We’ve launched a new liveblog at the link below, where I’ll be bringing you the latest developments in the pandemic from around the world:
Something to look forward to:
The best tik tok I’ve seen 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/T7JVJ3xNKc
— JoshWrench (@JoshWrenchh) April 30, 2020
Summary
Here are the main developments in the pandemic worldwide from the last few hours:
- European leaders join forces to combat Covid-19. European leaders have pledged to raise billions of pounds to help find a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19 as part of an “international alliance” fighting the disease.An online pledging conference due to be held on Monday will aim to pull in €7.5bn (£6.6bn) in funding to support the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.
- YouTube has deleted conspiracy theorist David Icke’s account. The video-sharing site said the 68-year-old violated its policies on sharing information about coronavirus.The former footballer has made controversial unproven claims about the virus on several internet platforms, including one that it is linked to the 5G mobile network.
- Primary schools in England and Wales could reopen for all in June. Children aged five to 11 could return to school from Monday 1 June as part of government plans to gradually ease lockdown measures, the Sunday Telegraph has reported.
- Italy reports surge in deaths but figure is misleading. Reported coronavirus deaths in Italy rose by 474, after 269 new fatalities were recorded on Friday, but the figures were distorted by late registrations of 282 hospital deaths which had occurred in April, according to La Repubblica newspaper. The daily tally of new infections nationwide was broadly stable for a third day running at 1,900 against 1,965 on Friday.
- Malaysian authorities have rounded up and detained hundreds of undocumented migrants, including Rohingya refugees, as part of efforts to contain coronavirus, officials said. The UN said the move could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment.
- Migrants allowed off Italy’s quarantine ferry. About 180 migrants rescued at sea and held in isolation on an Italian ferry off the coast of Sicily will be disembarked in Palermo on Monday, AFP reports, citing the Avvenire daily.
- UK death toll rises further. Another 621 people are confirmed to have died from the virus in the UK, bringing the total to 28,131 – just short of Italy which has so far had the world’s second most deadly outbreak after the US – as criticism mounts over the government in London’s handling of the crisis in the early stages.
- Spain eases lockdown as people emerge to exercise. As of first thing Saturday, adults across Spain are allowed to exercise between 6am and 10am and then 8pm til 11pm, while the children’s slot is midday til 7pm. The streets are reserved for older people and those who need assistance from 10am til midday and then 7pm til 8pm.
- Hairdressers in Austria reopen. Austrians visited newly reopened hairdressers, beauticians and electronics shops on Saturday after the further relaxation of its seven-week lockdown. Protective measures remain in place, while bars are set to reopen within a fortnight.
- Thousands protest in California against lockdown. Amid demonstrations across the state in defiance of the lockdown, California’s governor Gavin Newsom promised meaningful adjustments to stay-at-home orders in the coming days which would affect how businesses, including restaurants, can operate.
- Controversial Chinese virologist dismisses defection rumours. Shi Zhengli, a researcher of bat coronaviruses whose work has been at the centre of an extremely controversial claim about the origin of coronavirus, has reportedly dismissed rumours that she has defected from China.
- Mick Jagger and Will Smith to perform in India Covid-19 concert. Dozens of international and Indian celebrities including cricket captain Virat Kohli and actor Priyanka Chopra will appear and perform from their homes on Sunday as part of a four-hour concert to raise funds for the battle against coronavirus in India, where the number of cases is surging.
Updated
Hello, Helen Sullivan with you now and for the next few hours. You can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan with questions, comments and news from your part of the world.
NEW: Sat 2 May update of coronavirus trajectories
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) May 2, 2020
Daily deaths
• Brazil, Russia, India 📈
• UK falling 📉
• US may have peaked, but is now plateauing
• All descents slower than ascents
• Successes in dark blue: Australia, Norway, Austria
Live charts https://t.co/JxVd2cG7KI pic.twitter.com/S8UGxQURrK
European leaders have pledged to raise billions of pounds to help find a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19 as part of an “international alliance” fighting the disease.
An online pledging conference due to be held on Monday will aim to pull in £6.6bn in funding to support the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Norway and senior EU officials told of how the outbreak had “caused devastation and pain in all corners of the world”.
They wrote in the Independent:
This poses a unique and truly global challenge. And it makes it imperative that we give ourselves the best chance to defeat it. This means bringing together the world’s best – and most prepared – minds to find the vaccines, treatments and therapies we need to make our world healthy again, while strengthening the health systems that will make them available for all, with a particular attention to Africa.
The politicians declared their support for the World Health Organisation and backed the recent launch of the “Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator”.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust were also said to be joining forces with the leaders. Funding will be directed to health organisations such as CEPI, Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance, the Global Fund and Unitaid.
There have been 421 new deaths 4,970 further confirmed coronavirus cases in Brazil over the last 24 hours, the health ministry has announced.
The nation now has 95,559 confirmed cases of the virus and 6,750 deaths. New cases increased roughly 5.4% on Saturday from the previous day, while deaths rose by roughly 6.7%.
On Tuesday, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro shrugged off news that the country had recorded a record number of deaths within 24 hours. “So what?” he told reporters. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
Since Brazil confirmed its first coronavirus case on 26 February, Bolsonaro has continually minimised the pandemic and purposefully undermined physical distancing guidelines.
Families in a city just outside Mexico’s capital have protested to demand news about their relatives who have coronavirus and urge for the return of the bodies of the dead after videos showed corpses inside a hospital.
One video of the Las Americas general hospital in Ecatepec that was posted to social media showed several bagged bodies on stretchers, some in a small room and others outside lined against a courtyard wall.
“The only thing I demand is that they give me the full body of my son,” Maria Dolores Carrillo told television program Imagen on Friday evening after her son died at the hospital.
Ecatepec, a working class city of more than 1.7 million inhabitants outside Mexico City, has registered 407 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 28 deaths, according to data from Mexico’s health ministry. It is among the Mexican municipalities worst affected by the coronavirus.
State of Mexico authorities said in a statement that the Las Americas hospital, which is run by the state health ministry, would try to hasten deliveries of bodies to families.
Updated
YouTube have deleted conspiracy theorist David Icke’s account.
The video-sharing site said the 68-year-old former footballer violated its policies on sharing information about coronavirus.
The former footballer has made controversial unproven claims about the virus on several internet platforms, including one that it is linked to the 5G mobile network.
The video service, owned by Google, told the BBC:
YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS. Due to continued violation of these policies we have terminated David Icke’s YouTube channel.
The ban follows a similar move by Facebook, who removed Icke’s page from their site on Friday.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claimed Icke’s conspiracies over Covid-19 have been viewed more than 30m times and welcomed the move.
CCDH’s chief executive Imran Ahmed said:
We commend YouTube on bowing to pressure and taking action on David Icke’s channel. However, there remains a network of channels and shadowy amplifiers, who promote Mr Icke’s content (and) need to be removed.
It is time for Instagram and Twitter to follow Facebook and YouTube by acting to remove Icke and his content from their platforms. Lies cost lives in a global pandemic, and their failure to act promptly puts us all at risk.
In 48 hours both Facebook and YouTube have deleted David Icke after our report on his toxic COVID-19 misinformation.
— Center for Countering Digital Hate (@CCDHate) May 2, 2020
Now we need @Instagram and @Twitter to follow suit.
800 people have signed our #DeplatformIcke open letter. Add your name here: https://t.co/BQ6RIIi6Rr pic.twitter.com/7jO3S75PB2
Icke, the self-described ground breaking author and public speaker, tweeted: “YouTube delete David Icke - the man the Elite are terrified of - after complaint from CCDH. The reason is made-up. Where are you gutless media? Silent or cheering.”
Businessman Warren Buffett has given an upbeat assessment of the US’ ability to withstand crises.
The 89-year-old Buffett spoke at Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, which was held virtually for the first time, without shareholders, because of the pandemic. The meeting was streamed by Yahoo Finance.
Buffett said the potential impact of the pandemic, which has already had a serious impact on the global economy, had a “extraordinarily wide” range.
But he remained optimistic that the US would weather it successfully and cited its emergence from crises such as World War Two and the influenza pandemic a century ago.
“This is quite an experiment,” Buffett said. “I remain convinced ... that nothing can basically stop America.”
The annual meeting came hours after Berkshire reported a record almost $50bn billion first-quarter net loss following the market meltdown.
Updated
Saudi Arabia is to isolate an industrial area of the eastern city of Dammam from Sunday, preventing entry and exit until further notice, to curb the spread of coronavirus, the state news agency has said.
Freight shipments will be able to come and go from the area, Dammam Second Industrial City, SPA said, citing an interior ministry official. The decision allows vital factories to operate at a third of their capacity, SPA added.
A number of Gulf states have implemented lockdowns in parts of cities where large numbers of low-paid mostly foreign workers live and work in close proximity.
Updated
Boris Johnson has said that doctors were considering intubating him while he was in intensive care with coronavirus.
The prime minister told the Sun On Sunday:
It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it. They had a strategy to deal with a ‘death of Stalin’-type scenario. I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place.
The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong. They gave me a face mask so I got litres and litres of oxygen and for a long time I had that and the little nose jobbie.
Johnson told the paper “the bloody indicators kept going in the wrong direction” and that he kept asking himself: “How am I going to get out of this?”
He said:
It was hard to believe that in just a few days my health had deteriorated to this extent. I remember feeling frustrated. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better. But the bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe.
That was when it got a bit ... they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally.
Johnson said he was “in denial” initially about how serious his illness was, and that doctors were right to “force” him to go to St Thomas’s where he spent three nights in intensive care.
Here is our inside story of his illness from a fortnight ago.
Primary schools in England and Wales could reopen for all in June - report
Children aged five to 11 could return to school from Monday 1 June as part of government plans to gradually ease lockdown measures, the Sunday Telegraph has reported.
Boris Johnson is to reveal the UK government’s plans to edge the country back to normal in an address next Sunday, according to the paper. It cited plans to ask companies to routinely test asymptomatic staff to isolate those who are infected and allow workplaces to reopen.
Whitehall sources told the newspaper that pupils from Year’s 10 and 12 would form the first wave of secondary school children returning to school at a later date, so long as the current reduced infection rate holds.
The earmarked date for return of primary schoolchildren – which will undoubtedly face questions – is said to be intended to minimise the threat to early development and help parents swiftly return to work.
Schools have been closed for the vast majority of children since 23 March, but the children of key workers were allowed to continue going in. Schools in Ireland, which shares a land border with the UK, are to remain closed until September.
The Sunday Times reports that the government will only tweak the lockdown this week, encouraging building sites to reopen, relaxing rules on outdoor activities and urging people to cover their faces on public transport.
On Wednesday, the education secretary Gavin Williamson said schools across England would reopen in phases, with headteachers given as much notice as possible.
The news comes as a new poll suggests that fewer than one in five of the British public believe the time is right to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums.
The prime minister’s former business adviser Andrew Griffith wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that “every additional day the phone rings unanswered in ‘lockdown’ Britain is an order lost to an overseas competitor whose own economy is open for business”, as opposed to the world’s fifth largest economy.
TELEGRAPH: Primary schools to go back in June #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/BFHmdrT7TS
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 2, 2020
Updated
Coronavirus deaths in Canada have risen from 3,223 to 3,446, as confirmed cases increased by about 2,000 to 55,572, official data released earlier today shows.
Inmates at a prison in Manaus, a Brazilian city deep in the Amazon that has been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, briefly took seven prison guards hostage earlier today in protest against conditions and the suspension of visits, authorities said.
The rebellion came as the coronavirus outbreak overwhelms public services in Manaus, with authorities burying victims in mass graves and warning residents of an imminent shortage of coffins after 357 died from the disease.
The inmates rioted to create a distraction as others built a tunnel underneath the prison walls, but police foiled the scheme after raiding the prison and freeing the guards.
Dozens of family members had gathered outside the prison complaining of conditions inside the jail, including insufficient food, cells without electricity, and lack of proper medical attention for inmates. Some told Reuters that the spread of the coronavirus throughout the city was making their concerns more urgent.
There were no reported deaths. However, 10 prison guards, two police officers and five inmates were said to have been not seriously injured.
Updated
The UK government is facing renewed criticism after being forced to admit that “a small number” of coronavirus tests sent to homes cannot be processed due to absences of return labels, which include tracking codes.
“We are urgently seeking to resolve this so anyone affected can either be provided with a new label or order a replacement kit online, which won’t be counted in the daily figures,” a spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care told Sky.
Our Coronavirus home test arrived Wednesday without any return postage label. Phone line service said nothing could be done & suggested I re-apply for a new test in a fortnight. No response at all to email raiding concern. Wondering if this was a oneoff anyone else had this? pic.twitter.com/0vRZNHWCBl
— Lindsay Southern (@LindsaySouthern) May 2, 2020
Earlier today, the British health secretary, Matt Hancock, was accused of changing the criteria for counting Covid-19 tests after he claimed victory in reaching the target of 100,000 a day.
Critics said that a large proportion of the 122,000 tests counted on Friday had been mailed to addresses but not yet carried out.
Now, however, it appears that some of those tests are useless.
Updated
Some more cheer! From the former soldier canoeing in his garden pond to a distanced dance to Whigfield’s Saturday Night in Dublin (here’s the original).
The exposed, austere islands of the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, carry the beautiful Gaelic name of Innse Gall, or “islands of the strangers”. Against a backdrop of big skies, lonely farmhouses and sandy beaches, physical distancing comes easily here.
In small communities, such as those on Uist, isolation and the vast open spaces have preserved the local population from the devastation wrought elsewhere by the Covid-19 pandemic. Like everywhere else, lockdown has been strictly enforced and observed. Travel has been highly restricted – only lorry drivers and essential workers have been allowed on to the ferries since 16 March. And, as of last week, this archipelago of six principal islands linked by causeways has had no confirmed cases so far.
It is this very particular geographic and social profile that has led ministers to see islands such as Uist as the perfect location in which to test strategies to end the lockdown. The notion has been floated by several scientists and endorsed by Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, who said last week there was “scientific justification” for piloting measures such as contact tracing to “relax measures at a progressively greater rate” on some island communities before the rest of the UK.
So are islanders rushing to volunteer to throw off the shackles of lockdown? Not a bit. In fact some want it to go on even longer.
The flamingos which flocked to a lake in Mumbai, India – seemingly due to a marked decrease in pollution – have been pictured wading in huddles.
Flamingos seen wading in huddles in a lake in Mumbai pic.twitter.com/sOh736OLKC
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 2, 2020
Saudi Arabia will take strict and painful measures to deal with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, finance minister Mohammed al-Jadaan has said in an interview adding that “all options for dealing with the crisis are open”.
“We must reduce budget expenditures sharply,” Jadaan said in comments released ahead of the interview’s broadcast by Al Arabiya TV. No details of possible measures were disclosed.
The world’s largest oil exporter is suffering from historically low oil prices, while measures to fight the new coronavirus are likely to curb the pace and scale of economic reform.
Saudi Arabia’s central bank foreign exchange reserves fell in March at their fastest rate in at least 20 years, hitting their lowest since 2011, while the kingdom slipped to a $9bn budget deficit in the first quarter as oil revenues collapsed.
It comes after reports suggested that the scale of the coronavirus outbreak in the kingdom – which has been under strict lockdown since 25 March – could be larger than official estimates.
The White House has blocked Dr Anthony Fauci from testifying to Congress, saying it would be “counterproductive” for the senior member of the White House coronavirus task force to talk about the government’s response to the pandemic in a House committee hearing.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, welcomed Mitch McConnell’s move to recall the Senate to Washington despite the office of the Congress doctor reportedly telling Republicans they will not be able to screen all 100 senators for Covid-19 on Monday.
The president also called the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, “crazy” for not recalling the House and moved to remove a health department watchdog who wrote a critical report on the government’s pandemic response.
Yemen has reported three new coronavirus cases, two in Aden and one in Taiz province, the national emergency committee has announced, raising the number of diagnosed infections in the war-torn country to 10 with two deaths.
The news led the governor of Taiz to announce that he was closing the province’s borders for two weeks, with the exception of supplies of food and other essential goods, in order to prevent the virus from spreading.
The deaths were announced on Thursday and the victims were reportedly brothers who died at a hospital in the southern port city of Aden.
The virus has now been diagnosed in three provinces in the vulnerable country, in which five years of war has devastated large swathes. The new case in Taiz had been in contact with the southwestern province’s first infection which was announced on Friday, the emergency coronavirus committee said.
The United Nations has said it fears the coronavirus could be spreading undetected among an acutely malnourished population with inadequate testing capabilities. An estimated 10m Yemenis are on the brink of famine and many millions more are without access to healthcare.
Fighting in Yemen between the Houthi rebels and forces loyal to the exiled government escalated last month despite a ceasefire designed to help the war-torn country focus on containing the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization has said it fears that Covid will impact Yemen severely as the population has some of the lowest levels of immunity to disease compared with other countries.
Yemen is also split into rival power centres. On Wednesday the Aden-based government’s emergency coronavirus committee voiced concern that Houthi officials were not admitting a coronavirus outbreak in Sanaa. The group’s health authorities said all suspected cases there had tested negative.
Updated
The number of people who have died from coronavirus in France has risen by 166 to 24,760, while hospitalisations for the disease and the number of those in intensive care units with the illness continued to decline, the French health ministry announced.
It comes after there were 218 new deaths recorded on Friday.
Dozens of Rohingya believed to be from one of several boats stuck at sea due to coronavirus restrictions have landed on the coast of Bangladesh, according to a government official.
Some of the 43 people who arrived were sent to Bhasan Char, a remote island where authorities had previously planned to house Rohingya, the official told Reuters.
Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project monitoring group, said the group that landed on Saturday had likely come on a small boat from one the larger vessels still at sea, believed to be carrying hundreds of people.
Hundreds of Rohingya are stranded on at least two trawlers between Bangladesh and Malaysia, rights groups say.
The United Nations has urged authorities to let the boats land, but anti-refugee sentiment is surging in Malaysia.
Another boat, carrying hundreds of Rohingya who were starving after weeks at sea, landed in Bangladesh in mid-April. Survivors said several dozen died on board.
For years, Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh have fled by boat for Thailand and Malaysia when the seas are calm between October and April.
Updated
France is proposing to impose a minimum 14-day quarantine on anyone arriving in the country from abroad after the end of lockdown on 11 May.
The measure is included in a new law extending the state of “health emergency” until June 24 to be presented to the French parliament from Monday. The plans mark a serious blow to the country’s tourism industry.
The law contains seven articles describing what will happen when the lockdown ends. The quarantine can be extended to a maximum of 30 days.
Updated
In what marks a deepening of state support for the embattled aviation sector, Germany, Italy and Spain have joined a call by 12 EU governments for the bloc’s executive body to suspend rules forcing airlines to offer full cash refunds for cancelled flights, France has announced in a statement.
The dozen EU governments, including Paris, urged the European Commission on Wednesday to suspend rules forcing the crisis-hit airlines to offer cash refunds instead of vouchers for future travel because of the pandemic.
French transport minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said:
I’m glad a very large majority of member states are supporting my request to authorise airlines and maritime groups to temporarily use vouchers when trips are cancelled, so as to relieve their cash reserves while protecting passengers’ rights to a refund.
An animated musical extravaganza about a group of pop-loving trolls may turn out to be the most important film in recent Hollywood history. Trolls World Tour, which has become a lockdown hit – notching up digital sales of £80m in three weeks – has become the focal point of a battle that could forever change moviegoing habits in the Netflix era.
With cinemas closed, Hollywood studios are challenging the sacrosanct tradition that multiplexes air films first for up to three months, before their release on other platforms such as pay-TV, DVD and streaming. Instead, they are pushing new films straight to fans at home.
One of the UK government’s top medical advisers has said officials “don’t have enough information yet” to know whether people can catch coronavirus more than once.
Deputy chief medical officer for England, Dr Jenny Harries said:
The WHO (World Health Organisation) position is very similar to the one we would have, which basically says we actually don’t have enough information yet to be very clear on the immune status.
We know that some people will have different status. We would normally expect to see some sign of immunity about 10-12 days after an infection, and then a very consistent pattern about 28 days.
Her comments come a day after the UK’s testing coordinator said it was encouraging that evidence from South Korea suggested people were developing immunity to the disease.
More than 70% of critical care patients with Covid-19 in the UK are men, a new report has found. It showed that men were more likely to die in critical care, with 51% dying in care compared with around 43% of women.
Earlier, it was confirmed that the UK death toll from the virus had risen by 621 to 28,131
Updated
Something to lighten the mood: how not to put on a mask.
Meanwhile in Belgium... their deputy prime minister getting to grips with the situation. pic.twitter.com/NPnelc6shd
— Laura Round (@LauraRound) May 1, 2020
In Turkey, the number of people who have died from the virus has risen by 78 in the last 24 hours to 3,336, with 1,983 new cases of the virus, authorities have announced.
The total number of cases rose to 124,375, data showed, the highest total outside western Europe or the US, and slightly more than Russia.
A total of 58,259 people have so far recovered from the respiratory disease. The number of tests conducted in Turkey in the past 24 hours stood at 36,318, raising the total number of tests during the outbreak to more than 1.1m.
Thousands of people in a South African township stood in line for hours on Saturday waiting for handouts of food with physical distancing measures collapsing in parts of the sprawling queue, the Associated Press reports.
A five-week lockdown, one of the world’s strictest, eased slightly on Friday, allowing more businesses in South Africa to resume.
At least 46 people are reported to have died and 60 have been injured during a prison riot in Venezuela which was said to have been sparked by anger at a ban on inmates’ family bringing them food due to coronavirus transmission fears.
Beatriz Giron, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons, said 46 bodies had been identified after the incident on Friday at the Los Llanos penitentiary in the western Venezuelan state of Portuguesa.
However, the country’s prisons minister, Iris Varela, told local media that the incident resulted from an escape attempt and that the prison director had been shot and wounded.
Reported coronavirus deaths in Italy have risen by 474, after 269 new deaths were recorded on Friday, but the apparent figures are misleading.
Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that 282 of the new hospital deaths had occurred in April but were only registered today.
It follows a gradual declining trend and the new deaths were driven largely by Lombardy, the country’s worst affected region, where there were 329 recorded deaths in the last 24 hours compared with 88 the day before.
The daily tally of new infections nationwide was broadly stable for a third day running at 1,900 against 1,965 on Friday. It brings the total death toll in the Mediterranean country to 28,710, the second highest in the world after the US.
Updated
The UK government will support the aviation industry in “any way it can”, a minister has pledged.
“The aviation industry is both an extremely important one strategically for us as a country and one which employs a great deal of people,” British housing minister Robert Jenrick said in a press conference.
“It’s one we want to support in any way we can ... We are very conscious of the challenges it faces.”
Jenrick said the global industry was “grappling with what the longer term demand for its services might be in an age in which social distancing will be important and in which business travel, for example, might be different”.
He added: “If there is more that we can do to help support them through a very difficult period, we will do so,” he said.
It comes after it emerged the budget airline EasyJet was promised that green taxes would not be introduced, six months before the company was given a £600m coronavirus crisis loan with no environmental conditions attached after carriers sought government support amidst the lockdown and travel restrictions.
However, there have been calls for governments to use this moment to encourage the aviation industry to be more mindful of its effect on the planet.
Updated
The organisation that runs the Auschwitz memorial has condemned the appearance at a US anti-lockdown rally of a picket sign bearing a Nazi slogan displayed above the entrance of the concentration camp.
A demonstrator attending a rally in Illinois, where hundreds of people protested against the state’s lockdown and social distancing measures, was photographed carrying a sign bearing the words “Arbeit macht frei, JB”.
The German phrase translates as “work sets you free”, with JB referring to the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, who is of Jewish descent.
Austrians have today visited newly-reopened hairdressers, beauticians and electronics shops after the further relaxation of its seven-week lockdown.
The country acted relatively early in its outbreak and closed restaurants, bars, theatres, schools, non-essential shops and other gathering places. It helped reduce the daily increase in infections to less than 1%, and Austria has reported about 15,500 cases and 589 deaths so far.
Now, members of the public no longer require a reason, such as shopping or exercise, to justify being outside although bars remain closed till 15 May.
“After seven weeks in which no appointments were possible, I have the great fortune of having got the first appointment at my hairdresser,” Gertraud Schubert told Reuters as she had her hair cut and coloured at Hair Concept, a Vienna salon which is fully booked for the next three weeks.
Switzerland and Denmark have already let hairdressers reopen, but there are fears it could cause infections to resurge – though protective measures are in place (as pictured below).
Updated
The New York City police department has dispatched 1,000 officers this weekend to enforce physical distancing and a ban on congregating in public spaces, after 299 new deaths across the state were confirmed on Friday.
The NYPD has made 60 arrests and issued 343 summonses related to distancing measures since 16 March. Police commissioner Dermot Shea said violations would not be tolerated after officers clashed with members of Orthodox Jewish communities who had taken to the streets for funeral possessions. “You are putting my cops’ lives at risk and it’s unacceptable,” she said.
Meanwhile, in what suggests that the state has passed the peak of the virus, Mount Sinai hospital health system said it would stop taking new patients from Monday at the small field hospital it helped erect in Central Park. Only eight patients remained at the makeshift hospital on Saturday.
Updated
Malaysian authorities have rounded up and detained hundreds of undocumented migrants, including Rohingya refugees, as part of efforts to contain coronavirus, officials said.
Authorities said 586 undocumented migrants were arrested in a raid in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday. Armed police walked people through the city in a single file to a detention building, according to activists. The UN said the move could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment.
Those detained included young children and ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Social media posts, including some by Malaysian politicians, have recently blamed Rohingya for committing crimes and accused them of dominating areas of the capital.
The xenophobic campaigns have included activists having their names and photos circulated alongside inflammatory accusations, and have injected further fear into a community struggling for food and shelter through the pandemic lockdown.
Police said the operation was aimed at preventing undocumented migrants from travelling to other areas amid movement curbs imposed to contain the spread of the virus outbreak, the state news agency Bernama reported.
The UN urged Malaysia to avoid detaining migrants and release all children, warning that overcrowded detention centres carried a high risk of increasing the virus’s spread.
Updated
Florida’s governor, Ron de Santis, announced on Friday that state parks will soon reopen, even as the coronavirus pandemic continued and Death himself stalked the beaches of the sunshine state.
The Grim Reaper in question was actually Daniel Uhlfelder, a lawyer and campaigner for public beach access who put on a cowl and wielded a scythe in an attempt to alert Floridians to the dangers of reopening their economy too soon.
As footage of a socially distanced interview with a TV reporter at Miramar Beach in Walton county went viral, Uhlfelder told CNN: “We aren’t at the point now where we have enough testing, enough data, enough preparation for what’s going to be coming to our state from all over the world from this pandemic.
“I know how beautiful and attractive our beaches are. But if we don’t take measures to control things, this virus is going to get really, really out of control.”
Updated
Many people in Britain are likely to suffer from physical and mental problems for several years after the Covid-19 epidemic has subsided. That is the grim message from doctors and psychologists who last week warned that even after lockdown measures had been lifted thousands of individuals would still be suffering.
Some of these problems will be due directly to the impact that the virus has had on those it has infected, especially those who went through life-saving interventions in intensive care units (ICUs) in hospital. In addition there will be a considerable impact on vulnerable people affected by the lockdown and isolation.
As a result, there is a danger our society could become more anxious and risk-averse, say scientists who have called for a range of research programmes to be launched to understand the issues and to allow society to prepare itself for the physiological and psychological problems that lie ahead.
“This has been a national trauma like no other that we have experienced,” said psychologist Professor Dame Til Wykes, of King’s College London. “Consider the terrible flooding we had earlier this year. People watched river levels rise and listened to weather forecasts to find out if they might be inundated the next day or the day after. That was stressful.
“But it was nothing compared to this threat which has hung over us for weeks already and is likely to go on for much longer. Spending months looking over your shoulder all the time is going to cause considerable, lasting anxiety for many people. In addition, if you look at other natural disasters, you can usually find help or comfort from people around you. However, it is the people around you that are the threat in this case. So there is no consolation there.”
Migrants allowed off Italy's quarantine ferry
About 180 migrants rescued at sea and held in isolation on an Italian ferry off the coast of Sicily will be disembarked in Palermo on Monday, AFP reports, citing the Avvenire daily.
The migrants had been pulled to safety in two separate operations by NGO rescue vessels and placed on the Rubattino ferry after Italy closed its ports due to the coronavirus epidemic.
All had tested negative for the virus.
Far-right politician Matteo Salvini is to stand trial after he blocked migrants from disembarking from a coastguard boat while he was interior minister last year.
He had insisted they not be allowed off until a deal was made with the EU over who had duty of care for them.
It was not yet known whether the 183 people disembarking on Monday, including two women and 44 unaccompanied minors, would be sent to other EU countries.
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As of 2pm today, 58,833 people in Scotland have been tested for #coronavirus
— Scottish Government (@scotgov) May 2, 2020
46,906 confirmed negative
11,927 positive
1,559 patients who tested positive have sadly died.
Latest update ➡️ https://t.co/kZjGNz2EDe
Health advice ➡️ https://t.co/l7rqArB6Qu#COVIDー19 pic.twitter.com/jJU0Sp8xGL
Reuters reports on the conservative groups advising the US government that have issued an array of coronavirus economic reopening plans. They all have a common theme: Americans should go back to work immediately to halt the economic and societal damage from prolonged lockdowns.
The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus has focused in recent days around the same message – the need to reopen quickly. The White House did not renew federal guidelines on social distancing that expired on 30 April, and Donald Trump is expected to go to Arizona next week, after a month without travel.
Some state and local governments are opening malls, movie theatres, and hairdressers.
There have also been small protests against stay-at-home orders across the country.
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JK Rowling is donating £1m to help homeless people and those affected by domestic abuse during the coronavirus pandemic.
Announcing the financial contribution, which will be split between the Crisis and Refuge charities, the Harry Potter author said the money would go towards helping some of those hit hardest by the outbreak and the impact of the lockdown.
The author told of her mixed emotions at having three key workers in her immediate family during the crisis.
In a tweet announcing the donation on Saturday, she wrote: “Today’s the 22nd anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, but I’m going to be honest and say that it feels inappropriate to talk about fictional deaths today. Too many people are losing loved ones in the real world.
“So on this anniversary of a great wizarding victory, I’m thinking of the people who’re out there doing their jobs to protect us and our way of life. I have three key workers in my immediate family, and like all such relatives, I’m torn between pride and anxiety.
“As ever in a crisis of this sort, the poorest and most vulnerable are hit hardest, so in honour of the Battle of Hogwarts, I’ll be making a donation of £1m, half of which will go to Crisis, who’re helping the homeless during the pandemic, and half of which will go to Refuge, because we know that domestic abuse has, sadly, increased hugely during the lockdown.”
People in Spain will have to wear face masks when using public transport from Monday, the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced.
Speaking on Saturday, as adults in Spain were allowed out to exercise for the first time since the strict lockdown was imposed on 14 March, the prime minister said the use of masks would be compulsory on buses, tubes and trains.
Sánchez said 6m masks would be handed out at transport hubs, 7m would be issued by councils, and 1.5m would be distributed by the Red Cross and other NGOs.
He also announced that the government would seek MPs’ approval next week for another two-week extension of the state of emergency, which is currently due to end on 10 May.
He said that the success of Spain’s phased emergence from lockdown would depend on “social and personal responsibility”, adding: “The key to the de-escalation isn’t just about personal decisions. The key will be tens of thousands of decisions taken at home, on public transport, at work, and in free time.”
According to the latest health ministry figures, there have been 216,582 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Spain, and 25,100 deaths.
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Japan will fasttrack a review of the antiviral drug remdesivir so that it can hopefully be approved for domestic Covid-19 patients a week after Gilead Sciences filing for such approval, the health minister said on Saturday, according to a report by Reuters.
The health minister Katsunobu Kato’s comment comes after remdesivir was granted emergency use authorisation by the US Food and Drug Administration for Covid-19 on Friday.
“I’ve heard that Gilead Sciences will file for approval [in Japan] within days,” Kato said. “I issued an instruction so that we will be ready to approve it within a week or so.”
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The Chinese virologist whose work has been at the centre of the controversial claim that coronavirus came from a laboratory has dismissed rumours that she has defected from China, South China Morning Post reports.
Shi Zhengli, a researcher of bat coronaviruses, wrote on WeChat on Saturday that she and her family had not fled the country, despite coming under heavy scrutiny amid conspiracy theories that the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic had originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in central China where she works.
“No matter how difficult things are, there will not be a ‘defector’ situation as the rumours have said,” Shi wrote.
Chinese state newspaper Global Times said it had confirmed the post had been written by Shi. “We have not done anything wrong and we continue to have strong faith in science. There must be a day when the clouds part and the sun comes out,” she added.
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Malta reported just one new Covid-19 infection on Saturday, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases up to 468, according to the Times of Malta.
The R number, which is a way of rating a disease’s ability to spread, is below 1 according to a health official.
“The R-factor is below 1 and we want to keep it that way,” said Charmaine Gauci, superintendent of public health. “We have now started easing measures, including the opening of non-essential retail outlets. These will be allowed to open provided they adhere to some conditions.”
The single infected patient is reported to be a Sudanese man aged 27.
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The son of a care home nurse who died in the UK after contracting Covid-19 has said a lack of personal protective equipment is what killed his mother, as the family were forced to say goodbye via an iPad.
In an online tribute, Ian O’Neal described Suzanne Loverseed, 63, as a “lioness” who gave everything for her children.
He wrote: “At the end, she worked in a care home, with patients dying of this virus. She had no PPE [protective personal equipment] but fearlessly she carried on. That’s what killed her.”
It comes amid growing concern about the risks faced by those in the UK’s care homes, with the sector believed to be at the centre of crisis. On Wednesday, the government released figures that revealed coronavirus deaths for both in hospitals and the community, including care homes, for the first time. It added an additional 3,811 deaths for those who had tested positive for Covid-19 in the community since the start of the outbreak, bringing the total number of deaths to more than 26,000.
Mick Jagger and Will Smith will be among dozens of international celebrities performing from their homes in a four-hour concert to raise funds for the battle against coronavirus in India, where the number of cases is surging.
The country’s cricket captain Virat Kohli, Bollywood actors Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan are some of the top domestic names billed to perform or read messages during the event on Sunday.
The performances will be livestreamed by Facebook and will pay tribute to workers fighting the pandemic.
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A trial has begun in the UK to test if blood plasma from coronavirus survivors could help treat those critically ill with the disease.
Plasma is a clear liquid that makes up about half of people’s blood volume and carries red and white blood cells and platelets around the body. More than 6,500 people registered their interest for the plasma donation programme, which is being led by NHS Blood and Transplant on behalf of the government.
The organisation is recruiting people with the help of NHS data and inviting suitable candidates who have recovered from a confirmed case of coronavirus or had symptoms to donate plasma at its 23 main blood centres.
“Recovered patients’ plasma may contain antibodies that their immune systems have produced in fighting the virus,” NHS Blood and Transplant said in a statement. “It is hoped that plasma taken no sooner than 28 days after recovery from Covid-19 will contain a high level of this neutralising antibody.”
Blood had started being collected from 148 people in England so far, the BBC reported, and researchers hope antibodies found in it could become a significant solution in the fight against the virus.
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Malaysian authorities have defended plans to ease coronavirus lockdown measures next week even as the number of new infections jumped to a two-week high, Reuters reports.
Most businesses will reopen on Monday following a six-week shutdown ordered to fight the Covid-19 outbreak, though schools, cinemas and nightclubs will remain closed, along with the country’s borders, and mass gatherings will still be banned.
The decision to allow businesses to resume trading has sparked criticism including from members of the ruling coalition that restrictions were being eased too soon.
The number of new coronavirus infections as reported by the health ministry rose by 105 on Saturday, the highest daily increase since 16 April. The number of known infections totalled 6,176 and fatalities were at 103.
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Ireland extends lockdown for another two weeks
Ireland has extended its lockdown for another two weeks to 18 May, when it will introduce a phased, five-stage exit over three months.
The country’s lockdown regime has been much stricter than the UK’s, but Friday night’s announcement offers a clear, step-by-step map out of the lockdown for schools, shops, businesses as well as the global Irish diaspora including more than 300,000 in the UK, many of whom would normally make visits home in the summer.
The taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said while the rise in the death rate from coronavirus had flattened it was still too dangerous to ease the lockdown.
While thousands of lives had been saved, “we have not yet won this fight”, he said, adding that two more weeks of tight restrictions to weaken the virus further were necessary to ensure it “doesn’t have the strength to make a comeback”.
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Coronavirus was initially described as the “great leveller”, but as the virus has spread across the UK and the world, it’s the poorest that have borne the brunt.
The Guardian’s front page leads on what it calls the UK’s “corona divide”, as official data shows people in the poorest parts of Britain are dying from the illness at twice the rate of those in the wealthiest.
The new data analysis, which revealed the devastating scale of the death toll in the poorest parts of England and Wales, led to calls for the government to prioritise health funding for the most deprived regions in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.
London’s poorest boroughs have the highest Covid-19 death rates in England and Wales. Nearly a decade after hosting the Olympics, the spotlight was back on the London borough of Newham, which recorded the worst mortality rate in England and Wales with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population.
Here’s my dispatch on the area, where residents say the pandemic has become a stark reminder that the better jobs, housing and quality of life that were promised have failed to materialise.
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Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, will hold a news conference on Monday at 9am GMT about the coronavirus, the ministry of foreign affairs said on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Abe is expected to extend a nationwide state of emergency which runs until 6 May under which his government has asked restaurants and stores to close, and for people to stay at home in a bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
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Russia has posted another record jump in coronavirus cases, as the disease continues to overwhelm the country’s hospitals and infect top members of government.
Russia posted a record increase of 9,623 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Saturday, indicating the country has still not reached a plateau, with the national tally growing to 124,054. Russia is showing the second-highest rate of spread of the disease in the world behind the US, and the surge has vaulted Russia past Turkey to give it the seventh-largest caseload in the world.
Officials say that the actual number of infected may be far higher than government statistics show. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, estimated on Saturday that 2% of the Russian capital’s population was infected, meaning that more than 240,000 people may have the virus in a city of more than 12 million. That exceeds the confirmed 62,658 cases by nearly four times.
Hospitals in the capital are at capacity, with television footage showing ambulances forced to wait for hours or even overnight in order to deliver the infected to emergency rooms. Sobyanin last week also ordered medical students to be mobilised in the fight against disease, with some telling the Moscow Times and other news outlets that they had been coerced into serving at local hospitals.
Officially, Russia has posted close to 1,200 deaths from coronavirus, but the numbers are likely higher. In St Petersburg, eight refrigerator trailers used as mobile morgues appeared outside of hospitals this week to handle the overflow, according to the Fontanka news agency.
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Birds’ seven-week reign in Madrid is coming to an end.
By 9.30am on Saturday, the musings of blackbirds, the cooings of pigeons and the hooligan shrieks of parakeets had begun to mix with the rhythmic fall of foot on pavement and the whizzing of bikes.
Spain’s coronavirus lockdown, one of the toughest in Europe, is slowly being eased, and people are twitchy for the newly-restored privilege of exercise.
As of first thing Saturday, adults are allowed to exercise between 6am and 10am and then from 8pm to 11pm. The children’s slot is midday to 7pm, while the streets belong to older people and those who need assistance from 10am to midday and then 7pm until 8pm.
Juan Badiola, a 28-year-old teacher, was relishing his freedom as he walked along the streets of Hortaleza in north-east Madrid.
“It’s been pretty tough and I’ve been working really hard for weeks,” he said. “My family is all healthy and OK, but I’ve really missed being able to go out and make plans.”
His sister, Ana, was also thrilled to be out even if she can’t yet resume her hobby of climbing – or see her friends.
“Being able to get out again is a big deal,” said the 21-year-old student. “But people need to be responsible.”
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China’s most populous cities saw an increase in outbound travellers, tourists and day-trippers on the long holiday weekend, according Reuters.
The increase in the number of people travelling was led by residents of Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus epidemic that first struck the country late last year.
Reuters reports the number of people travelling outside their home cities jumped 40% on 1 May, the start of the Labour Day weekend, compared with the first day of the tomb sweeping holiday on 4 April, according to Reuters calculations on data from China’s internet giant Baidu Inc.
The increase in tourism was led by increases in travellers from Wuhan, Beijing, Dalian, Tianjin and Jinan, with China having eased curbs on travel and relaxed rules on quarantine amid dwindling cases of the coronavirus.
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Iran’s death toll from coronavirus increased by 65 in the past 24 hours to 6,156 people on Saturday, health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said in a statement on state TV.
Reuters reports the total number of diagnosed cases in Iran, one of the hardest-hit Middle Eastern countries, has reached 96,448, he said, adding that 2,787 were in critical condition.
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US regulators approve use of experimental drug remdesivir to treat coronavirus
Guardian reporters Joan E Greve and Julia Carrie Wong have written the following story on the use of the experimental drug remdesivir.
US regulators have allowed the emergency use of the experimental drug remdesivir, which appears to help some coronavirus patients recover faster.
It is the first drug shown to help fight Covid-19, which has killed more than 230,000 people worldwide.
Donald Trump announced the news on Friday at the White House alongside Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, who said the drug would be available for patients hospitalized with Covid-19.
The president said the approval represented a “very promising situation” in the country’s fight against coronavirus, and Dr Deborah Birx added, “I think this really illustrates what can happen in such a short time.”
The emergency approval comes days after Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, expressed cautious optimism about the results of a remdesivir drug trial.
“The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci said earlier this week. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”
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Spain’s coronavirus death toll reached 25,100 on Saturday after 276 people died overnight, the health ministry said.
Reuters reports the total cases rose to 216,582 from 215,216 on Friday.
Spain has had one of the worst outbreaks in the world, but is past its peak and gradually easing lockdown restrictions.
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The lockdown in Lagos, which accounts for more than half of Nigeria’s 2,000 confirmed infections, is due to gradually ease from Monday. Yet the impact on millions, particularly those living on the edge of the city and working in daily informal, labour has been acute.
Amid limited government support, an outpouring of hundreds of initiatives has emerged across Lagos, providing food and essential goods. A range of food and aid distribution has been set up by NGOs, private businesses, community groups and local people.
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Malaysia is rounding up and detaining undocumented migrants amid coronavirus lockdown
Malaysian authorities are rounding up undocumented migrants as part of efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus, officials said, after hundreds of migrants and refugees were detained in the capital Kuala Lumpur, according to Reuters.
Authorities said 586 undocumented migrants were arrested during a Friday raid in a downtown area where many foreigners live, a move theUN said could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment.
Those detained included young children and ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, rights groups had said.
Police said the operation was aimed at preventing undocumented migrants from travelling to other areas amid movement curbs imposed to contain the spread of the virus outbreak, the state news agency Bernama reported.
The UN urged Malaysia to avoid detaining migrants and release all children and their caregivers, warning that overcrowded detention centres carried a high risk of increasing the virus’s spread.
“The fear of arrest and detention may push these vulnerable population groups further into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment, with negative consequences for their own health and creating further risks to the spreading of Covid-19 to others,” the UN said in a statement.
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Undocumented African migrants, who even before the coronavirus outbreak plunged Italy into crisis, barely scraped, but the lockdown for past two months has made their existence even more precarious.
Italy is preparing to reopen some businesses and industry on Monday in a preliminary easing of its virus shutdown. But there is no indication that migrants in Castel Volturno will get back to work anytime soon, and no evidence that the government’s social nets will ease their misery.
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Rohingya refugees whose relatives, including children, have been stranded for weeks on cramped boats have urged international governments to act before they perish at sea.
Two boats carrying about 500 people were last spotted off Bangladesh about a week ago, but are believed to have returned to the high seas. The refugees on board, who were fleeing desperate conditions in camps in Bangladesh, had attempted to reach Malaysia but appear to have been turned away. Bangladesh has also said it will not allow the boats to dock.
Mohammed, a father who has lived in the camps in Bangladesh since 2017, when more than 700,000 Rohingya fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar, believes his 13-year-old son is among those stranded. His son went missing 51 days ago, but later phoned to say that he would be taking a boat with friends to Malaysia.
Mohammed has since seen a video, shared on Facebook, in which he recognised his son onboard a packed boat. “He looked hungry and he had become very thin,” Mohammed said. “There is no way to get information about the boat. Whether he is alive or not is totally unknown.”
After two and a half years living in the sprawling camps in Cox’s Bazar, where about 1 million Rohingya refugees are sheltering, Mohammed said he believes his son had become desperate. “He cannot access education here in the camp. There are no jobs, there’s no available income here for our boys,” he said.
He had not known that his son planned to make the journey, he added.
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Russia reports 9,623 new coronavirus cases, a record daily rise
Russia has seen another record daily increase with 9,623 new cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, bringing the total to 124,054.
Reuters reports the nationwide death toll rose to 1,222 after 57 people died in the last 24 hours, Russia’s coronavirus crisis response centre said, after revising the previous day’s tally.
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About two million Afghans have lost their jobs due to lockdown as the war-torn country confirmed 179 new coronavirus cases, triggered by continued surges of transmission in Kandahar and the biggest one-day rise of infections in Kabul.
According to the National Union of Workers and Employees, the political crisis has compounded unemployment in the country.
“The political crisis, security threats, the lockdown of cities and the reduction in international aid strongly concerns us. We want all to pay attention to the situation and the problems,” said Marouf Qadiri, the head of the National Workers Union.
The country’s health ministry has confirmed 179 new coronavirus cases and four deaths over the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections to 2,514 and total deaths to 72.
Kabul has recorded its biggest one-day rise of new infections as 75 new patients tested positive for Covid-19. The total number of infections in Afghanistan’s worst affected area is 692.
#Afghanistan has recorded 179 new #COVID19 cases and 4 deaths over past 24 hours.
— Akhtar Mohammad Makoii (@akhtar_makoii) May 2, 2020
Total infections: 2514
New infections: 179
May1: 164
Apr30: 232
Apr29:110
Apr28: 125
Apr27: 172
Apr26: 68
Apr25: 133
Apr24: 95
Apr23: 83
Apr22: 51
Apr21:66
Apr20:30
Death toll: 72
Recovered: 331
The city of six million is under lockdown in a bid to contain spread of coronavirus.
The western province of Herat, which borders Iran and had the first coronavirus case confirmed there, has recorded 23 new infections. Thousands of Afghan migrants poured back in February and March from Iran.
At least 41 suspected patients were tested in Kandahar in past 24 hours, of which 15 were positive.
Meanwhile, war continued to rage on Saturday as three civilians were killed in an explosion in Laghman province. United Nations Mission in Afghanistan has said that more than 533 civilians including 152 children were killed in first quarter of 2020.
Health ministry spokesman, Wahidullah Mayar has said that the ministry is concerned about spread of coronavirus in war zones. He said the country was fighting with both terror and coronavirus. ”You won’t find any country like us, war is our biggest challenge in order to fight with coronavirus.”
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Coronavirus has upended life for Morocco’s medical workers. They enjoy better medical facilities than in much of Africa but are often short of the equipment available in European hospitals, which also found themselves overwhelmed, according to a report by AP.
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Read this brilliant, in-depth report from Guardian US writers Oliver Laughland and Amanda Holpuch on alleged negligence at plants run by some of America’s largest food manufacturers.
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A north-eastern Chinese city of 10 million people struggling with currently the country’s biggest coronavirus cluster shut dine-in services on Saturday, reports Reuters, as the rest of China eases restrictions designed to hamper the spread of the disease.
Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang and its biggest city, said it temporarily suspended dine-in services for all eateries, reported the official CCTV, citing an emergency epidemic prevention notice.
Catering services operating in the city, such as barbecue eateries and those selling skewers, shabu shabu, and stew, must suspend dine-in meals until further notice and in accordance with changes in the epidemic situation, the notice said.
While mainland China reported only one case on Saturday and crowds returned to some of its most famous tourist attractions for the five-day May holiday, the northern province of Heilongjiang is hunkering down to prevent further clusters from forming.
Of the 140 local transmissions in mainland China, over half have been reported as from Heilongjiang, according to a Reuters tally.
Heilongjiang province borders Russia and has become the frontline in the fight against a resurgence of the coronavirus epidemic, with many new infections from citizens entering from Russia.
The province has already banned entry to residential zones by non-locals and vehicles registered elsewhere. It had also ordered isolation for those arriving from outside China or key epidemic areas.
On the back of the outbreak, deputy secretary of the provincial party committee, Wang Wentao, said at meeting on Friday that “we deeply blame ourselves”, according to local media.
“We had an inadequate understanding of epidemic prevention and control,” said Wang, adding that the failure to carry out testing in a timely manner contributed to the clusters.
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New polling shows pretty extraordinarily high support for the Scottish National party government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the YouGov survey for the Times Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has the confidence of 71% of Scots when it comes to her ability to make the correct decisions in dealing with the virus, with only 23% saying they do not have faith in her judgments. That gives the Scottish first minister a +48 rating overall.
There was a high level of cross-party consensus in support of the government’s performance – three quarters of Scots, including the vast majority of Tory and Labour voters, believe the SNP government is handling the crisis well.
As well as 85% of SNP voters, 84% of Liberal Democrats and 70% of both Conservative and Labour supporters are happy with the approach taken by the Scottish government. Just 19% said the virus was being handled badly.
This consensus falls apart when assessing the UK government’s performance. Scots are split, with 47% of those surveyed agreeing Conservative ministers have handled the outbreak well and 48% disagreeing. Boris Johnson himself has a net rating of -15.
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Singapore’s health ministry confirmed 447 new coronavirus infections on Saturday, the smallest daily rise in two weeks, according to a report by Reuters.
The increase takes the city state’s tally of cases to 17,548, with 16 virus-related deaths.
The ministry said most of the new cases were among migrant workers living in dormitories.
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Two per cent of Moscow infected, says mayor
The mayor of Moscow says about 2% of the city’s population, more than 250,000 people, have the virus.
“According to screening tests of various population groups, the real number of the infected is around 2% of Moscow’s total population,” Sergei Sobyanin wrote on his blog, Agence France-Presse reported.
Russia has so far reported more than 114,000 cases of the coronavirus, including 57,300 cases in Moscow, which is the centre of the country’s contagion.
According to official statistics, Moscow has a population of 12.7 million people but the real figure is believed to be higher.
Sobyanin said Moscow has significantly increased testing capacity over the past few weeks, adding the city has managed to “contain the spread of the infection” due to the enforcement of stay-at-home rules and other measures.
But he reiterated that the city was not yet past the peak of the outbreak.
“The threat is apparently on the rise,” he said.
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Hello, I’m taking over the live blog from my colleague Helen. If you want to get in touch with any tips or comments, you can email me on aamna.mohdin@theguardian.com or tweet me @aamnamohdin.
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Ninety-eight people die in NY nursing home
A nursing home in New York has reported a “horrifying” death toll of 98 people from the coronavirus as residential facilities continued to emerge as a deadly source of outbreaks across the world.
The death toll at the Isabella Geriatric Center in Manhattan is one of the worst such outbreaks in the United States and caused a shock even in hard-hit New York after an official state tally of nursing home deaths listed only 13 at the home as of Friday.
But officials at the 705-bed centre later confirmed that up to 46 residents who tested positive for Covid-19 had died, as well as an additional 52 people suspected to have the virus, Associated Press reported. Some died at the nursing home and some died after being treated at hospitals.
“It’s absolutely horrifying,” mayor Bill de Blasio said. “It’s just impossible to imagine so many people lost in one place.”
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India mandates tracing app for public and private sector employees
India has mandated that all public and private sector employees use a government-backed Bluetooth tracing app and maintain social distancing in offices as New Delhi begins easing some of its lockdown measures in lower-risk areas.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Friday said India - the country with the largest number of people in lockdown - would extends its nationwide control measures for another two weeks from Monday to battle the spread of the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 illness, but allow “considerable relaxations” in lower-risk districts.
As part of its efforts to fight the deadly virus, India last month launched the app Aarogya Setu - meaning Health Bridge - a Bluetooth and GPS-based system developed by the country’s National Informatics Centre. The app alerts users who may have come in contact with people later found to be positive for COVID-19 or deemed to be at high risk.
“Use of Aarogya Setu shall be made mandatory for all employees, both private and public,” India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a notification late on Friday.
It will the responsibility of the heads of companies and organizations “to ensure 100% coverage of this app among the employees,” the ministry said.
Officials at India’s technology ministry and a lawyer who framed the privacy policy for Aarogya Setu told Reuters the app needs to be on at least 200 million phones for it to be effective in the country of 1.3 billion people.
The app has been downloaded around 50 million times on Android phones, which dominate India’s smartphone user base of 500 million, according to Google Play Store data.
The app’s compulsory use is raising concerns among privacy advocates, who say it is unclear how the data will be used and who stress that India lacks privacy laws to govern the app.
“Such a move should be backed by a dedicated law which provides strong data protection cover and is under the oversight of an independent body,” said Udbhav Tiwari, Public Policy Advisor for internet company Mozilla.
New Delhi has said the app will not infringe on privacy as all data is collected anonymously.
New Zealand has been under a strict lockdown and has seen extraordinary results in containing the virus outbreak.
As those restrictions were downgraded to level three, we asked Guardian readers about their experiences.
“I was nearly skipping when I got to work,” said Kylie Toka, a fencer from Marton, Rangetikei.
I went back to work on Tuesday. It was exciting to start the day with a sense of purpose after five weeks of time melting into itself. It was a little discombobulating to dust off my clothes, boots and tool belt, and hunt out my bag and lunch box. It was so nice to be in my car, music turned up and travelling fast. I was nearly skipping when I got to work. It was exciting to see my work colleagues – we are a small team of three and we spend long hours working together, arguing and laughing. The first day was very physical – ripping out a wire fence, moving a cut-down tree – it’s going to take at least two weeks for my body to get used to the work again.
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Australian health authorities are investigating possible breaches of infection control at a Sydney aged care facility at the centre of a coronavirus cluster.
Of the five new Covid-19 cases in the state over the last 24 hours, two were recorded at Newmarch House, where 13 residents have died.
Anglicare Sydney, which runs the aged care facility, confirmed the positive tests but said it had “strict procedures and enforced infection control practices” in place.
More than 60 people – 24 staff and 37 residents – have tested positive to Covid-19 since the outbreak at the Penrith nursing home on 11 April.
Read more here:
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Somali medics report rapid rise in deaths
Medics, funeral workers and gravediggers in Somalia have reported an unprecedented surge of deaths in recent days amid growing fears that official counts of Covid-19 deaths reflect only a fraction of the virus’s toll in Africa .
So far Somalia, one of the poorest and most vulnerable countries on the continent, has announced an official total of 601 confirmed cases and 28 deaths.
But evidence from medics and burial workers in Mogadishu, the capital of the unstable east African country, suggest the number of deaths could be many times higher.
Read more here:
The Jakarta Post has reported that a hamlet on the island of Bali has been put under lockdown after rapid testing showed hundreds of residents were probably infected.
Out of 1,200 tests, 400 returned a reactive result.
“Starting Thursday, Serokadan hamlet in Abuan village is isolated, closed. No one is allowed to enter or leave the hamlet,” said the Bali provincial Covid-19 taskforce’s executive chairman, Dewa Made Indra.
“We have followed up the rapid test results by taking swab samples for further PCR [polymerase chain reaction] tests to get accurate results on whether they are positive for Covid-19 or not. Of course, we will use the swab test results as the final results.”
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Associated Press: Gun-carrying protesters have been a common sight at some demonstrations calling for coronavirus-related restrictions to be lifted. But an armed militia’s involvement in an angry protest in the Michigan statehouse on Thursday marked an escalation that drew condemnation and shone a spotlight on the practice of bringing weapons to protest.
The American Patriot rally started on the statehouse steps, where members of the Michigan Liberty Militia stood guard with weapons and tactical gear, their faces partially covered. They later moved inside the capitol along with several hundred protesters, who demanded to be let on to the House floor, which is prohibited.
Some protesters with guns which are allowed in the statehouse went to the Senate gallery, where a senator said some armed men shouted at her, and some senators wore bulletproof vests.
For some observers, the images of armed men in tactical gear at a state capitol were an unsettling symbol of rising tensions in a nation grappling with crisis. Others saw evidence of racial bias in the way the protesters were treated by police.
For some politicians, there was fresh evidence of the risk of aligning with a movement with clear ties to far-right groups.
Prominent Michigan Republicans on Friday criticised the showing, with the GOP leader of the state senate referring to some protesters as “a bunch of jackasses” who used intimidation and the threat of physical harm to “stir up fear and feed rancor”.
President Donald Trump, who has been criticized in the past for condoning extremist views, called the protesters very good people and urged Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer to make a deal.
Michigan has been the centre of the political showdown over how to contain the spread of the deadly virus without decimating the economy. About a quarter of the state’s workforce has filed for unemployment and nearly 4,000 people have died.
Updated
Parts of Australia have started easing their restrictions on social activity. In the state of NSW for example, two people could visit another house for the first time from yesterday. In the Northern Territory, some national parks have opened and there is a date for pub’s reopening. Queensland is allowing people to travel up to 50km for recreation.
Naaman Zhou has spoken to a few people about what they planned to do with the new (relative) freedom.
For Lisa Villani, Friday’s relaxation of restrictions means she can see her friend Deb Mansfield, who is recovering from surgery.
Mansfield, 43, is a visual artist and former university lecturer, who now works in the disability sector. The pair met seven years ago and, until the shutdown, worked together at a pottery workshop.
“In some of my toughest times, Deb has been the family in Sydney I didn’t have. She checks in. She delivers baked goods. She sends gifts,” Villani says.
Singapore to ease restrictions as cases subside again – minister
Singapore’s health minister says the city state will relax some anti-coronavirus measures after a fall in the number of cases in the broader community.
Some businesses will be allowed to open again after 12 May while some schools will reopen from 19 May.
Some Singapore businesses to reopen from May 5 as circuit breaker measures eased progressivelyhttps://t.co/WzWgm0p47l
— The Straits Times (@STcom) May 2, 2020
Singapore saw cases flare up recently in a second wave as infections rose sharply in its crowded migrant worker dormitories.
Updated
The postponed Tokyo Olympics are unlikely to go ahead in 2021, infectious disease experts have warned, in a Bloomberg article.
“Japan may be able to contain the virus by next year’s games” but other regions like the U.S., Africa or Brazil may not, creating an uneven playing field for athletes, said Norio Sugaya, a visiting professor at Keio University’s School of Medicine in Tokyo and a member of a World Health Organization panel advising on pandemic influenza. “It’s going to be tough to hold the Olympics.”
AFP: Ten years after sinking into its worst economic crisis in living memory, Greece once again faces the spectre of a grave recession in the midst of a global coronavirus lockdown.
Though the country has so far been spared the death toll of other European nations at fewer than 150 fatalities from Covid-19, it will not escape the resulting economic downturn, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned this week.
“The consequences of this coronavirus attack will undoubtedly be dramatic,” he told parliament on Thursday.
“We know with certainty that (the recession) will be deep... we don’t know how long the health crisis will last, we don’t yet know if we’ll have tourism.”
Tourism is one of Greece’s most important sources of revenue, along with shipping.
The Greek state alone could lose 8-10 billion euros ($8.8-11 billion) in income this year, the prime minister said.
There were attempts at May Day rallies in some countries yesterday. In Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protests have been a massive presence since mid last year, authorities banned any May Day marches, citing public health regulations.
3,000 riot police were reportedly sent out on the street in anticipation of people ignoring the ban.
Lab or organisers appealed the ban, but lost, and so instead went out in two small groups that were 1.5m apart. They were, however, fined by police, according to activist leader Lee Cheuk-Yan.
Lee told the Guardian yesterday police stopped them and said because the two groups had “the same objective” they would all be fined.
He accused police of abusing the social distancing laws to stop protest actions.
Elsewhere some protesters took to shopping malls to hold small rallies or to sing. They were met with quite an intense response from police, who used pepper spray to disperse more than 100 protesters singing and chanting pro-democracy slogans at a shopping mall in the New Territories.
Police PTUF & QRF1 crushed into New Town Plaza and deployed pepper spray to disperse shoppers and protestors inside the mall #HongKongProtests pic.twitter.com/NYblHd1r9q
— Galileo Cheng (@galileocheng) May 1, 2020
There is a total of 2,307 positive cases and 73 deaths on the Navajo Nation. This includes 1,080 males, 1,227 females, and an average age of 45-years old. The deaths include 45 males, 28 females, and an average age of 66-years old.
— Arlyssa Becenti🗞🖊 (@ABecenti) May 2, 2020
The International Monetary Fund has approved a request from Ecuador for emergency financing to fight the coronavirus pandemic, granting a $643 million loan, the Andean country’s economy ministry said on Friday.
Ecuador has been among the hardest-hit countries in Latin America by the coronavirus, with 24,675 confirmed cases and 883 deaths, plus a further 1,357 deaths that were likely caused by the virus.
“This financing will allow us to have the necessary liquidity to support the reactivation of the economy, and protect jobs,” the ministry said in a statement.
The outbreak there is boosting pressure on President Lenin Moreno to default on $17 billion in debt and devote more resources toward fighting a pandemic that has left bodies in the streets of the country’s largest city, Guayaquil.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 945 to 161,703, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The death toll rose by 94 to 6,575.
Malaysian authorities are rounding up undocumented migrants as part of efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus, the country’s police chief said late on Friday, after hundreds of migrants and refugees were detained in the capital Kuala Lumpur.
Over 700 migrants were taken into custody, including young children and ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, during Friday’s raid in a downtown area where thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers live, rights groups had said.
The operation was aimed at preventing undocumented migrants from travelling to other areas amid movement curbs imposed to contain the spread of the outbreak, Inspector-General of Police Abdul Hamid Bador told state news agency Bernama.
“We cannot allow them to move freely... as it will be difficult for us to track them down if they leave identified locations,” Abdul Hamid was quoted as saying.
Those detained would be placed at a single location for monitoring until the movement curbs were lifted, he said according to Bernama.
The arrests followed public anger in recent days over the presence of migrant foreigners, particularly Rohingya refugees, with some in Malaysia accusing them of spreading the coronavirus and being a burden on state resources.
Malaysia has around 2 million registered foreign workers but authorities estimate many more are living in the Southeast Asian country without proper documents. Malaysia does not formally recognise refugees, regarding them as illegal migrants.
The Australian government has urged any citizens or residents currently in Africa to get a flight out as soon as possible, if they can.
“We have no plans to provide evacuation [flights],” it said.
“The government cannot guarantee you access to medical services if the situation gets worse.”
If you’re anywhere in Africa, and can access a✈️out, we urge you to do so asap. We have no plans to provide evacuation✈️. The 🇦🇺 Government cannot guarantee you access to medical services if the situation gets worse. Consular assistance will also be limited. #staysafe #beprepared
— Smartraveller (@Smartraveller) May 2, 2020
World Health Organization officials in Africa have said the Covid-19 outbreak is still increasing across the continent despite widespread efforts at containment.
Most African nations are hoping they can slow the spread of the disease to protect their very limited health facilities, which aren’t able to treat large numbers of sick people.
US congress investigating Carnival Cruise Line
US congress has launched an investigation into the conduct of Carnival Cruise Line over its response to the coronavirus pandemic, questioning why the company did not act sooner to protect passengers and staff.
Dozens of people have died and more than 1,500 confirmed Covid-19 infections have been recorded in connection with Carnival’s ships, which saw major outbreaks at least nine ships including, the Diamond Princess, the Zaandam and the Ruby Princess.
In a letter to Carnival, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure chair Peter DeFazio said the company is “still trying to sell this cruise line fantasy and ignoring the public health threat posed by coronavirus to potential future passengers and crew.”
Referring to an investigation by Bloomberg into the company, DeFazio said the reports suggested “Carnival were aware of the threats to some of its ships and did not take appropriate actions, which may have led to greater infections and the spread of the disease.”
In response to the allegations, the company told the Guardian in a statement: “Our goal is the same as the committee’s goal: to protect the health, safety and well-being of our guests and crew, along with compliance and environmental protection. We are reviewing the letter and will fully cooperate with the committee.”
The House investigation comes as more than 100,000 crew members remain stranded at sea, some with Covid-19 outbreaks on board. At least 18 people have died.
This is a beautiful read from my colleague Alyx Gorman about her very real wedding last weekend, attended by hundreds of family and friends from around the world - all virtually.
Covid-19 had already robbed the world of thousands of lives, jobs and freedoms – but could it give us our dream wedding? No complex travel arrangements, no savings drained. When most people’s realities have been completely upended, getting married on the internet just didn’t seem that weird any more. We could skip the most painful gut churn of wedding planning – weighing up our love for our friends against the cost of feeding them – and invite anyone who wanted to come. We just had to act fast.
China reported one new coronavirus case for May 1, down from 12 a day earlier, data from the country*s health authority showed on Saturday.
The new case was imported, the National Health Commission (NHC) said, down from six imported cases a day earlier.
China reported no domestic transmission cases down from six the day before.
The NHC also reported 20 new asymptomatic cases for 1 May, down from 25 a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed cases in the country has reached 82,875. With no new deaths on Friday, the toll remained at 4,633.
Nearly 3,000 crew of a cruise ship belonging to German tourism giant TUI have been quarantined on board after one person tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the company said on Friday.
Fifteen crew members of the Mein Schiff 3 were tested after showing mild flu symptoms, with one of them testing positive for COVID-19.
All 2,899 crew members would remain in quarantine on board in the ship’s home port of Cuxhaven on Germany’s North Sea coast until further notice, TUI said in a statement.
The cruise ship had no passengers on board, TUI added.
TUI, the leader in global tourism, has agreed a 1.8 billion euros ($1.9 billion) bridging loan from the German government to cushion the impact of COVID-19 on one of the hardest-hit sectors.
Nearly 3,000 crew have been quarantined on board after one person tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Photograph: Cristóbal Garcia/EPA
Mexico’s health ministry reported on Friday 1,515 new known coronavirus cases and 113 deaths, bringing the country’s total to 20,739 cases and 1,972 deaths.
The U.S. government was slow to understand how much coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped drive the acceleration of outbreaks across the nation, a top health official has said.
Limited testing and delayed travel alerts for areas outside China contributed to the jump in U.S. cases starting in late February, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We clearly didn’t recognise the full importations that were happening,” Schuchat told The Associated Press.
In an article published by the CDC looking back on the US response, Schuchat suggested the nation’s top public health agency missed opportunities to slow the spread.
The CDC is responsible for the recognition, tracking and prevention of just such a disease. But the agency has had a low profile during this pandemic, with White House officials controlling communications and leading most press briefings.
“This report seems to challenge the idea that the China travel ban in late January was instrumental in changing the trajectory of this pandemic in the United States,” said Jason Schwartz, assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly celebrated a federal decision, announced on 31 January, to stop entry into the US of any foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the previous 14 days. That took effect on 2 February.
China had imposed its own travel restrictions earlier, and travel out of its outbreak areas did indeed drop dramatically.
But in her article, Schuchat noted that nearly 2 million travellers arrived in the US from Italy and other European countries during February. The US government didn’t block travel from there until 11 March.
“The extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks, really accelerated our importations and the rapid spread,” she told the AP. “I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier.”
She also noted in the article that more than 100 people who had been on nine separate Nile River cruises during February and early March had come to the U.S. and tested positive for the virus, nearly doubling the number of known U.S. cases at that time.
Schuchat also noted the explosive effect of some late February mass gatherings, including a scientific meeting in Boston, the Mardis Gras celebration in New Orleans and a funeral in Albany, Georgia. The gatherings spawned many cases, and led to decisions in mid-March to restrict crowds.
“I think in retrospect, taking action earlier could have delayed further amplification (of the US outbreak), or delayed the speed of it.”
Yesterday, Beijing correspondent Lily Kuo published this piece on the “dining table revolution” in China, seeking to end, or at least change, the tradition of all-in communal meals, and reduce physical contact and shared utensils.
Today Zoe Williams looks at how European cuisine may also struggle to adjust.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, promised “meaningful” adjustments to stay-at-home orders in the coming days as protesters gathered in the capital of Sacramento and in Orange county’s Huntington Beach, a recent flashpoint after Newsom ordered beaches there to close following a busy weekend.
In Sacramento, the state’s capital, a packed crowd of protesters faced off with lines of riot cops in a tense and chaotic protest on Friday afternoon.
“Traitors!” the protesters screamed at police, according to a livestream of the protest produced by reporters from the Sacramento Bee.
Some protesters held signs questioning whether the coronavirus is real or promoting anti-vaccine conspiracies, while others protested the closure of businesses during the pandemic, arguing that all jobs are essential. Almost none of the protesters were wearing masks, according to reporters and photographers at the scene.
Top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci will not testify next week to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said on Friday, calling it “counterproductive” to have individuals involved in the response testify.
The White House issued an emailed statement after a spokesman for the House of Representatives committee holding the hearing said the panel had been informed by Trump administration officials that Fauci had been blocked from testifying.
“While the Trump administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
“We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.”
Fauci’s testimony was being sought for a 6 May hearing by a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health programs, said spokesman Evan Hollander. The Washington Post first reported that Fauci would not testify.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been one of the leading medical experts helping to guide the U.S. response to the highly contagious virus that has swept across the United States.
Summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing global coverage of the pandemic.
- Global number of infections passes 3.33m and at least 237,943 have died around the world since the pandemic began, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University.
- Top US health official Dr Anthony Fauci will be prevented from testifying to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic next week, the White House has said. The Trump administration claimed it would be “counterproductive” to have individuals involved in the response testify.
- Donald Trump is offering an increasingly bleak picture, telling a White House event: “Hopefully, we’re going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number, nevertheless.”
- In the US the drug remdesivir has been approved for emergency use to treat virus patients. The FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn clarifies that the drug has specifically been cleared for emergency use on those in hospital.
- Trump’s threats to reignite the US-China trade war in reaction to the pandemic trigger a sell-off in global financial markets, as the economic costs of the pandemic continue to mount. Against a backdrop of rising tension between the world’s two biggest economic superpowers, share prices resume a downward slide, with the FTSE 100 falling by 144 points, or 2.5%, in London.
- Restrictions on movement are to continue for several more weeks in Ireland, although over-70s may now leave their homes to exercise. The taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, says most restrictions will remain until 18 May to “weaken the virus further so it doesn’t make a comeback”.
- The UK reports 739 more deaths, bringing the total death toll in the country to 27,510. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, says 177,454 people have tested positive: an increase of 6,201 since Thursday’s update. Of those, 15,111 patients are in hospital, Hancock says.
- India has extended its lockdown – the world’s broadest by population – for two more weeks, but with some easing of restrictions in areas with few cases. The home ministry says that in view of “significant gains in the Covid-19 situation”, there will be “considerable relaxations” in areas with few or no cases.
- In South Africa some industries are allowed to reopen after five weeks of restrictions in Africa’s most industrialised nation, which was already struggling with low growth and high debts when the lockdown began on 27 March.Its easing comes after the ratings agency S&P downgraded the country’s credit rating to junk on Wednesday.
