We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on our continuing coverage on our new global live blow below.
Summary
- Confirmed cases of coronavirus passed 18 million, according to the tally kept by the US-based Johns Hopkins University. The university’s coronavirus resource centre had counted 18,166,298 cases at the time of writing, with 690,953 deaths. The worst affected countries by caseload were, in order, the US, Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa.
- There might never be a “silver bullet” for Covid-19 in the form of a perfect vaccine, and the road to normality could be long, the World Health Organization said. The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the emergencies chief, Mike Ryan, exhorted nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
- The US Treasury Department plans to borrow $947bn to cover coronavirus impact. Congress has already allocated about $3tn for coronavirus-related economic aid so far.
- One person is dying from Covid-19 every seven minutes in Iran, state television said on Monday, as the country’s health ministry reported 215 new deaths from the disease. The combined death toll in Iran rose to 17,405 on Monday, Sima Sadat Lari, the health ministry spokeswoman, said, while the number of confirmed cases rose by 2,598 to 312,035. Of those, 270,228 have recovered.
- US teaching staff stage protests over plans to reopen schools. Teachers and support staff in more than 35 school districts formed car caravans and other protests to demand schools hold off on August and September school resumptions until scientific data supports such a move.
- The number of coronavirus patients admitted to intensive care units in Belgium has doubled in a month and the epidemic is spreading “intensively”, health officials warned on Monday. On average 2.7 people died of Covid-19 every day in Belgium in the last week of July, up by about a third from two in the previous seven days. At least 9,845 have died since the epidemic arrived.
- The Russian government said it aims to launch mass production of a coronavirus vaccine next month and turn out “several million” doses per month by next year. “We are very much counting on starting mass production in September,” the industry minister, Denis Manturov, said. Russia is pushing ahead with several vaccine prototypes.
- Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations are falling in California. Governor Gavin Newsom said the state’s Central Valley agricultural hub was still being hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic and there was not yet enough data to consider lifting pandemic restrictions.
The NHS test-and-trace programme needs to be scaled up in order to reopen schools safely, researchers have said.
A new modelling study has implied that reopening schools in September must be combined with a high-coverage test-trace-isolate strategy to avoid a second wave of Covid-19 later this year.
The study comes as Australian research found there were “low” levels of coronavirus transmission in schools and nurseries.
The modelling study - which simulates various scenarios - examined the possible implications of schools reopening in the UK coupled with broader reopening of society, such as more parents returning to the workplace and increased socialising within the community.
The authors found that “with increased levels of testing... and effective contact tracing and isolation, an epidemic rebound might be prevented”.
But in a worst-case scenario, a second wave could be 2.3 times higher than the first, according to the study published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.
It comes after one scientist suggested that pubs may need to shut to allow schools to reopen.
Prof Graham Medley told the BBC on Sunday there may need to be a “trade-off”, with the reopening of schools seen as a “priority” for children’s wellbeing.
In the new study, researchers from UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) simulated what would happen in an “optimistic” scenario assuming 68% of contacts of people who tested positive could be traced. In the more pessimistic scenario the system had 40% coverage.
But one of the authors, Chris Bonell, professor of public health sociology at LSHTM, said the current testing system has “about 50% coverage”. He said:
Our findings suggests that it might be possible [to avoid] a secondary epidemic wave in the UK, if enough people with symptomatic infection can be diagnosed and their contacts traced and effectively isolated.
Reopening schools fully in September, alongside reopening workplaces in society, without an effective test, trace, isolating (TTI) strategy could result in a second wave of infections between two and 2.3 times the size of the original wave.
This is a scenario with model, not a prediction of what is going to happen. It all depends on the other measures and the level of TTI coverage.
Currently, TTI is not achieving the levels that we modelled. Looking at the NHS reports from the TTI system, it looks like it’s about 50% coverage.
The most recent data [shows] about 81% of positives are interviewed, about 81% of those report contacts and about 75% of those contacts are reached so overall that equates to coverage of 50%.
It looks from the ONS data like there are about 4,200 new infections per day. And it looks like from the testing data there are about 4,200 testing positive per week. So it looks like about one in seven. So, that’s not good enough, basically.”
But he said the coverage rates were following an “upward trend.
The authors said that without appropriate levels of testing and contact tracing, reopening of schools together with gradual relaxing of the lockdown measures are “likely to induce a second wave that would peak in December 2020 if schools open full-time in September”.
The model assumes that around 70% of people would return to workplaces once their children returned to school and up to a 90% increase of mixing within the community with schools reopening.
The research from Australia, also published in the same journal, examined real world data from the first wave of Covid-19 in New South Wales.
Data from 15 schools and 10 nurseries showed that although 27 children or teachers went to school or nursery while infectious, only an additional 18 people later became infected.
The authors concluded: “Children and teachers did not contribute significantly to Covid-19 transmission via attendance in educational settings”.
Updated
With not enough workers to pick the upcoming harvest, Australia faces potential food shortages, and its farmers face economic devastation, writes Michael Rose, a research fellow and anthropologist at the Australian National University.
We are sailing into a food shortage and few are talking about it. This needs to change.
In essence the issue is this: a large proportion of Australia’s harvest labour is done by people from abroad who are unable to travel. As the months tick down towards the summer harvest there are simply not enough people to pick the fruit.
If this doesn’t change the result is likely to be shortages and price rises for horticultural products and, even more seriously, devastating hardship for our primary producers.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there are limited numbers of tickets for the speedway races, and tired of having to watch on TV, fans took matters into their own hands.
Photograph: Wojtek Jargiło/EPA
On the front page of the Guardian tomorrow: The political communications company behind the Conservative party’s controversial 2019 digital campaign strategy received a £3m government contract to work on Covid-19 messaging without a competitive tender and is negotiating with the Cabinet Office for more work.
An investigation by the Guardian and openDemocracy found that on 17 March, shortly before the UK went into lockdown, Topham Guerin was contracted by the Cabinet Office to work on the government’s public communications.
Almost two months after reopening, Universal Orlando is laying off an undisclosed number of workers.
Universal spokesman Tom Schroder said in an email on Monday that the Florida theme park resort was “reducing its workforce to reflect current priorities and needs.”
Universal has put the construction of a new theme park, Epic Universe, on pause because of the pandemic.
Comcast, Universal Orlando’s owner, reported last week that the company’s theme parks division shrank to $87m in revenue from $1.46bn a year ago.
“We are prioritizing daily operations and shorter-term projects and continuing our pause on longer-term projects such as Epic Universe as we allow the tourism industry to recover,” Schroder said.
Like theme park operators around the US, Universal Orlando closed its doors in mid-March as Covid-19 started spreading in the country.
It was the first of Orlando’s major theme park operators to reopen when it welcomed back visitors in early June. SeaWorld reopened in late June, and Walt Disney World welcomed back visitors last month.
All of the parks have new rules meant to limit the spread of the virus. Guests and workers must have their temperatures checked and wear masks. Attendance has been limited to allow for social distancing in the parks.
Tuesday’s UK newspaper front pages are in, with a number covering the government’s “eat out to help out” scheme which started on Monday evening.
Metro writes on people helping themselves to double portions at restaurants under the new discount scheme, after the government launched an anti-obesity drive last week.
METRO: Rishi Two Snacks #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Eu2msNrwkK
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) August 3, 2020
The Mail leads on the fact offices around the country are still standing empty as thousands flock to restaurants.
MAIL: we’ve had our lunch, now let’s get back to work #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/luWfeOwK4F
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) August 3, 2020
The Mirror turns its attention to the government’s “flawed” test and trace strategy, with experts warning a second wave of cases in December could be worse than the first as a result of its failures.
MIRROR: Test & Trace fiasco is time bomb #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/CXCS58yRqO
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) August 3, 2020
Meanwhile the i quotes government scientific advisers as saying those who have had the virus could be exempt from self-isolation and quarantine in order to boost the economy.
I: Having virus may earn right to roam #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/kL9kwqKcKj
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) August 3, 2020
Finally the Yorkshire Post leads on a report which finds rural areas are more vulnerable to the impacts of coronavirus than cities.
YORKSHIRE POST: Our rural areas are ‘more at risk of job cuts’ #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/4VL3MQWAO9
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) August 3, 2020
Updated
Teachers and support staff at more than 35 school districts across the United States staged protests over plans to resume in-class schooling while Covid-19 is surging in many parts of the country.
The protesters, who formed car caravans and attached signs and painted messages on their vehicles, demand schools hold off on August and September school resumptions until scientific data supports such a move.
They want districts to wait until safety protocols such as lower class sizes and virus testing are established, and schools are staffed with an adequate number of counsellors and nurses, according to a website set up for the demonstrations.
On Twitter, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association showed protesters making fake gravestones that said, “Here lies a third grade student from Green Bay who caught Covid at school” and “RIP Grandma caught Covid helping grand kids with homework.”
TODAY IS THE DAY! Students, teachers, parents, & communities across country are rising to #DemandSafeSchools! Art Teachers made gravestones for car caravan paying tribute to those whom undoubtedly will die if profits r placed over health. #EdEquityOrElse https://t.co/fmThzDcy8q pic.twitter.com/Uy5CLMnNuv
— MTEA (@MTEAunion) August 3, 2020
Deaths in the United States rose for a fourth week in a row to more than 8,500 people in the seven days ending 2 August, while the number of new cases fell for a second straight week, a Reuters analysis found.
More than 155,000 people have died of Covid-19 related illness in the United States, the most in the world. Cases rose week-over-week in 20 states, including in Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma.
Teachers are also demanding financial help for parents in need, including rent and mortgage assistance, a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, and cash assistance.
Many of these issues are at the centre of a political tussle in Washington, where Democrats in Congress and Trump administration officials held talks on Monday and will resume on Tuesday to hammer out a coronavirus economic relief bill after missing a deadline to extend benefits to tens of millions of jobless Americans.
Education employees in Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia honked their horns in socially distanced car protests.
Protesters rallied outside the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce building and in the Hartford, Connecticut, area, about 400 formed a car march that went by Governor Ned Lamont’s home.
“I do not want to put my students or myself in harm’s way. I do not want to be an experiment,” Andrea Parker, an elementary school teacher in Chicago, told reporters before a car protest.
Supporters of a Senegalese Muslim religious and political leader ransacked a newspaper after it reported the public figure was ill with Covid-19, the newspaper said.
Les Echos reported on its Monday front page that the Tijaniyya brotherhood’s leader Serigne Moustapha Sy, who also heads the PUR party, was “stricken by Covid-19” and admitted to the main hospital in the capital Dakar.
The party denounced the report as lies and issued a veiled warning to the newspaper.
An official at the newspaper, Cheikh Oumar Ndao, told AFP that four or five assailants arrived at the publication on Monday.
“They asked for the author of the article on Moustapha Sy, issued threats and damaged equipment,” including seven computers and a TV set, Oumar Ndao told AFP.
In a statement reacting to the newspaper’s story, PUR’s national secretary for youth, Habib Ndiaye, denounced it as “bare-faced lies”.
The PUR leader “is in good health and is somewhere on planet Earth taking care of business”, he added.
“Leave him alone if you want peace,” the statement added - though it made no mention of the attack on the newspaper.
Senegal’s Council of Editors (Cdeps) denounced the attack and reminded the government of its duty to protect journalists and media organisations.
The PUR’s presidential candidate in 2019 won around four percent of the vote.
Senegal has officially declared 10,386 coronavirus cases and 211 deaths, but those infected have complained they are stigmatised.
Senegal, a west African country whose population is mainly Muslim, ranks 49th out of 180 countries in media freedom by the Reporters without Borders watchdog.
Indoor soft play centres in the UK have started closing at an “alarming” rate which is much quicker than expected, according to the industry’s trade association.
The British Association of Leisure Parks, Piers and Attractions (BalppaA) said dozens of sites have already shut just a month after it warned almost two-thirds could close by October following the impact of coronavirus.
A survey, which included more than 60 different indoor play businesses, revealed 18% would have to close by the end of August, 24% by the end of September and a further 22% by the end of October.
It comes as Eddie Catz Softplay became the latest company to announce it is permanently closing two venues in south London.
A message on its Facebook page read:
As a small business owner having dedicated the last 15 years of my life to developing Eddie Catz into a national softplay chain the decision not to re-open has been incredibly hard and heart-breaking.
As you may know from media coverage, there is no scheduled opening date for our industry to reopen as a result of Covid-19.
This has been a devastating blow to all indoor soft play operators nationally and the industry is on the verge of collapse.
Other firms to shut in the past few weeks include Little Lambs Softplay & Roleplay Cafe in Coulsdon, The Big Fun House in Canterbury and Riverside Hub in Northampton.
Gordon Forster, of Balppa, told the PA news agency:
The latest closures are a huge kick in the teeth in the fight against obesity; indoor play centres are a hidden gem in keeping children active over the summer holidays, when venues would be at their busiest.
You can see from the outcry of parents on social media after every closure just how much these centres mean for communities.
Our warning last month has come certainly true, the rate of closures has already been alarming and is so quick that by October even more than we predicted could close.
It’s incredibly worrying, these businesses are often owned by individual operators and their personal circumstances are being seriously affected.
The governor of California has said rates of new Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and intensive care unit admissions were all trending down in the state, according to the latest analysis.
Governor Gavin Newsom said in a briefing that the state’s Central Valley agricultural hub was still being hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic and that the data was not yet enough to consider lifting pandemic restrictions.
Newsom said:
This virus is not going away.
Its not going to take Labor Day weekend off, Halloween off, or the holidays off. Until we have a vaccine we are going to be living with this virus.
California, the nation’s most populous state with some 40 million residents, has recorded a total of 514,901 confirmed Covid-19 infections and 9,388 deaths, according to the governor’s office.
The state has administered more than 8m tests for Covid-19 and has seen the rate of positive results decline to 7% over the last 14 days, compared to 7.5% in the previous two weeks.
Updated
The US Treasury Department said it plans to borrow $947bn in the third quarter as it anticipates the government continuing to need to spend heavily in order to reduce the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the economy.
Congress has already allocated about $3tn for coronavirus-related economic aid so far. Republicans and Democrats are currently at odds on a new coronavirus relief bill, after missing a vital deadline to extend relief benefits to tens of millions of jobless Americans.
The Treasury’s estimates “assume $1tn of additional borrowing need in anticipation of additional legislation being passed in response to the Covid-19 outbreak,” the department said in a statement on Monday.
Senior Treasury officials told reporters the estimates were tentative given uncertainty about the price tag of any future bill.
Updated
Tyson Foods is seeking to convince Beijing to lift a ban on US chicken shipments from an Arkansas plant where workers tested positive for Covid-19, says its president Dean Banks.
China has emerged as the largest export market for American poultry, overtaking Mexico this spring, after Beijing in November ended a nearly five-year embargo on imports from the United States.
Since June, China’s customs authority has blocked chicken from Tyson’s plant in Springdale, Arkansas, as part of an all-out effort to control the spread of Covid-19 in China.
Globally, Beijing has suspended imports from more than 20 overseas plants processing pork, beef and poultry.
Banks told reporters:
We’ve been interacting with them and making sure that they have all the information they need about the precautionary measures, the protective measures that plant has taken.
We’d love to continue to export product from that facility, but that’s in the hands of the Chinese government.
More than 16,000 US meatpacking workers have been infected with Covid-19 at dozens of plants, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jim Sumner, president of the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, said the United States is lucky Beijing suspended imports from just one American plant. As of last week, China had blocked six Brazilian facilities, according to Brazil’s agriculture ministry.
China is also testing imported meat and seafood for Covid-19, although processors say food cannot transmit the coronavirus.
China has increased imports as a deadly pig disease has decimated its herd over the past two years.
“We’ve seen a bottleneck in ports emerge a little bit due to testing,” Banks said. “Their demand is very, very strong right now and so they’re doing everything they can to keep things moving.”
Updated
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray taking over the coronavirus live blog for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any suggestions or story tips.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
Summary
Here are the main headlines from our global coronavirus coverage so far on Monday:
- Confirmed cases of coronavirus passed 18 million, according to the tally kept by the Maryland, US-based Johns Hopkins University. The university’s coronavirus resource centre had counted 18,147,574 cases at the time of writing, with 690,573 deaths. The worst affected countries by caseload were, in order, the US, Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa.
- There might never be a “silver bullet” for Covid-19 in the form of a perfect vaccine, and the road to normality could be long, the World Health Organization said. The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the emergencies chief, Mike Ryan, exhorted nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
- The capital of the Philippines and its outlying districts are to go back into lockdown after medical groups warned the country was waging “a losing battle” against the coronavirus. Metropolitan Manila and five densely populated provinces will revert to stricter quarantine restrictions for two weeks starting Tuesday, the president’s spokesman, Harry Roque, said on Monday.
- One person is dying from Covid-19 every seven minutes in Iran, state television said on Monday, as the country’s health ministry reported 215 new deaths from the disease. The combined death toll in Iran rose to 17,405 on Monday, Sima Sadat Lari, the health ministry spokeswoman, said, while the number of confirmed cases rose by 2,598 to 312,035. Of those, 270,228 have recovered.
- Some travellers arriving in Singapore will be required to wear electronic monitoring devices to ensure they are complying with quarantine restrictions, the city state’s government has announced. The devices, which use GPS and Bluetooth signals to track wearers, will be issued to people arriving from a select group of countries who will be allowed to isolate at home.
- The number of coronavirus patients admitted to intensive care units in Belgium has doubled in a month and the epidemic is spreading “intensively”, health officials warned on Monday. On average 2.7 people died of Covid-19 every day in Belgium in the last week of July, up by about a third from two in the previous seven days. At least 9,845 have died since the epidemic arrived.
- The Russian government said it aims to launch mass production of a coronavirus vaccine next month and turn out “several million” doses per month by next year. “We are very much counting on starting mass production in September,” the industry minister, Denis Manturov, said. Russia is pushing ahead with several vaccine prototypes.
- Australia will introduce a pandemic leave payment for workers who have run out of sick leave but need to be quarantined because they have been directed to stay at home due to the novel coronavirus, prime minister Scott Morrison said Monday. The announcement comes as the country deals with a second wave of infections and its second most populous state, Victoria, closes retail shops.
That’s it from me, Damien Gayle, for today.
About 1.5 million Italians - 2.5% of the population of Italy- may have already contracted coronavirus, nationwide antibody tests indicate, according to the Associated Press.
The figure, announced by health officials on Monday, is six times the number of confirmed cases in Italy’s official virus tally. The results — viewed with the country’s overall death toll of close to 35,000 —align with a 2.3% estimated mortality rate of the virus.
Dr Franco Locatelli, a key scientific government adviser, said the tests were designed to understand the virus’s circulation nationwide and not whether Italians with antibodies were safe from the virus.
The interests and input of indigenous peoples must be included in the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and any recovery strategy, the UN secretary general has said.
In a message ahead of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, observed on 9 August, António Guterres said the world’s 476 million indigenous people must be consulted in all recovery efforts.
Indigenous people’s communities have for generations been ravaged by diseases brought from elsewhere, Guterres said, adding that in the present crisis this vulnerability has been exacerbated by a lapsing of environmental protections.
Guterres said:
In the face of such threats, indigenous peoples have demonstrated extraordinary resilience. Indigenous communities with the autonomy to manage their lands, territories and resources have ensured food security and care through traditional crops and traditional medicine.
The Karen people of Thailand have revived their ancient ritual of kroh yee — or village closure — to fight the pandemic. Such strategies have been applied in other Asian countries and in Latin America, with communities closing off entry to their areas.
Realising the rights of indigenous peoples means ensuring their inclusion and participation in Covid-19 response and recovery strategies. Indigenous peoples must be consulted in all efforts to build back stronger and recover better.
Updated
Bolsonaro's chief of staff tests positive for Covid-19
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff has tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the seventh Brazilian minister to have contracted the disease.
General Walter Souza Braga Netto’s office announced on Monday that he had tested positive for the virus, adding that he is doing well and has no symptoms, according to Reuters.
He will remain in isolation until a new examination and medical evaluation is carried out, and will continue to work remotely.
Last week, Bolsonaro’s wife and one of his ministers tested positive for COVID-19. Bolsonaro also contracted the disease but his latest test showed he was no longer infected.
Brazil has the second-worst coronavirus outbreak in the world after the United States. The South American country has registered more than 2.73 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 94,104, according to health ministry data.
Updated
Spain on Monday reported 968 new coronavirus infections in the past day, showing a slower pace of contagion than last week when the country reported more than 1,000 new cases for three days in a row, according to Reuters.
Cumulative cases, which also include results from antibody tests on people who may have recovered, increased to 297,054 from 288,522, the health ministry said. The number of active clusters grew to 560 from 483 on Thursday, when they were last disclosed.
Covid-19 survivors suffer higher rates of mental ill-health, study claims
Researchers in Italy have found that Covid-19 survivors suffer higher rates of psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, insomnia and depression, according to Reuters.
The survey by San Raffaele hospital in Milan showed that more than half of the 402 patients monitored after being treated for the virus experienced at least one of the disorders in proportion to the severity of the inflammation during the disease.
The patients - 265 men and 137 women - were examined at a one-month follow-up after hospital treatment. Based on clinical interviews and self-assessment questionnaires, physicians found PTSD in 28% of cases, depression in 31%, anxiety in 42% of patients and insomnia in 40%, and finally obsessive-compulsive symptoms in 20%.
The report was published on Monday in the scientific journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity. The study found that women in particular suffered the most from anxiety and depression, despite the lower severity of the infection, the statement said.
“We hypothesise that this may be due to the different functioning of the immune system,” said professor Francesco Benedetti, group leader of the research unit in psychiatry and clinical psychobiology at San Raffaele, in a statement.
A single cruise ship could have spread the coronavirus to dozens of towns and villages across the western coast of Norway, after an outbreak was discovered aboard which infected at least five passengers and 36 crew.
On Monday the Hurtigruten cruise line halted all trips and apologised for procedural errors which led to its liner, MS Roald Amundsen, continuing to sail as the outbreak spread on board, according to the Associated Press.
The 41 people on the MS Roald Amundsen who tested positive have been admitted to the University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsoe, north of the Arctic Circle, where the ship currently is docked.
Hurtigren said it had suspended the ship and two others - MS Fridtjof Nansen and MS Spitsbergen - from operating for an indefinite period.
It has contacted passengers who had been on the MS Roald Amundsen for its 17-24 July and 25-31 July trips from Bergen to Svalbard. The ship had 209 guests on the first voyage and 178 guests on the second. All other crew members tested negative.
But since the cruise line often acts like a local ferry, traveling from port to port along Norway’s western coast, the virus may not have been contained onboard. Some passengers disembarked along the route and may have spread the virus to their local communities.
As many as 69 towns in Norway could have been affected, Norwegian news agency NTB reported.
“A preliminary evaluation shows that there has been a failure in several of our internal procedures,” Hurtigruten’s CEO, Daniel Skjeldam, said in a statement. He added the company that sails along Norway’s picturesque coast between Bergen in the south and Kirkenes in the north is “now in the process of a full review of all procedures.”
Thirty million schoolchildren in Mexico will restart school via television later this month, with a return to classrooms remaining an uncertain goal, the Associated Press reports.
The education secretary, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, and leaders of the country’s biggest broadcasters on Monday presented a plan to air lessons on television, with lessons beginning on 24 August
Officials fear children could become coronavirus carriers, infecting relatives at home.
In remote indigenous communities, instruction will be carried on government radio. Some 140 million free textbooks will be distributed.
Vietnam is embroiled in a “decisive” fight against coronavirus focused on the city of Danang where infections have appeared in four factories with a combined workforce of 3,700, its prime minister said on Monday.
The country is battling several new clusters of infection linked to Danang after going more than three months without detecting any domestic transmission.
“We have to deploy full force to curb all known epicentres, especially those in Danang,” official broadcaster Vietnam Television quoted prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc telling government officials.
“Early August will be the decisive time within which to stop the virus from spreading on a large scale.”
Vietnam, which has a population of 96 million, has confirmed at least 642 infections, and six deaths.
Officials on Monday reported 22 new cases linked to Danang, in central Vietnam and a tourism hotspot where the country’s first domestically transmitted case in 100 days was detected on July 25.
The source of the new outbreak is unclear but it has spread to at least 10 places, including the capital Hanoi in the north and the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City in the south, infecting almost 200 people and killing six.
Four cases were found at factories in different industrial parks in Danang that collectively employ 77,000 people, the Lao Dong newspaper said.
Portugal has reported no new coronavirus deaths for the first time since March, when a lockdown was put in place, and the lowest number of new infections in almost three months.
The figures, reported on Monday, showed that the country’s total confirmed cases rose by 106 from Sunday to 51,568, with 62% of new infections reported in and around Lisbon.
Meanwhile, Portugal’s death toll remained unchanged at 1,738.
“It has been very difficult in recent times - we are very happy this happened,” the secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said as he teared up during a news conference.
“I want to leave this message of hope to the Portuguese but I want to ask them to help us maintain these numbers.”
The country, which is heavily dependent on tourism, began lifting restrictions imposed during a six-week lockdown on 4 May and was initially hailed as a success story in its fight against the disease.
But outbreaks on the outskirts of Lisbon forced the government to reinstate some measures in affected areas, and led several European nations, including Ireland, Belgium and Finland, to impose travel restrictions on Portugal.
Portugal was also left off a list of dozens of countries Britain considered safe enough for travel without having to quarantine upon return.
A nationwide Covid-19 tracing app could be rolled out in Spain in September after a pilot showed it could detect twice as many infections as human trackers.
The system, developed by Google and Apple which holds data on individual devices to ensure privacy, was tested in a simulated outbreak on La Gomera, a tiny island next to the tourist hotspot of Tenerife in the Canary Islands in July.
The government is now aiming to offer it to tourist–dependent areas, or areas where coronavirus cases are rising by 10 August, and to regional health authorities by mid-September, according to the head of the state digital and artificial intelligence unit.
Carme Artigas said:
The app sees more than we see because we only remember contacts with people we know, but the app also remembers contacts with strangers.”
“It is anonymous and much less intrusive than receiving a call from someone who wants to reconstruct everything you have done for the past 15 days,”
Around 3,200 people downloaded the app, beating a target of 3,000.
Participants anonymously entered randomly distributed codes into the app, some of which falsely indicated a positive Covid-19 test, which then alerted everyone with whom they had spent a minimum of 15 minutes at a proximity of 2 metres (6.5ft) or less.
For every virtual positive diagnosis, the app identified an average 6.4 contacts with others, Artigas’s ministry said in a statement, compared with an average 3.5 contacts identified by human tracers in the Canary Islands.
Updated
There may never be a "silver bullet" for Covid-19 says WHO
There might never be a “silver bullet” for Covid-19 in the form of a perfect vaccine, and the road to normality could be long, the World Health Organization has said.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the emergencies chief, Mike Ryan, exhorted nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
“The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing from the UN body’s headquarters in Geneva. He said face masks should become a symbol of solidarity round the world.
A number of vaccines are now in phase 3 clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection. However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment – and there might never be.
For now, stopping outbreaks comes down to the basics of public health and disease control. Testing, isolating and treating patients, and tracing and quarantining their contacts. Do it all. Inform, empower and listen to communities. Do it all. For individuals, it’s about keeping physical distance, wearing a mask, cleaning hands regularly and coughing safely away from others. Do it all.
The message to people and governments is clear: do it all. And when it’s under control, keep going! Keep strengthening the health system. Keep improving surveillance, contact tracing and ensure disrupted health services are restarted as quickly as possible. Keep safeguards and monitoring in place, because lifting restrictions too quickly can lead to a resurgence.
Ryan said countries with high transmission rates, including Brazil and India, needed to brace for a big battle: “The way out is long and requires a sustained commitment,” he said, calling for a “reset” of approach in some places.
“Some countries are really going to have to take a step back now and really take a look at how they are addressing the pandemic within their national borders,” he added.
Asked about the US outbreak, which White House coronavirus experts say is entering a “new phase”, he said officials seemed to have set out the “right path” and it was not the WHO’s job to do so.
The WHO officials said an advance investigation team had concluded its China mission and laid out the groundwork for further efforts to identify the origins of the virus.
The study is one of the demands made by the WHO’s top donor, the US, which plans to leave the body next year, accusing it of being too acquiescent to China.
A larger, WHO-led team of Chinese and international experts is planned next, including in the city of Wuhan, although the timing and composition of that was unclear.
Updated
The Russian government claims to have stolen a march on dozens of global rivals – including the US and UK - in the race to produce a viable coronavirus vaccine, saying it would start production of a vaccine next month and begin mass immunisation by October, writes Peter Beaumont, senior reporter on the Guardian’s global development desk.
The announcement came amid controversy over how Russia has rushed its two vaccine candidates through safety testing, in which researchers dose themselves as part of truncated human trials.
Russian officials previously suggested they planned to approve the main vaccine candidate by 10 August with foreign sales aimed at countries including India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia – which officials say have expressed an interest.
Numerous countries and research groups are working to produce a vaccine, including the UK, which also announced its plans to step up preparations for mass production.
The Russian announcement came even as some experts, including the World Health Organization, cautioned that any vaccines that emerges may not be the “magic bullet” that ends the pandemic.
France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, has warned his country “not to let down its guard” in the fight against coronavirus if it is to avoid a new national lockdown, according to AFP.
“The virus has not gone on holiday and neither have we,” the premier said on a visit to the north-eastern city of Lille, amid a recent rise in cases. “We need to protect ourselves against this virus, without putting a stop to our economic and social life, in other words avoiding the risk of a new generalised lockdown.”
France, which has registered more than 30,000 deaths from Covid-19, has emerged relatively swiftly from a two-month lockdown imposed to combat the virus, but this has come with the risk of an increase in cases.
Health authorities recorded thousands of new confirmed infections last week, prompting some regions to reimpose local restrictions.
“We are seeing an increase in the figures for the epidemic which should make us more attentive than ever,” Castex said.
“I call on every French person to remain very vigilant. The fight against the virus depends of course on the state, local communities, institutions, but also on each of us,” he added.
Updated
Manila to go back into lockdown
The capital of the Philippines and its outlying districts are to go back into lockdown after medical groups warned the country was waging “a losing battle” against the coronavirus, the Associated Press reports.
Metropolitan Manila, the capital region of more than 12 million people, and five densely populated provinces will revert to stricter quarantine restrictions for two weeks starting Tuesday, the president’s spokesman, Harry Roque, said on Monday.
The move, which economic officials oppose, will again prohibit non-essential travel outside of homes.
The president, Rodrigo Duterte, had relaxed the country’s lockdown on 1 June in an effort to restart the stalled economy.
Under the new restrictions, police checkpoints will return to ensure only authorised people, including medical personnel and workers in vital companies, venture out of their homes, said Eduardo Ano, the interior secretary.
Other businesses previously allowed to partly reopen, including barbershops, internet cafes, gyms, dine-in restaurants, massage and tattoo shops, drive-in cinemas and tourist destinations, will again be closed.
Political leaders in Germany are divided over whether to restrict the rights of demonstrators, after tens of thousands of people who took to the streets of Berlin at the weekend failed to abide by hygiene and distancing rules, writes Kate Connolly, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent.
According to officials, up to 20,000 people took part in demonstrations against the government’s coronavirus restrictions at different locations across Berlin on Saturday, amalgamating for a joint rally later in the day. Organisers said up to 1.3 million people took part, a figure that police denied.
The gathering was broken up by police after repeated warnings over participants’ failure to wear face coverings or keep a 1.5-metre distance from each other were ignored.
During attempts to break up the gathering, which organisers called End of the Pandemic – Day of Freedom, some protesters turned violent. Police said 133 demonstrators were arrested and 45 officers were injured, with some needing to be hospitalised. Several journalists reported being verbally or physically attacked.
Covid-19 death 'every seven minutes' in Iran
One person is dying from Covid-19 every seven minutes in Iran, state television said on Monday, as the country’s health ministry reported 215 new deaths from the disease.
The combined death toll in Iran rose to 17,405 on Monday, Sima Sadat Lari, the health ministry spokeswoman, said, while the number of confirmed cases rose by 2,598 to 312,035. Of those, 270,228 have recovered.
Some experts have doubted the accuracy of Iran’s official coronavirus tolls. A report by the Iranian parliament’s research centre in April suggested that the coronavirus tolls might be almost twice as many as those announced by the health ministry, according to Reuters.
The report said that Iran’s official coronavirus figures were based only on the number of deaths in hospitals and those who had already tested positive for the coronavirus.
The BBC reported on Monday that, based on data from an anonymous source, the number of deaths in Iran might be three times higher than officially reported. Iranian health authorities denied the report and said there had been no cover-up.
Iran’s national coronavirus combat taskforce was expected to announce later on Monday whether nationwide university entrance examinations, with over 1 million participants, will take place in August. Many Iranians have called on social media for the examinations to be postponed.
The first of Germany’s schools have reopened today in the north eastern state of Mecklenburg Vorpommern, with all eyes on the region where the return of 150,000 pupils and 13,000 teachers is being seen as a test-run for the rest of the country, writes Kate Connolly, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent.
One of the most sparsely populated areas in Germany, which has had strict coronavirus rules and has been far-less affected by the pandemic than elsewhere in the west and the south, MeckPomm, as it is popularly referred to, has taken a no nonsense approach amid a great deal of tension as to whether due to rising infection rates, Germany might have to revert back to drastic shutdown measures.
School groups will be contained, lesson times will be staggered and break times will be held only in strictly demarcated areas. Primary school pupils will initially receive just four hours teaching a day, pupils at secondary schools just five hours. Bettina Martin, the education minister who has been criticised by some for not being ambitious enough, has countered critics by saying: “better a careful start than a hasty one”, and insisting “it’s high time to put the interests of the children to the fore”.
One school, in Neustrelitz, is even offering voluntary coronavirus tests for all its pupils and staff, who are advised to take their throat swabs themselves looking into a mirror. “You do have to fight against the urge to vomit,” the headteacher, Henry Tesch, told Die Zeit. Test results come back within two days, he said.
Some would like the school to be model which the rest of the country would follow. The federal health minister, Jens Spahn, who this week will introduce obligatory coronavirus tests for people returning from 130 countries considered high risk due to their infection rates, has called on more regular tests to be made available for teachers and educators. The capacity, he has said, is sufficient.
But Germany’s teaching association has warned of a “huge confusion” as schools prepare to reopen, with a lack of clarity over preparations in case of the need to close schools once again.
Each state is taking a different approach. Hamburg will return on 6 August and has said anyone who is returning from an area considered high risk, such as Israel, Turkey, the US or Egypt, will either have to produce a negative test or go into quarantine for two weeks. If it can be proven that someone has deliberately travelled to a risk area and has to stay at home as a result, it will be considered to be bunking off and their family could be fined accordingly.
Berlin’s schools return on 10 August, with teachers and parents asking why there is not a better offering for online teaching in the case of teachers – around 26% nationwide - who are considered high risk and therefore must work from home.
Germany’s federal education minister, Anja Karlizcek, has spoken out in favour of a general face covering rule inside school buildings, and on school playgrounds, but has no authority to issue a nationwide decree.
In Berlin a decision on who should wear face masks and where, is still outstanding.
North Rhein Westaphalia, Germany’s most populous state, which returns on August 12, announced on Monday that face coverings will be obligatory in all its secondary and vocational schools, including during lessons. Primary schools are exempt as long as pupils remain on their seats during teaching.
Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have said masks will be obligatory inside their school buildings, while in Hesse and Saxony, schools are being allowed to make their own face mask regulations.
Belgium's Covid-19 ICU admissions double in a month
The number of coronavirus patients admitted to intensive care units in Belgium has doubled in a month and the epidemic is spreading “intensively”, health officials warned on Monday, according to Reuters.
Belgium suffered one of the highest per capita rates of infection at the height of Covid-19’s progress through Europe but began easing lockdown measures in May after the disease peaked. Now, cases are climbing once again.
“We can see that the virus is circulating intensively in our territory. The numbers continue to rise,” the federal virus taskforce spokeswoman, Frederique Jacobs, said.
“There are no less than 13 municipalities in which more than 100 people per 100,000 inhabitants have tested positive, that’s one person in 1,000 infected as of last week.”
On average 2.7 people died of Covid-19 every day in Belgium in the last week of July, up by about a third from two in the previous seven days. At least 9,845 have died since the epidemic arrived.
The rate of daily new cases climbed 68% between the two weeks, and the daily number of hospitalisations by more than a third. In total 69,849 cases have been detected in the country, although most recover.
Most of the new wave of infections are among young adults, but nevertheless, Jacobs said, “The number of people admitted to intensive care has doubled since the beginning of July.”
It’s official: if you’re thinking of jumping on a ferry to island-hop in Greece you will have to mask up. That is the message after the Greek government spokesman announced the measure today, writes Helena Smith, the Guardian’s Athens correspondent.
With the tourist-dependent country bracing for a potential surge in arrivals, and Greeks preparing for one of the Orthodox calendar’s biggest religious celebrations on 15 August, the precautionary step has been deemed essential.
“If there isn’t compliance we are ready to look at the issue of [limiting passenger] capacity,” Stelios Petsas, the spokesman, told reporters saying the measure would be enforced from tomorrow. “We are always ready to take new measures,” he added after emphasising that while Greece had a “much better epidemiological profile” than most other countries, complacency had become a real threat.
Previously ferry passengers had been spared having to don face coverings on open-air decks with crew members announcing via megaphone – in English clearly learned by rote – that travellers were “required to wear masks indoors”. The measure, to apply until at least 18 August, was announced after the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, held a teleconference with senior health officials handing the government’s response to the pandemic.
A ban on re-entry to the country of seasonal foreign workers – the vast majority from neighbouring Albania – employed mostly in the agriculture sector will also be extended amid mounting concern over the rise in cases in neighbouring Balkan countries.
Greece has experienced a worrying rise in coronavirus cases with infectious disease experts calling the coming week critical. Officials recorded the highest single day spike in weeks at the weekend with 110 cases reported on Saturday. The increase in infections has seen the total numbers of cases rise to 4,622 from 4,077 10 days ago.
The increase prompted authorities in Cyprus to demand that, as of 6 August, travellers flying into the Mediterranean island from Greece will be required to have tested negative for the virus. Passengers will have to carry a doctor’s certificate proving the negative molecular test for Covid-19 has been conducted 72 hours prior to arrival.
Prof Nikolaos Sypsas, a prominent infectious diseases expert who sits on the committee that advises the government, warned that bars and restaurants may soon be required to close earlier.
Likening Covid-19 to a fire raging “around us”, he told SKAI TV: “The biggest danger is for citizens to stop believing in the state and experts. Ignorance feeds the epidemic. The epidemic is on the rise globally … the second wave will come if we remain spectators to the increase in cases.”
Local lockdowns, he said, were also on the cards.
“This is a very critical and difficult week … if measures are maintained they will very much help us curb the virus. If this abrupt increase in cases continues we will take measures to protect vulnerable groups.”
Updated
Players who deliberately cough at opponents or referees can be shown red or yellow cards under new guidelines issued by England’s Football Association amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The instructions to referees taking charge of games when Covid-19 restrictions are in place will come into force immediately and be applied at all levels of the game.
People will have to wear masks outdoors in many of the major areas of the southern French city of Nice, including parts of the tourist spot of the Promenade des Anglais, the city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, has said.
The measures for Nice coincide with similar new rules to make the wearing of masks compulsory outdoors in several other French cities, as France fights against a resurgence of the Covid-19 virus, according to the Reuters news agency.
France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, was in the northern city of Lille on Monday, which also made the wearing of masks compulsory in many of its pedestrian areas and parks.
Updated
Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet medical journal, has written for the Guardian on how a rising wave of anti-China sentiment, fostered by western governments, is threatening peace and hampering efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic. He writes:
The Chinese government does have questions to answer. The first case of Covid-19, as later reported in the Lancet, took place in Wuhan on 1 December. Why did it take a whole month for Chinese authorities to report the outbreak of a dangerous new disease to the international community? For such a highly transmissible virus, those four weeks of silence lost precious time for alerting the world to the risks of coronavirus.
But the scale of the anti-China reaction is disproportionate to the reality of the courageous contributions made by Chinese scientists to our global understanding of this pandemic. It was Chinese scientists who first described the human threat of this new disease on 24 January. It was Chinese scientists who first documented person-to-person transmission. It was Chinese scientists who first sequenced the genome of the virus. It was Chinese scientists who called attention to the importance of scaling up access to personal protective equipment, testing and quarantine. It was Chinese scientists who warned of the threat of a pandemic.
Singapore to use electronic tags to track quarantine compliance of some travellers
Some travellers arriving in Singapore will be required to wear electronic monitoring devices to ensure they are complying with quarantine restrictions, the city state’s government has announced.
The devices, which use GPS and Bluetooth signals to track wearers, will be issued to people arriving from a select group of countries who will be allowed to isolate at home rather than at a state-appointed quarantine centre.
Similar measures using electronic wristbands to track people’s’ movements during quarantine have been used in Hong Kong and South Korea.
In Singapore, travellers will be ordered to activate the device when they reach their home. They will receive notifications on the device which they must acknowledge. Any attempt to leave home or tamper with the device will trigger an alert to the authorities.
There are already tough punishments for breaching of quarantine and social distancing rules. Under the Infectious Diseases Act, lawbreakers can be fined up to S$10,000 ($7,272) or imprisoned for up to six months, or both. Singapore has also revoked the work passes of foreigners who flouted the rules.
The tiny country has reported 53,051 coronavirus infections, one of south east Asia’s worst outbreaks, mostly due to mass outbreaks in cramped migrant workers’ dormitories, but imported cases have been creeping up in recent days.
Twenty-seven people have died of Covid-19 there.
Updated
Tens of thousands of people who marched through Berlin over the weekend in a demonstration against coronavirus restrictions in Germany have been accused by the government of “unacceptable” exploitation of the right to protest.
About 20,000 people took part in the “day of freedom” demonstration on Saturday, most not covering their nose and mouth or respecting Germany’s 1.5-metre social distancing requirement.
The crowd shouted “We are the second wave” as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding “resistance” and dubbing the pandemic “the biggest conspiracy theory”.
On Monday, Ulrike Demmer, spokeswoman for the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that protesters who failed to wear masks or respect social distancing rules had “exploited their right to demonstrate” and were “in no way justified”.
While the freedom to demonstrate was important, the “images we saw this weekend were unacceptable”, Demmer was quoted as saying by AFP, the French government-funded news agency.
Demmer said the government condemned “not only the massive violations against hygiene regulations and basic protective measures”, but also reported attempts to hinder journalists from reporting and attacks on police.
Police said 45 officers were injured at the “day of freedom” protests and other demonstrations.
The number of coronavirus cases has risen in Germany in recent weeks.
Updated
Russia says it will begin producing coronavirus vaccine next month
The Russian government has said it aims to launch mass production of a coronavirus vaccine next month and turn out “several million” doses per month by next year, according to AFP.
“We are very much counting on starting mass production in September,” the industry minister, Denis Manturov, said in an interview published by TASS news agency.
“We will be able to ensure production volumes of several hundred thousand a month, with an eventual increase to several million by the start of next year,” he said, adding that one developer is preparing production technology at three locations in central Russia.
The country is pushing ahead with several vaccine prototypes and one prepared at the Gamaleya institute in Moscow has reached advanced stages of development.
The health minister, Mikhail Murashko, on Saturday said the Gamaleya vaccine had “completed clinical trials” and that documents were being prepared to register it with the state.
Gamaleya’s vaccine is a so-called viral vector vaccine, meaning it employs another virus to carry the DNA encoding of the needed immune response into cells.
Gamaleya’s vaccine employs an adenovirus, a similar technology to the coronavirus vaccine prototype developed by China’s CanSino, currently in the advanced stage of clinical trials, and Oxford University’s vaccine, which is being trialled in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.
The Gamaleya institute came under fire after researchers and directors injected themselves with the prototype months ago, with specialists criticising the move as an unorthodox and rushed way of starting human trials.
Updated
Hi, this is Damien Gayle here taking over the liveblog now. For the next eight hours I’ll be bringing you the latest updates from the coronavirus outbreak around the world.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for coverage, then feel free to drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Lebanon’s foreign minister announced his resignation on Monday in protest at the government’s mishandling of the worst economic crisis in decades that has forced Beirut to ask for IMF support.
“I have decided to resign today as foreign minister,” Nassif Hitti said in a statement seen by AFP, charging that the government had shown no will to initiate reforms demanded by international donors.
“I participated in the government under the logic of serving one boss, which is Lebanon,” Hitti said. “But I found that in my country there are many bosses and contradictory interests.
“If they don’t unite in the interest of the Lebanese people … then the ship, God forbid, will sink with everyone onboard.”
Lebanon is mired in its worst economic crisis since the 1975-90 civil war, with runaway inflation, galloping prices and bank capital controls fuelling poverty, despair and angry street protests.
Prime minister Hasan Diab’s government, formed in January and billed as a group of technocrats, has struggled to secure international support.
Hitti’s resignation comes more than a week after France’s top diplomat Jean-Yves Le Drian during a visit scolded Lebanon’s leadership for failing to take the necessary measures to save the country from collapse.
Updated
The number of confirmed coronavirus related deaths rose by four on Monday in Afghanistan as at least 21 people have been killed in an ongoing complex attack by Isis in eastern Nangarhar province.
Health ministry reported that the total death toll stands at 1,288. In its latest update, the health ministry said the number of people who had tested positive for the virus had reached 36,746, an increase of 36 on the day before. There have been 25,556 recoveries, including 47 over the past 24 hours.
The war-torn country, which has a lack of testing capacity, has tested 89,360 suspected patients since the outbreak began. Health ministry’s facilities were able to test 105 patients over the past day. The ministry has said that the number of patients with coronavirus have decreased in recent weeks.
Afghanistan recorded its lowest daily rise in the number of transmissions and deaths on Sunday as one patient died from the virus and another one tested positive from only 19 tests. Health officials said that despite warnings, Eid was widely celebrated in public places.
“A lower number of people have come for testing during Eid days,” the officials said, citing the reason for dropping cases.
Health officials in western Herat province announced over the weekend that Dr Ibrahim Basim, 64, the head infectious diseases department of Herat regional hospital has died from the virus. Basim identified and treated the first Covid-19 patient in Afghanistan and raised awareness about the pandemic in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, at least 21 people have been killed and 43 wounded in an ongoing attack claimed by Isis on the prison of eastern Nangarhar province, which began on Sunday evening, local officials have said.
The attack started after a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle full of explosives at the entrance gate of the prison.
Local governor’s spokesman said that the clash is still ongoing close to the prison and has continued for so long because attackers “use shopping malls as cover.” So far three attackers were killed, but militants continue to fight in the Jalalabad prison and a nearby mall.
A rare three-day long ceasefire over Eid festival between the Taliban and Afghan government ended on Monday but no security incident has been reported as efforts to start negotiations between the two intensified in recent days.
Indonesia recorded 1,679 new coronavirus infections on Monday, bringing the total number of cases in the southeast asian country to 113,134, official data on the health ministry website showed.
The data also showed there were 66 additional deaths, taking the overall number of fatalities to 5,302.
Kenya has long grappled with high teen pregnancy rates. However numbers had fallen from 82 pregnancies per 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in 2016, to 71 per 1,000 in 2017, according to Save the Children.
Last month, figures from a leaked health ministry document showing thousands of girls had fallen pregnant during lockdown between March and May led to fierce debate on social media.
In Nairobi alone almost 5,000 girls fell pregnant, just over 500 of them between the ages of 10 and 14, according to the figures from a data unit within the ministry.
Both president Uhuru Kenyatta and his health minister Mutahi Kagwe have mentioned the rise in teen pregnancies during addresses to the nation.
“Teenage motherhood is a catastrophic, disempowering outcome in the life of a girl. More often than not it spells doom to the teenager’s attainment of life’s full potential,” Kagwe said last month.
Evelyne Opondo, senior Africa regional director at the Centre for Reproductive Rights, said evidence of an uptick in pregnancies directly linked to the pandemic was still “anecdotal”.
However she believed the numbers are merely “the tip of the iceberg” as most girls do not seek proper antenatal care.
She said teen pregnancies were likely increasing during the pandemic because girls were idle at home, or “engaging in relationships for survival”.
Some children get free lunches or free sanitary towels at schools, which will remain closed until at least 2021.
Being home also places an added burden on parents who may have lost their jobs.
“So the young girls will turn to men who will be providing them with pocket money, money for pads,” Opondo said.
“We have seen this even before the virus so you can imagine how much worse it must be.”
The Philippine health ministry on Monday confirmed 3,226 novel coronavirus infections and 46 additional deaths. In a bulletin, it said total confirmed cases have reached 106,330 and deaths have increased to 2,104.
With four successive days of reporting record infections, the Philippines is close to passing Indonesia with the most cases so far in Southeast Asia.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday ordered the re-imposition of a strict lockdown in and around the capital starting Aug 4 to stem the case surge and help inundated hospitals.
Norwegian cruise line Hurtigruten is halting all its so-called expedition cruises until further notice following an outbreak of Covid-19 on one of its vessels last week, the company said in a statement on Monday.
At least 40 passengers and crew from the MS Roald Amundsen cruise liner have so far tested positive for the coronavirus, public health officials said on Sunday.
Asian markets mostly fell Monday with sentiment depressed by a spike in coronavirus infections that has forced fresh lockdowns and sparked worries about the impact on the world economy.
A lack of substantial progress by US lawmakers on a new stimulus package is also frustrating traders, while China-US tensions continued as the White House considers measures against Chinese tech firms, citing national security.
With the disease showing no sign of easing globally - total cases topped 18 million Monday - governments are moving to reimpose containment measures.
Australia’s Victoria state imposed fresh, sweeping restrictions Sunday, including a curfew in Melbourne for the next six weeks, a ban on wedding gatherings, and an order that schools and universities go back online in the coming days.
Britain introduced new measures in several northern counties at the end of last week, while there are reports the government is considering fresh moves to avert another economically painful national lockdown, including sealing off London.
The new wave of infections has fanned fears that a nascent economic recovery will be knocked off track.
Hello, please do get in touch this morning while I blog and share any comments on news tips with me.
Twitter: @sloumarsh
Instagram: sarah_marsh_journalist
Email: sarah.marsh@theguardian.com
Australia to introduce pandemic leave payment for workers who run out of sick leave
Australia will introduce a pandemic leave payment for workers who have run out of sick leave but need to be quarantined because they have been directed to stay at home due to the novel coronavirus, prime minister Scott Morrison said Monday.
The announcement comes as the country deals with a second wave of infections, and its second most populous state, Victoria, closes retail shops, limits construction projects and curtails manufacturing activity in order to slow the spread of Covid-19. The payment will be a $1,500 for a two-week pandemic leave period.
Updated
The UK government will act if the coronavirus spreads through the capital of England, London, as it has done in other parts of Britain, junior business minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Monday.
“If we see the virus spreading in a particular way in London, as we’ve seen in Manchester and West Yorkshire where it’s spreading through people coming into another person’s home, then we will discuss that … and we will not hesitate to act,” he told LBC radio.
Updated
Top French bank Société Générale said on Monday the Covid-19 crisis pushed it into a second-quarter loss of more than €1bn as it was forced to increase loss provisions sharply.
The net loss of €1.26bn ($1.48bn) for the three months to June, compared with a profit of more than €1bn in the same period a year earlier follows a loss of €326m in the first quarter.
“This quarter has been sharply impacted by the Covid-19 global health crisis and its economic repercussions,” Société Générale said in a statement.
Net banking income – a bank’s core measure of profitability – tumbled 13.5%, with all business areas affected except for private banking, asset management and financial and consultation services.
Given the uncertain outlook, the bank said it had put aside €653m to cover losses during the three months.
While most banks have suffered badly in the coronavirus pandemic like Société Générale, its French peer BNP Paribas bucked the trend, managing to report on Friday only a slightly lower second quarter net profit of €2.3bn thanks to a surge in investment banking.
Updated
Lebanese foreign minister Nassif Hitti will submit his resignation on Monday over “the government’s performance on a number of issues”, Sky News Arabia cited him as saying.
Hitti decided to quit over differences with the prime minister and frustration at being sidelined, a ministry official and sources close to him said earlier.
Updated
Mandatory testing of travellers returning to Germany from countries with a high risk of Covid-19 infection will take effect later this week, health minister Jens Spahn said.
“We have first drafts. We want to coordinate this well with the states because they need to be able to implement it at airports and train stations,” he told German broadcaster ARD on Monday.
Updated
A novel coronavirus outbreak that began in the Vietnamese city of Danang more than a week ago has spread to at least four city factories with a combined workforce of about 3,700, state media reported on Monday.
Four cases were found at the plants in different industrial parks in the central city which collectively employ 77,000 people, the Lao Dong newspaper said.
Vietnam, praised widely for its decisive measures to combat the coronavirus since it first appeared in late January, is battling new clusters of infection having gone more than three months without detecting any domestic transmission.
Authorities on Monday reported one new case linked to Danang, a tourism hot spot where a case was detected on 24 July, Vietnam’s first domestically transmitted case in 100 days.
The source of the new outbreak is unclear but it has spread to at least 10 different places, including the capital, Hanoi, and the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, infecting 174 people and killing six.
Twenty-three per cent of the latest infections are asymptomatic, the government said in a statement. The country of 96 million has confirmed at least 621 infections, with six deaths.
Prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said on Monday early August was a “decisive time” to contain the new outbreak, which he said could have a more “critical impact” than previous waves of infection.
Vietnam has carried out 52,000 tests for the coronavirus in the past seven days, according to a Reuters analysis of official data.
The government said on Saturday it planned to test Danang’s entire population of 1.1 million people, part of “unprecedented measures” to fight the outbreak. The city imposed a lockdown last week, closing entertainment venues and banning movement in and out of the city.
Authorities said on Sunday that the strain of virus detected in Danang was a more contagious one, and that each infected person could infect 5 to 6 people, compared with 1.8-2.2 for infections earlier in the year.
Updated
Thousands of Chinese beer lovers gathered as the annual Qingdao beer festival opened over the weekend.
China has largely brought the coronavirus outbreak under control through a series of lockdowns and restrictions, and the small number of cases reassured beer-lovers to turn out despite the global pandemic.
At the festival, which opened on Friday and runs until late August, drinkers were eating and drinking together, watching shows and fireworks and sampling the more than 1,500 types of beer available.
Many revellers were walking around the enormous venue in Shandong province mask-free, with long tables packed with merry drinkers in scenes reminiscent of pre-Covid-19 days.
State broadcaster CCTV said the festival was a chance for people to go back to “normal life and clink glasses”.
“It’s been half a year since I last travelled around … I feel so happy and relaxed right now,” Wang Hua, a tourist from northern Shanxi Province, told CCTV.
But all was not entirely as normal. The central “Beer City” is limited to 30% visitor capacity, while staff must wear masks and visitor temperatures and health codes are checked.
China reported 43 new coronavirus infections on Monday.
Updated
Hello everyone. I am taking the blog over from Helen Sullivan, bringing you the latest global updates on the coronavirus outbreak. Please get in touch with me while I work to share any comments or news tips via any of the channels below. Thanks so much.
Twitter: @sloumarsh
Instagram: sarah_marsh_journalist
Email: sarah.marsh@theguardian.com
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. Thanks for following along.
I’m off to pick my husband up from his hotel quarantine in Sydney – it will be the first time we’ve seen each other in five months. He has been in Beirut, where we were living when I came to Australia to start this job. Lebanon’s airport shut for three months shortly afterwards.
So I’ll be on leave for a few days.
My colleague Sarah Marsh will be taking you through the next few hours of pandemic news.
Global report: July's terrible toll revealed as coronavirus cases double every six weeks
July was the worst month of the coronavirus pandemic so far for many countries, with more than 8 million cases recorded – nearly as many as the first six months of the outbreak put together, figures have shown.
With global infections passing 18 million on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned over the weekend that the pandemic continues to accelerate, with cases doubling about every six weeks:
Restrictions announced on businesses in Metropolitan Melbourne
So, a summary of those restrictions to businesses in Metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, which yesterday started a six-week a strict lockdown:
- Grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, post offices, petrol stations and similar businesses, as well as businesses involved in the state’s front line response, will not close.
- Retail businesses will close, as will certain manufacturers.
- Construction and businesses including meat works will operate at a reduced capacity.
Victorian state Premier Daniel Andrews says:
Now everything I’ve announced relates to metropolitan Melbourne with the exception of abattoirs:
Now everything I’ve announced relates to metropolitan Melbourne with the exception of abattoirs.
Those rules, two-thirds production, PPE, much like a health setting as well as temperature checking and stopping workers working at multiple sites.
All that will apply at each of those important facilities right across the state, we can’t have a situation where such a high risk environment is operating under two different sets of rules into different parts of the state, that will only contribute to further out breaks and would only mean we were moving the problem from where it currently is into communities where it has not been.
We’ll be leaving that press conference now – but you can follow the rest of it on the Australian politics live blog:
Updated
Also included in the third category, where activity will be significantly reduced from Friday at midnight, is construction. There are three categories of construction, Andrews says:
[The first is] large-scale major projects. We will continue project by project to look at ways we can further reduce then umber of staff while doing so safely and for instance allowing us to reopen train lines that are currently closed because we are removing level crossings.
Very large commercial building, whether it be building apartments in the city or building factories or warehouses or some of those sorts of non-residential building project, if it’s above three stories, then those builders will need to reduce their workforce down to the practical minimum, they can have no more than25% of their workforce working.
In terms of the third category of building which is domestic homes, that sector can obviously stay open, as the other two can as well but there will be -- it will be unlawful to have any more than five people on site at any one time.
The third category of business in Metropolitan Melbourne will reduce their activities from midnight on Friday – though abattoirs across the state face these restrictions:
In terms of the third category of businesses that will have to scale back the way in which they work, they will remain open but they will look very different and they will be operating at a significantly reduced capacity to what a normal August andSeptember would look like.
...
If I can give you a couple of examples, firstly, meat works...they will reduce their production by one-third. And those workplaces will look very different. There will be some of the most stringent safety protocols that have ever been put in place in any industrial setting.Those workers will be essentially dressed as if they were a health worker. Gloves and gowns, masks and shields, they will be working in one workplace only, they will be temperature checked, they will be tested.
...
Those changes will come into effect together with a couple of other examples which I will move to, and midnight Friday.
Updated
The second category of business in Metropolitan Melbourne is other retail, as well as some manufacturers. These must close at 11.59pm on Wednesday this week:
From 11.59pm this Wednesday, retail will close, some manufacturing will close, some admin will close. These businesses, unless they have specific requirements to safely shut down on a slightly longer timeline, they will have to close by 11.59 on Wednesday night.
To give you the retail example, for instance, Bunnings [an Australian hardware chain], you will no longer be able to go into a Bunnings store but you will be able to collect goods without making contact with anybody.
Updated
Speaking in the Victoria, Australia, state premier Daniel Andrews has announced that there are three categories of businesses. The first includes grocery stores, and these will not close:
So, in essence, there are three groups. The first is those businesses that will remain open and not be affected.
...
I will point to a couple of examples where it needs to be statewide but the group of businesses that will not close, will not change, not the modified, supermarkets, grocery stores, bottle shops, pharmacies, petrol stations, banks, news agencies, post offices, plus of course everybody involved in our frontline response, our comprehensive response to this pandemic.
Andrews says that he will be announcing further measures today, but that there will be “progressive announcement made over the next few days”:
Now, given that we are undertaking an exercise that has never been done before and there is no playbook, no handbook for a global pandemic of this nature, yesterday we made some announcements and today, some further announcements but there will be progressive announcements made over the next few days to give people the clarity and certainty they need.
The premier of the Australian state of Victoria is speaking now.
The regional parts of the state are under stage 3 lockdown while Metropolitan Melbourne is under a strict Stage 4 lockdown.
A reminder of those measures:
A summary of the Stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne until 13 September:
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) August 2, 2020
- From 6pm tonight shopping is one person per household, within 5km of home
- Daily exercise is 1 hour, max 2 people, within 5km of home
- Curfew 8pm to 5am unless you're at work, giving or getting care
Andrews is expected to announce further restrictions on businesses.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- The United States reported a record 1.87 million cases in July, more than twice the figure for the previous record month, April, when 860,000 new cases were reported, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. May saw 690,200 new infections, while June saw 820,000 cases. US infections are approaching 5 million, with 4,657,693 confirmed, or more than a quarter of the global total.
- India reported nearly 55,000 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, down from the previous day’s record of 57,118. At least 37,364 people have died in India during the pandemic so far.
-
Residents in the Australian city of Melbourne will be subject to an overnight curfew for the next six weeks, and be banned from travelling more than 5km to go shopping or to exercise, as Victoria attempts to get the number of new coronavirus cases under control. The premier, Daniel Andrews, announced that from 6pm on Sunday, residents in the Melbourne metropolitan area would be under curfew for six weeks until 13 September.
- Vietnam is rushing to build a 700-bed makeshift hospital to cope with an outbreak in the central city of Da Nang, as the health minister warned the current strain of the virus is more contagious than those previously seen in the country.
- Honduras will extend its curfew for another week in an effort to curb the pandemic . Honduras first imposed a curfew, which is in effect daily between 5pm and 7am, in March.
- The number of new Covid-19 cases in China’s far north-western region of Xinjiang continue to fall, with 28 reported on Monday. China reported 43 new cases nationwide, seven of them imported and eight in the north-eastern province of Liaoning.
- Seven Chinese health officials arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, the first of a 60-person team that will carry out widespread Covid-19 testing in the territory as it races to halt another wave. A group of local Hong Kong councillors said on Sunday that some local residents fear China may use their presence as an opportunity to collect DNA samples for surveillance purposes.
- A major incident has been declared in Greater Manchester in England in response to increases in coronavirus infection rates across “multiple localities”.
-
Nancy Pelosi says she has no confidence in Deborah Birx over handling of pandemic. House speaker Nancy Pelosi escalated an attack on Dr Deborah Birx, a senior scientist on Donald Trump’s coronavirus taskforce, in television comments on Sunday as Birx defended the administration’s handling of the pandemic.
- Media to be banned from Republican convention due to coronavirus restrictions. The media will reportedly not be allowed to witness Donald Trump’s formal renomination as the Republican party’s choice for president at its national convention later this month.
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson is considering new lockdown measures in England should there be a second wave of coronavirus infections. Plans are being assessed after a rise in Covid-19 cases forced the prime minister to slow the lockdown easing on Friday, with proposed relaxations for the leisure and beauty sectors delayed.
Australian state of Victoria cofirms 429 new coronavirus cases
In the Australia state of Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews is expected to announce further restrictions on business in a few minutes’ time.
The state has confirmed 429 new cases confirmed in the last 24 hours, after 25,000 tests
13 people, confirmed to have contracted Covid-19, have died in the past 24 hours. They include a man in his 60s, two males and a female in their 70s, two males in their 80s and five females and two males in their 90s.
Victoria’s death toll now stands at 136
The overall total cases have increased by 380, due to 49 cases being reclassified – largely due to duplication.
Within Victoria, 36 of the new cases are linked to outbreaks or complex cases and 393 are under investigation.
In Victoria at the current time:
- 2031 cases may indicate community transmission
- 6489 cases are currently active in Victoria
- 416 cases of coronavirus are in hospital, including 35 in intensive care
- 5111 people have recovered from the virus
- More than 1,676,953 tests have been processed – an increase of 25,000 since yesterday
Charlotte Graham-McLay reports from New Zealand, where life is back to pre-Covid normal, aside from closed borders. The terrible news from Australia has filled the front pages in Aotearoa today, with the public looking on in horror as the Melbourne lockdown begins. Here is her full report:
Reuters reports that Singapore will make some incoming travellers wear an electronic monitoring device to ensure that they comply with coronavirus quarantines as the city-state gradually reopens its borders.
From August 11, the devices will be given to incoming travellers, including citizens and residents, from a select group of countries who will be allowed to isolate at home rather than at a state-appointed facility.
Similar measures using electronic wristbands to track peoples’ movements during quarantine have been used in Hong Kong and South Korea.
Travellers to Singapore are required to activate the device, which use GPS and Bluetooth signals, upon reaching their home and will receive notifications on the device which they must acknowledge.
Any attempt to leave home or tamper with the device will trigger an alert to the authorities.
Melbourne’s empty streets under lockdown and curfew – in pictures:
Stage four restrictions have come into effect in the capital as Victoria tries to get the coronavirus outbreak under control:
India reported 52,972 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 1.8 million, data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare showed on Monday.
Reuters reports that with 771 new deaths, the Covid-19 disease has now claimed 38,135 lives in the world’s second-most populous country.
The people that Covid-19 has cut off from home
Shaun Walker reports from Budapest with Lily Kuo in Beijing, Hazem Balousha in Gaza and Oliver Holmes:
Covid-19 has caused havoc with the travel plans of millions across the world, ruining holidays and testing long-distance relationships. But for many people who are still unable to get back to their home countries, such problems seem trivial by comparison.
Chinese students, Mongolian tourists, Palestinians from Gaza and many others have all found themselves unable to return home, often meaning separation from close family, economic hardship and uncertainty about the future:
Vietnam is rushing to build a 700-bed makeshift hospital to cope with a coronavirus outbreak in the central city of Da Nang, as the country’s health minister warned the current strain of the virus is more contagious than those previously seen in the country.
Nguyen Thanh Long said each person carrying the new strain may infect about 5-6 people, compared to 1.8-2.2 people during the country’s previous outbreak.
Over recent months, the country has been praised for its success in preventing a major outbreak, thanks to its aggressive contact tracing and quarantine measures. It was on the brink of reaching 100 days without any community transmission, before cases were detected in Da Nang, a busy tourist hub. Last week, Vietnam recorded its first ever coronavirus-related fatality, linked to the outbreak in Da Nang. Since then, five more people have died.
About 200 people in six cities, including Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, have tested positive over recent weeks. More than 100,000 people, mostly domestic tourists returning from Da Nang, have been asked to isolate.In total, the country has recorded 621 infections since January.
More on China’s cases now:
An outbreak of the coronavirus continues to spread in Xinjiang, home to China’s controversial internment camps and government programme of mass surveillance targeting Muslim minorities. As of Sunday, the far northwestern territory added 28 new cases, bringing the total number of infections in the region to 590 - as officials continue lockdown measures.
Of the cases, five are considered “critically ill” and 21 have been diagnosed as “severely ill”. The majority of cases, 586, are in the region’s capital Urumqi, with other cases in Kashgar and Changji prefecture. Almost 15,000 people are currently under medical observation.
As most Chinese cities return to normal, lifting restrictions and sending people back to work, authorities are still struggling to deal with imported infections from returning Chinese nationals. In Wuhan, which was hardest hit by the virus after it first emerged there late last year, officials confirmed three new cases of the virus - all Chinese students who had been studying in Russia and took a chartered flight from Moscow to Wuhan on July 30.
The flight, CA602, carried 198 passengers and 20 crew - who have been placed under medical observation, according to officials.
Honduras will extend its coronavirus curfew for another week through to 9 August in an effort to curb the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports, citing the security ministry.
Honduras first imposed a curfew, which is in daily effect between 5pm and 7am, in March.
Global infections pass 18m
The number of coronavirus infections worldwide has passed 18m, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker which currently lists 18,017,556 global cases.
The number of deaths is approaching 700,000, with 688,351 currently confirmed.
Due to time lags, differing testing rates and definitions, as well as suspected underreporting, the true case and death figures are likely to be higher.
In the UK, people who have recovered from Covid-19 are being urged to donate their blood plasma as part of an urgent appeal to help the NHS treat those who fall ill during a potential second wave.
The call follows news that the number of appointments booked each week as part of the ongoing NHS Blood and Transplant convalescent plasma collection has dropped by almost half in the past month. There are fewer eligible donors due to the fall in new infections during lockdown:
China reports 43 new cases including 28 in Xinjiang
The number of new Covid-19 cases in China’s far northwestern region of Xinjiang are continuing to fall, with 28 reported on Monday, AP reports. China reported 43 new cases nationwide, seven of the imported and eight in the northeastern province of Liaoning.
No new deaths were reported, leaving China’s total at 4,634 among 8,428 cases. All the new cases in Xinjiang were in the regional capital and largest city of Urumqi, which has been at the center of China’s latest major outbreak since cases were first detected there in mid-July.
The region has reported a total of 590 cases, all but four of them in Urumqi, where authorities have conducted mass testing, cut down on public transport, isolated some communities and restricted travel outside the city.
Yet, while mainland China’s latest outbreak appears to have peaked, authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong are struggling to contain a new wave of infections, with more than 200 new cases added over the weekend.
Here is the latest on the Stage Four restrictions in Melbourne.
Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the restrictions have been brought in to get community transmission – cases where the source of the transmission cannot be determined – under control. Andrews said government modelling showed that without these measures, stage three restrictions would need to last six months.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is expected to announce further restrictions to businesses this afternoon:
Two cruise ships hit by coronavirus weeks after industry restarts
Covid-19 has been detected on at least two cruise ships – one in the Arctic and one in the Pacific – just weeks after cruising holidays restarted.
At least 40 passengers and crew from the MS Roald Amundsen have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and authorities are trying to contact trace hundreds of passengers from two recent Arctic voyages the ship took.
Four crew members on the MS Roald Amundsen were hospitalised on Friday when the ship arrived at the Norwegian port of Tromsø, and later diagnosed with the respiratory illness. Tests showed another 32 of the 158 staff were also infected:
New Zealand reports two new cases, both returned travellers in quarantine
More now from New Zealand – Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian:
New Zealand has reported two new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, both diagnosed in travellers returning to the country who are quarantined in government-managed facilities.
It has been 94 days since a coronavirus case in New Zealand was last recorded as being acquired locally from an unknown source. There are 27 active cases in the country, all among returning travelers staying in the isolation facilities.
Returnees must spend two weeks at the hotels, where they are tested twice for Covid-19. Only New Zealanders and certain essential workers are permitted to enter the country.
The two latest cases were diagnosed in a teenage boy returning from the United States and a man in his 20s arriving from Switzerland.
New Zealand has recorded a total of 1,217 confirmed cases of the virus, with 22 deaths. A swift, early lockdown of the country in March appears to have quashed its spread.
Vietnam’s coastal city of Danang plans to test its entire population of 1.1 million people for coronavirus infection, the governing authorities said on Saturday, as 40 new cases linked to the tourist hot spot were reported across the country, taking total infections to 586, with three deaths, Reuters reports.
Most of the new cases are linked to hospitals in Danang city, where the first locally transmitted infection in more than three months was detected last week.
The Health Ministry said on Saturday that up to 800,000 visitors to Danang have left for other parts of the country since 1 July, adding that more than 41,000 people have visited three hospitals in the city since.
Local medical officials in Danang have conducted 8,247 coronavirus tests in the city since 25 July, when the latest cluster was first detected. Testing capacity will be increased to 8,000-10,000 per day, the governing authorities said.
Vietnam has detected new coronavirus cases in other cities, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with links to Danang.
Meanwhile, authorities of the capital city, Hanoi said late on Saturday it had carried out around 49,000 tests since Thursday after the city ordered mass testing for all people who recently returned from the popular coastal city.
In the UK, two new tests for Covid-19 that are said to deliver results within 90 minutes are to be introduced across NHS hospitals and care homes, to speed up diagnosis ahead of winter and differentiate coronavirus infection from flu, the government says.
But some experts were surprised by the government’s decision, saying the particular tests were not well-known. No data had been published concerning their evaluation. The government had made mistakes in buying tests that turned out to be sub-standard in the past, they said:
Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian:
Here’s another way in which New Zealand is casting off the last restraints on domestic life since Covid-19:
Jury trials resumed today in the country’s courts for the first time since New Zealand entered a strict period of lockdown in late March. While life has largely returned to normal in the country – there are no known cases of Covid-19 in the general population, outside of quarantine facilities – only defendants who opted to be tried by a judge alone have been able to proceed through the system.
The return to jury trials was tested in one city, Dunedin, in late July to see how potential jurors would respond to receiving a summons, the Otago Daily Times reported. But there were no issues with attendance.
There is, however, a long wait – often a case can take a year to come to trial in New Zealand, and the lockdown resulted in about 500 extra trials in the system.
New Zealand PM says trans-Tasman bubble 'some time away now'
Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian:
The governments of New Zealand and Australia have been talking for months now about the eventual possibility of a trans-Tasman travel “bubble”, in which travelers would be able to move between the countries without spending the requisite time required in quarantine at each end.
But the events in the Australian state of Victoria are a significant impediment to those plans happening any time soon, Jacinda Ardern told Radio New Zealand on Monday.
“This is a major setback for trans-Tasman travel because we have always said we have to be very, very assured that any quarantine free travel we have with any country needs to ensure that it doesn’t come at a risk or a cost to us,” she said. “And so obviously this is going to be some time away now.”
When asked by RNZ whether she had ruled out such a travel bubble this year, Ardern said she hadn’t “put a timeframe on it.”
There is no known community transmission of Covid-19 in New Zealand; all diagnosed cases are contained in quarantine hotels among returning travellers. In contrast, Victoria has moved to its strictest period of lockdown so far.
Updated
US cases in July were double any other month
The US reported 1.87 million cases in July alone, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
This figure is more than twice the figure for April, which was the last highest at 860,000 new cases. May saw 690,200 new infections, while June saw 820,000 cases reported:
US infections are approaching 5 million, with 4,657,693 currently confirmed, which amounts to a quarter of the global total of nearly 18 million.
Deaths in the country stand at 154,834, or a fifth of the global total of 687,067.
The British love affair with home crafting shows no sign of abating, according to Hobbycraft, which has reported a 200% boom in online sales since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Hobbycraft, whose bestsellers include a giant set of 1,000 craft pieces for £6 and soap-making kits for £15, said there had been “exceptional levels of customer demand” during lockdown as customers confined to their homes looked to find their inner craftsperson.
It is moving its popular craft demonstrations and workshops online as part of its adjustment to the post-coronavirus world.
The company, which has 99 stores on high streets and retail parks including five that opened last year, said total revenue increased by 8.9% to £193.6m for the year ending 16 February – before the Covid-19 crisis. Online sales grew by 19% over the same period:
China sends Covid-19 testing team to Hong Kong, prompting surveillance fears
Seven Chinese health officials arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, the first members of a 60-person team that will carry out widespread Covid-19 testing in the territory as it races to halt another wave of illness.
The initiative marks the first time mainland health officials have assisted Hong Kong in its battle to control the epidemic.
The city has reported around 3,500 coronavirus cases and 34 deaths since January, far lower than many other global metropolitan centres. But the daily number of new infections has been in three digits for the past 12 days.
Members of the testing team, co-ordinated by the Chinese government, are mostly from public hospitals in Guangdong province, China’s National Health Commission said.
A group of local Hong Kong councillors said on Sunday that some local residents fear China may use their presence as an opportunity to collect DNA samples for surveillance purposes:
Greater Manchester declares major incident after rise in Covid-19 cases
A major incident has been declared in Greater Manchester in response to increases in coronavirus infection rates across “multiple localities”.
The decision to up the readiness of emergency and public services to react to the escalating Covid-19 transmission rate in the region comes after the government announced new lockdown restrictions for parts of north-west England on Thursday.
Gold command meetings of senior figures from the police, local authorities and other agencies to discuss the pandemic have been taking place over the weekend.
Major incidents are often declared as a result of a terror attack or natural disaster and mean a region can access extra national resources if necessary, with the police able to draft in the army if they need support:
Summary
Hi, my name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest coronavirus news from around the world for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com. News tips, feedback and questions are welcome.
Residents in the Australian city of Melbourne woke up this morning to their first full day of strict lockdown expected to last as long as six weeks, as the Australian state of Victoria struggles to contain an outbreak with hundreds of what authorities call “mystery cases” – infections that cannot be traced to known outbreaks. Yesterday 671 new cases were confirmed in the state. Many of Victoria’s cases are in aged care homes and among healthcare workers.
Here is a reminder of the restrictions in Melbourne:
A summary of the Stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne until 13 September:
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) August 2, 2020
- From 6pm tonight shopping is one person per household, within 5km of home
- Daily exercise is 1 hour, max 2 people, within 5km of home
- Curfew 8pm to 5am unless you're at work, giving or getting care
Global infections meanwhile are nearing 18m, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with 17.95m currently confirmed. There have been 686,947 deaths reported over the course of the pandemic so far.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Residents in the Australian city of Melbourne will be subject to an overnight curfew for the next six weeks, and be banned from travelling more than 5km to go shopping or to exercise, as Victoria attempts to get the number of new coronavirus cases under control. The premier, Daniel Andrews, announced that from 6pm on Sunday, residents in the Melbourne metropolitan area would be under curfew for six weeks until 13 September.
-
Nancy Pelosi says she has no confidence in Deborah Birx over handling of pandemic. House speaker Nancy Pelosi escalated an attack on Dr Deborah Birx, a senior scientist on Donald Trump’s coronavirus taskforce, in television comments on Sunday as Birx defended the administration’s handling of the pandemic.
- Media to be banned from Republican convention due to coronavirus restrictions. The media will reportedly not be allowed to witness Donald Trump’s formal renomination as the Republican party’s choice for president at its national convention later this month.
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson is considering new lockdown measures in England should there be a second wave of coronavirus infections. Plans are being assessed after a rise in Covid-19 cases forced the prime minister to slow the lockdown easing on Friday, with proposed relaxations for the leisure and beauty sectors delayed.
- Trump campaign adviser says election will not be delayed. “The election is going to be on 3 November,” Donald Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said, adding it is actually Democrat governors who want the election delayed by introducing mail-in voting, where ballots can arrive after 3 November.
- India reported nearly 55,000 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, down from the previous day’s record 57,118 but raising the country’s total to 1.75 million. The month of July accounted for more than 1.1 million of those cases. The major cities of New Delhi and Mumbai might have passed their peaks, said a government expert, Randeep Guleria. Subways, cinemas and other public facilities are closed until 31 August.
- The Philippines announced it would reimpose a stricter lockdown in and around its capital for two weeks from midnight of 4 August, as the country struggles to contain coronavirus infections that have jumped to more than 100,000 cases.
- 40 cruise ship passengers infected with coronavirus. At least 40 passengers and crew from a luxury cruise liner have tested positive for Covid-19 and the authorities are still trying to trace a number of passengers from two recent Arctic voyages, public health officials in Norway said on Sunday.
- A major incident was declared in Greater Manchester, England on Sunday after coronavirus infection rates continued to climb at the end of the week. Crisis meetings of senior figures from the police, local authorities and other agencies have been taking place over the weekend amid concerns that numbers are still going up in the wake of stricter lockdown measures, which were announced on Thursday night.
- France to push for sanctions for countries tolerating human rights violations in EU Covid recovery plan. France will push for financial sanctions under the EU’s 750 bn euro ($880bn) coronavirus recovery fund against states that undermine fundamental human rights, its junior European affairs minister told the Financial Times.
