in the country are older than 60, fuelling an increase in the numbers of those who are severely or critically ill, health authorities have said.
South Korea is battling a second wave of Covid-19, centred in the capital, Seoul, and its suburbs, which are home to 25 million people.
On Tuesday, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 267 new infections, a slight increase from the previous day.
The country’s total caseload is 20,449, with 326 deaths. South Korea was the site of the first large outbreak of coronavirus outside China, but experts believe the relative youth of many of those infected could have helped to keep down the death toll.
The surge in infections over the last three weeks has depleted medical facilities, leaving fewer than 3% of hospital beds – or just nine – available for critical cases in greater Seoul, down from 22% about 10 days ago, the health ministry said.
Vice health minister Kim Gang-lip said the government were scrambling to increase beds out of fear that the number of severe cases will also rise.
Updated
European Union states could buy potential Covid-19 vaccines through a procurement scheme co-led by the World Health Organization, the EU commission said in what appears to be a change in position.
The move could allow EU governments to secure vaccines from companies that are not negotiating with Brussels, such as US firms Merck, Inovio and Novavax.
They are all in talks with the WHO scheme, dubbed Covax, but have so far not been reported to be involved in negotiations with the EU commission.
EU states have committed not to enter into parallel negotiations with the same vaccine manufacturers with which talks are ongoing at EU level, but this “does not exclude the possibility to take part in negotiations with other vaccine companies through Covax,” an EU commission spokesman said.
That would represent a change in policy after the EU executive advised the 27 EU governments not to purchase vaccines through the WHO scheme in July, deeming it slow, expensive and legally incompatible with the parallel EU procurement programme.
Updated
Germany rules out winter lockdown
Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, has said the country will not need to enter another nationwide lockdown over the winter to keep Covid-19 under control despite a rising number of infections.
After initially keeping infections and deaths relatively low compared with other European countries, the number of new cases in Germany has accelerated in recent weeks, raising fears of a second wave.
Updated
Greece recorded has recorded the first coronavirus case in the overcrowded migrant camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos, two migration ministry officials said on Wednesday.
A 40-year old asylum seeker has tested positive for the virus and had been put in isolation, one of the officials told Reuters. Authorities were trying to trace the people he had been in contact with, the official said.
The Moria facility, which hosts about 13,000 people, has been frequently criticised by aid groups for poor living conditions.
Since 1 March, all migrants who reach Lesbos have been quarantined away from the island’s camps.
Greece has recorded 10,524 Covid-19 cases since the first infection in February, and 271 coronavirus-related deaths.
In recent weeks, it has reported a surge in cases, which has forced Greek authorities to gradually reimpose restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.
Lesbos lies just off the Turkish coast, and hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees have used the island as a staging post in recent years in their attempt to get to mainland Europe.
Updated
I am now handing over the blog to the very capable Amy Walker. Thank you for reading and please do keep us updated on all coronavirus-related tips and stories.
Entry requirements for tourists have been tightened in the Maldives after a spike in coronavirus infections at more than a dozen resorts, the foreign ministry has said.
The Indian Ocean archipelago reopened its luxury resort islets in mid-July after a months-long lockdown, and did not require visitors to be tested or carry virus-free certificates when entering the country.
Since then, 29 local staff and 16 foreigners have tested positive at the resorts, officials said, where they were also being isolated.
Under the new guidelines, all tourists will be required to present a negative Covid-19 test result on arrival.
Tourism is the major economic driver for the Maldives and authorities had hoped visitors would flock back after international flights restarted.
Only 5,200 tourists visited the country in the month since 15 July – a fraction of the pre-pandemic 141,000 monthly average.
Meanwhile, the Maldives recorded more than 1,000 new infections in just the past week to take the total number of cases to 8,003. Most of the infections since the start of the pandemic have been among poor migrant labourers and locals in the densely populated capital Male.
The government imposed a night curfew in Male and neighbouring inhabited islands from early August to contain the sharp rise in cases there.
Twenty-nine people have so far died from Covid-19 in the nation of 340,000 people.
Updated
Most powerful elected US Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, pictured without a face covering in hair salon.
Quite a big story coming out of the US with Nancy Pelosi pictured having her done in a San Francisco hair salon without a mask on.
Footage obtained by Fox News showed the House of Representatives speaker inside the premises on Monday, breaking the city’s coronavirus-prevention rules.
It gets worse for Pelosi as hair salons have been closed by law in San Francisco, and so therefore she shouldn’t have been there.
Given her role as Democrat House speaker, and her regular messages to Americans to wear masks and follow the guidelines, this could be quite impactful.
Many feel this could be a Dominic Cummings-style moment in the US, where even Democrats who had been following coronavirus guidelines begin to stop.
Updated
Frontline staff battling coronavirus in government-held areas of Syria are dying in growing numbers for want of personal protective equipment, according to Human Rights Watch.
The humanitarian organisation reported multiple deaths of doctors in August from Covid-19-related symptoms, many of which did not appear in government figures because no test was carried out.
“It is bewildering that as the obituaries for doctors and nurses responding to the Covid-19 pandemic pile up, official numbers tell a story at odds with the reality on the ground,” said HRW researcher Sara Kayyali.
Syria has recorded 2,830 cases, including 116 deaths, in government-held areas, but the health ministry has acknowledged it lacks the “capacity … to carry out widespread testing in the provinces”.
HRW said evidence suggested the official figures significantly understate the scale of the outbreak.
It said it had confirmed the deaths of 33 doctors from Covid-19-related symptoms in August, while official figures recorded 64 confirmed deaths among the whole population.
“Doctors and nurses operating in government-held areas said that there are severe shortages of supplies, particularly in rural areas,” the New York-based watchdog said.
Personal protective equipment provided by the World Health Organization did not appear to be reaching medical staff in sufficient quantities.
Health workers told HRW that hospitals equipped to treat Covid-19 patients were now all full and smaller centres lacked the ventilators and oxygen to do so.
Several sources told AFP last month that deaths among medical personnel in government-held areas had shot up in previous weeks.
A doctor, who asked to remain anonymous, said most of the dead had not been tested for the virus but had presented symptoms before dying.
Nine years of civil war have battered Syria’s healthcare system, with hospitals damaged by bombing, vital equipment lacking and doctors wounded or forced to flee fighting.
The government controls most of the country but the north-west remains in rebel hands while the northeast is controlled by US-backed Kurdish forces.
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China’s aviation regulator said it will resume direct flights to Beijing from eight countries including Thailand, Cambodia, Greece, Denmark, Sweden and Canada from 3 September.
In March, Chinese authorities ordered all international flights to Beijing to be diverted to other airports as their first port of entry, as the capital stepped up measures to battle imported infections.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said it would reimpose such curbs if more than three passengers test positive for the coronavirus upon arrival and load factors on such flights would be strictly controlled.
Indonesia has reported 3,075 new coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s total tally to 180,646, data from the country’s health ministry website showed.
The south-east Asian country also added 111 new deaths on Wednesday, taking the total number to 7,616, the highest coronavirus death toll in south-east Asia.
Updated
Australia: Victoria extends state of emergency
Australia’s coronavirus hot spot, Victoria state, extended its state of emergency for another six months as its weekly average of new infections dipped.
The Victorian parliaments upper chamber passed legislation by a 20-19 vote to extend the state of emergency, which enhances the governments powers to impose pandemic restrictions. The government had wanted a 12-month extension.
The state health department reported 90 new infections and six deaths in the latest 24-hour period. There were 70 new infections reported on Tuesday.
Updated
There has been much commotion surrounding the minister of security and law in the Netherlands, Ferdinand Grapperhaus, after reports that he broke social distancing rules at his own wedding.
The NL Times reports that Grapperhaus was criticised last week after a photo from his wedding showed him standing close to his guests and not maintaining the 1.5-metre distance rule. As justice minister he is responsible for enforcing social distancing guidelines.
Grapperhaus eventually apologised for not maintaining social distancing and paid €780 – twice the amount of the fine for not complying with coronavirus rules – to the Red Cross.
However, the house of representatives is due to discuss the matter today and reports suggest that if the situation escalates further, it could end in Grapperhaus’s resignation.
Updated
There was some good news in the Philippines – the health ministry recorded 2,218 new coronavirus infections, the country’s lowest daily case increase in five weeks.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total infections have risen to 226,440 while the number of deaths have reached 3,623, a quarter of which were recorded in the past 15 days.
Updated
Russia has reported 4,952 new coronavirus cases today, pushing its national tally to 1,005,000, the fourth largest in the world.
Authorities said 115 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 17,414.
Another record high, this time in Hungary. The central European country has registered 365 new coronavirus cases, its highest daily tally on record, as people return from summer holidays and the school year starts up.
Hungary, with a population of around 10 million, weathered the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year with fewer infections than many European countries. The total number of cases, as of Wednesday, stood at 6,622, with 619 deaths.
But even as most people with the disease have recovered, the number of active cases has risen over the past week or so from the hundreds to 2,100 on Wednesday, and experts have warned of a spike in infections in coming weeks as schools reopen.
Prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government has closed borders to foreign visitors, though it has exempted citizens of three neighbouring central European nations – the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia – from the ban, provided they test negative for the virus beforehand.
The European Union, which insists on uniform rules for all EU citizens crossing internal borders, has said the move is discriminatory and therefore illegal.
Updated
India’s coronavirus infections rose to almost 3.8 million on Wednesday, as states continued to relax rules on movement despite the surge in cases.
The country reported 78,357 new cases in the past 24 hours, according to federal health data, taking total infections to 3,769,523. Some 66,333 people have died.
India’s total cases lag only the US and Brazil, which it will overtake in days based on current trends.
Prime minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide lockdown in March when the country was reporting fewer than 100 daily cases, winning praise from some experts for early action but warnings from others the restrictions had been imposed too soon.
The country’s economy shrank by nearly a quarter in April-June, data showed on Monday, much more than forecast and placing increasing pressure on policymakers to kick-start growth, despite the high number of new cases.
The chief minister of Goa, a popular tourist destination that has recently relaxed quarantine rules to attract visitors, said on Wednesday he had tested positive for the virus.
“Those who have come in my close contact are advised to take the necessary precautions,” Pramod Sawant, a member of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party, said in a tweet.
I wish to inform all that I have been detected COVID19 positive. I am asymptomatic and hence have opted for home isolation. I shall continue to discharge my duties working from home. Those who have come in my close contact are advised to take the necessary precautions.
— Dr. Pramod Sawant (@DrPramodPSawant) September 2, 2020
Authorities in the capital New Delhi are due to meet later on Wednesday to discuss the reopening of the city’s metro, despite fresh cases there sitting at a two-month high.
Updated
The show must go on in Australia as its most populous state reported the biggest daily jump in coronavirus infections in two weeks on Wednesday, but said there were no plans to cancel the new year fireworks show over Sydney Harbour.
New South Wales (NSW) reported 17 new cases, the biggest one-day jump since 12 August, while nationally the count rose to 109 cases from 85 a day earlier.
Victoria state remained the hardest-hit region with 90 cases, although this was well down from its daily peak of more than 700 in early August at the height of a second wave of infections.
Victoria’s capital Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is in its fifth week of a six-week lockdown with authorities scheduled to detail on Sunday a timetable for easing curbs.
Though strict restrictions have helped to contain the spread of the virus, they have wreaked havoc on the economy with official data on Wednesday showing Australia had entered its first recession in three decades.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state was pushing ahead with plans to host large events such as the New Year’s Eve fireworks over Sydney Harbour.
“We should be hosting events we’ve hosted before but it will be different,” Berejiklian told reporters. “I think for a lot of people the fireworks represent hope.”
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Malaysia’s prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, is winning in the popularity stakes after being rated highly by voters, according to a poll published on Wednesday.
Muhyiddin has scored points for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and greater representation of the ethnic Malay majority in his administration.
He received a 69% approval rating in a survey run by independent pollster Merdeka Center, six months after taking office in March following a power struggle that led to the collapse of the previous multi-ethnic government led by Mahathir Mohamad.
Survey respondents also gave a 93% approval rating for the government’s handling of Covid-19 and rated it highly for helping the needy and managing the economy during the coronavirus-induced crisis. Malaysia has reported just over 9,300 coronavirus infections.
Merdeka Center executive director Ibrahim Suffian said Malay voters indicated a strong preference for the administration’s management of the pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout and for bringing together long-feuding Malay political parties.
“The results also indicate a significant swing of support of Malay voters towards a unified Malay political coalition,” Ibrahim said in a statement.
Ethnic Malays account for some 60% of Malaysia’s population of about 32 million, with the rest comprised mostly of ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian minorities.
Muhyiddin, who leads the Malay-based Bersatu party, secured the premiership backed by two of the largest parties representing Malay interests – the scandal-tainted former ruling party, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party.
But he holds a razor-thin majority in parliament. In July, UMNO, which forms the largest bloc in Muhyiddin’s administration, withdrew from the prime minister’s political alliance, though the party said it would continue to support the government in parliament.
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There has been a surge in cases in Ukraine with a record 2,495 new coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the national security council said on Wednesday, up from a previous record of 2,481 cases.
Ukraine has imposed a temporary ban on most foreigners from entering the country until 28 September and extended lockdown measures until the end of October to contain a recent spike in cases.
It has so far reported a total of 125,798 infections.
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Morning, I am now taking over the blog and will be updating it this morning. As ever, please do send me your tips and stories or anything you think we should be covering. My email is nazia.parveen@theguardian.com or follow me on Twitter to send me a DM: @NParveenG
Updated
Summary
I will be handing over to my colleagues in London shortly but here is a summary of the main points in the past eight hours.
-
The Trump administration says it will not work with other countries to develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine. It said it did not want to be constrained by “multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China”.
- Australia has slumped into recession for the first time in nearly 30 years as the coronavirus pandemic finally ended its record run of economic prosperity. Growth fell a record 7% in the June quarter as household spending cratered during lockdown.
- The Scottish government is reimposing a ban on household gatherings in three local authorities in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area for the next two weeks amid alarm about rising infections in recent days.
- Antibodies humans make to fight the coronavirus last for at least four months after diagnosis and do not fade quickly, countering concerns to the contrary. US scientists said their study of 30,000 Icelanders offered hope that a vaccine could produce sustained resistance.
- Mexico passed 600,000 cases and Colombia has racked up more than 20,000 deaths, latest figures show, as the virus continues to take its toll in the Americas. Worldwide there have been more than 25.65 million cases confirmed and 855,000 deaths.
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South Korean officials warned the high rate of infection among over-60s was placing strain on the country’s health system as it battles a second wave.
- Experts are puzzled by Pakistan’s relatively low number of cases and deaths. It has just under 300,000 infections compared with almost 4 million in neighbouring India.
Updated
The Scottish government is reimposing a ban on household gatherings in three local authorities in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area for the next two weeks amid alarm about rising infections in recent days.
One in six Scots has been banned from visiting other households as Wednesday's Daily Record leads on the lockdown crackdown in Glasgow, East Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire in the wake of a virus surge. pic.twitter.com/N6h9d2vIsM
— The Daily Record (@Daily_Record) September 1, 2020
Residents of West Dunbartonshire, Glasgow and East Renfrewshire council are not allowed to host people in their homes or visit someone else’s home, Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, said. Members of different households can continue to meet outdoors, including in gardens.
It is estimated the new restrictions will affect about 800,000 people.
Here’s our full story:
Experts are baffled by the fall in cases in Pakistan in recent weeks following an initial surge that many believed would spiral into a serious crisis.
Despite fears that the country’s crowded urban areas and ramshackle hospitals would be overrun, Covid-19 deaths are hovering in the single digits each day, Agence France-Presse reports, while neighbouring India tallies hundreds of fatalities and is closing in on having 4 million infections.
Pakistan has a long history of failing to contain infectious diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and hepatitis, but coronavirus has so far been subdued. To date, the South Asian nation has confirmed more than 295,000 infections and currently is recording a few hundred new cases per day.
‘India clueless as Pakistan manages to flatten Covid-19 curve’ https://t.co/4A7mYIyYis pic.twitter.com/ujNi6mTVY4
— The Express Tribune (@etribune) August 26, 2020
“No one has been able to explain this decline ... We don’t have any concrete explanation,” said Salman Haseeb, a doctor at Services Hospital in the eastern city of Lahore.
To the UK, where 70 health bodies have written to Boris Johnson warning him that the planned abolition of Public Health England will damage the fight against obesity, smoking and alcohol misuse.
PHE has been set up as the fall guy for Britian’s poor response to the pandemic that has seen more than 40,000 people lose their lives.
You can read our full story here:
Updated
Australia’s economy was already weak before the pandemic hit, but now it’s really been knocked for six according to our political editor in Canberra, Katharine Murphy.
The country’s first recession for almost 30 years will have far-reaching consequences for how people feel about their economic circumstances and will require a more radical approach than just a few tax cuts and labour reforms.
The scale of the economic downturn, both here, and around the world, suggests that deeper thinking will be needed. The environment is strongly suggestive that what’s required to turn things around will be more than reverting, mindlessly, to the orthodoxies that have dominated postwar economic thinking.
Here’s Murph’s full piece:
Forget the recession, the big news from Australia is that this year’s Australian Rules football grand final will be played in Brisbane and not the home of the sport, Melbourne.
It means that, thanks to the serious outbreak of coronavirus in Melbourne, the AFL showpiece event will be played outside the Victorian capital.
The grand final, for those not familiar with it, is one of the world’s great sporting occasions and attracts a crowd of more than 100,000 every year to the giant Melbourne Cricket Ground.
South Korea has recorded 267 new cases as of midnight on Tuesday, a slight increase over the day before. Overall, South Korea now has 20,449 confirmed cases and 326 deaths.
Officials said on Wednesday that more than 40% of new cases are being found in people over the age of 60, increasing the number of people who are critically ill with Covid to 124 compared with 9 three weeks ago.
“The government is working to secure more beds in the expectation that the number of severe cases will continue to rise because so many of the new patients are over 60,” vice health minister Kim Gang-lip said.
Japan is considering offering a vaccine free of charge to every citizen, according to Kyodo news agency.
The government is aiming to secure enough vaccines for the entire 126 million-strong population by the middle of next year, Reuters reports, citing Kyodo.
Germany has seen its new cases rise by 1,256 to 244,855, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
Germany, which has seen some ugly protests in recent days calling for an end to restirctions on everyday life, also saw fatalities rise by 11 to 9,313.
Updated
The bigger-than-expected drop in Australian GDP has seen the Aussie dollar take a bit of knock on Wednesday.
it was flying high thanks mainly to the $100-plus price of its principal export, iron ore, but today’s snapshot from the rest of the economy has not been so rosy. The Aussie is down 0.3% to US73.54.
This is a great chart on how income and consumption have diverged in Australia.
Household income up (due to government support), much of it being saved, consumption way down. #ausbiz pic.twitter.com/xUHEFjY4zM
— James Foster (@JFosterFM) September 2, 2020
Sarah Hunter, chief economist for BIS Oxford Economics in Australia, said the path out of recession would be a long one with the country’s second-biggest state, Victoria, still in lockdown.
Growth in the September quarter will be weighed down by the lockdown in Victoria, and beyond this continued health concerns, ongoing restrictions and the dialling back of income support will all weigh on the economy. We expect it to take until early 2022 for activity to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Updated
Antibody study offers vaccine hope
A study of 30,000 people in Iceland has found that the antibodies we make to fight the coronavirus last for at least four months after diagnosis and do not fade quickly as some earlier reports have suggested.
The work by researchers at Harvard and the US National Institutes of Health is the most extensive work yet on the immune systems response to the virus over time, and is good news for efforts to develop vaccines, Associated Press reports.
In a commentary published with the study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the scientists wrote:
If a vaccine can spur production of long-lasting antibodies as natural infection seems to do, it gives hope that immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting.
One of the big mysteries of the pandemic is whether having had the coronavirus helps protect against future infection, and for how long. Some smaller studies previously suggested that antibodies may disappear quickly and that some people with few or no symptoms may not make many at all.
The new study by Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics, a subsidiary of the U.S. biotech company Amgen, with several hospitals, universities and health officials in Iceland. The country has tested 15% of its population since late February, when its first Covid-19 cases were detected, giving a solid base for comparisons.
A little nugget from the Australian GDP breakdown gives us an interesting insight into what Aussies got up to in lockdown... drinking.
Although household consumption saw the biggest falls, the amount spent on alcohol skyrocketed by 13% as people denied the ability to drink at pubs and restaurants shipped in booze at home.
Household consumption volumes make interesting reading - most growth in alcohol spending, large hits to in retail and cafes etc and perversely healthcare which seemingly underscores the risk that other illness/disease goes untreated in the covid world... #ausbiz pic.twitter.com/T5jqBoatkl
— Alex Joiner (@IFM_Economist) September 2, 2020
Australia officially in recession for first time in 29 years
The GDP number has landed down under and it’s ugly – the Australian economy shrank 7% in the second quarter of the year. It is the biggest contraction ever experienced and is higher than forecast by the treasury (it had pencilled in 6%). The previous biggest fall on record had been 2% in June 1974.
Today's figures confirm Australia has sunk into its first recession in 30 years. GDP fell 0.3% in the first quarter of this year. https://t.co/acjpavIcYz
— Nour Haydar (@NourHaydar) September 2, 2020
Incredibly, it’s the first recession in the country for 29 years (as measured by two consecutive quarters of negative growth).
You can read more at our Australia live blog:
US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said there are still “serious differences” between Democrats and the White House over coronavirus relief legislation.
In a statement issued after a phone call with treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, on Tuesday night, Pelosi said:
Sadly, this phone call made clear that Democrats and the White House continue to have serious differences understanding the gravity of the situation that America’s working families are facing.
Earlier, Mnuchin testified before the House subcommittee that is examining “the urgent need for additional economic relief for children, workers, and families and the administration’s implementation of key stimulus programs”.
Democrats criticised the White House for not agreeing to Democrats’ compromise offer of crafting a $2 trillion package for the next coronavirus relief bill, but Republicans defended the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic and want a package worth $1 trillion.
Updated
While we’re still on the question of how the virus has impacted the financial markets, ICYMI there was an astonishing landmark reached on Tuesday where the value of Apple outstripped the TOTAL VALUE of the UK’s leading index, the FTSE100.
Apple share capital value of $2.2 trillion makes this tech Titan larger than the entire value of FTSE 100. The largest U.K. company is UNILEVER (value: circa £115 billion). FTSE 100 has had a shocker today down 109 points at 5854 - banks & financials under the cosh!
— David Buik (@truemagic68) September 1, 2020
That’s quite something to consider. Although Britain’s banks have taken a hammering in recent years and the index has suffered accordingly, it is still home to some of the biggest names in the corporate world such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Unilever.
Here’s the full story if you want to read more:
Asian stock markets buoyed by stimulus hopes
Hope of continued stimulus from the US Federal Reserve has helped to boost stock markets in Asia on Wednesday.
In Australia, where the central bank on Tuesday said it would expand its term funding facility to the country’s banks, the ASX200 benchmark index is up 1.5%.
The Nikkei in Tokyo is up by around 0.5% and indices in Shanghai, Hong Jong and Seoul are also basking in the prospect of more cheap money.
The #RBA perhaps forced yesterday to “consider how further monetary measures could support recovery” as its global counterparts still seek to heap on stimulus despite the likelihood of bolstering the economy being uncertain and bolstering markets being almost guaranteed #ausbiz https://t.co/AAV7W3TxVn
— Alex Joiner (@IFM_Economist) September 1, 2020
Standby for the latest GDP figures from Australia in about 30 minutes. They are expected to show that the economy shrunk 7% in the second quarter.
From our US team, news of a teacher in California with ties to the far-right who has been held on suspicion of sending misogynistic and threatening letters to a health official involving the coronavirus pandemic.
You can read the full story here:
Mexico passes 600,000 cases
Mexico recorded 827 new deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday with another 6,476 new cases, the health ministry said.
The country now has 65,241 fatalities and 606,036 cases.
La Secretaría de Salud reportó 827 nuevas muertes por Covid-19, con lo que suman 65 mil 241; en México hay 606 mil 36 casos acumulados, 6 mil 476 más que ayer. #RegístrateGratis https://t.co/dvAftuHBD1
— mural.com (@muralcom) September 2, 2020
Updated
If you find yourself missing the slightly indeterminate chicken with rice or pasta sludge served up on long-haul flights, don’t worry, help is at hand.
Incredible though it may seem, airline food companies have begun selling food that would normally be dished out somehwere above the clouds.
Thai Airways began selling meal boxes in April, while in Hong Kong Cathay Pacific is selling meals to airport staff and Indonesia’s national airline Garuda is offering its food as takeaway dinners on a tray.
Rubi Haliman, from Tangerang, Indonesia, who has already ordered four meals from Aerofood ACS, the catering company for Garuda, said:
We get the whole set [of potted dishes]. My favourite was nasi daun jeruk: rice with lemon flavour.
Our south-east Asia correspondent, Rebecca Ratcliffe, has the full story here:
Another day, another stock market high.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both registered record closing highs on Tuesday with technology leading the charge while economic data and moves toward stimulus talks in Washington helped fuel optimism. Zoom, the video conferencing site, rose 40%
Asian markets are set to follow suit when they open around about now.
APAC Opening Calls:#ASX 5985 +0.39%#NIKKEI 23283 +0.63%#HSI 25189 -0.07%#NIFTY 11513 +0.11%#A50 15736 +0.39%#TWSE 12752 +0.45%#IGOpeningCall
— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) September 1, 2020
There have been another eight new cases of the virus in mainland China up to midnight on Tuesday, the health ministry said on Wednesday morning.
All of the new Covid-19 cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, marking the 17th consecutive day with no local infection.
The Chinese mainland on Tuesday reported eight additional #coronavirus cases, all from overseas. There are now 198 active cases, including three in critical condition. #China pic.twitter.com/0fmQMC6Br3
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) September 1, 2020
The number of new asymptomatic cases fell to 19 from 34 a day earlier. China does not count symptomless infections as confirmed cases. The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 85,066, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
US vaccine decision is a 'real blow'
The US refusal to cooperate on an international Covid-19 vaccine effort with what it calls the “corrupt” World Health Organisation and China has been met with despair by leading experts.
The WHO has warned against “vaccine nationalism” that could prevent the distribution of a treatment around the world. It has set up a Covid-19 vaccines global access facility (Covax), along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to accelerate the development and testing of a vaccine and work toward distributing it equally.
Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, told the Washington Post that the US not participating in the initiative was a “real blow”.
The behavior of countries when it comes to vaccines in this pandemic will have political repercussions beyond public health,. It’s about, are you a reliable partner or, at the end of the day, are you going to keep all your toys for yourself?
You can read our full story here and we’ll keep you posted with more reaction.
Deaths in Colombia pass 20,000
Confirmed deaths in Colombia due to Covid-19 passed 20,000 on Tuesday, the health ministry said in its daily update, while it has recorded more than 620,000 cases.
The Andean country has so far reported 20,052 deaths and 624,069 cases of the novel coronavirus. Active cases stand at 133,155. This week Colombia ended its initial quarantine measures after nearly five months of national lockdowns.
South America has been very badly affected by the pandemic, with Brazil the second worst hit country in the world after the United States.
Brazil has recorded 42,659 new cases of coronavirus and 1,215 deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Tuesday night.
Brazil has registered a total 3,950,931 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from Covid-19 has risen to 122,596.
Good morning/afternoon/evening
Good morning/afternoon/evening wherever you are. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be keeping you updated with all the developments in the coronavirus from around the world for the next few hours.
You can contact me on Twitter at @MartinFarrer or by email at martin.farrer@theguardian.com
Here are the main points to get started:
- The Trump administration says it will not work with other countries to develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine. It said it did not want to be constrained by “multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China”.
- A leading UK oncologist who suggested that Covid-19 could “fizzle out” has been criticised by other experts. Prof Karol Sikora, dean of medicine at the University of Buckingham, made his “positive” prediction on BBC TV before other medics said the rapid rise in worldwide cases meant such an idea was “dangerous”.
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Hungary has closed its border again as infections continue to drive higher across Europe. The country has imposed tougher restrictions than during the spring lockdown and is now closed to almost everyone except Hungarian citizens and residents until at least next month. They must quarantine on arrival.
- Schools across Europe started to reopen on Tuesday after being closed for months. Tens of millions of pupils, most wearing face masks, have headed back to class in England, France, Belgium, Poland and Russia.
- Greece has delayed the reopening of schools by a week to 14 September because of a surge in infections. Holidaymakers returning to Wales from the Greek island of Z.ante are to be asked to quarantine for 14 days.
- Scotland has announced more local lockdowns, including limits on household gatherings. Also, people returning to Scotland from Greece will have to isolate.
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Brazil has almost 4 million cases. It recorded 42,659 new cases of coronavirus and 1,215 deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Tuesday night and now has a total of 3,950,931 cases.
- The Australian state of Victoria has extended its state of emergency for another six months if it is needed. It recorded 90 cases on Tuesday and six deaths.
- The United Arab Emirates has recorded over 500 new Covid-19 infections for the second successive day, after a rise in cases in the Middle East financial hub.
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