We’ve fired up a brand new global coronavirus blog at the link below – head there for the latest:
Remdesivir: Ebola drug endorsed as a coronavirus treatment in Australia
The antiviral drug remdesivir has been recommended for the treatment of Covid-19 patients in Australia, by the national taskforce bringing together the country’s peak health groups, AAP reports.
The National Covid-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce said Australian doctors treating adults with moderate, severe or critical Covid-19 should consider using the drug to aid recovery times.
The antiviral drug is the first medication to be recommended as a considered treatment for patients treated in hospital after contracting coronavirus.
Originally developed for the treatment of Ebola, clinical trials have shown remdesivir may improve recovery time for people with moderate to critical Covid-19 symptoms.
The taskforce’s executive director, Associate Professor Julian Elliott, said while it was early days it was a significant step forward.
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now. I’ll be with you for the next few hours.
As always, I’d be delighted to hear from you: please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com with comments, tips, questions or news from your part of the world.
UK researchers have called for the use of additional coronavirus symptoms to detect new cases, reduce infections and save lives.
In a letter published in The Lancet journal, the King’s College London team discussed how loss of taste and smell should form part of screening measures for the virus.
The researchers, led by Professor Tim Spector, previously reported that loss of smell and taste is a key predictor of Covid-19 in addition to the most established symptoms of a high temperature and a new, continuous cough.
On May 18, the symptoms were added to the NHS coronavirus symptoms list, weeks after experts first raised concerns that Covid-19 cases were being missed.
However, the importance of the symptom was disputed by some.
The researchers’ additional analysis of the Covid Symptom Study app data and its 3.7 million users sought to quantify the clinical value of recording loss of smell in the population.
They said: “As countries slowly emerge from lockdown measures, it is imperative to correctly contact-trace infected individuals.
“We believe that having added loss of smell and taste to the list of Covid-19 symptoms is of great value as it will help tracing almost 16% of cases that otherwise would have been missed.”
From 76,260 people with symptoms who tested positive for coronavirus up to May 19, 28.5% never reported any fever or cough and 16% reported loss of smell but not fever or cough.
Researchers say the prevalence of loss of smell and taste was three-fold higher in individuals testing positive (65%) than in those testing negative (22%), the strongest single predictor of being infected.
They suggest this means people with loss of smell and taste should self-isolate for at least seven days or until they can be tested.
Prof Spector said: “We believe that loss of smell and taste is a very common Covid-19 symptom, and in fact occurs more often than fever and lasts longer (five days on average compared to only two for fever).
“Infections could be reduced and lives saved now that this non-flu-like symptom is widely recognised and actions are taken.”
The researchers suggest that policymakers should consider these findings and their implications for mass screening as part of other public health measures in key areas such as schools, hospitals, airports and care homes.
Coronavirus is spreading fast through Brazil’s indigenous populations with deaths caused by the disease increasing more than five-fold in the past month, according to data.
Many epidemiologists had hoped remote locations might protect the tribes, but the virus, which first took hold in state capitals of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, is increasingly devastating these far-flung communities where basic healthcare is often precarious.
Deaths among Brazil’s indigenous populations rose to 182 by June 1, from 28 at the end of April, according to the Articulation of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB), a national umbrella association that brings together the country’s 305 tribes.
In the village of Sororó in southeastern Pará, tribesman Itamaré Suruí said one elder had died and people were falling ill but the government had not provided tests to confirm whether they have COVID-19.
Compulsory face-covering measures should be introduced to “all areas” where social distancing is not possible in the UK, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps announced that wearing a covering will be mandatory on public transport in England from June 15.
However, face-covering measures can help prevent the spread of Covid-19 and “should not be restricted to public transport”, according to BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul.
Dr Nagpaul said the risk of the virus would be “much less” if the public wears face coverings straight away instead of waiting for the mid-June start date.
He said: “The BMA recently advocated the wearing of face coverings by the public several weeks ago in areas where they cannot socially distance and believes it is right that people should be required to wear face coverings on public transport.
“Given there remains a considerable risk of infection, with thousands of new cases every day, wearing masks can reduce the spread of the virus.
“Not only will this afford greater protection to the public, importantly it will protect the lives of the staff working on public transport who, as evidence suggests, are at greater risk of infection.
“These important measures should not be restricted to public transport but to all areas where social distancing is not always possible - the risk will be much less if the public adopts this now - not mid-June.”
The front page of the UK edition of The Guardian.
Guardian front page, Friday 5 June 2020: Revealed: NHS test and trace not fully operational until September pic.twitter.com/X6PKBpnGRX
— The Guardian (@guardian) June 4, 2020
Turkey announces weekend lockdown in 15 cities
Turkey will impose a weekend lockdown in 15 cities as part of efforts to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, the interior ministry said.
In a statement, the ministry said bakeries and certain shops could operate during the lockdown.
Turkey has had 167,410 Covid-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Around 600 people attended a funeral in the Spanish city of Seville to honour those who have died in the pandemic.
Many of the seats in Seville’s cathedral were reserved for families of the victims and authorities in what is one of the largest gatherings in the country since the lockdown began in March.
The cathedral, which is a World Heritage site, accommodated the mourners under strict safety conditions, as a 53-person choir led by four soloists and accompanied by 27 musicians performed Mozart’s Requiem.
Spain has had over 240,000 confirmed cases and in excess of 27,000 deaths, according to its official figures.
Long lines of cars snaked along Austria’s frontier with Slovakia on Thursday after it lifted coronavirus-related border controls but motorists found they still faced lengthy checks on the Slovakian side.
Vienna has announced it was lifting the restrictions at its land borders at midnight, except on the Italian frontier.
Many European countries have said they will be following suit in the coming weeks and relax travel restrictions imposed at the beginning of the pandemic.
“Since yesterday, the news that Austria has lifted its controls is in all our media,” said a cyclist from Bratislava, surprised that Slovak authorities were stopping him at the Berg border crossing.
A Slovak police officer at the crossing, which is surrounded by fields, said vehicles had been gathering on Thursday for the first time in weeks.
But some of those wanting to leave Austria fell foul of rules still in force in Slovakia.
Anyone entering the country needs to show they have recently tested negative for the coronavirus or undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine.
The only way to avoid quarantine is to produce a document proving they have spent less than 48 hours outside Slovakia - handy for those who want to nip across to visit family or shop in Austria.
“Too bad! I will come back when it is fully open,” said Lazlo Turkazavo, who lives in Austria and wanted to go to Slovakia but decided to turn around after crossing proved more complicated than he had expected.
As for Slovaks who work in Austria, they are still waiting for trains and buses to resume full service.
Some of them could be seen crossing the border on foot, dragging heavy suitcases to load them into taxis on the Austrian side.
For now, some checks at the border are also still being applied by several of Austria’s other neighbours.
Only Slovenia and Hungary have announced they will reciprocate the reopening from Friday and let in people travelling from Austria without checks.
Italy for its part has opened its borders for EU citizens, including Austrians.
But Austria had not reciprocated, saying the virus was still too prevalent in its hard-hit southern neighbour.
South Africa sees record rise in coronavirus cases
South Africa has recorded 3,267 coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the biggest increase since the pandemic hit the country.
Africa’s biggest industrial power now has a total of 40,792 infections, the health ministry said. It saw a rise of 56 deaths, bring the total to 848.
More than half of the cases are in the Western Cape region where health services are under pressure.
Global death toll passes 388,000
The fatalities worldwide has reached 388,416, according to US-based Johns Hopkins University.
The US has had 107,765 deaths, the highest of any country, followed by the UK with 39,987.
Jordan is set to reopen hotels and cafes, allow sporting events behind closed doors and shorten a night-time curfew from Saturday, prime minister Omar al-Razzaz said.
He said that toughening enforcement of social distancing measures was to ensure there is not a resurgence of infections.
The country imposed a state of emergency in March, sealing its borders and enforcing a night curfew.
There have been 757 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and nine deaths. Officials say new infections have dropped to less than 10 a day over the past week.
Egypt’s prosecutor-general has called for urgent legal action after a man reportedly arranged female genital mutilation (FGM) for his three young daughters and told them it was a treatment for Covid-19.
The father and the doctor who performed the procedures have been referred to a criminal court.
The incident was reported to the authorities by their mother who is divorced from the children’s father.
He is said to have told the girls they were being “vaccinated” for coronavirus. They were then reportedly drugged and FGM was carried out on them.
Madagascar’s education minister was sacked after announcing a plan to buy sweets for students to take the edge off the “bitter taste” of a herbal tea the president claims is a coronavirus remedy.
Rijasoa Andriamanana said last week she was ordering $2.2 million worth of sweets to go with the Covid-Organics concoction, which experts have warned is useless against Covid-19.
She told the press that “a purchase of sweets and lollipops” had been made with all students in the Indian Ocean island nation to receive three each.
She added that it was for the “bitter taste” of the drink, which president Andry Rajoelina has been promoting for export, saying it is the country’s “green gold” which will “change history”.
The potential benefits of Covid-Organics have not been validated by any scientific study.
Andriamanana defended the plan, but it was not considered by the cabinet which relieved her of her duties.
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
- A $2bn (£1.5bn) fund aimed at ensuring that poorer countries can access doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine has been unveiled at a virtual summit hosted by the UK. The announcement was made at the third Gavi vaccine alliance replenishment summit, a virtual pledging event that raised $8.8bn.
- New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, said several days and nights of demonstrations in the state after the killing of George Floyd could accelerate the spread of the coronavirus and urged protesters to get tested. He noted that an estimated 30,000 people have protested in the state.
- Grant Shapps, the UK’s transport secretary, has announced that face coverings will be mandatory on public transport in England from 15 June. He added that people can be refused permission to travel if they do not comply and could be fined.
- Low Covid-19 figures for Africa are “broadly accurate”, the World Health Organization’s director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, has said. There were concerns that low levels of testing, poor infrastructure and a lack of cooperation from some governments may be disguising the true extent of the disease’s spread.
- US pandemic jobless claims passed 42 million after another 1.9 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week. The pace of layoffs has slowed dramatically from its peak of 6.6m at the start of April as states begin to relax quarantines. Last week was the ninth consecutive week of declines.
Three of the authors of an influential article that found hydroxychloroquine increased the risk of death in COVID-19 patients have retracted the study after concerns about the quality of the data in the study.
They said that Surgisphere, the company that provided the data, would not transfer the full data set for an independent review and they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.”
The study was published in British medical journal the Lancet last month.
Today, three of the authors have retracted "Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis" Read the Retraction notice and statement from The Lancet https://t.co/pPNCJ3nO8n pic.twitter.com/pB0FBj6EXr
— The Lancet (@TheLancet) June 4, 2020
Updated
Greece is “more than just sea and sun,” the country’s prime minister said as a campaign was launched to resurrect its economy from the coronavirus lockdown.
“We are opening Greece’s windows and doors to the world gradually but with optimism,” premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.
“What we want to communicate is that Greek summer...is a state of mind.
“The entire world probably needs this vacation more than ever before.
“Enjoy your Greek summer, wherever you are.”
Mitsotakis said the message was designed to entice even travellers unable to visit this year, looking forward to 2021 and 2022.
He has already warned the country that the economy would fall into a “deep recession” this year before rebounding in 2021.
France reported 44 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals over the previous 24 hours, taking the official tally to 29,065 fatalities.
The health ministry tally does not include deaths in care homes and other institutions with the latest inclusive update not due till June 9.
Nationwide, France now lists 1,163 serious cases of Covid-19 who are in hospital on a ventilator, 47 fewer than Wednesday.
Three-quarters of those are spread over just four regions - the Ile de France including Paris, the Grand-Est, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Hauts-de-France.
A second round of random testing in Spain for antibodies to coronavirus indicates that a third of those infected do not develop symptoms, health authorities said.
It is not possible to control an outbreak by just considering those who are symptomatic, National Epidemiological Center Director, Marina Pollán, said.
With this number of asymptomatic cases, we must follow the recommendations for personal hygiene and social distancing, Pollán added.
Results from the latest round of the nationwide testing confirmed preliminary finding published three weeks ago showing that blood tests detected the IGG antibody against the virus in only 5% of the 63,000 participants.
Researchers say that means Spain is far from having developed a herd immunity to COVID-19 and is still vulnerable to more outbreaks.
Over 95% of the people tested in the first round continued in the study for the second round. There will be one more round of testing before the study concludes.
The Health Ministrys virus expert, Fernando Simón, acknowledged that regional authorities are correcting their data and said he expects the national totals of deaths and infections to undergo revisions.
Whilst the last official clap for carers took place last week, we still want to show our appreciation for the NHS and all front line workers. Thank you to Richard Prest and his team for creating the signs. pic.twitter.com/NAJJ61bIwm
— Optare (@Optaregroup) June 4, 2020
Now that Clap for our Carers has come to an end, we would like to say a huge thank you to all of our key worker friends and colleagues on this #thankfulthursday 👏🌟Thank you to everyone that has clapped over the previous 10 weeks! We are all #InItTogether! pic.twitter.com/VdUvvTSpV9
— UHNM NHS Trust 🏥 #StayAtHome (@UHNM_NHS) June 4, 2020
The nationwide applause for NHS and key workers is now taking place in the UK.
Whether you #ClapforCarers tonight or not, we still want to thank all of #ourNHSpeople, key workers and volunteers for your hard work during the pandemic — thank you!
— NHS Citizen (@NHSCitizen) June 4, 2020
💙🌈💙 #ThankYouNHS 🌈💙🌈 #Volunteersweek
At 8pm in the UK, the weekly Clap for Carers will take place. It is expected to be a scaled down nationwide applause after the founder of the initiative called for it to end last week amid concerns it was becoming politicised.
Although the final #ClapforKeyWorkers took place last week, it is more important than ever to let those on the frontline know we are supporting them. That is why tonight St Albans Museum + Gallery will be lit up in blue and green. #ClapForNHS#ClapForCarers pic.twitter.com/8uCbCzLtzB
— St Albans Museums (@stalbansmuseums) June 4, 2020
Organisers have scrapped plans to mandate physical distancing during President Donald Trump’s appearance at a Mount Rushmore fireworks display on 3 July and will not limit the crowd size due to coronavirus concerns, South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, has said.
The Republican governor said the National Park Service was dolling out 7,500 tickets via a lottery for the event, which marks the first time in a decade that fireworks will be set off at the memorial in recognition of Independence Day.
“There will be no better place to celebrate our independence,” Noem said.
“We are excited that President Trump will be joining us for this event.”
Organisers did not reduce the number of tickets due to the coronavirus pandemic and Noem added she was not concerned that an influx of tourists would heighten the risk.
Coronavirus infections are on a downward trend in the state and hospitals are prepared to handle more infections if needed, she said.
The governor added that people who do not get tickets to the event will be able to gather outside the monument grounds to watch the fireworks.
Updated
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has asked the country to remain calm, a day after health officials announced more than 1,000 new Covid-19 deaths, a figure that was more than double the previous toll reported in a single day.
The reason for the sudden jump in deaths was attributable to a number of factors, including confirmation and inclusion of deaths stretching back as far as 25 days, health officials said.
“Let there not be psychosis, let there not be fear,” López Obrador said, accusing the press of fanning fears.
He tried to reassure Mexicans that 1,000 deaths registered in 24 hours is “no cause for alarm”.
The country is passing through the epidemic’s most critical moment with a dramatically increasing number of confirmed and suspected infections.
The jump in reported deaths came in the first week after the federal government’s official social distancing period ended as the president continued a week-long tour trying to reactivate the economy.
López Obrador said he would recommend tightened measures if there was a surge in infections.
Updated
New York governor urges George Floyd protesters to get tested
New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, said several days and nights of demonstrations in the state after the killing of George Floyd could accelerate the spread of coronavirus and urged protesters to get tested.
He noted that an estimated 30,000 people have protested in the state.
Officials in Chicago this week expressed similar concern, and asked protesters to quarantine themselves for 14 days.
Cuomo said his concern about increased spread of the virus during the demonstrations would not impede the state’s regionally phased reopening, which is set to allow New York City to open on Monday for limited economic activity.
With more people wearing face coverings, the state has made significant progress in halting the spread, as reflected in a drop in the rate of people testing positive for the virus over the past six weeks to 2% from 26%, he said.
The number of hospitalised Covid-19 patients also continued trending lower, he added.
Cuomo said: “I’m not a nervous Nellie, I’m just looking at the numbers.
“Many wear masks. But there is no social distancing. Police are in their face ... If you were at a protest, get a test, please.”
A second phase of activity, which New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said could start as early as July, will include outdoor restaurant seating.
Updated
Researchers in Denmark have developed a fully automated robot that can take coronavirus swabs so that healthcare professionals are not exposed to the risk of infection, Reuters reports.
Researchers from Southern University of Denmark (SDU) and Lifeline Robotics hope their prototype ‘swab robot’ can soon be deployed to relieve health professionals of the potentially risky task of testing patients.
When a patient presents an ID-card, the robot prepares a sampling kit, performs the swab and puts the sample in a container ready for testing, explained Thiusius Rajeeth Savarimuthu, professor of robotics at SDU.
In a video, Savarimuthi tested the robot on himself. He positioned his face with his chin in a plastic frame, opened his mouth wide, and allowed a robotic arm to stick a swab into the back of his throat and rotate it.
Danish researchers have developed a fully automated robot that can take coronavirus swabs to protect healthcare professionals from the risk of infection https://t.co/xkRt4mcUnO pic.twitter.com/WwiIvqdqpZ
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 4, 2020
Updated
Gypsy and Traveller communities in England have been left without water and sanitation facilities during the coronavirus lockdown, writes Jessica Murray in London.
Families in England have no access to sanitation, refuse collection, or water for drinking, cooking, showering and washing clothes, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma (GRT) said in a letter to the Local Government Association.
Some local authorities have directed vulnerable Travellers to uncleaned public toilets with no hand-washing facilities, the letter said, while others are attempting to evict camps. It stressed that these basic facilities were needed for communities to physically distance, self-isolate and follow guidelines on hand washing and hygiene.
One Irish Traveller, Catherine*, who lives with her sister and two children, aged 12 and two, in south-east England, moved from an overcrowded site because she was worried about the risk of catching the virus from others.
The family are now on public land outside a transit site closed due to Covid-19, and are struggling to access water and toilet facilities. The mother said:
There’s no other families on there, so we could use it to isolate, but the local authority won’t let us. We have to drive to get to the water, and the toilets close at 6pm. We’re usually fine with a public toilet, we’ve used them hundreds of times before, but we don’t want to risk infection.
We’re worried about not having water for the kids now it’s getting warmer. It feels very depressing, we’ve got no toilet, no nothing. We can’t drive anywhere, because we don’t have anywhere to go. It feels like they just don’t care about us.
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
- A $2bn (£1.5bn) fund aimed at ensuring that poorer countries can access doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine has been unveiled at a virtual summit hosted by the UK. The announcement was made at the third Gavi vaccine alliance replenishment summit, a virtual pledging event that raised $8.8bn.
- Activists in Norway were refused permission to hold rallies in support of US protests over the police killing of George Floyd, because of fears of the spread of coronavirus. Mohamed Awil, the president of the African student association UiO, said rallies were planned in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim.
- Grant Shapps, the UK’s transport secretary, has announced that face coverings will be mandatory on public transport in England from 15 June. He added that people can be refused permission to travel if they do not comply and could be fined.
- Low Covid-19 figures for Africa are “broadly accurate”, the World Health Organization’s director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, has said. There were concerns that low levels of testing, poor infrastructure and a lack of cooperation from some governments may be disguising the true extent of the disease’s spread.
- US pandemic jobless claims passed 42 million after another 1.9 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week. The pace of layoffs has slowed dramatically from its peak of 6.6m at the start of April as states begin to relax quarantines. Last week was the ninth consecutive week of declines.
- Iran reached a new peak in coronavirus transmissions. Health authorities in Iran have reported 3,574 new cases of coronavirus, the highest daily count since the outbreak began in the country in February. The previous high was 3,186, recorded on 30 March.
- Authorities in France have cancelled the 2020 Bastille Day military parade due to social distancing requirements. Rather than the traditional march of soldiers and military hardware down the Champs-Elysees on 14 July, there will be a smaller ceremony at the Place de la Concorde, the presidency said.
- Spain wants to welcome British tourists back as soon as its airports reopen to foreign visitors on 1 July, but has warned much will depend on the UK’s 14-day coronavirus quarantine for those returning from abroad and on the British authorities rescinding advice on non-essential foreign travel.
- Restrictions on domestic travel will be eased in Sweden from 13 June, the prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has said, despite signs that coronavirus infections are increasing in parts of the country.
- New Zealand has a date for when it will achieve its goal of elimination of Covid-19: 15 June. On Thursday, health officials announced they had found no new cases of the virus for the 13th straight day, from thousands of tests.
That’s it from me, Damien Gayle, for another day. I’ll be back tomorrow.
The head of the UK’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency said Britain’s intelligence agencies are working urgently to prevent hackers from hostile states, including China, trying to steal the secrets of a potential coronavirus vaccine, writes Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor.
Jeremy Fleming, said hackers – including those from hostile states – were targeting the UK’s health infrastructure and some of its world-leading research labs, often by using simple techniques.
“We do know that, whether it’s states or criminals, they are going after things which are sensitive to us,” the director general said in a rare interview to the Cheltenham science festival. “So, it’s a high priority for us to protect the health sector, particularly the race to acquire a vaccine.”
He said hackers were often “looking for pretty basic vulnerabilities” such as “lures to get people to click on the wrong thing ... where people aren’t backing up properly, or where they’ve got basic passwords and so on.”
The chief of the signals intelligence agency did not directly name China or any other country as being behind the cyber-attacks on the NHS and British research labs, but sources indicated that Beijing was often believed to be involved.
Elsewhere in the interview, which was recorded three weeks earlier, Fleming described China as, in part, “an intelligence adversary”, and said the UK had to navigate a complex relationship with Beijing, made more acute by the pandemic.
One of the world’s biggest electronic music festivals, Tomorrowland in Belgium, will be held online this year because of coronavirus restrictions, the organisers have said.
While Belgium, which has one of the world’s worst per capita death rates from the pandemic, is slowly lifting restrictions to curb the spread of the disease, music festivals are banned until at least the end of August.
Tomorrowland, which usually draws some 400,000 people to the small town of Boom, will this year take the form of a two-day “digital music festival experience”.
Viewers will be able to navigate eight different “stages” through a computer, smartphone or tablet, with organisers promising “the planet’s biggest names in electronic dance music and the world’s best technology in 3D design, video production and special effects”.
The festival’s co-founder, Michiel Beers, said they hoped to capture the spirit of the event while “re-inventing the festival experience”.
“We hope that hundreds of thousands of people will unite in a responsible way and that small Tomorrowland gatherings at people’s homes - from Canada to Australia, from Japan to Brazil and everywhere in between - will be organised,” he said in a statement.
“Especially during the weekend where normally Tomorrowland Belgium would take place, we really have the power to unite the world.”
Zimbabwe’s government has accused two opposition activists and an MP who described torture, humiliation and repeated sexual assaults after being abducted by suspected state security services of inventing the entire episode, writes Jason Burke, the Guardian’s Africa correspondent.
The three women, all leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change’s youth section, were arrested at a roadblock guarded by police and soldiers last month at a protest in Harare against the state’s failure to provide for the poor during the country’s Covid-19 lockdown last month.
They then disappeared until they were found on a roadside 60 miles away from the capital two days later, badly injured and traumatised. Witnesses said masked assailants had bundled the three women into an unmarked Toyota minivan and driven them away.
The women later described repeated beatings, humiliation and sexual assault at the hands of unidentified men who threatened them with further attacks if they continued their political activities. Police have since charged them with participation in an illegal demonstration.
Kazembe Kazembe, Zimbabwe’s home affairs minister, said on Thursday that the government “does not permit any of its institutions and agencies to use torture, forced disappearance or abductions”.
According to the Herald, a state-owned newspaper, Kazembe described such methods as alien to Zimbabwe, suggesting they had been imported “from foreign environments for the benefit of regime change sponsors”.
Kazembe also said examination by government doctors had not shown any injuries that matched the three women’s accounts and alleged their statements showed signs of coaching.
Suspected state security services have abducted dozens of pro-democracy campaigners, trade unionists and opposition officials in recent years. Most have been released after several hours, though many have been badly beaten, stripped, threatened or otherwise mistreated.
An alpaca named Tyson could help deliver a knockout blow in the fight against the spread of coronavirus, Swedish scientists hope.
After immunising Tyson, a 12 year-old alpaca in Germany, with virus proteins, the team at the Karolinska Institute have isolated tiny antibodies - known as nanobodies - from his blood that bind to the same part of the virus as human antibodies and could block the infection.
They hope this can form the basis of a treatment for Covid-19 or eventually a vaccine against it, though the work is at an early stage.
Gerald McInerney, head of the team at Karolinska said:
We know that it is the antibodies that are directed to the same very, very precise part of the virus that are important and that is what we have engineered with this antibody from Tyson. In principle, all the evidence would suggest it will work very well in humans, but it is a very complex system.
There were 88 new coronavirus fatalities in Italy on Thursday, up from 71 on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 33,689, writes Angela Giuffrida, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent.
New infections increased by 177, down from 318 within the previous 24 hours, according to the figures from the civil protection authority.
The number of people currently infected decreased by 868 to 38,429. Italy, which lifted restrictions on inter-regional travel and opened its borders to European tourists on Wednesday without the requirement to quarantine, has so far registered 234,013 coronavirus cases, including 161,895 recoveries.
Updated
Authorities in France have cancelled the 2020 Bastille Day military parade due to coronavirus physical distancing requirements, AFP reports.
Rather than the traditional march of soldiers and military hardware down the Champs-Elysees, this year will see a much smaller ceremony at the Place de la Concorde, the presidency said.
The annual parade to mark the 14 July 1789 storming of the Bastille fortress in Paris during the French Revolution has been held on the Champs-Elysees since the first world war. This will be the first year without one since the end of the second world war.
It normally starts at the Arc de Triomphe, a monument to those who fought for France, and ends at Concorde, where King Louis XVI was beheaded in 1793.
This year, the square will host a military ceremony with some 2,000 participants and 2,500 guests, who will gather in strict respect of physical distancing rules. “It will be a reinvented 14th of July adapted to the circumstances,” the defence minister, Florence Parly, said.
Updated
The coronavirus outbreak has been a worrying time for all, and it would be a callous soul who had not fretted enough to gain a few extra lines on a furrowed brow.
For people living under quarantine measures in Florida, there is now an answer, Reuters reports. Botox is back, and it’s being offered at a drive-through.
On 4 May, the US state allowed a partial relaxing of restrictions imposed to slow the coronavirus pandemic. That means certain elective medical procedures could resume, including Botox injections and cosmetic surgery.
Michael Salzhauer, a plastic surgeon known as ‘Dr Miami’ who has also starred in a reality television show, has been conducting drive-through Botox injections in the garage of his building in the posh Miami neighbourhood of Bal Harbour.
Botox is back, and it’s being offered at a drive-through clinic in Florida https://t.co/tuFW4hWuWm pic.twitter.com/7KBXdovA7X
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 4, 2020
Updated
Restrictions on domestic travel will be eased in Sweden from 13 June, the prime minister, Stegan Lofven, has said, despite signs that coronavirus infections are increasing in parts of the country.
With the number of deaths and people treated at intensive care falling, Lofven said that Swedes who were symptom-free could now plan visits to their summer cottages or relatives in other parts of the country.
Lofven told a news conference:
This decision does not mean that the danger is over. It doesn’t mean that life is back to normal again, and other restrictions remain in place. If the curve showing the seriously ill turns up again, there will be new restrictions.
Earlier, Sweden’s public health agency said that a rise in cases reported on Thursday could not wholly be explained by increased testing.
“Unfortunately, in Sweden, we can see an increase in cases again,” the chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, told a news conference, urging people not to ease up on physical distancing. He said the increases in new cases was seen primarily in western Sweden and among younger people.
Cases among the really old have declined quite rapidly. It shows the measures taken have had an effect. There’s reason to believe the decline in deaths will continue.
Updated
International donors have contributed $8.8bn to a public-private partnership aimed at increasing the use of new and underused vaccines around the world, the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has announced.
The UK government has today been hosting a virtual global summit in support of Gavi, the vaccine alliance. The donations from international donor governments, companies and philanthropic foundations will fund its immunisation programmes through to 2025
Gavi said the pledges had exceeded its target of $7.4bn, and would “help immunise 300 million more children in the world’s poorest countries against diseases like measles, polio and diphtheria”.
In a speech closing the conference, Johnson said: “People who are vaccinated protect themselves and the rest of the population by lowering the spread and risk of infection.
“Gavi’s work on routine immunisation is the strongest shield against outbreaks of infectious diseases. And so it is today and our collective efforts at this summit will now save up to 8 million lives.”
The prime minister earlier pledged that the UK government would remain the leading donor, paying £1.65bn towards Gavi’s work over the next five years.
Updated
Is it safe to protest during a pandemic?
Protests have erupted in many cities around the world in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, and public health experts warn of a likely uptick in Covid-19 infections.
“There is the concern that protests could be super spreader events,” said Kim Sue, a physician who has participated in demonstrations. And yet many health experts – aware of the risk – say they still support the protests, suggesting that police violence is its own kind of epidemic.
Danielle Renwick spoke with three of them.
Updated
Damien Gayle back at the controls now, with thanks to Lucy for covering my break. If you want to get in touch, feel free to send me an email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or a Twitter direct direct message to @damiengayle.
Puerto Rico on Thursday reported 485 new cases of the coronavirus, but officials say 355 of those correspond to April and early May and had not been shared with the government until now.
The announcement drew criticism from many who say the government lifted a two-month lockdown without taking into account those cases.
The island’s health department said samples involving the cases in question were taken from 31 March to 16 May and were identified by health officials and laboratories. It was not immediately clear why the 355 cases were not identified earlier.
The US territory has reported a total of more than 4,500 Covid-19 cases and at least 140 deaths.
Updated
Spain’s total death toll from the coronavirus reached 27,133 on Thursday, health ministry data showed, five more than reported on Wednesday.
The ministry has stopped providing a daily death toll but said 56 people had died from the virus over the last seven days. Confirmed cases climbed by 195 from the previous day to 240,660.
Spain is implementing a new methodology for logging deaths and cases, leading to fluctuations in its statistics and frequent revisions of data which officials warn are likely to continue for some time.
Ukraine is considering cancelling its visa requirement for tourists from China, Australia, New Zealand and Arab states in order to attract more visitors once lockdowns ease and bring more money into the economy, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday.
The government expects the economy to shrink 12% in the second quarter after a 1.5% drop in the first quarter. Zelenskiy said:
It is necessary to liberalise the visa policy: if countries cancel visa requirements for Ukrainians who come to them, we will cancel for them too. We need to compete for tourists.
According to the president’s communications department, a foreign tourist usually spends $120-150 a day and stays in Ukraine for an average of three to four days. Around 14 million tourists visited Ukraine in 2018.
Last year, Ukraine introduced electronic visas for citizens of 52 countries, including China and Australia. A single 30-day visa costs $85. EU citizens can enter for short trips without a visa.
An anti-coronavirus curfew in Senegal is to be eased and restrictions on intercity travel lifted after hundreds of people were arrested in two nights of protests.
More than 200 people were arrested after demonstrations broke out in several cities, including the capital Dakar, according to interior ministry figures.
Protesters were dispersed by police and gendarmes using teargas, and there were pictures on social media showing military vehicles in the street. The anger has focused on the curfew, but transport workers have also gone on strike over the travel restrictions.
Speaking on state television on Thursday, the interior minister, Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, said the start of the 9.00pm to 5.00am curfew would be pushed back by two hours, to 11.00pm.
“From today, transport restrictions across the country are being lifted, with the curfew being maintained from 11pm to 5am,” AFP quoted him as saying.
“Gatherings in public or private places, restaurants, gyms, casinos will also benefit from these relaxation measures.”
One of the centres of unrest was Touba, Senegal’s second largest city located around 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Dakar, and the seat of a politically powerful Sufi Muslim order, the Mouride Brotherhood. Several police vehicles there were set ablaze and a coronavirus treatment centre and post office buildings were attacked, sources said.
The curfew was imposed by President Macky Sall on 23 March, and has been implemented in tandem with a ban on travel between Senegal’s regions. The authorities have already extended until June 30 a ban on all passenger flights to and from the country.
Updated
Slovenia will from Friday lift coronavirus border restrictions for Austrians, a government spokesman said on Thursday, following a similar move by neighbouring Austria to lift border restrictions for Slovenians.
Slovenia had introduced border checks and travelling restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus, including obligatory quarantine for most people entering the country. Over the past weeks it has lifted restrictions for citizens from neighbouring Croatia and Hungary.
The decision on whether to lift restrictions for citizens from neighbouring Italy is also due, following the visit of the Italian foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, to Ljubljana on Saturday.
Slovenia introduced lockdown in mid-March and started to gradually lift it from 20 April. In May it became the first European state to declare an end to its coronavirus epidemic but people are still obliged to keep social distance and wear face masks in indoor public spaces. The country has so far reported 1,477 coronavirus cases and 109 deaths.
Updated
Ireland hopes to be able to recommend the resumption of air travel with a select number of countries in a number of weeks, the prime minister Leo Varadkar said on Thursday, telling prospective holidaymakers “summer is not yet lost.”
Some European countries such as Germany, Spain and Austria plan to lift coronavirus-related border restrictions with neighbouring countries this month, something Ireland has been more cautious about as it slowly reopens its economy.
Ireland requires anyone entering the country to self-isolate for 14 days and foresees making its first step back to non-essential travel via so-called “air bridges” with other countries who share low levels of coronavirus infection.
Varadkar told parliament:
I hope that as the world returns to a new normality, we will see international air travel resume, in the first instance through air bridges with countries that have suppressed the virus to a similar extent as ours.
This however is some weeks away and it’s far too soon for anyone to book their holidays yet but summer is not yet lost.
Ireland has reported 1,659 deaths related to just over 25,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19. The number of cases, deaths and admissions to hospital have all been falling in recent weeks.
The government is due to review the 14-day quarantine for travellers on 18 June. Airlines, in particular Ryanair, have pushed back strongly against the rules, saying they are impossible to implement.
Varadkar also reiterated that he hopes to announce a speeding up of the reopening plan on Friday ahead of entering the second of five phases next week.
Updated
Hello everyone. I’m Lucy Campbell, taking over the blog so Damien can have a much-needed break. Please feel free to get in touch with news tips and comments as I work.
Email: lucy.campbell@theguardian.com
Twitter: @lucy_campbell_
The head of the African Union health agency has said that the continent needs to triple its rates of coronavirus testing in the coming months “to move ahead of the curve” as more countries ease lockdown measures.
The continent has so far conducted 3.4m tests, a figure that John Nkengasong, director of the Africa centres for disease control (Africa CDC), told journalists he wants to see climb to 10m “in the next two or three months”.
The current total translates to a rate of 1,700 tests per one million people across Africa’s 54 countries, far below the UK’s rate of 30,000 tests per million and Italy’s 37,000, Nkengasong was quoted as saying by the French news agency AFP.
As of Thursday morning, Africa had recorded 162,000 cases and 4,600 deaths, with an average of 5,400 new cases per day in the past week, Nkengasong said. Those numbers could rise as countries eased lockdown measures, he added.
The Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (#PACT) in Africa is led by three pillars: test, trace, treat. PACT aims to test individuals for #COVID19 on the continent, trace by identifying cases and contacts, and to provide treatment and supportive care for cases. #africa
— John Nkengasong (@JNkengasong) June 4, 2020
#PACT is a continental strategy to help Member States limit #COVID19 transmission by ensuring uninterrupted supply of diagnostics and medical supplies, as well as frontline personnel, needed to support response at the country level. #TestTraceTreat #Africa pic.twitter.com/GE7CCv3kEP
— John Nkengasong (@JNkengasong) June 4, 2020
“Our situation will likely get worse before it gets better,” Nkengasong warned.
“As we begin to relax some of the lockdown measures, which is part of balancing between saving lives and saving the economy, we expect to see that numbers will increase.”
A platform established to help African countries procure supplies to combat Covid-19 has secured 15m tests per month for the next six months, Nkengasong said.
Despite this progress, he acknowledged that conducting 10m tests would still cover less than one percent of Africa’s population.
Updated
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen strongly to a new peak this year, despite the impact of the global effects of the coronavirus crisis, writes Fiona Harvey, the Guardian’s environment correspondent.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 417.2 parts per million in May, 2.4ppm higher than the peak of 414.8ppm in 2019, according to readings from the Mauna Loa observatory in the US.
Without worldwide lockdowns intended to slow the spread of Covid-19, the rise might have been 2.8ppm higher, according to Ralph Keeling, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He said it was likely the lockdowns had played a role, but that the difference was too small to show up against other factors causing year-to-year fluctuations.
“People may be surprised to hear that the response to the coronavirus outbreak hasn’t done more to influence CO2 levels,” he said. “But the buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up. The crisis has slowed emissions, but not enough to show up perceptibly at Mauna Loa. What will matter much more is the trajectory we take coming out of this situation.”
Daily emissions of carbon dioxide fell by an average of about 17% around the world in early April, according to a comprehensive study last month. As lockdowns are eased, however, the fall in emissions for the year as a whole is only likely to be between 4% and 7% compared with 2019. That will make no appreciable difference to the world’s ability to meet the goals of the Paris agreement to keep global heating below the threshold of 2C, which scientists say is necessary to stave off catastrophic effects.
Updated
Low Covid-19 figures for Africa "broadly accurate" - WHO
The World Health Organization’s director for Africa has said current statistics for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the continent are broadly accurate, amid concerns that low levels of testing, poor infrastructure and a lack of cooperation from some governments may be disguising the true extent of the disease’s spread.
There are currently 162,622 confirmed cases in Africa, with 4,604 deaths.
Nearly 163,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus had been reported across Africa on Thursday morning, according to the @AfricaCDC. So far, more than 70,000 people who have tested positive for the virus have recovered, and about 4,600 have died. https://t.co/8k1lizups2 pic.twitter.com/5b71aYE6cl
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) June 4, 2020
Dr Matshidiso Moeti told reporters in the organisation’s weekly streamed press conference that officials would know if there were high numbers of cases of infection or deaths that were going undetected, though testing remained a challenge.
“We believe there is some underestimation of the cases, but we don’t believe it is a multiple fold underestimation such as that one day we will find that many, many African people died of Covid-19 that were never discovered,” she said.
One reason was that pre-existing systems designed to pick up signs of outbreaks of other respiratory diseases, such as influenza, would have been triggered and “that did not happen.”
Moeti said that reported numbers of cases in many countries were rising steeply but that this was most likely to be because of more testing, especially in Ghana, Ethiopia and Senegal.
“It’s increasing, but not to show we are discovering a huge number of previously undetected cases,” she said.
In South Africa, where testing has scaled up “hugely”, case numbers have soared since easing a strict lockdown four days ago.
South Africa has reported 38,000 cases, an increase of 17,000 in two weeks, and 792 deaths. The outbreak in and around Cape Town, the western city, is the worst on the continent.
Updated
Over in Greece infectious disease experts are expressing consternation over the dangers posed by tourism ahead of the country reopening to the world with the resumption of international air links on 15 June, writes Helena Smith in Athens.
Anxiety over the virus being imported by visitors was highlighted earlier this week when 12 of the 91 passengers aboard a Qatar Airways flight tested positive for coronavirus upon arrival in Athens. The airline has since said that no one was found to be infected when they boarded the plane in Doha.
Speaking on Skai TV today, professor Nikolaos Sypsas, a member of the scientific committee that advises the government, said tourism would be “the first candidate” for restrictive measures being reinstated in the event of a recurrence.
“With tourism comes imported cases. Despite the efforts underway to have the least possible danger, the risk remains.”
Greek authorities, enforcing emergency health protocols, suspended flights to and from Qatar and quarantined all those on board - for 14 days in the case of those who tested positive, and an initial seven days for those who tested negative. If found to be clear at the end of a week those cleared of the virus will be free to go.
“The incident has shown how complicated tourism is,” said professor Sypsas. As of 15 June blanket testing of plane passengers will be replaced by random ‘spot’ testing, he explained, because Greece simply didn’t have the capability of testing everyone flying in and the EU had decided against endorsing such a move.
“Playing with this virus is like playing with fire,” the expert lamented saying it was vital that countries were separated into categories of risk.
Both Albania and north Macedonia, Greece’s northern neighbours, had seen a rise in confirmed coronavirus cases as a result of relaxing precautionary measures, he noted.
“The biggest danger, as far as the epidemic is concerned, is complacency. The virus does not excuse any mistake, we’ve learned it from other countries.”
So far Greece has succeeded in keeping infection rates and confirmed coronavirus cases low.
But with tourism the heavy engine of their economy - generating one in five jobs and almost 25% of GDP - Greeks are now eager to reignite the sector. A tourist campaign promoting the pleasures of “the Greek summer” is to be unveiled by Athens’ centre right government this evening.
Outdoor cinemas, keeping to customary film launches on a Thursday, also open tonight as lockdown measures continue to be eased.
Updated
Iran is reluctantly confronting the possibility of a renewed political crisis as well as a health one after the latest figures showed the number of new coronavirus infections at a record high, writes Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.
The government appeared to have brought the virus under control a month ago, but a second wave of the virus has steadily been gathering force, and according to data released by the health ministry there were 3,574 confirmed new infections in 24 hours – an increase of 440 on the previous day.
The previous daily record in Iran, recorded on 30 March, was 3,186. The country was one of the first in the Middle East to be gripped by the disease.
In spite of a steadily rising infection rate, authorities have been progressively lifting controls on shops, mosques, schools, offices and travel. The border with Turkey was also being opened for haulage traffic on Thursday.
In recent days government spokesmen have been increasingly critical of the public, accusing them of ignoring the continued restrictions, especially in workplaces. “If the rules are not obeyed,” the president, Hassan Rouhani, warned, “the government would be forced to restore the quarantine situation again, disrupting normal life and inflicting serious damage on the entire national economy.”
There was little immediate domestic coverage of the record infection figure.
Activists in Norway have been refused permission to hold solidarity rallies in support of protests in the US over the police killing of George Floyd, because of fears of the spread of coronavirus.
Mohamed Awil, the president of the African student association UiO, told the Associated Press that rallies had been planned in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, but that local authorities said they could not allow more than 50 people to gather in one place without a dispensation from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
The association is co-organising the rally in Oslo, where more than 15,000 people said they planned to take part in the demonstration on Thursday outside the US embassy. He said they were considering an alternative but details were not immediately available.
Thousands gathered on Wednesday in support rallies in the capitals of Sweden and Finland. A video circulated on Twitter showed police in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, using irritant spray and batons against protesters.
Police being violent against children at the protest in Stockholm, Sweden. #BlackLivesMatter#JusticeForFloyd #riots2020 #ACAB #Anonymuos #BLACK_LIVES_MATTER pic.twitter.com/ZWRePtRhum
— Evelina 📿 (@evelinaredzepi) June 3, 2020
Updated
US pandemic jobless claims pass 42 million
Another 1.9 million people filed for unemployment benefits in the United States last week as the total number of claims passed 42m since the coronavirus pandemic hit, writes Dominic Rushe in New York.
The pace of layoffs has slowed dramatically from its peak of 6.6m at the start of April as states begin to relax quarantine orders, and last week was the ninth consecutive week of declines. But the scale of layoffs remains staggeringly high. In the worst week of the last recession “just” 665,000 people filed for unemployment.
Jason Reed, professor of finance at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, said the numbers may be slowing down, but “this is unprecedented. The figures are so high that it’s hard to grasp the reality.”
On Friday the labour department will release May’s monthly jobs report. Economists are predicting unemployment will rise to close to 20% from 14.7% in April and some 8m more jobs will have been lost after a combined loss of 21.4m in March and April.
The official tally would mean one in five Americans in the workforce are now out of work. The layoffs have disproportionately hit African Americans, Latinos and those without a college education.
Updated
Twenty more deaths from Covid-19 were reported by Sweden on Thursday, as its government said the country was now entering the post-peak phase of its coronavirus epidemic.
The health minister, Lena Hallengren, told a news conference that an additional 5.9bn crowns ($633m) would be spent to ramp up tracing of cases. All people with symptoms will be tested, while authorities will also run large-scale antibody tests to see who has had the virus.
“We’re entering post-peak phase in the pandemic. It gives us better chances to trace every single person,” Reuters quoted Hallengren as saying.
The pledge comes after criticism of Sweden’s inability to ramp up testing to meet a target of 100,000 tests per week, reaching just over a third of that in the last week.
In total, Sweden had tested 275,500 samples by end of last week, a much lower rate of testing than in its Nordic neighbours. Denmark has carried out more than double Sweden’s total despite having only half the population.
Unlike much of Europe, most schools, restaurants and businesses have remained open in Sweden, with authorities relying on voluntary measures focused on good hygiene and physical distancing to stem the outbreak.
More than 4,500 people have died from Covid-19, many times more relative to the size of the population than in neighbouring Nordic countries.
On Thursday, the public health agency reported 1,080 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, taking the total case load in the country so far to 41,883.
Updated
Spain wants to welcome British tourists back as soon as its airports reopen to foreign visitors on 1 July, but has warned much will depend on the UK’s 14-day coronavirus quarantine for those returning from abroad and on the British authorities rescinding advice on non-essential foreign travel, writes Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent.
Spain’s tourism minister, María Reyes Maroto, said the country will begin hosting foreign visitors from 22 June, when the current state of emergency ends and land borders with France and Portugal reopen.
Two pilot schemes will also mean thousands of overseas holidaymakers, at least 6,000 of them German, begin arriving in the Balearic and Canary islands during the last two weeks of June.
Questionnaires and an app will be used to track the visitors and the information gathered will help the Spanish government and tourist sector prepare for the return of all foreign visitors from the beginning of July.
Maroto said Spain’s message to UK tourists – its largest single national visitor group - was simple: “As soon as possible, as soon as possible! We want British tourists to come back as soon as they can.”
But the minister said there needed to be greater clarity from the British government about when UK tourists would be able to fly abroad, and on whether they would need to self-isolate on return.
A vast database from a little-known company called Surgisphere has influenced rapid policy shifts as the world seeks treatments for Covid-19. But as researchers began to examine it more closely, they became increasingly concerned.
Melissa Davey, the Guardian’s Melbourne bureau chief, has written the latest instalment of our investigations into the factors driving coronavirus policy around the world.
UK pledges £1.65bn to public-private vaccine partnership
The UK will contribute £1.6bn to a public-private partnership that aims to increase access to vaccination around the world, it said at an international virtual summit that is taking place today.
Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said he hopes the Gavi vaccine alliance meeting will be a “moment when the world comes together - uniting humanity in the fight against disease”.
Johnson opening the virtual summit, said: “To defeat the coronavirus we must focus our collective ingenuity on the search for a vaccine and ensure that countries, pharmaceutical companies and international partners - like the World Health Organisation - co-operate on a scale beyond anything we have seen before.
“We must use the collective purchasing power of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, to make that future vaccine affordable and available to all who need it.
“If we are to make this the beginning of a new era of global health collaboration, we must also replenish the funding for the vaccines we already have - strengthening the routine immunisation against preventable diseases in the poorest countries.”
Johnson said the UK would remain the world’s leading donor to Gavi - contributing £1.65bn over the next five years.
“I urge you to join us, to fortify this lifesaving alliance, and inaugurate a new era of global health co-operation which I believe is now the most essential shared endeavour of our lifetimes.”
Today’s summit is being live streamed and you can watch it in the player at the top of the blog.
Pakistan reported a record single-day spike in coronavirus-related deaths with 82 new fatalities and 4,688 cases that it says resulted from increased testing in the past 24 hours, the Associated Press reports.
Pakistan’s outbreak has grown steadily since the country’s first case in February. Since then, 1,770 people have died and 85,264 have tested positive.
As many as 901 patients were listed in critical condition at hospitals on Thursday. The country has barely 3,000 intensive care beds serving a population of 220 million.
On Thursday, Pakistan for the first time conducted over 20,000 tests in the past 24 hours. It has done more than 615,000 tests after increasing its testing capacity from only two labs in February.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases passed 18,000 in Afghanistan and death toll topped 300 on Thursday, as the new acting health minister pledged reforms in health sector amid a continued surge of transmission in Kabul, writes Akhtar Mohammad Makoii in Herat.
According to the latest update, the health ministry has detected 787 new cases out of 1,296 tests, as six patients died overnight, pushing the total number of infections to 18,054 and the death toll to 300. There have been 1,585 recoveries. According to the ministry, 19 patients are in a critical condition in hospital.
Most of the new cases were reported in Kabul, the capital, where the ministry detected 323 new cases out of 513 tests. Kabul is the country’s worst affected area by number of confirmed transmissions, with 7,133 cases.
The western province of Herat recorded 110 new cases out of 128 tests in the past 24 hours. Testing capacity remains low in Afghanistan and experts warn that the real figures may be much higher.
Earlier this week, International Rescue Committee warned about the low testing capacity and said that the Afghan health ministry has the capacity to test 2,000 suspected patients each day, but are receiving between 10,000 and 20,000 samples each day.
“That means between 80 and 90% of potential cases are not being tested. Afghanistan has one of the highest test positivity rates (40%) of all the countries where the IRC works, suggesting a high level of undetected population infection” the NGO said.
The southern province of Kandahar recorded 65 new positive cases. Meanwhile, at least nine civilians were killed and five others were wounded in when a roadside mine exploded in the province on Wednesday, police said.
On Thursday, a newly introduced acting minister of public health, Ahmad Jawad Osmani, said in a press conference that he would bring reforms to the health sector.
Osmani said the coronavirus must be fought, but also that reforms in hospitals and in other service areas must be made. He also said that the current health services do not meet the people’s standards and health services need to be increased.
The president, Ashraf Ghani, replaced Ferozuddin Feroz, the former health minister, after more than five years in the position. During his efforts to fight with coronavirus, Feroz tested positive and then recovered from the virus.
The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has said that temporary hospitals for patients sick with Covid-19 will remain in place in the Russian capital until mass vaccination can be carried out.
In an interview with Tass, Russia’s official news agency, Sobyanin said:
The temporary hospitals we’ve created are top-notch ones. They will stay in place until the mass vaccination of the population has been completed in case of a second wave. This reserve will enable us to restore permanent hospitals to normal routine operation with greater confidence, which is very important
He claimed that Moscow had created the world’s largest system for providing hospital care to people sick with Covid-19.
Summary
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
- New mortality data from St Petersburg has reignited questions about Russia’s official Covid-19 death toll. Russia’s second-largest city issued 1,552 more death certificates this May than in the previous year, a nearly 32% rise that indicates that hundreds of deaths tied to the pandemic are not reflected official statistics.
- Known Covid-19 cases worldwide exceeded 6.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. They said there have been 6,530,067 coronavirus cases confirmed worldwide and 386,392 deaths reported. The figures, which are based on official and media reports, are likely to underestimate the scale of the pandemic.
- A survey has shown increasing scepticism over governments’ handling of the coronavirus crisis, with the UK suffering the biggest slump in confidence. In May, in G7 nations as a whole, 48% of respondents approved of how authorities had handled the pandemic, down from 50% in April and 54% in March.
- Brazil registered a record number of daily deaths from the novel coronavirus for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, even as city and state authorities move to open back up. The nation recorded 1,349 new deaths on Wednesday and 28,633 more cases. Brazil has now registered 32,548 deaths and 584,016 total cases.
- Hospitals in Armenia can no longer cope with the number of coronavirus patients, the prime minister warned on Thursday. Nikol Pashinyan, who has himself tested positive, said there could be as many as 20,000 people infected but showing no symptoms in the country, which has so far registered 11,221 cases and 176 deaths.
- The EU is preparing to use an emergency €2.4bn fund to make advance purchases of promising coronavirus vaccines. The move was discussed at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, after Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands said they were speeding up negotiations with pharmaceutical companies.
- The governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, said on Thursday it may be necessary to stage a “simplified” Olympics next year due to the impact of the pandemic. “Holding the Olympic and Paralympic Games calls for sympathy and understanding of Tokyoites and the Japanese people,” he said.
- The Spanish tourism minister, Reyes Maroto, has said that all restrictions on border crossings with France and Portugal will be lifted from 22 June. The authorities closed the borders to everybody but Spaniards, cross-border workers and truck drivers from mid-March when the country went into lockdown.
- China on Thursday said foreign airlines blocked from operating in the country over virus fears would be allowed to resume limited flights, lifting a de facto ban on US carriers, Agence France-Presse reports. This comes a day after Washington ordered the suspension of all Chinese travel into and out of the US.
- Mexico overtook the United States in daily reported deaths from coronavirus for the first time on Wednesday. The health ministry registered a record 1,092 fatalities and attributed the increase to improvements in documenting the pandemic. Plans to further relax social distancing measures this week were put on hold.
- George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died with a policeman’s knee on his neck, tested positive for coronavirus, according to a full autopsy report released by the Hennepin county medical examiner’s office. The report noted that the virus was not a contributing factor in his death and that Floyd had no symptoms.
Germany has unveiled a massive €130bn (£116.4bn) package of tax and spending measures designed to boost the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis, writes Richard Partington, the Guardian’s economics correspondent.
Announcing measures to drag Europe’s largest economy out of recession as lockdown measures are removed, Angela Merkel’s government said it would use the package of sweeping temporary tax cuts and increase benefits to turbocharge its recovery.
Measures included a cut in VAT until the end of this year and substantial payments for every child in the country designed to help ordinary German families, alongside the launch of a new €50bn fund to tackle global heating and finance new technologies. A state financial incentive to buy an electic car has been doubled to €6,000.
Against a backdrop of rising unemployment and with Germany already in a technical recession before Covid-19 struck, Merkel said a “bold response” was required to secure jobs and keep the economy running. Measures announced include:
- A temporary VAT cut from 19% to 16%, from 1 July until 31 December.
- A €300 one-off payment for every child in the country.
- A €50bn fund to address climate change, innovation and digital technology.
- A €25bn loan support programme for small firms that have seen their sales drop by more than 60% for June to August. This could be a particular boost for bars, restaurants, hotels and other hospitality busineses.
- €10bn for municipalities struggling with lower tax receipts, with public spending on infrastructure and housing.
Up until now, countries around the world had largely announced emergency financial support to cushion the economic blow from the coronavirus outbreak rather than jump-start a recovery. Germany’s package of measures comes on top of a €750bn rescue package agreed in March that included loan guarantees and direct spending measures such as furlough wage subsidies.
Iran reaches new peak in coronavirus transmission
Health authorities in Iran have reported 3,574 new cases of coronavirus, the highest daily count since the outbreak began in the country in February.
The previous high of 3,186, recorded on 30 March, was surpassed on the fourth consecutive day of daily caseloads that have topped 3,000. It comes after Iran eased restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus, but the health ministry spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour, said that the surge in cases might be the result of wider testing rather than a second wave of infection.
He said that Iran had now conducted more than a million tests.
Nevertheless, the health ministry has been taking no chances and has stepped up a public health campaign in recent days reminding people to protect themselves and observe social distancing, AFP reports.
There has been not been a corresponding rise in death toll. In his daily update on Thursday, Jahanpour said 59 people had died of Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, taking Iran’s overall official toll to 8,071.
A total of 164,270 people have tested positive for the virus.
Nearly 163,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus had been reported across Africa on Thursday morning, according to the @AfricaCDC. So far, more than 70,000 people who have tested positive for the virus have recovered, and about 4,600 have died. https://t.co/8k1lizups2 pic.twitter.com/5b71aYE6cl
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) June 4, 2020
The World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa is beginning its weekly briefing in a few minutes. You can watch it in the player embedded in this tweet.
COVID-19 in Africa: WHO media briefing with @moetitshidi, @Safia_Boly, Sipho Pityana, @drmichelyao1 https://t.co/27URSwaY1g
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) June 4, 2020
Speakers are
- Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa
- The Hon. Safia Boly, minister of investment promotion, small and medium enterprises and national entrepreneurship, Mali
- Sipho Pityana, president of Business Unity South Africa, and co-chair of the Africa Regional Action Group, World Economic Forum
Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, is hosting a virtual summit for vaccine development on Thursday, which will call on countries to pledge funding for vaccinations against infectious diseases, Reuters reports.
Representatives of more than 50 countries, including 35 heads of state or government, will come together virtually in London to raise funds for the Gavi vaccine alliance, a public-private global health partnership.
According to the UK government, the summit aims to raise at least $7.4bn (£5.9bn) to help Gavi protect a further 300 million more children against infectious diseases like measles, typhoid and polio and save up to 8 million lives over the next five years.
A new Covid-19 vaccine global access (Covax) facility, to be launched by Gavi at the summit, will raise money to scale up manufacturing for a future Covid-19 vaccine.
Campaigners for Global Justice Now said Johnson must make any public funding for a coronavirus vaccine conditional on guarantees that people around the world will receive it, otherwise it will simply put money into the hands of big pharmaceutical companies.
Heidi Chow, a campaigner with the NGO, said:
If no conditions are attached to this facility, it will simply become a giant handout to big pharma. The prime minister needs to use his role as the summit host to work with Gavi and push for conditions to prevent monopolies, otherwise big pharma will be free to dictate whatever price they want while restricting supply. There should be no profiteering during a global pandemic.
Governments around the world are already pouring billions into vaccine research and development but there are no safeguards that ensure any publicly funded vaccine will be produced patent-free. Any vaccine developed must be a global public good and therefore patent-free so that it is affordable for all countries and free to every person.
Updated
New mortality data from Russia’s second-largest city has reignited questions about whether the country’s official tally has discounted thousands of deaths tied to the coronavirus outbreak, writes Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent.
St Petersburg issued 1,552 more death certificates this May than in the previous year, a nearly 32% rise that indicates that hundreds of deaths tied to the pandemic are not reflected in the city’s official coronavirus death toll for the month of 171.
It is not clear how many of those people had tested positive for the novel coronavirus or were suspected to have been infected. But statisticians and doctors have previously told the Guardian that 75% or higher of “excess deaths”, the number of deaths exceeding what would regularly be expected, are likely to be tied to the coronavirus outbreak. That means potentially 1,000 additional deaths in St Petersburg in May tied to the pandemic.
The new data, released by the city on Wednesday and first reported by Reuters, further indicates how Russia’s conservative account of its coronavirus death toll may be missing out thousands of deaths, while feeding political talking points and informing policy decisions about tackling the outbreak and reopening the country.
Russia has reported a 1.2% mortality rate from the disease, while Brazil and the US have reported higher than 5.6% and 5.8%, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University. France posted a 15.4% mortality rate and Italy has posted a 14.4% mortality rate. But experts have said that comparing national mortality rates is misleading when reporting standards vary widely and that excess deaths are likely to give a clearer picture of the death toll from the disease.
UK leads G7 in fall in faith in handling of Covid-19 crisis
An international survey has increasing scepticism over governments’ handling of the coronavirus crisis in the world’s richest countries, with the UK suffering the biggest slump in confidence, Reuters reports.
In May, in the Group of Seven nations as a whole, 48% of respondents approved of how authorities had handled the pandemic, down from 50% in April and 54% in March, the survey published by polling firm Kantar showed.
The UK saw the biggest drop - a sharp fall of 18 points from April to 51% - while in the US, Canada, Germany, France and Italy, the declines ranged between two and six points. Japan was the only country to show an increase.
Kantar said 50% of respondents across the G7 said they trusted their government to make the right decisions about the pandemic in the future, down four points from April.
Just over half said they would use a contact-tracing app to help to prevent a new wave of infections. Almost two-thirds of those who said they would not use it cited privacy concerns.
One in three people felt uncomfortable about returning to their workplace, a similar number said they would work at home more than before the crisis and about four in 10 said they would visit restaurants, cafes, pubs and cinemas less than before.
The survey of 7,012 people was conducted between 28 May and 1 June.
This is Damien Gayle taking the reins on the blog now, steering you through the latest in coronavirus-related world news for the next eight hours or so.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions then please do drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Armenian prime minister warns 'situation worsening'
Hospitals in Armenia can no longer cope with the number of coronavirus patients, the country’s prime minister warned on Thursday.
Nikol Pashinyan, who has himself tested positive, said there could be as many as 20,000 people infected but showing no symptoms in the country, which has so far registered 11,221 cases and 176 deaths. The health ministry said an additional 68 patients who tested positive for the virus had died from other illnesses.
Last week, health officials warned that intensive care beds would soon be reserved for patients with the best chance of survival.
“I have got bad news,” Pashinyan said in a video statement on his Facebook page. “The epidemiological situation is worsening and medical facilities cannot timely hospitalise all the coronavirus patients who need [treatment].”
Pashinyan has acknowledged his government failed to enforce anti-virus measures and denounced widespread quarantine violations.
Armenia has already lifted a state of emergency that was imposed in March to slow the spread of the virus. Conspiracy theories and disinformation on social media undermined government efforts to fight the outbreak, according to analysts.
The World Health Organization will resume clinical trials of an anti-malaria drug researchers hope may treat Covid-19, after a study of the drug published in May by a major medical journal prompted them to halt trials due to safety concerns.
The paper, published in the Lancet, said hydroxychloroquine was associated with higher mortality rates and higher rates of heart problems in Covid-19 patients in hospitals around the world. The finding prompted the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to announce the hydroxychloroquine arm of its Solidarity global clinical trial would pause while the study and other findings were reviewed.
More here:
Football with fans is back, and Shaun Walker reports on last night’s Hungarian cup final between Honvéd and Mezokovesd:
Giles Tremlett has written a long read on how one medieval town in Rioja has suffered a particularly deadly outbreak - and in such a tight-knit community, suspicion and recrimination can spread as fast as the virus.
Updated
As of 12.01am local time, about two hours ago, casinos in Nevada have been allowed to open, for the first time since 18 March.
There are big hopes for recovery from an unprecedented and expensive shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s a tremendous amount on the line, not only for casinos, but for the community and the state,” said Alan Feldman, a longtime casino executive, now a fellow at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “This is an extremely important moment.”
Safety measures being rolled out include disinfected dice; hand sanitiser and face masks; limited numbers of players at tables; temperature checks at entrances to some resorts and touchless cellphone check-ins.
“I’m optimistic that customers will see that gaming properties invested time and effort to welcome them back to a safe and entertaining environment,” state Gaming Control Board chief Sandra Douglass Morgan said on Wednesday.
The regulatory board required detailed health safety plans by last week, before giving the go-ahead to reopen.
“It may be a little different,” MGM Resorts International chief executive Bill Hornbuckle said during a recent walk-through of the Bellagio casino floor. “But I think it will be memorable, personable and special.”
Updated
The Spanish tourism minister, Reyes Maroto, has said that all restrictions on border crossings with France and Portugal will be lifted from 22 June. The authorities closed the borders to everybody but Spaniards, cross-border workers and truck drivers from mid-March when the country went into lockdown.
The European Union is preparing to use an emergency €2.4bn fund to make advance purchases of promising vaccines against the new coronavirus, EU officials have told Reuters.
The move was discussed at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, after Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands said they were speeding up negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to secure access to vaccines currently under development.
The EU rainy-day fund, known as the Emergency Support Instrument (ESI), would also be used to increase vaccine production capacity in Europe and offer liability insurance to pharmaceutical companies, officials said, confirming a Reuters report in May.
The EU’s push follows moves from the United States to secure vaccines under development, including almost a third of the first 1bn doses planned for AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 shot. An EU official said it was necessary to do as the United States was doing, even if this meant losing money as many of the vaccines under development are unlikely to be eventually successful.
The bloc is ready to take higher financial risks as it fears otherwise not having rapid access to a vaccine against the virus that has killed 385,000 people worldwide. The ESI fund is run by the European Commission, the EU executive arm, which acts on behalf of the 27 EU states.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn and his colleagues from France, Italy and the Netherlands wrote to the Commission saying they had joined up to “achieve the fastest and best possible outcome in negotiations with key players in the pharmaceutical industry”, German newspaper Handelsblatt wrote on Thursday.
The paper cited government sources as saying Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands were talking to several pharmaceutical firms including AstraZeneca about government research funds and purchase guarantees.
AstraZeneca was not immediately available for a comment.
The four were also talking to Britain, Norway, Singapore and Japan about possible cooperation.
The EU is also worried that not enough doses might be available to rapidly vaccinate its population of nearly 450 million if a vaccine against the new coronavirus is developed. It is working on a vaccination strategy to give priority to the people most in need, like medics, nurses and the elderly. It remains unclear how the EU initiative will be coordinated with plans by individual member states to secure vaccines from pharmaceutical companies.
Interesting and important thread here by John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times, on the coronavirus data being released by the Spanish government. In particular, the way they report Covid-19 deaths was changed last week, and has allowed the government to release artificially deflated figures (which the Guardian has written up, for example here). He also links to this article in El Pais.
NEW: much has been made this week of Spain recording zero new Covid deaths for two successive days.
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) June 4, 2020
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz called it "A success for all".
Unfortunately it’s also nonsense.
Story by me & @danieldombey: https://t.co/kThBKffKeD
Thread follows:
Updated
Uzbekistan will allow many businesses, including restaurants and cafes, clothing retailers and kindergartens, to reopen on 15 June in the latest easing of its coronavirus restrictions, the government said today.
Bus routes will also start operating on the same date between some provinces in areas deemed low-risk, it said. A ban on mass events such as group prayers and concerts, and the operation of nightclubs, colleges, universities and city public transport, will remain in place.
Uzbekistan, which has been divided into green, yellow and red zones depending on the rates of newly-detected Covid-19 cases, has already allowed the resumption of domestic tourism and football games behind closed doors, and domestic air flights and train services have resumed.
Central Asia’s most populous nation of 34 million has confirmed 3,874 coronavirus cases and 16 deaths.
Russia has reported 8,831 new cases of the novel coronavirus today, taking the total number of infections across the country to 441,108. The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said 169 people had died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 5,384.
The Taliban boasted of their readiness to fight coronavirus when it first reached Afghanistan, but now the insurgents are struggling to curb its spread in their strongholds, reports AFP.
For months, Habib Rahman, a resident of a Taliban-controlled area in the south of the country, has been unable to test whether his persistent cough is due to the virus. “I have a cough, fever and chest pain,” said Rahman, 32, who owns a grocery store in Helmand province. “There is neither a centre here to diagnose or treat coronavirus patients, nor is there any effort to create awareness of the disease.
Official figures show Afghanistan has more than 17,000 confirmed cases, including thousands in Taliban-controlled territories. But a shortage of testing kits and medical supplies and a dilapidated health system were compounding problems in tackling the spread, said Ahmed Saeedi, an independent analyst.
Years of war have left Afghanistan with a crumbling health sector, hampering the government’s fight against Covid-19. In an attempt to bolster their narrative that they can run Afghanistan better than the struggling administration, the Taliban launched a campaign to tackle the virus in March. They posted images online showing insurgents distributing masks and soap to villagers - albeit without any social distancing. In one image, masked militants wearing white protective suits check residents’ temperatures and explain about personal hygiene as a machine gun is seen on a nearby table.
The virus entered Afghanistan as infected migrants returned from neighbouring Iran, the region’s worst-hit country, and the Taliban ordered hundreds of returnees into quarantine.
In some areas they controlled, the insurgents allowed government health officials to monitor the virus’s spread, rare for a group blamed for the deaths of dozens of medics over the years. But in recent weeks, residents from provinces such as Kunduz, Helmand, Uruzgan and Kandahar - where the Taliban hold sway over large areas - complain they have been abandoned to their fate.
In Kunduz, where the militants fought a fierce night battle before a short nationwide ceasefire last month, insurgents have barred medics.
“They said they would handle the virus on their own,” said Sebghatullah, a doctor from a nearby district, worried about the residents’ lack of awareness when it came to personal hygiene.
Haji Qudratullah, a resident of Helmand, said he recently saw a group of Taliban fighters film a promotional video at a neighbourhood clinic, but they never returned. “I have not seen anybody do anything to raise awareness about the virus here,” he said.
Taliban commanders insist they are helping fight the virus. “People who are suffering from high fever, cough and body pain ... are taken to Trinkot,” said Hafez Mohammad, a Taliban commander, referring to the capital of Uruzgan province.
The disease is also sweeping through the Taliban itself, with several high-level militants believed to be sick, according to international media reports. The group deny any of their senior leaders are ill.
In his annual message marking the Eid holiday, the Taliban’s top leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, urged people to seek medical help for the disease. But he also insisted the virus was caused by mankind’s “transgression against Allah’s religion”. To stop the virus, people should “seek forgiveness from Allah and stop violating his commands”, Akhundzada said.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the militants had distributed booklets explaining how to prevent infections. “Our mobile teams, using motorcycles, are taking people with symptoms to the hospitals,” Mujahid told AFP.
Experts, however, said the insurgents faced an uphill task. “There is no ambulance or a professional team that can take their samples or treat these suspected patients,” health official Hamid Ahmadi said.
Residents, meanwhile, say they have little information on what to do. “Many people are complaining from flu-like symptoms ... we don’t know why,” said Haji Abdul Bari in Helmand. “Nobody has told us about the symptoms of corona. We don’t know anything about it.”
Tokyo looking into 'simplified' Olympics
The governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, has said today it may be necessary to a stage a “simplified” Olympics next year due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and that organisers were already discussing possible changes.
Koike’s comments come after the Yomiuri newspaper reported that various options, such as mandatory coronavirus testing and having fewer spectators, were being considered by organisers.
John Coates, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) inspectorate for Tokyo, has said a lack of a defence against the new coronavirus threatened the Games and organisers had to start planning for what could be a “very different” Olympics if there were no signs of Covid-19 being eradicated.
Koike did not go into details but said such discussions were necessary.
“Holding the Olympic and Paralympic Games calls for sympathy and understanding of Tokyoites and the Japanese people,” Koike told reporters. “For that, we need to rationalise what needs to be rationalised and simplify what needs to be simplified.”
The Yomiuri, citing government and organising committee sources, said making tests mandatory for all spectators — in addition to athletes and staff — and limiting movement in and out of the athletes village were among the options Japan would discuss with the IOC.
The IOC and Japanese government in March took the unprecedented decision to delay the Games, which had been due to start in July, for a year due to the coronavirus outbreak. A further delay beyond 2021 has been ruled out.
Around 700 workers at Israel’s legislative body, the Knesset, were told not to come to work on Thursday after a member of parliament announced he had contracted the coronavirus, according to local media.
Sami Abu Shehadeh, 44, a lawmaker for the majority-Arab Joint List alliance, said he had entered isolation after his driver tested positive for Covid-19.
“I appeal to anyone who was in my immediate area to go in isolation and do a test. I ask everyone to follow the instructions of the Ministry of Health,” Abu Shehadeh said on Twitter.
“We must all internalise that the campaign is not over yet. The virus still exists between us and the supposed return to a routine helps the virus spread in a big and fast way.”
Following an early and stringent lockdown, Israel was able to reduce the numbers of new daily virus cases into the low double digits. However, the country of 9 million has seen a resurgence in recent days.
Dozens of schools have been closed over the past week, with several thousand students and staff told to isolate at home.
Israel, which has a population of 9 million, has reported 17,343 coronavirus cases and 290 deaths. More than 593,000 people in the country have been tested for the virus, the Health Ministry said.
Updated
The Associated Press have reported this morning about the crews of merchant ships, some of whom have been stranded at sea since the start of the coronavirus crisis:
About 150,000 seafarers are stranded at sea in need of crew changes, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. Roughly another 150,000 are stuck on shore, waiting to get back to work.
“In some ways, they’ve been the forgotten army of people,” said Guy Platten, secretary general of the ICS. “It’s not a tenable position to keep on indefinitely. You can’t just keep extending people,” said Platten.
With more than 80% of global trade by volume transported by sea, the world’s more than 2 million merchant seafarers play a vital role.
“They’re out of sight and out of mind, and yet they’re absolutely essential for moving the fuel, the food, the medical supplies and all the other vital goods to feed world trade,” Platten said.
International shipping organizations, trade unions and shipping companies are urging countries to recognize merchant crews as essential workers and allow them to travel and carry out crew changes.
“Our challenge now is to get a very strong message to governments. You can’t expect people to move (personal protective equipment), drugs and all the issues that we need to respond to COVID, and keep cities and countries that are in lockdown fed, if you don’t move cargo on ships,” said Steve Cotton, General Secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, or ITF. “They’ve got to recognize the sacrifice seafarers are making for our global society.
Capt. Andrei Kogankov is seven months into a four-month contract and was supposed to be replaced in mid-March in Qatar. But a few days before he arrived, Qatar imposed a lockdown and banned international flights. From there to South Korea, Japan, South Korea again and on to Singapore and Thailand, each time the same story: Lockdown. No flights. No going home.
The open-ended extension of his contract — and with it the responsibility for his 21-man crew and a ship carrying flammable cargo — is taking its toll.
“When you are seven months on board, you are becoming physically and mentally exhausted,” Kogankov said by satellite phone from Thailand. “We are working 24/7. We don’t have, let’s say, Friday night or Saturday night or weekends. No, the vessel is running all the time.”
Officers sign on for three to four months, the rest of the crew for around seven months. But they always have an end date. Take that away, and suddenly the prospect of endless workdays becomes a strain.
“We’re gravely worried that there could be a higher increase of incidents and accidents. But we also are seeing a high level of what I would describe as anxiety and frustration,” Cotton said. “If you don’t know when you’re going to get off a ship, that adds to a high level of anxiety that really is quite demoralizing.”
Unless governments facilitate crew changes, Cotton warned, “it’s difficult for us to convince the seafarers not to take more dramatic action, and ... stop working.”
Morning/evening/whatever-it-is-where-you-are everyone. This is Simon Burnton taking on the live blog for the next few hours. If you have seen any stories that deserve our attention, or if you have any tips, comments or suggestions for our coverage then please let me know by sending me a message either to @Simon_Burnton on Twitter or via email. Thanks!
That’s all from me - I’m now handing over to my colleague in London, Simon Burnton, who will bring you all the latest developments over the next few hours.
Associated Press is exploring questions relating to the coronavirus pandemic, including: “Can I get Covid-19 through my eyes or ears?”.
Here is the verdict:
It’s possible through the eyes, but not likely through the ears.
As with the nose and mouth, doctors say the eyes may be a route of infection if someone with the virus coughs or sneezes nearby. Infection is also possible when rubbing your eyes with hands that have been exposed to the virus.
Tears from an infected person could also spread the virus.
Frequent hand washing, social distancing and the use of facial coverings in public are ways to keep the virus from spreading, including through the eyes.
Glasses may also offer added protection, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Health care workers are advised to use safety goggles when treating potentially infected patients.
Ears, on the other hand, are not believed to be a route of COVID-19 infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The skin in the outer ear canal is more like regular skin, unlike the tissue in the mouth, nose and sinuses. That creates a barrier that makes it difficult for the virus to enter, according to Dr. Benjamin Bleier at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston.
China to allow limited US passenger flights
China on Thursday said foreign airlines blocked from operating in the country over virus fears would be allowed to resume limited flights, lifting a de facto ban on US carriers, Agence France-Presse reports. This comes a day after Washington ordered the suspension of all Chinese travel into and out of the US.
The apparent decision to step back by Beijing follows rising tensions between the world’s two superpowers over a series of issues including Donald Trump’s accusations over China’s handling of the pandemic, Hong Kong and Huawei.
The latest spat was rooted in the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) deciding to impose a limit on foreign airlines based on their activity as of March 12. Because US carriers had suspended all flights by that date their cap was set at zero, while Chinese carriers’ flights to the US continued.
On Wednesday the US said it would block Chinese passenger flights from June 16, raising concerns of another front being opened up in the standoff between the two countries.
But the CAAC on Thursday said all foreign airlines not listed in the March 12 schedule would now be able to operate one international route into China each week.
Restrictions on entry to both the US and China remain in place.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have become increasingly strained in recent months after Trump accused China of causing the virus intentionally, while a plan to impose a strict security law on Hong Kong has increased tensions substantially.
Trust in governments falls across G7 nations
People across almost all the world’s leading rich economies have turned more sceptical about their governments’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic with confidence slumping the most in Britain, Reuters reports.
In May, in the G7 nations as a whole, 48% of respondents approved of how authorities had handled the pandemic, down from 50% in April and 54% in March, the survey published by polling firm Kantar showed.
Britain saw the biggest drop - a sharp fall of 18 points from April to 51% - while in the United States, Canada, Germany, France and Italy, the declines ranged between two and six points. Japan was the only country to show an increase.
Britain’s Covid-19 death toll has surpassed 50,000, making the country one of the worst hit in the world by the pandemic. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also struggled to contain the fallout from a decision by his top advisor Dominic Cummings to undertake a long road trip to get family help at the height of the coronavirus lockdown when COVID-19 hit his household.
The survey of 7,012 people was conducted between May 28 and June 1.
Production companies in Turkey - known for its obsession with TV dramas - have been finding new ways to keep filming despite coronavirus restrictions, Agence France-Presse reports.
The last six episodes of Tutunamayanlar, known as The Outcasts in English, were shot on video-conferencing platform Zoom, with actors going without makeup sessions or the usual costumes.
Turkey’s soap operas are taking the Arab world by storm, prompting TV executives to start importing Turkish series even to Latin American countries - a region more used to exporting its own “telenovelas”.
“We have adjusted our script accordingly, it’s not like those we used to film. We have a different script, it’s much more adjusted to the house setting,” said Yener Yalcin, video assistant.
Turkey has so far recorded 166,422 cases and 4,609 deaths.
Thailand reported 17 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, all involving citizens who recently returned from abroad.
The country, which has avoided a major outbreak, has recorded 3,101 cases so far. In total, there have been 58 fatalities.
Mexico overtook the United States in daily reported deaths from coronavirus for the first time on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
The health ministry registered a record 1,092 fatalities yesterday, and attributed the increase to improvements in documenting the pandemic.
Latin American has emerged in recent weeks as a major center for coronavirus. Brazil, where the virus has hit hardest in the region, also reported a record number of deaths on Wednesday.
The Mexican government had previously predicted the pandemic would peak in early May and under US pressure has begun reopening its vast auto industry, which underpins billions of dollars of business through cross-border supply chains.
However, plans to further relax social distancing measures this week were put on hold in recognition of the fact that infections had not yet begun coming down.
Wednesday saw a record 3,912 new infections, with the number of daily deaths more than twice the previous record of 501.
The total number of known cases in Latin America’s second-largest economy is now 101,238 and its tally of deaths is 11,729. Its death toll is seventh highest in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
Updated
Global deaths pass 385,000
The number of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic globally has now passed 385,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University dashboard.
At total of 385,991 fatalities have been recorded worldwide. The US is the worst hit country, with 107,175 deaths, followed by the UK and Italy.
For a summary of the biggest developments in the outbreak, here is the latest at a glance guide.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. Thanks for following along – and, as always, to those of you who got in touch. I’m heading over to the George Floyd live blog now.
My colleague Rebecca Ratcliffe will take it from here.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
-
Known coronavirus cases pass 6.4 m. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 6,430,705 known coronavirus cases so far, and 385,947 deaths reported.
- Brazil looks to reopen despite record coronavirus deaths. Brazil registered a record number of daily deaths from the novel coronavirus for a second consecutive day, according to Health Ministry data released on Wednesday, even as city and state authorities move aggressively to open commerce back up. The nation recorded 1,349 new coronavirus deaths on Wednesday and 28,633 additional confirmed cases, the data showed. Brazil has now registered 32,548 deaths and 584,016 total confirmed cases. In Brazil, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus, saying on Tuesday that death was “everyone’s destiny.”
- George Floyd had coronavirus, according to autopsy. Floyd tested positive for coronavirus, according to a full autopsy report released by the Hennepin county medical examiner’s office. The report noted that the virus was not a contributing factor in his death and that Floyd was asymptomatic.KSTP news reports: “A postmortem nasal swab was taken, which confirmed that Floyd was positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It is noted that Floyd was known to be positive for Covid-19 on April 3. The postmortem positivity likely reflects asymptomatic but persistent PCR positivity from previous infection, the report said.”
- Mexico sees deaths twice as high as previous record. Mexican health authorities reported 1,092 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, the highest toll in one day so far, with total infections surging past 100,000. The number of deaths was more than twice a previous record, and daily infections were also at an all time high of 3,912. The additions bring the total number of known cases to 101,238 and deaths to 11,729. Health authorities have previously said the real number is higher.
- California: rise in Covid-19 cases raises fears over reopening and protests. The number of coronavirus cases in California is on the rise after weeks of optimism that infections had slowed, raising fears that plans to reopen counties, along with mass protests against police brutality, could accelerate transmission of the virus.According to numbers from Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking coronavirus cases and deaths, California is one of 20 states that have seen an uptick in cases in the past five days.
- Coronavirus crisis could cause $25tn fossil fuel industry collapse. The coronavirus outbreak could trigger a $25tn (£20tn) collapse in the fossil fuel industry by accelerating a terminal decline for the world’s most polluting companies.A study has found that the value of the world’s fossil fuel reserves could fall by two-thirds, sooner than the industry expects, because the Covid-19 crisishas hastened the peak for oil, gas and coal demand.The looming fossil fuel collapse could pose “a significant threat to global financial stability” by wiping out the market value of fossil fuel companies, according to financial thinktank Carbon Tracker.
- Spain’s congress voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 14 March and Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.
- The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma went into self-isolation after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber.He was delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.
- WHO reports 100,000 new cases a day for five days. The World Health Organization has received reports of 100,000 new cases of coronavirus every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world, its director general has said.
- The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
In El-Arish, the provincial capital of Egypt’s North Sinai, a group of women sew colourful Bedouin designs on masks to combat coronavirus, as an insurgency simmers in their restive region, AFP reports.
Egypt’s toll from the Covid-19 pandemic has reached over 28,600 cases, including more than 1,000 deaths, while North Sinai itself remains the bloody scene of a long-running Islamist insurgency.
“I learnt how to embroider when I was a young girl watching my mother,” homemaker Naglaa Mohammed, 36, told AFP on a landline from El-Arish.
A versatile embroiderer, she also beads garments and crafts rings and bracelets. Now with the pandemic, she has been designing face masks showcasing her Bedouin heritage.
Bedouins are nomadic tribes who traditionally inhabit desert areas throughout the Arab world, from North Africa to Iraq. Many have now integrated into a more urban lifestyle.
Egypt’s Bedouin textile tradition of tatriz - weaving and beading rich geometric and abstract designs on garments, cushions and purses - has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries.
It has survived in the Sinai Peninsula, whose north has been plagued by years of militant activity and terror attacks spearheaded by a local affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) group.
Updated
In Australia, while speaking at Googong, New South Wales, about the homebuilder scheme – a new tranche of economic stimulus designed to create a pipeline of work for the construction sector – on Thursday morning, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison was interrupted by a homeowner opposite.
‘Can everyone get off the grass please?’ the unknown man said. ‘Hey guys, I’ve just reseeded that,’ he added when the media pack wasn’t fast enough to decamp from the plush new outdoor carpet:
Lockdown prompts surge in Germans seeking help for alcoholism
Germany has seen a surge in numbers of people seeking help for alcohol addiction since lockdown measures were introduced in early March, AFP reports. According to a spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous, enquiries to the group’s national helpline have roughly doubled - from about 10 calls per day to about 20.
Sales of alcohol rose sharply during the initial phase of the lockdown as many people turned to drinking at home as a substitute for banned social events. Wine sales at the end of March were 34% higher than during the same week in February, and sales of spirits went up 31%, according to a study published in the Spiegel magazine.
But the pandemic has also prompted many people to confront problematic alcohol use, whether through increased self-reflection or because family members finally became aware of how much they were drinking, according to the Alcoholics Anonymous spokesman.
“Some people use or abuse the way to work and the workplace as a drinking opportunity, and in many cases this is now no longer available,” he said.
“People have to start drinking at home, and then their spouse or family can see how much they really drink. They get to the point where they realise that there is no way to hide it.”
Alcoholics Anonymous holds about 2,000 regular meetings across Germany. A spokesman for one of the groups in Berlin said it is now getting roughly one enquiry a day, compared to one or two a month before the pandemic started.
“There’s a huge increase, that’s definitely clear,” he said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 394 to 182,764, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The death toll rose by 30 to 8,581, the tally showed.
The Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay has a request – she is trying to track down New Zealand’s last remaining coronavirus case, a woman who is not in hospital, but is still ill with the virus. She would like to speak to this person anonymously.
Are you able to help?
Her request here:
New Zealand’s streak of days without a new recorded case of Covid-19 – 13 straight days on Thursday – isn’t the only detail the public wants to know when health officials release their daily afternoon update.
They’re also eager to hear the status of the single person in the country who is still recovering from Covid-19.
Since last Friday, only one person in New Zealand - which has had less than 1,500 confirmed cases of the virus and 22 deaths - has remained ill with the virus. They are not in hospital. But each day, we’re told, they are still recovering.
All we know is that the woman, aged in her 50s, lives in Auckland and was associated with a cluster of cases at St Margaret’s rest home in Te Atatu.
The Guardian is keen to speak anonymously to this person, who can contact our reporter Charlotte Graham-McLay by emailing charlottegrahammclay[at]gmail.com.
She is also on Twitter here.
Brazil looks to reopen despite record coronavirus deaths
Brazil registered a record number of daily deaths from the novel coronavirus for a second consecutive day, according to Health Ministry data released on Wednesday, even as city and state authorities move aggressively to open commerce back up, Reuters reports.
The nation recorded 1,349 new coronavirus deaths on Wednesday and 28,633 additional confirmed cases, the data showed. Brazil has now registered 32,548 deaths and 584,016 total confirmed cases.
In Brazil, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus, saying on Tuesday that death was “everyone’s destiny.”
State and local authorities that have supported quarantining measures are loosening restrictions as hunger grows and public finances, shaky in the best of times, plummet deep into the red.
In Rio de Janeiro, the nation’s second-largest city, many types of shops were allowed to open for the first time in months on Tuesday.
“First, we have to think of health before everything. Without doubt, we have to think about the economy with hunger and all those things, but Covid-19 is a disease that kills,” said Renato Maya, a resident of Niteroi, right across the bay from Rio, as he took a city-provided coronavirus test on Wednesday.
“The reopening to me seems necessary, but it needs to be done quite carefully.”
Podcast: From Anfield to Cheltenham: did major events cost lives?
A series of high-profile sporting events went ahead as scheduled in mid-March even as Covid-19 was being declared a pandemic. The Guardian’s David Conn investigates the scientific reasoning behind the decision, while Liverpool fan Simon Renoldi reflects on the loss of his father:
New Zealand sees 13th consecutive day with no new cases
Stuff.NZ reports that New Zealand has yet again confirmed zero new coronavirus cases:
For the 13th day in a row New Zealand has no new coronavirus cases, Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said on Thursday.
One active case still remains.
Bloomfield updated the public on our coronavirus situation at a media briefing at the National Library Auditorium on Thursday.
The total number of confirmed cases remains at 1154, which is the number reported to the World Health Organisation. The combined total of confirmed and probable cases remains at 1504.
No-one is currently in hospital with the virus.
China’s civil aviation regulator will let foreign airlines currently not allowed to operate international routes to China to start once-a-week routes into a designated city from 8 June, news website The Paper reported on Thursday.
The Paper, backed by the Shanghai city government, cited an order from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) that said qualifying airlines can choose the destination to which they wish to fly.
As always, please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com with comments, questions, tips and news from your part of the world.
Zoom, the popular video conferencing platform, has announced it will provide end-to-end encryption after facing a litany of privacy and security concerns – but only to users who pay for it.
Eric Yuan, the company’s CEO, raised alarm among privacy advocates on Wednesday by saying Zoom planned to exclude free calls from end-to-end encryption so as to leave open the possibility of working with law enforcement.
“Free users for sure we don’t want to give [end-to-end encryption] because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose,” Yuan said on the call with analysts.
Privacy and security experts say encryption, which secures communication so that it can only be read by the users involved, is particularly important at a time when video apps and other digital platforms are being used for sensitive issues such as organizing protests, discussing legal issues, and attending medical appointments.
George Floyd had coronavirus, according to autopsy
Floyd tested positive for coronavirus, according to a full autopsy report released by the Hennepin county medical examiner’s office. The report noted that the virus was not a contributing factor in his death and that Floyd was asymptomatic.
A postmortem nasal swab was taken, which confirmed that Floyd was positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It is noted that Floyd was known to be positive for COVID-19 on April 3. The postmortem positivity likely reflects asymptomatic but persistent PCR positivity from previous infection, the report said.
Updated
WHO reports 100,000 new cases a day for five days
In case you missed it earlier: the World Health Organization has received reports of 100,000 new cases of coronavirus every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world, its director general has said. Opening the WHO’s regular coronavirus briefing, Tedros said:
More than 100,000 cases of Covid-19 have been reported to WHO for each of the past five days.
The Americas continues to account for the most cases. For several weeks, the number of cases reported each day in the Americas has been more than the rest of the world put together. We are especially worried about Central and South America, where many countries are witnessing accelerating epidemics.
We also see increasing numbers of cases in the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and Africa, although the numbers are much smaller.
Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 cases in Europe continues to decline. Yesterday saw the fewest cases reported in Europe since 22 March.
Protestors in Dakar, Senegal, set tyres on fire and threw stones at security forces on Wednesday night during protests over a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed almost three months ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The unrest in Senegal’s capital followed similar action in the holy city of Touba a night earlier, where crowds of people torched an ambulance, threw rocks and looted office buildings.
“Youths took to the streets after the curfew and tangled with police officers, throwing stones and burning tires,” a resident in central Dakar, who requested anonymity citing security concerns, told Reuters.
There were also protests in the Kaolack region in the south of the country, a local official said.
Senegal’s government has not faced major opposition to its handling of the pandemic but the economy has been hard hit by measures like the overnight curfew and a ban on inter-regional travel.
Senegal has confirmed almost 4,000 cases of Covid-19, including 45 deaths. Dakar and Touba, which is both a trading hub and major pilgrimage destination, have been hardest hit.
Updated
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected late last year, has tested nearly 10 million people in an unprecedented 19-day campaign to check an entire city, AP reports.
It identified just 300 positive cases, all of whom had no symptoms. The city found no infections among 1,174 close contacts of the people who tested positive, suggesting they were not spreading it easily to others.
That is a potentially encouraging development because of widespread concern that infected people without symptoms could be silent spreaders of the disease.
It not only makes the people of Wuhan feel at ease, it also increases peoples confidence in all of China, Feng Zijian, vice director of Chinas Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state broadcaster CCTV.
There is no definitive answer yet on the level of risk posed by asymptomatic cases, with anecdotal evidence and studies to date producing conflicting answers.
Wuhan was by far the hardest hit city in China, accounting for more than 80% of the countrys deaths, according to government figures.
Mexico sees deaths twice as high as previous record
Mexican health authorities reported 1,092 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, the highest toll in one day so far, with total infections surging past 100,000.
The number of deaths was more than twice a previous record, and daily infections were also at an all time high of 3,912.
The additions bring the total number of known cases to 101,238 and deaths to 11,729. Health authorities have previously said the real number is higher.
Coronavirus crisis could cause $25tn fossil fuel industry collapse
The coronavirus outbreak could trigger a $25tn (£20tn) collapse in the fossil fuel industry by accelerating a terminal decline for the world’s most polluting companies.
A study has found that the value of the world’s fossil fuel reserves could fall by two-thirds, sooner than the industry expects, because the Covid-19 crisis has hastened the peak for oil, gas and coal demand.
The looming fossil fuel collapse could pose “a significant threat to global financial stability” by wiping out the market value of fossil fuel companies, according to financial thinktank Carbon Tracker.
California: rise in Covid-19 cases raises fears over reopening and protests
The number of coronavirus cases in California is on the rise after weeks of optimism that infections had slowed, raising fears that plans to reopen counties, along with mass protests against police brutality, could accelerate transmission of the virus.
According to numbers from Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking coronavirus cases and deaths, California is one of 20 states that have seen an uptick in cases in the past five days.
‘Governor, let me see my kids before I die’: pressure mounts to release elderly women from prisonsRead more
Just this week, daily cases of Covid-19 hit a new high across the state, topping 3,000 new daily confirmed cases for the second time in a week and contributing to the 115,000 cases and more than 4,300 deaths the state has reported since the pandemic began.
California has been held up as a model for its response to the coronavirus, locking down earlier, and being slower to lift shelter-in-place orders compared to other states.
But recent weeks have seen counties push back on the orders, in some cases reopening sections of the economy in defiance of orders from Gavin Newsom, California’s governor.
China reported one new coronavirus case and four new asymptomatic Covid-19 cases for 3 June, the health commission said on Thursday.
The National Health Commission said all five of the cases were imported, involving travellers from overseas. For 2 June, China reported one confirmed case and 4 asymptomatic cases.
China does not count asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but do not exhibit symptoms, as confirmed cases.
The total number of infections in China stands at 83,022. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
Hong Kong braces as protesters plan to defy Tiananmen vigil ban
Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers are expected to mark the 31st anniversary of the military crackdown on the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement in their own localities after police banned an annual candlelit vigil that has taken place uninterrupted for 30 years, citing public health concerns.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which has organised the vigil for the past 30 years, asked Hong Kongers to hold individual commemorations through lighting candles wherever they are in the city on the anniversary.
Fearing commemorations might soon be barred under the national security laws, the alliance said its members still planned to gather at Victoria Park to light candles in groups of eight, in order not to breach the government’s social distancing restrictions, and planned to stream the event live online.
Rights groups say the government is using Covid-19 as a pretext to stifle freedom of expression as numerous restrictions, including on swimming pools and religious gatherings, were recently lifted due to low numbers of infections.
More on Germany’s stimulus package:
With borders slamming shut, employees kept home, and shops and restaurants forced to close to halt transmission of the coronavirus, Germany is headed for the worst recession in its post-war history. Disruptions to trade and travel have also weighed on the export powerhouse.
Latest data released earlier Wednesday showed that the unemployment rate rose to 6.3% in May, the equivalent of some 2.8 million people, from 5.8% in April.
With new infections sharply dropping, Europe’s biggest economy began easing social restrictions in early May, allowing shops to reopen while restaurants and tourist businesses are taking the first tentative steps.
Factories too are restarting their production lines. Merkel has said the support programme will help “the economy to find its feet and grow again”.
A controversial plan for a cash-for-clunkers scheme that also covers petrol and diesel cars did not materialise after noisy environmental protests.
The youth environmental movement “Fridays for Future” had organised some 60 protests nationwide on Tuesday, with demonstrators asked to wear masks and keep their distance in line with coronavirus-fighting measures.
Meanwhile, companies in sectors hardest hit by the crisis - including hospitality, tourism and entertainment - will receive “bridging help” worth €25bn in total from June to August.
Under the measure, restaurants, hotels or event management companies could get up to 80% of their fixed operating costs reimbursed if revenues had plunged by more than 70% compared to a year ago.
Germany unveils €130bn stimulus to kickstart virus-hit economy
In case you missed this earlier: Germany will plough €130bn (US$146 billion) into a stimulus package to kick-start an economy severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
Under the wide-ranging measures outlined in a 15-page document, value-added tax will be temporarily slashed, families will receive 300 euros for each child, while those who purchase electric cars will see a government rebate doubled to €6,000.
“The size of the package will reach €130bn for 2020 to 2021, €120bn of which will be borne by the federal government,” said Merkel.
“We have an economic stimulus package, a package for the future and in addition, we’re now dealing with our responsibility for Europe and the international dimension.”
Noting that millions of employees in Germany have been put on shorter working hours, Merkel said that “shows how fragile the whole thing is, and why we must succeed in giving the economy a push so that jobs can be secured.”
“We need to get out of this crisis with an oomph,” said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.
The fresh stimulus comes on top of a massive €1.1tn rescue package already agreed in March, comprising loan guarantees, subsidies and a beefed-up shorter-hours programme to avoid job cuts.
To fund the unprecedented package, parliament had approved new borrowing, marking a sea change in German economic policy, upending a financial-crisis-era constitutional rule drastically limiting budget deficits.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
As always, please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
A €130bn (£116bn) post-lockdown stimulus package has been agreed by the coalition partners running the country, the chancellor Angela Merkel announced. The agreement paved the way for a fiscal programme that is substantially bigger than similar packages by Germany’s Eurozone partners.
Meanwhile the World Health Organization says that for the past five days, cases have risen by 100,000 a day worldwide.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Known coronavirus cases number around 6.4m, according to Johns Hopkins University, with the current number at 6,392,319. There have been 383,298 deaths reported so far.
- Spain’s congress voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 14 March and Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.
- The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma went into self-isolation after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber.He was delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.
- The World Health Organization said it has received reports of 100,000 new cases every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world.
- The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
- Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in infections, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus. Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the north-west, died on Wednesday. Yesterday two other lawmakers died after testing positive.
- The number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Sweden surpassed that of France. With 450 deaths per 1 million people, Sweden now has the seventh-worst death rate in the world, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
- Entry checks at land borders to Austria introduced because of the pandemic will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister announced. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference.
- The UK government was criticised for failing to release test and trace data. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the programme’s chief, Dido Harding: “I hope you understand that our frustration is that it is very hard to scrutinise what the government is doing if we’re not given the data that allows us to do that.”
- Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to the UK while it maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government will scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries, including the UK, from 15 June.
