We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:
At least three people were reported dead as coronavirus-hit Mumbai appeared to escape the worst of Cyclone Nisarga Wednesday, the first severe storm to threaten India’s financial capital in more than 70 years, AFP reports.
The city and its surrounds are usually sheltered from cyclones - the last deadly storm to hit the city was in 1948. Authorities had evacuated at least 100,000 people, including coronavirus patients, from flood-prone areas in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat ahead of Nisarga’s arrival.
In Mumbai, police announced fresh coronavirus restrictions on the city of 18 million people - which was just beginning to emerge from a months-long lockdown - banning gatherings of four people or more until Thursday afternoon.
Mumbai is India’s worst-hit city, home to a fifth of the country’s more than 200,000 coronavirus cases. The storm evacuees included nearly 150 coronavirus patients from a recently built field hospital in Mumbai, underscoring the difficulties facing the city ahead of the monsoon season as it struggles to contain the pandemic.
“Refrain from venturing out to coast-beaches, promenade, parks and other similar places along the coastline,” the police tweeted early Wednesday.
Key coronavirus questions as tens of thousands gather at protests across US
Unrest has swept across the United States since George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in custody of Minneapolis police. Since then, protests have swelled in dozens of towns and cities across the country.
Tens of thousands of people have been standing shoulder to shoulder as they protest against the killing of George Floyd, after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes despite his cries that he could not breathe.
But the public health emergency that engulfed the nation – Sars-Cov-2, the virus which causes Covid-19 - has not disappeared.
Where are cases of coronavirus increasing?
More cases are being detected in a number of southern states, including Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. But cases are not increasing only in southern states. Alaska, Montana and California have also seen cases increase. In total, 17 states are seeing increases.
These increases reflect infections that may have taken place weeks ago. The novel coronavirus has a long incubation period, and people may not get tested until they feel ill.
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now.
I’ll be bringing you the latest updates in the coronavirus pandemic for the next while. As always, we’d love to hear from you – get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com.
The British prime minister Boris Johnson will host a global vaccine summit on Thursday, urging nations to pledge funding for vaccinations against infectious diseases to help the poorest countries tackle the pandemic.
Representatives of more than 50 countries, including 35 heads of state or government, will come together virtually in London to raise funds for the GAVI vaccine alliance, a public-private global health partnership.
The summit aims to raise at least $7.4bn (£6bn) for GAVI to immunise a further 300 million children in the world’s poorest countries by 2025 against diseases such as polio, diphtheria and measles. Johnson said:
Just as the UK is the single biggest donor to the international effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, we will remain the world’s leading donor to GAVI, contributing £1.65bn over the next five years.
I urge you to join us to fortify this lifesaving alliance and inaugurate a new era of global health cooperation, which I believe is now the most essential shared endeavour of our lifetimes.
German government to introduce major stimulus package
A €130bn (£116bn) post-lockdown stimulus package has been agreed by the coalition partners running the country, the chancellor Angela Merkel has said.
Merkel said her conservatives and their Social Democrat coalition partners agreed measures designed to speed up Germany’s economic recovery after resolving differences on incentives to buy new cars and relief for highly indebted municipalities.
The agreement paved the way for a fiscal programme that is substantially bigger than similar packages by Germany’s Eurozone partners.
Updated
A China-EU summit planned for September in Leipzig has been postponed because of the pandemic, the German government has said.
The decision was made after the chancellor Angela Merkel held separate phone calls with the Chinese president Xi Jinping and the European Council president Charles Michel, the German government’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
They agreed that the meeting cannot take place at the envisaged time given the pandemic but should be rescheduled. The details should be agreed soon.
A similar summit that was due to take place at the end of March in China was also postponed.
Merkel had hoped to used Germany’s six-month presidency of the EU from 1 July to strengthen the bloc’s ties with China. But the fight against the virus and its social and economic impact as well as environmental issues will now be the focal point of her efforts, she has said.
The EU had wanted to use the summits to push China to deliver on its promise in April last year to give European companies equal treatment and put an end to a practice of forcing foreign firms to share know-how when operating in China.
Summary
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
- The number of official cases of coronavirus passed 6.4m, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University. They say at least 6,435,453 people are known to have been infected, while at least 382,093 are confirmed to have died since the outbreak began.
- Spain’s congress voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 14 March and Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.
- The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma went into self-isolation after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber. He was delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.
- The official Brazilian death toll passed 30,000 after a record record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths were recorded in a 24-hour period, taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199. But the president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to downplay the pandemic, even as Brazil’s health ministry says the number of cases has risen to 555,383.
- The World Health Organization said it has received reports of 100,000 new cases every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world.
- The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
- Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in infections, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus. Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the north-west, died on Wednesday. Yesterday two other lawmakers died after testing positive.
- The number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Sweden surpassed that of France. With 450 deaths per 1 million people, Sweden now has the seventh-worst death rate in the world, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
- Entry checks at land borders to Austria introduced because of the pandemic will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister announced. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference.
- The UK government was criticised for failing to release test and trace data. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the programme’s chief, Dido Harding: “I hope you understand that our frustration is that it is very hard to scrutinise what the government is doing if we’re not given the data that allows us to do that.”
- Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to the UK while it maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government will scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries, including the UK, from 15 June.
Sharma, a cabinet minister, appeared at the dispatch box earlier, Rowena Mason and Rajeev Syal write. The parliamentary authorities are understood to have given the area a deep clean and MPs were at the time sitting at least 2 metres apart. “This was done as a precaution,” a House of Commons source said.
However, Sharma’s suspected illness is likely to cause concern about the government’s decision to bring back parliament in its physical form, after weeks of allowing MPs to attend remotely via video link.
Many MPs have protested against the new arrangements, which have seen them queuing around the parliamentary estate while complying with the 2-metre physical distancing rules in order to vote.
Observers noticed that Sharma appeared unwell and to be sweating profusely while he spoke about the corporate insolvency and governance bill in the Commons.
UK business secretary self-isolates
The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma has been tested and is returning home to self-isolate after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber, his spokeswoman has said.
Secretary of state Alok Sharma began feeling unwell when in the chamber delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.
In line with guidance he has been tested for coronavirus and is returning home to self-isolate.
Restrictions may have to be reimposed in Iran if the country is hit by a second wave of infections, its president has warned, as local authorities say transmissions are creeping back towards the previous peak.
Lockdown measures have been gradually lifted since April but have been reimposed in some areas after localised outbreaks.
The health ministry, cited by state media, has reported 3,134 new infections in the past twenty four hours, the most since 30 March, bringing the total to 160,696. And 70 more deaths brought the toll to 8,012. The president Hassan Rouhani said:
If in any part of the country these warnings aren’t taken seriously and God forbid the outbreak of illness peaks again, the authorities will have to reimpose restrictions.
This issue will create problems for the ordinary life of citizens and will also bring serious economic damage to the society.
The crisis is an opportunity for “a new beginning”, Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte has said, as he outlines plans for the country’s economic recovery.
“The acute phase of the health emergency is behind us but now we have to deal with the economic emergency,” Conte said, adding that Italy had earmarked €80bn (£71.4bn) worth of measures to help companies and workers affected by the lockdown.
Conte admitted that there have been “delays” in people receiving social benefits, due to the “state apparatus” not being prepared. “But we will improve,” he promised.
The aims of Italy’s “recovery plan” over the next few months include investing in infrastructure, relaunching public and private investments, ensuring broadband availability across the country and encouraging electronic payments to tackle the shadow economy. Conte said the justice and taxation systems also needed to be reformed.
Restrictions on inter-regional travel were lifted on Wednesday and borders opened up to European travellers as Italy tries to revive tourism, a sector crucial to its national economy.
The further easing of restrictions coincides with the sustained fall in deaths and infections since 4 May, when construction and manufacturing activity across the country resumed.
Italy registered 71 news deaths on Wednesday, up from 55 on Tuesday, and 321 new infections, compared to 318 on Tuesday. However, Conte warned citizens to maintain physical distancing and wear face masks.
The numbers are encouraging and we deserve to smile after months of sacrifice … but the virus has not disappeared.
Spanish lawmakers extend emergency for two more weeks
Spain’s congress has voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency, which has been in effect since 14 March, writes Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent.
Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest Covid-19 lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said that the last extension was needed to preserve the gains made against the virus over the past three months, but added that the country’s gradual loosening of lockdown restrictions was going well.
“We will keep on asking for prudence, prudence and prudence,” said Sánchez. “We will remain alert until the risk disappears. And, after that, we will keep working to learn for the new pandemics that we have a duty to prevent.”
The extension was approved despite fierce opposition from the conservative People’s party and the far-right Vox, both of which accuse the government of unnecessarily curtailing people’s freedoms.
To date, Spain has reported 27,128 deaths from the virus and 240,326 confirmed infections.
The USA has recorded 1,045 more deaths and 24,955 new cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said, taking the totals to 106,202 deaths and 1,827,425 cases.
France’s death toll, the world’s fifth-worst, has increased by 81, or 0.3%, to reach 29,021, the health ministry has said.
That represents a decelerated increase compared to Tuesday, when fatalities were up by 0.4%. The number of people hospitalised has continued its long-running decline.
Summary
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
- The number of official cases of coronavirus passed 6.4m, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University. They say at least 6,435,453 people are known to have been infected, while at least 382,093 are confirmed to have died since the outbreak began.
- The official Brazilian death toll passed 30,000 after a record record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths were recorded in a 24-hour period, taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199. But the president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to downplay the pandemic, even as Brazil’s health ministry says the number of cases has risen to 555,383.
- The World Health Organization said it has received reports of 100,000 new cases every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world.
- The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
- Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in infections, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus. Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the north-west, died on Wednesday. Yesterday two other lawmakers died after testing positive.
- The number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Sweden surpassed that of France. With 450 deaths per 1 million people, Sweden now has the seventh-worst death rate in the world, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
- Entry checks at land borders to Austria introduced because of the pandemic will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister announced. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference.
- The UK government was criticised for failing to release test and trace data. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the programme’s chief, Dido Harding: “I hope you understand that our frustration is that it is very hard to scrutinise what the government is doing if we’re not given the data that allows us to do that.”
- Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to the UK while it maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government will scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries, including the UK, from 15 June.
That’s it from me, Damien Gayle, for another day. I’ll be back tomorrow.
Health officials in Portugal have insisted that increases in confirmed coronavirus cases in the Lisbon region are due to more tests being carried out in areas identified as hotspots, rather than signs of a second wave of outbreak.
The health ministry on Wednesday announced 366 new cases nationally, the biggest daily increase in almost four weeks. Officials said 335 of those new cases were in the Lisbon metropolitan area, while the outbreak is waning in the rest of the country.
The Lisbon total was almost double the number detected in the region the previous day.
The secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said the governments strategy is to encircle the hotspots, which are in low-income neighbourhoods around the capital, and run more tests there.
Construction workers and temporary staff working in the service sector are being especially targeted for testing.
The increase comes after Portugal eased restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus, leading to crowded beaches last week.
UK overtakes Spain in Covid-19 death rate
The UK death rate from the coronavirus outbreak overtook that of Spain on Wednesday, according to data collated by the Worldometers website, after the British health department reported 359 more deaths from Covid-19.
According to the Worldometers site, which is one of several online services tracking coronavirus statistics, the UK now has 585 coronavirus deaths per million people, compared to 580 for Spain. Spain had reported no new deaths from the virus by 5.30pm GMT on Wednesday.
The UK’s health department on Wednesday reported that the UK death toll from coronavirus had increased to 39,728. The total number of confirmed cases was 279,856, an increase of 1,871 on the day before. Unlike most other countries, UK health authorities do not publish recovery rates.
As of 9am 3 June, there have been 4,786,219 tests, with 171,829 tests on 2 June.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) June 3, 2020
279,856 people have tested positive.
As of 5pm on 2 June, of those tested positive for coronavirus, across all settings, 39,728 have sadly died.
More info:
▶️https://t.co/xXnL3FU15k pic.twitter.com/g2ROPO66og
A censorship row has broken out in the UK after third-party submissions were left out of a government-commissioned report on the disproportionate effects of Covid-19 on black, Asian and minority ethnic people, Haroon Siddique and Denis Campbell report.
Public Health England said it had engaged with more than 1,000 people during its inquiry. But the report, which has been criticised for failing to investigate the reasons for the disparities or make recommendations on how to address them, did not mention the consultations.
Anger has been compounded by a report in the Health Service Journal claiming that before publication the government removed a section detailing responses from third parties, many of whom highlighted structural racism.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which called in its written submission for “specific measures … to tackle the culture of discrimination and racism [within the NHS]”, said it had contacted PHE to ask why its evidence was not included.
Its secretary general, Harun Khan, said:
To choose to not discuss the overwhelming role structural racism and inequality has on mortality rates and to disregard the evidence compiled by community organisations, whilst simultaneously providing no recommendations or an action plan, despite this being the central purpose of the review, is entirely unacceptable. It beggars belief that a review asking why BAME communities are more at risk fails to give even a single answer.
The MCB is seeking further clarification from PHE as to why the report removed the submission from the MCB and others. It is imperative that the full uncensored report is published with actionable policies and recommendations as suggested by community stakeholders, and a full Covid race equality strategy is introduced.
If you like all your daily coronavirus world news wrapped into one neat story, read our coronavirus global report.
Statement from the National Public Health Emergency Team
— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) June 3, 2020
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre @hpscireland has today been informed that a total of 3 people with #COVID19 have died.
There have now been a total 1,659 #COVID19 related deaths in Ireland.
— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) June 3, 2020
Validation of data at the @hpscireland has resulted in the denotification of 2 deaths. The figure of 1,659 deaths reflects this.
As of midnight Tuesday 2 June, @hpscireland has been notified of 47 confirmed cases of #COVID19.
— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) June 3, 2020
There is now a total of 25,111 confirmed cases of #COVID19 in Ireland.
Validation of data at the @hpscireland has resulted in the denotification of 2 confirmed cases. The figure of 25,111 confirmed cases reflects this.
— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) June 3, 2020
For more detailed case information, visit: https://t.co/RjyC3RrpgD
03 June 2020: Update on COVID-19 in Somalia.
— Ministry of Health- Somalia (@MoH_Somalia) June 3, 2020
> New cases confirmed today: 57
> Benadir: 34
> Somaliland: 18
> Jubbaland: 5
> Male: 30
> Female: 27
> Recovery: 26
> Death: 0
-----
Total confirmed cases: 2,146
Total recoveries: 406
Total deaths: 79
Visit:https://t.co/2X5ZGypfHr pic.twitter.com/Ds5pHgvoxl
Sweden’s government has been ready to introduce further measures to try to halt the spread of the coronavirus, had they been recommended by public health officials, the health minister said on Wednesday.
“The government has been, at all times, prepared to introduce further measures recommended by the expert authority,” Lena Hallengren said in written comment to Reuters.
Earlier, the public health agency’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said that with hindsight, Sweden should have done more to halt the outbreak, which has claimed a higher proportion of lives in Sweden than in neighbouring countries.
Sweden’s death rate from the outbreak passed that of France on Wednesday.
Updated
Brazil poised to overtake Italy as country with third-highest death toll
Experts have voiced fears that Latin America’s two largest economies are reopening their economies too fast as a record number of Covid-19 deaths leave Brazil poised to overtake Italy as the country with the world’s third-highest number of fatalities, writes Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s correspondent for the region.
The South American country recorded 1,262 deaths on Tuesday – a new daily record – taking its official toll to 31,199, not far short of the 33,530 deaths recorded in Italy. Brazil has recorded more than 555,000 infections – second only to the US.
Mexico, meanwhile, has confirmed the deaths of 10,637 people and nearly 100,000 cases although officials admit the true numbers are likely to be considerably higher.
Despite those grim statistics both countries this week began a gradual reopening, as did parts of other countries in the region including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
In Rio, where nearly 4,000 people have died, restrictions on the use of beaches and commerce were partially relaxed and surfers returned to the Atlantic waves off Ipanema. The level of traffic appeared to be returning to normal and car showrooms and estate agents were allowed to reopen.
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to play down the crisis on Tuesday, telling supporters: “I regret every death but that’s everyone’s destiny.”
In Mexico, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, resumed his travels, kicking off a six-state tour as the nationwide physical distancing rule was relaxed.
Updated
When cats get the coronavirus they show cold-like symptoms including a runny nose, fever and cough, Russia’s federal veterinary service has reported.
In a statement carried by the Tass news agency, the service said:
According to the information published on the website of the World Organization for Animal Health [OIE], cats (both domestic and wild cats) and minks often exhibit clinical symptoms of an acute respiratory infection. Namely, the animals exhibit such symptoms as high fever, cough, sneezing, discharge from nose and eyes.
Some cats exhibited symptoms of an acute intestinal infection, such as vomiting and diarrhoea, the agency said. Dogs do not seem to show any symptoms, it added.
The statement came after Nikolay Vlasov, deputy head of the federal veterinary service, submitted a report to the OIE on a coronavirus infection in a cat in Moscow late last month.
Updated
WHO reports 100,000 new cases a day for five days
The World Health Organization has received reports of 100,000 new cases of coronavirus every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world, its director general has said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said that the WHO had resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing data in studies that had apparently shown it was dangerous.
Opening the WHO’s regular coronavirus briefing, Tedros said:
More than 100,000 cases of Covid-19 have been reported to WHO for each of the past five days.
The Americas continues to account for the most cases. For several weeks, the number of cases reported each day in the Americas has been more than the rest of the world put together. We are especially worried about Central and South America, where many countries are witnessing accelerating epidemics.
We also see increasing numbers of cases in the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and Africa, although the numbers are much smaller.
Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 cases in Europe continues to decline. Yesterday saw the fewest cases reported in Europe since 22 March.
On hydroxychloroquine, Tedros said:
As you know, last week the Executive Group of the Solidarity Trial decided to implement a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm of the trial, because of concerns raised about the safety of the drug. This decision was taken as a precaution while the safety data were reviewed.
The Data Safety and Monitoring Committee of the Solidarity Trial has been reviewing the data. On the basis of the available mortality data, the members of the committee recommended that there are no reasons to modify the trial protocol. The Executive Group received this recommendation and endorsed continuation of all arms of the Solidarity Trial, including hydroxychloroquine
Updated
The World Health Organization’s coronavirus briefing has just begun. You can watch it in the player at the top of the blog.
The organisation’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is beginning with an update on the renewed Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, has knighted a group of citizens and frontline health workers “for their services to the community during the coronavirus emergency.”.
New knights include Annalisa Malara, the 38-year-old anaesthetist at Codogno hospital in the northern Lombardy region, who first treated Italy’s “patient one”; Maurizio Cecconi, a professor of anaesthesiology and intensive care at Milan’s Humanitas University; the team of researchers at Rome’s Spallanzani hospital who carried out studies on the virus and Elena Paglierini, the Italian nurse pictured in viral photo that showed her asleep on her desk after a long shift in a Covid-19 ward in Cremona.
They were all named knights of merit of the Italian republic.
1/ Every crisis spawns a hero - or heroine. This is Elena Pagliarini a nurse at a hospital in Cremona who fell asleep exhausted in full protective gear and, because of this picture taken by a colleague, has become the symbol of Italy's battle with #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/PAnpuDAJEV
— John Hooper (@john_hooper) March 11, 2020
Updated
Greece has been forced to confront the risks of restarting international tourism after authorities announced that 12 out of 91 passengers aboard a Qatar Airlines flight to Athens had tested positive for coronavirus, writes Helena Smith, the Guardian’s Athens correspondent.
The country’s civil protection ministry, rushing to enforce emergency health protocols, responded by suspending air links to and from the Arab state until 15 June. All 91 travellers were immediately placed in quarantine.
“We knew there would be such cases. We’ve seen what can happen this summer,” said infectious diseases expert Nikolaos Sypsas.
The incident highlighted the degree to which opening up to tourism was a calculated risk, he told ANT1 TV.
“The safest [thing] would be not to open up to tourism but that would mean huge economic destruction,” added professor Sypsas who sits on the specialist committee advising the Greek government on management of the pandemic. “The first thing we have to do is divide countries of origin into safe and unsafe [categories]. That creates certain diplomatic pressure but for us the first priority is public health.”
The passengers who tested positive will have to self-isolate in a government-designated hotel for 14 days. At least two were reported to be members of Australia’s large ethnic Greek community, which traditionally returns to Greece during the summer months.
Donald Trump, the US president, said he will seek a new state to host this summer’s Republican national convention after North Carolina refused to guarantee the event could be held in Charlotte without size restrictions because of ongoing concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.
The president has lobbied for a full-scale convention without face coverings, despite the threat of the virus. His demands are likely to be extremely difficult as several years of planning go into party conventions.
Trump announced his desire for a change on Twitter, complaining that North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, and other officials “refuse to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena” and were not “allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised”.
Had long planned to have the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, a place I love. Now, @NC_Governor Roy Cooper and his representatives refuse to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena - Spend millions of dollars, have everybody arrive, and...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2020
...then tell them they will not be able to gain entry. Governor Cooper is still in Shelter-In-Place Mode, and not allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised. Would have showcased beautiful North Carolina to the World, and brought in hundreds of...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2020
...millions of dollars, and jobs, for the State. Because of @NC_Governor, we are now forced to seek another State to host the 2020 Republican National Convention.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2020
Demands for a full-scale convention had raised alarms in North Carolina, which is facing an upward trend in its virus cases. The state has roughly 29,900 cumulative cases and 900 deaths as of Tuesday. About 700 Covid-19 patients are currently hospitalized. Mecklenburg county, where Charlotte is located, accounted for 4,500 cases – more than double the next-highest county – and has nearly 100 deaths.
Belgium has announced that restaurants, cafes and bars can reopen next week, in a significant easing of lockdown restrictions, writes Jennifer Rankin, the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent.
From 8 June, an individual can see up to 10 people in a week, compared with the current four-person limit per household for home gatherings. The new rules apply to indoor and outdoor meetings.
Restaurants, cafes and bars can open from Monday if they take precautions, such as banning counter service and shared menus, compulsory masks for staff and a 1.5-metre distance between tables.
Gyms can also reopen, but contact sports are banned and swimming pools will remain closed until July. Night clubs and festivals are not expected to return until late August.
Belgium will reopen its borders on 15 June.
People are advised to follow six golden rules, including hand hygiene and social distancing, when meeting someone from outside the family.
After a meeting of Belgium’s national crisis centre, the prime minister, Sophie Wilmès, announced the start of the third phase of lifting the lockdown: “We are going to think differently, with our freedoms the point of departure.”
The differences between Belgium and its neighbours, France, the Netherlands, Germany, which have already eased lockdown rules, were beginning to cause tensions as Belgians crossed borders to visit cafes and restaurants that remained shut at home.
Few cases are as surreal as the town of Baarle-Hertog, a Belgian town with nearly two dozen Dutch enclaves, where borders divide streets and shops. Although forbidden for Belgians to cross the border, plenty have been doing so.
“I made sure I was in Holland, not Belgium so I could have a drink on the terrace,” one visitor told the francophone broadcaster RTBF. “I didn’t harm anyone.”
But another resident, Jozef, told the channel that he hadn’t crossed the border since February - despite living only 1 metre away. “I am waiting for the end of the lockdown and the lifting of the frontiers.”
Updated
The UN and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement have called on governments, the private sector, international organizations and civil society to unite towards “a people’s vaccine” for Covid-19.
While there are dozens of coronavirus vaccine efforts continuing around the world, the signs are that access to the jab will be as hotly contested as were supplies of medical equipment for health systems struggling to treat patients with the disease.
In a joint statement, the UN, the IRC and the RCM said:
Covid-19 is a global disease affecting people around the world but with a disproportionately higher impact on vulnerable groups and individuals. As the race to identify the most effective tools to combat this virus continues with steady pace, the spirit of global solidarity must prevail: no one should be left behind.
A people’s vaccine should protect the affluent in cities and the poor in rural communities, the old in care homes and the young in refugee camps. A global social contract for a people’s vaccine against Covid-19 is a moral imperative that brings us all together in our shared humanity.
The unity and commitment towards a people’s vaccine against Covid-19 should be accompanied by equal global collaboration and resolve to sustain immunisation against preventable diseases.
Pakistan records largest single day rise in new infections
Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in coronavirus infections on Wednesday, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus.
Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the northwest, died on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports. His death comes a day after two lawmakers died at different hospitals after testing positive for the coronavirus.
So far, four Pakistani lawmakers have died because of the coronavirus in the country, according to the American news agency.
Pakistan on Wednesday reported 67 deaths in the past 24 hours from the outbreak.
Critics have blamed the prime minister, Imran Khan, for an increase in deaths and infections. They accuse him of easing restrictions last month at a time when there was a need to enforce a stricter lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.
Pakistan has recorded a total of 80,463 confirmed cases and 1,688 deaths since February.
Updated
Sweden passes France for Covid-19 deaths per capita
The number of deaths per capita from the coronavirus outbreak in Sweden has now surpassed that of France, as the country also recorded a bumper rise in infections due to the release of previously withheld statistics from a Stockholm test lab.
According to the latest update from the public health agency, 74 more people have died from Covid-19 in Sweden, pushing the total death toll to 4,542. With 450 Covid-19 deaths per 1m people, it means Sweden now has a higher coronavirus death rate than France, which has recorded 443 deaths from the virus per 1m population, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
Sweden’s unwelcome rise up the coronavirus rankings on Wednesday came after its chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who is credited with masterminding his country’s light touch outbreak strategy, admitted there was “quite obviously a potential for improvement in what we have done”.
Asked in an interview on Swedish radio whether too many people in Sweden had died, he replied: “Yes, absolutely,” adding that the country would “have to consider in the future whether there was a way of preventing” such a high toll.
“If we were to encounter the same disease again knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Tegnell said. It would be “good to know exactly what to shut down to curb the spread of infection better”, he added.
Also on Wednesday, a further 2,214 confirmed cases of coronavirus were announced – the highest daily increase in cases yet in the country. According to Stockholm regional officials, the big daily rise in cases came because a laboratory that had hitherto only reported positive tests to patients publicly released data on 1,385 positive tests for the first time.
Sweden has reported 40,803 cases since the coronavirus outbreak began.
Updated
Damien Gayle back on the blog now, with thanks to Alexandra Topping for covering my break. If you have any comments, tips or suggestions drop me a line at damien.gayle@theguardian.com.
In the UK, the home secretary, Priti Patel, has outlined how the proposed 14-day quarantine for people coming into the country will work.
She told the Commons Border Force will check that travellers fill out a form with their contact details and location for isolation on arrival. She said that anyone found breaking the isolation rules could face a fine of up to £1,000 or prosecution. Patel said:
We will not allow a reckless minority to put our domestic recovery at risk.
The UK government has faced criticised for not implementing a quarantine earlier, but Patel said scientific advisers had advised that quarantine would not have been effective earlier in the pandemic when infection rates in the UK were higher.
Imported cases of the virus now pose a more significant threat, she said, so it was important to “protect our hard-won progress as we move in the right direction”.
The measures will come into force on Monday, with “limited exemptions” intended to ensure supplies of essential items such as food and protective equipment are not disrupted.
The regulations apply to England. Patel said devolved administrations would set out their own rules for enforcing the quarantine.
Updated
Controversial French scientist Professor Didier Raoult, who has promoted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment against Covid-19, has been reported to public prosecutors in Marseille after a fellow specialist claimed patients were given the drug illegally.
The investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné reported on Wednesday that a “colleague” working as an infection specialist had sent a letter to the authorities at the beginning of April claiming Raoult had given trial patients the drug without their “free and clear” consent as required by law.
The French National Drug Agency was said to have carried out its own investigation and concluded that Raoult’s trial patients were not correctly informed. The agency said:
The procedures for informing patients and for tracing the reasons for the prescription do not comply with legal requirements.
The agency added that it had referred the matter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens told 20 Minutes investigators were looking into the letter with “the greatest care”. She said:
It’s easy to denounce certain things, but much more difficult to verify them.
Under French legislation known as the 2012 Jardé Law, covering therapeutic drug trials, patients must give their express consent to taking part.
Raoult divides public and scientific opinion in France between those who see him as a rebellious local hero and modern messiah and others less convinced by his methods and self-promotion.
He denied the accusations and told French media he had always “respected the full force of the law”.
The links between obesity and the risk of becoming dangerously ill with coronavirus have become increasingly clear, my colleague Sarah Boseley has looked at the subject in detail:
Obesity and coronavirus: how can a higher BMI increase your risk? https://t.co/aXiInIfSEf
— sarahboseley (@sarahboseley) June 3, 2020
France’s digital minister has said its coronavirus contact-tracing app has been downloaded 600,000 times since Tuesday afternoon, when it became available.
StopCovid France is designed to prevent a second wave of infections by using smartphone logs to warn users if they have been near someone who later tested positive for the virus, but its launch hasn’t been completely smooth.
A last-minute launch delay meant some citizens downloaded a Catalan health information app with a similar name - Stop Covid19 CAT - causing it to briefly top France’s download charts.
England has not yet launched its app. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, originally said that the app would be “rolling out in mid May” across England, but it could now be as late as mid-May or July.
Both the UK and France have created apps of their own based on a “centralised” design, while other countries such as Latvia, Italy and Switzerland have released apps based on a “decentralised” technology developed by Apple and Google.
Digital Minister Cedric O indicated that he was pleased with the initial uptake. He told the TV channel France 2.
As of this morning, 600,000 people managed to download the app, so it’s a very very good start.
We are very happy with his start, but obviously several million French people need to have it.
This is Lexy Topping, just taking over from Damien for an hour while he has a break.
Any tips or stories please do get in touch: alexandra.topping@theguardian.com 07920 021380
Officials in Afghanistan have said that the country is heading toward the peak of its coronavirus outbreak as Wednesday saw the biggest one-day rise in the number of deaths yet and the number of confirmed cases passed 17,000, Akhtar Mohammad Makoii reports from Herat.
Amrullah Saleh, the vice president, said people continue to break lockdown roles and that, according to the information he has received from health ministry, Afghanistan is on the verge of a “catastrophe”.
“The virus will spread fast in coming two months, if we control it in August, we can go back to normal on the eve of new year” Saleh said. He also asked the Taliban to announce a humanitarian ceasefire so the health workers can fight the virus across the country.
The office of Save the Children in Afghanistan said Tuesday that the coronavirus crisis has left more than seven million children in the country prone to poverty and barred them from their basic rights.
“Covid-19 crisis exposes more than seven million Afghan children to the threat of hunger. Also, the children who have been deprived of school in the last three months have not had access to their basic right that is education” said Maryam Ataee, the NGO’s Afghanistan spokesperson.
On Wednesday, the Afghan health ministry recorded the biggest one-day rise in number of deaths, as 24 patients died overnight. The ministry also said it had detected 758 new cases, raising the total number of infections to 17,267. Of those 294 have died and 1,522 have recovered.
Most of new infections and deaths were recorded in the capital, Kabul, and the western province of Herat, which are hotspots of the virus in Afghanistan. Kabul recorded 332 new cases with eight deaths, while Herat reported 216 new positive cases and four deaths.
After around three weeks pause in reporting coronavirus statistics, due to a problem in the testing process, the southern province of Kandahar recorded 54 new cases on Wednesday.
In the north, the interior ministry has confirmed that the police commander of Kunduz province has died due to the virus, along with a district governor.
More than 600 nurses worldwide are known to have died from Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the International Council of Nurses said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The death toll among nurses more than doubled in the past month from 260 on 6 May, according to its figures, which are based on data from more than 30 countries.
“In the last two months, we have seen the number of deaths of nurses as a result of coronavirus around the world rise from 100 to now in excess of 600 and we think worldwide the number of healthcare workers who could be infected by the virus is around 450,000,” Howard Catton, chief executive officer of the Geneva-based ICN, told Reuters Television.
“These are numbers that keep going up,” he said.
On average, 7% of all cases of coronavirus infection are among healthcare workers, which means that nurses and other staff are at great personal risk “and so are the patients they care for”, it said. Extrapolating from more than 6 million reported cases gave its estimate of some 450,000 infections among healthcare workers.
Infection rates among healthcare workers vary greatly between countries, with fewer than 1% in Singapore and more than 30% in Ireland, it said. Spain and Germany have recorded low numbers of fatalities among healthcare workers despite large outbreaks, it added.
“Why do the rates of deaths among nurses appear higher in some Latin American countries?” it asked, referring to the region that the World Health Organization (WHO) says has emerged as the new epicentre for the pandemic.
“Why are some countries reporting disproportionate deaths among black, Asian and minority ethnic HCWs (healthcare workers)? This is an issue raised directly by the Philippine Nurses Association to ICN, concerning Filipino HCWs in the UK,” it said.
Austria ends land border checks, except for Italy
Entry checks at land borders to Austria, introduced because of the coronavirus pandemic, will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister has announced.
“As of tomorrow there will be no more checks in order to enter Austria,” Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference, according to AFP. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, the French news agency quoted him as saying, adding that Vienna was considering the possibility of allowing entry from Italian regions where infection figures are low.
Austria said last month it would open its borders - closed in mid-March - with all countries, except for Italy and Slovenia, in the middle of June.
Announcing the decision to bring forward the opening, Schallenberg cited positive epidemiological developments in neighbouring Germany, Hungary, Lichtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
On Wednesday, Austria reported that 26 people had tested positive for coronavirus, and one person had died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. To date the Alpine EU member of nearly nine million people has escaped the worst of the pandemic, registering more than 16,759 cases, of which 15,629 have recovered and 669 have died.
Updated
It’s been proposed, probed and pushed to the margins of the European Union for more than two decades. Now, writes Ashifa Kassam in Madrid, as Europe reels from tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths and millions of lost jobs in the worst recession for generations, ministers from Spain, Italy and Portugal say the time has come to revive a radical idea: a pan-EU minimum income.
“This is the moment for debates about social protection,” Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s deputy prime minister for social rights and leader of Podemos, told the Guardian. “Anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable situation should have access to protection mechanisms that allow them to fill their fridge and care for their family.”
The measure, Iglesias argues, could protect more than 113 million people who face poverty and social exclusion in the EU and offer a safety net as the coronavirus pandemic threatens to pull millions more into poverty.
He has joined forces with the labour ministers for Italy and Portugal, Nunzia Catalfo and Ana Mendes Godinho, to call for a common EU approach to minimum income. The measure would pave the way for the bloc’s 450 million residents to receive a top-up if their income falls below a certain level.
What the trio are putting forward is the idea; the hope is that EU governments will come together to hash out how it would be funded, the minimum income amount, and eligibility.
Switzerland’s economy shrank 2.6% during the first three months of the year compared to the previous quarter, as the coronavirus crisis took a heavy toll, official statistics showed Wednesday.
The pandemic and the measures taken to halt the spread of the virus severely restrict economic activity, at the same time as the international economic slump also slowed exports, Switzerland’s economic affairs ministry said.
It added, however, that exports had swung back into positive territory, saved by the country’s large pharmaceutical sector.
Switzerland, which has registered nearly 1,700 deaths from Covid-19 and nearly 30,800 coronavirus infections, stopped short of full confinement requirements but introduced dramatic restrictions from mid-March to try to rein in the virus.
With case numbers declining, Switzerland, like many other European countries, has since 27 April been gradually lifting restrictions. Schools, restaurants, and shops have resumed business, and a third phase in the easing process is due to kick in on 6 June, when events with up to 300 people will be permitted, and all leisure and entertainment businesses and tourist attractions will be permitted to reopen.
Summary
Here are the main points of our global coronavirus coverage so far today:
- “We could have done better,” Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has said. Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s light-touch approach to the coronavirus has acknowledged that the country has had too many deaths from Covid-19 and should have done more to curb the spread of the virus.
- Known deaths from coronavirus passed 380,000, according to Johns Hopkins University figures that show the toll currently standing at 380,662. Confirmed infections are nearing 6.4 million, with 6,399,876 so far.
- Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to Britain while the UK maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, announced plans to scrap travel warnings for 30 countries including Britain from 15 June.
- A record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Brazil - taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199. The figures were announced on Tuesday evening by Brazil’s health ministry, which also said the number of coronavirus cases had risen to 555,383, second only to the United States.
- Lufthansa has announced it will undergo “far-reaching” restructuring as it posted a first-quarter net loss of €2.1bn (£1.9bn/$2.3bn), hammered by the coronavirus pandemic. “Global air traffic has come to a virtual standstill in recent months,” chief executive Carsten Spohr said in a statement.
- Air pollution in China has climbed back to pre-pandemic levels, and scientists say Europe may follow suit. Data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea) shows concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are now at the same levels as one year earlier.
- Vietnam’s most gravely-ill Covid-19 patient, a British pilot who works for its national airline, has started to recover and may no longer require a lung transplant, state media said. Vietnam, which has reported no deaths from the coronavirus, has mounted an all-out effort to save the 43-year-old man.
- Australia is now in a recession as the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic, the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, confirmed. It came after the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the economy shrank by 0.3% in the March quarter, on the back of the bushfires, drought and the pandemic
- New Zealand has recorded 12th day with no new cases. The government is considering abandoning as early as next week all remaining restrictions on the country except stringent border controls. Just one person is still recovering, health officials said on Wednesday. The patient is not in hospital.
Iran’s daily number of new coronavirus transmissions continued creeping back towards its previous peak on Wednesday, with 3,134 confirmed cases detected in the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry.
The Islamic republic recorded 3,186 transmissions on 30 March, at the height of its outbreak. Numbers then dipped to 802 on 2 May, after the country imposed closures of schools, religious sites and parts of the economy, but have crept up since then as measures to contain the spread have been eased. Wednesday’s figure is the second highest number of daily transmissions reported in a day.
In his daily update, Kianoush Jahanpour, the health ministry spokesman, said that 70 more Iranians had died as a result of the outbreak in the past 24 hours, and 2,557 patients were in hospital in a critical condition, the Islamic Republic News Agency reports.
Iran has so far reported 160,696 confirmed cases of coronavirus, of which 125,206 have recovered and 8,012 have died.
The number of coronavirus cases is slowly declining in Russia, the World Health Organization has said, as the Kremlin prepares to stage a vote that would pave the way for the president, Vladimir Putin, to continue in office.
“We are seeing a good, albeit slow, decline” in the number of infections in Russia including the capital Moscow, said Melita Vujnovic, the WHO’s Russia representative, according to AFP.
“We are hoping that the epidemic will continue to decline further,” she told reporters.
This week Putin said a delayed vote on constitutional reforms allowing him to potentially stay in power beyond 2024 would be held on 1 July. He ordered officials to pay “special attention” to safety issues in organising the vote but stressed that the country had passed the peak of contagion.
Germany to allow travel to European countries from 15 June
Germany will lift a travel ban for European Union member states plus Britain, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland from 15 June as long as there are no entry bans or large-scale lockdowns in those countries, the foreign minister has said.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Heiko Maas said all countries concerned met those criteria except Norway due to an entry ban and Spain, where he said parliament was deciding whether to extend an entry ban, Reuters reports.
Maas said the travel warnings would be replaced with guidelines, adding that Germans would be urged not to travel to Britain when not essential while a 14-day quarantine is in place.
Updated
As social unrest spurred by the police killing of George Floyd sweeps America, public health officials and government departments are grappling with the fear that demonstrators and police risk accelerating the spread of the coronavirus, which also disproportionately affects minority communities, writes Jessica Glenza, Guardian US health reporter.
“This is the worst possible thing that could happen,” said Dr Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and an expert on pandemics. “It’s hard to know how many of those people are asymptomatic carriers, and that’s really scary.”
Several factors could contribute to the spread, including lack of social distancing, limitations of masks, and police tactics such as use of teargas and arrests.
At the same time, the threat of infection is unlikely to deter demonstrators desperate for social change. In some cases, the rate of black men killed by police rivals that posed by serious infectious disease.
“Protests are life-saving for black people in this country,” said Dr Rhea Boyd, pediatrician and masters of public health in minority health policy. “Even though being in the streets increases your risk,” of Covid-19 infection, “we all know that risk exists anyway.”
Humanity will be “finished” if we fail to drastically change our food systems in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis, the prominent naturalist Jane Goodall has warned, writes Fiona Harvey, the Guardian’s environment correspondent.
She blamed the emergence of Covid-19 on the over-exploitation of the natural world, which has seen forests cut down, species made extinct and natural habitats destroyed. The coronavirus is thought to have made the jump from animals to humans late last year, possibly originating in a meat market in Wuhan, China.
Intensive farming was also creating a reservoir of animal diseases that would spill over and hurt human society, said Goodall, one of the world’s foremost experts on chimpanzees and a longtime conservation campaigner, speaking alongside two European commissioners at an online event held by the campaigning group Compassion in World Farming, on Tuesday.
“We have brought this on ourselves because of our absolute disrespect for animals and the environment,” she said. “Our disrespect for wild animals and our disrespect for farmed animals has created this situation where disease can spill over to infect human beings.”
People must move away from factory farming and stop destroying natural habitats as a matter of urgency, she said, because of the threat of diseases and of climate breakdown. Factory farming is linked to the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs, which threaten human health.
“If we do not do things differently, we are finished,” she said. “We can’t go on very much longer like this.”
Primary school pupils in North Korea returned to their classrooms on Wednesday, after months of delays to the start of the new term, AFP reports.
While Pyongyang has not confirmed a single case of coronavirus, it had nevertheless imposed strict rules to curb its spread, including closing its borders and ordering thousands into isolation.
The new school term was originally scheduled to start in early April but was repeatedly postponed. Some universities and high schools were allowed to resume classes in mid-April.
Uniformed students made their way to their schools on Wednesday morning, all wearing red commemorative flowers and face masks. At an elementary school in Pyongyang pupils wearing backpacks had their temperatures checked as they arrived for lessons.
In the classroom they lined up to wash their hands using water from red buckets before taking their seats.
“You have to rub your hands,” the teacher told them.
Students wore their masks in class but sat close together as they diligently listened to their teacher - also wearing a face covering - talk about the North’s leadership, maths and other topics.
VIDEO: North Korea will reportedly reopen schools this month after shuttering them over the coronavirus pandemic. The new school term has been repeatedly postponed, although some universities and high schools were allowed to resume classes in mid-April pic.twitter.com/u4DXCxks14
— AFP news agency (@AFP) June 3, 2020
This is Damien Gayle taking over the live blog now.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for coverage, please feel free to drop me a line, either on email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to Britain while the UK maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe.
Speaking a press conference on Wednesday morning, the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government would scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries including Britain from 15 June, replacing it with daily travel advice for each country that reflects the current development of the pandemic.
The 30 countries include the 26 member states of the European Union as well as four countries that are part of Schengen but not the EU: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Maas said while the UK maintained its rule for international arrivals to self-isolate for 14 days, his government would advise against non-essential travel to Britain.
Germany introduced a rule for international arrivals to self-isolate for 14 days on 9 April but the advice was scrapped in mid-May
British doctors are trialling a formulation of anti-inflammatory ibuprofen to see if it reduces respiratory failure in patients with severe symptoms of Covid-19, Reuters reports.
The trial involves a particular formulation of ibuprofen, which researchers said had been shown to be more effective than standard ibuprofen for treating severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARCS), a complication of Covid-19. The formulation is already licensed for use in Britain for other conditions.
“If successful, the global public health value of this trial result would be immense given the low cost and availability of this medicine,” said Matthew Hotpot, director of NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.
The trial, known as “Liberate”, will be a randomised study, with recruitment of up to 230 patients expected over the coming months. It is being run by Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London, King’s College London and pharmaceutical organisation the SEEK Group.
In March, France’s health minister said people should not use anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen if they have symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. However, US, British and EU drug regulators as well as the maker of Nurofen, Reckitt Benckiser, have all said there is no evidence that ibuprofen makes Covid-19 worse.
Patient 91, British pilot in Vietnam, showing signs of recovery
Vietnam’s most gravely-ill Covid-19 patient, a British pilot who works for its national airline, has started to recover from the illness and may no longer require a lung transplant, state media said today, report Reuters.
Vietnam, which has reported no deaths from the coronavirus, has mounted an all-out effort to save the 43-year-old man, who has been identified officially by the government as “Patient 91”.
Until recently, the Vietnam Airlines pilot was thought by doctors and officials to be in urgent need of a lung transplant.
The fate of “Patient 91” has received unprecedented national attention, with more than 50 people in Vietnam offering themselves as potential lung donors, according to state media.
The man, who is being treated at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, can now smile, shake hands and respond to commands from hospital staff, the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said on Wednesday.
His reliance on artificial life support has also been reduced but he is still on a ventilator to allow his badly-damaged lungs to recover, VNA said. He has tested negative for the coronavirus, and Vietnam has spent more than $215,000 treating him, the report added.
Through aggressive testing and a mass, centralised quarantine programme, Vietnam has successfully contained the spread of the novel coronavirus, putting it on course to revive its economy much sooner than most others.
Vietnam’s second most serious case, “Patient 19”, was discharged from hospital on Wednesday. Of Vietnam’s 328 coronavirus cases, 90% have recovered.
Updated
Here’s Jon Henley’s take on Anders Tegnell’s admission that there was “quite obviously a potential for improvement in what we have done” in Sweden:
Asked whether too many people in Sweden had died, he replied: “Yes, absolutely,” adding that the country would have to consider in the future whether there was a way of preventing such a high toll.
Figures suggest the country’s death rate per capita was the highest in the world over the seven days to 2 June. This week the Swedish government, bowing to opposition pressure, promised to set up a commission to look into its Covid-19 strategy.
More here:
Our science correspondent, Hannah Devlin, has written this handy guide to the face mask, whether it works, and how to make your own:
Air pollution in China has climbed back to pre-pandemic levels, and scientists say Europe may follow suit.
Air pollution causes at least 8m early deaths a year, and cleaner skies were seen as one of the few silver linings of Covid-19. Experts have called for action to help retain the air quality benefits of lockdowns, and measures taken to date have included expanding cycle lanes and space for walking in cities.
Data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea) shows concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) across China are now at the same levels as one year earlier. At the height of the country’s coronavirus response in early March, NO2 levels were down by 38% from 2019 and levels of PM2.5 were down by 34%.
More here:
Berlin’s senate has switched one of the three “corona traffic lights” in its pandemic warning system to red, after the R number stayed above 1.2 for three consecutive days.
The German capital recorded 35 new infections on Tuesday evening, bringing the total number of active cases of Covid-19 to 317. The latest basic reproduction number (R), indicating how many new cases one infected person generates on average, was estimated to be at 1.95.
Dilek Kalayci, Berlin’s senator for health, said the R number was more likely to fluctuate while the total number of infections was low. “But the number of new infections is increasing, so that you can recognise a change of trend.”
If one of the two other “traffic light” indicators, either the number of free intensive care beds or the number of weekly new infections, also switches to red, the senate will need to take action, for example by reintroducing restrictions that have just been eased.
For now, the two other traffic lights are on green: the number of weekly new infections in the city is currently at 5.1 per 100,000 people, while Covid-19 patients only take up 3.3% of intensive care beds. Across Germany as a whole, the R number on Wednesday sunk back below one, to 0.89.
Updated
Germany to lift travel ban for most European countries from 15 June
Germany will lift a travel ban for European Union member states plus Britain, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland from 15 June as long as there are no entry bans or large-scale lockdowns in those countries, the foreign minister said. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Heiko Maas said all countries concerned met those criteria except Norway, due to an entry ban, and Spain, where he said parliament was deciding whether to extend an entry ban. Maas said the travel warning would be replaced with guidelines, adding that Germans would be urged not to travel to Britain when not essential while a 14-day quarantine is in place.
[Edit: see Philip Oltermann’s update here]
Meanwhile, free movement between the Czech Republic and Slovakia will be restored from midnight tonight.
Updated
Indonesia has reported 684 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, taking the total number of cases in the south-east Asian country to 28,233, and 35 deaths, taking the total to 1,698. Meanwhile Malaysia has reported 93 new cases, with no new deaths.
Updated
'We could have done better,' says Sweden's chief epidemiologist
Sweden should have done more to combat the coronavirus and prevent a much higher national Covid-19 death rate than in neighbouring countries, the man behind the Public Health Agency’s pandemic strategy said today.
Nearly 4,500 Swedes have died in the outbreak, a higher mortality rate than in Denmark, Norway and Finland, and criticism has been growing over the government’s decision not to impose lockdown measures as strictly as elsewhere in Europe.
Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency, said that in hindsight Sweden should have done more.
“If we were to run into the same disease, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would end up doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Tegnell told Swedish radio. “Yes, I think we could have done better in what we did in Sweden, clearly.”
While most of Europe, including Norway, Denmark and Finland, closed schools, shops and businesses, bringing much of society to a halt, Sweden has relied more on voluntary measures, social distancing and common-sense hygiene advice to stem the outbreak.
It shut care homes to visitors in late March, but around half of the deaths in the country have been among elderly people living in care facilities. Tegnell said it was hard to know which measures taken elsewhere might have been the most effective in Sweden.
“Maybe we will find this out now that people have started removing measures, one at a time,” he said. “And then maybe we will get some kind of information on what, in addition to what we did, we could do without adopting a total lockdown.”
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the government would launch an enquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
Updated
Spain’s National Ballet Company have gone back to work today for the first time since lockdown, rehearsing in small groups of no more than 12 dancers.
Interesting news we missed yesterday: a South high court in South Africa declared some of the government’s coronavirus lockdown regulations unconstitutional, but suspended the order for 14 days, leaving the rules in place for now.
South Africa introduced in March one of the world’s most restrictive Covid-19 lockdowns - including a ban on alcohol and cigarette sales - but has gradually eased restrictions down to the third of five levels.
The Liberty Fighters Network advocacy group filed a lawsuit against the regulations in May, arguing they were unlawful as they violated South Africa’s Bill of Rights. In response, the court declared rules governing levels three and four of the lockdown to be “unconstitutional and invalid”.
“The regulations ... in a substantial number of instances are not rationally connected to the objectives of slowing the rate of infection or limiting the spread thereof,” the written judgement read. “Insofar as the ‘lockdown regulations’ do not satisfy the ‘rationality test’, their encroachment on and limitation of rights ... is not justifiable.”
The judgement said all regulations under level three and four must be reviewed and amended giving due consideration to their impact on individual rights, aside from a few exceptions including the closure of borders, nightclubs and casinos.
Today is World Bicycle Day, which has been celebrated in the Philippines by the opening of new bike lanes in the capital, Manila:
The Chinese government has said today that a report widely circulated yesterday that said it delayed sharing information about Covid-19 with the World Health Organization (WHO) is totally untrue. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made the remarks during a daily briefing in response to a question about the report by the Associated Press, which said the WHO was frustrated by significant delays in information sharing by Beijing as the coronavirus outbreak took hold in China in January.
Russia has reported 8,536 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 today, taking its nationwide tally to 432,277, the third highest in the world. The death toll reached 5,215 after the authorities said they had recorded another 178 deaths from the virus.
Is this the future of concerts? The Greek singer Natassa Theodoridou played last night in the Athens suburb of Glyfada to an audience who stayed in or at least near their cars throughout:
Updated
Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh and chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, have written for us about dealing with the twin perils of a super-cyclone and Covid-19 in Bangladesh last month:
There was no time to lose when Cyclone Amphan began forming over the Indian Ocean in May.
But shelters are not built with social distancing in mind in Bangladesh and the country faced a challenge: how to move 2.4 million people from the destructive path of the storm without delivering them into an even greater danger – Covid-19.
Mass evacuations are challenging at the best of times. People are reluctant to leave their homes unguarded. This time the challenge was far more complex. People were afraid to move to shelters for fear of the virus. First responders also had to make sure the evacuation itself was not a vector for contagion.
In a matter of days, Bangladesh prepared almost 10,500 additional shelters – on top of the 4,171 in existence – to accommodate evacuees with a measure of social distancing. More than 70,000 “cyclone preparedness” volunteers across coastal areas were mobilised. Masks, water, soap and sanitiser were distributed. The garment industry, reeling from cancelled export orders, retooled production lines to manufacture personal protective equipment.
Much more here:
Lufthansa announces first-quarter loss of €2.1bn
Lufthansa has announced it will undergo “far-reaching” restructuring as it posted a first-quarter net loss of €2.1bn (£1.9bn/$2.3bn) today, hammered by the coronavirus pandemic, reports AFP.
“Global air traffic has come to a virtual standstill in recent months. This has impacted our quarterly results to an unprecedented extent. In view of the very slow recovery in demand, we must now take far-reaching restructuring measures to counteract this,” chief executive Carsten Spohr said in a statement.
On top of the collapse in passenger numbers, depreciation of some company assets sapped the bottom line. Falling fuel prices meanwhile cost the airline €950m because it had hedged its purchases with much higher priced contracts.
The first quarter was much worse than the loss of €342m in 2019’s first quarter, traditionally a quiet time for travel.
On Monday, the airline’s supervisory board approved a €9bn bailout deal from the German government. The group is to ask its shareholders to back the agreement, which will see the state take a 20% stake in the group, at an online meeting on 25 June.
Like its rivals, the Lufthansa group – which also includes Eurowings, Swiss, Brussels and Austrian Airlines – has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.
The airline said on Wednesday it plans to increase seat capacity in September to “up to 40%” of what was expected before the pandemic, and compared with around 3% in May. But of its 760 aircraft, 300 are expected to remain parked next year and 200 in 2022.
Even with the hoped-for gradual increase of passenger traffic, Lufthansa’s push to repay the bailout cash “will only succeed if we implement restructuring programs in all areas … and agree on innovative solutions with the unions and working councils,” finance director Thorsten Dirks said.
Looking ahead, “the uncertain further development of the corona pandemic continues to make it impossible to make a precise forecast of the earnings trend for 2020”, the group said, predicting only a “significant decline” in adjusted operating profit.
Updated
A study of blood donors in the Netherlands has found that around 5.5% of them have developed antibodies against the new coronavirus, blood donation firm Sanquin said today. The study, conducted among 7,000 donors between May 10 and 20, gives an indication of what percentage of the Dutch population may have already had the disease. A similar study in April showed antibodies in 3% of Dutch blood donors.
“This shows that over 90% of our donors have still not been in touch with the virus, assuming almost all people who have been infected develop antibodies,” Sanquin’s head researcher, Hans Zaaijer, told Dutch public broadcaster NOS. “We are miles away from a scenario of herd immunity.”
As of Tuesday 46,647 infections with the new coronavirus had been confirmed in the country, with 5,967 deaths.
Updated
Morning/evening/whatever-it-is-where-you-are everyone. This is Simon Burnton taking on the live blog for the next few hours. If you have seen any stories that deserve our attention, or if you have any tips, comments or suggestions for our coverage then please let me know by sending me a message either to @Simon_Burnton on Twitter or via email. Thanks!
We’ve got more detail from our team in Australia about how the country is on the brink of its first recession for nearly 30 years.
The resource-rich nation saw its economy shrink by 0.3% in the first quarter amid the onslaught of coronavirus. Added to the devastating bushfires at the turn of the year and with worse to come according to treasurer Josh Frydenberg, the country is sure to plunge into recession when June quarter are releasded later in the year.
The decline in Australian GDP seems relatively modest compared to most other economies - while lockdowns etc occurred at different times we also had devastating bushfires interrupting activity as well - they are not great numbers but they seemingly could have been worse! #ausbiz pic.twitter.com/1lqZv9qguN
— Alex Joiner (@IFM_Economist) June 3, 2020
Here’s the full story from Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy:
Our correspondent in Bangkok, Rebecca Ratcliffe, has sent this dispatch about how academics have taken inspiration from Japan to find ways of holding graduation ceremonies during the outbreak.
She writes:
Robots decked out in gowns and mortarboards have already found their way into a university hall in Japan. They might also be about to appear in Malaysia, as academics search for ways to hold graduation ceremonies without risking transmission.
Sultan Zainal Abidin University, in north-eastern Terengganu state, has released a simulation video showing waist-high robots collecting certificates from staff. Each robot head features a screen that broadcasts a student’s face through video conferencing.
Business Breakthrough (BBT) University in Tokyo held a graduation ceremony using similar technology in April, allowing students to participate remotely during lockdown.
Not all students are keen on the idea though, with some saying they’d rather wait to take part in the ceremony in real life.
Malaysia has eased restrictions following a relatively moderate virus outbreak. So far, nearly 8,000 people have been infected and 115 deaths have been recorded.
India still 'very far' from peak – government expert
India is still some way from the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a government expert.
The country passed 200,000 infections on Wednesday, the health ministry said, and worse is expected to come. Cases jumped by 8,909 over the previous day in one of the highest single-day spikes, taking the tally to 207,615. Six other nations, from the United States, to Britain and Brazil, have a higher caseload.
But Dr Nivedita Gupta, of the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research, warned: “We are very far away for the peak.”
Officials have previously said it could be later this month, or even July, before cases start to fall off. The death toll from the disease stood at 5,815.
We reported yesterday about the death of a doctor who worked at the same hospital as the coronavirus whistleblower, Li Wenliang.
Now our China correspondent, Lily Kuo, reports on how the death of Hu Weifeng, 42, a urologist at Wuhan Central hospital, has prompted a wave of anger at hospital authorities for not protecting frontline health workers in the face of the coronavirus outbreak.
“From Li Wenliang to Hu Weifeng, the medical staff of Wuhan Central hospital lost the most during the outbreak. They were killed by the leaders of the hospital,” one internet user wrote on the Chinese social media site Weibo.
Indifference or disbelief towards Covid-19 runs deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasha, in a response that strikes fear into watchdogs battling the disease, AFP reports.
On May 20, the official committee to fight the coronavirus said three of its workers were threatened at knifepoint, part of what the government last Friday described as “rising cases” of abuse of virus campaigners.
The hostility in the chaotic capital of 10 million people is such that Caritas and two grassroots groups called Lucha and Filimbi have resorted to going out in groups to spread awareness messages and hand out masks.
In the districts of Victoire and Selembao, they were recently greeted by scores of locals who wagged their forefinger at them in disapproval or screamed “corona eza te!” (“there’s no corona,” in the Lingala language).
Many, however, accepted a mask, although one admitted that this was to avoid the risk of a 5,000-franc fine ($2.6/2.4 euros) for not wearing one.
Good morning/afternoon/evening wherever you might be. My name is Martin Farrer and I’m taking over blogging duties from Helen Sullivan.
Helen has just published her summary of the day below, and we’ve also just launched my wrap up of the day so far which focuses on how global stock markets have risen to a three-month high despite anxiety about continuing spread of the virus and the US protests. And Australia is heading into recession for the first time in 30 years.
You can read it in full here:
Summary
- Known deaths in the coronavirus pandemic passed 380,000 on Wednesday, with Johns Hopkins University figures showing the toll currently standing at 380,250. Confirmed infections are nearing 3.4 million, with 6,378,239 so dar.
- Brazil deaths passed 30,000. A record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Brazil today - taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199 - but the president continues to downplay the pandemic. The figures were announced on Tuesday evening by Brazil’s health ministry, which also said the number of coronavirus cases had risen to 555,383, second only to the United States. The South American country is now on the verge of overtaking Italy, where 33,530 deaths have been recorded, as the country with the third highest number of deaths.
- Australia’s economy is in recession. Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has confirmed Australia is now in a recession as the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic. His confirmation came after the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the economy shrank by 0.3% in the March quarter, on the back of the bushfires, drought and coronavirus pandemic. Asked whether the country was now in recession, he said: “Well, the answer to that is ‘yes’. And that is on the basis of the advice that I have from the Treasury department about where the June quarter is expected to be.”
- New Zealand saw its 12th consecutive day with no new cases. New Zealand has reported a 12th straight day of no new cases of Covid-19, as the government considers abandoning as early as next week all remaining restrictions on the country except stringent border controls. Just one person in New Zealand is still recovering from the illness, health officials said on Wednesday. They are not in hospital. There have been fewer than 1,500 confirmed cases of the virus in the country, with 22 deaths.
-
French anti-racism protesters defied a coronavirus gathering ban. Clashes broke out between police and protesters in Paris on Tuesday after around 20,000 people defied a ban to rally over the 2016 death of a black man in police custody, galvanised by US demonstrations against racism and deadly police violence.
- China’s service sector is bouncing back. China’s huge service sector has bounced back to growth for the first time since January in a sign that the world’s second largest economy is recovering strongly from strict coronavirus-induced containment measures. Although employment and overseas demand remains weak in the economy, the Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers’ index rose to 55.0 in May from 44.4 in April, hitting the highest level since late 2010. The 50-mark separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.
- Yemen aid funding falls short by US$1bn. Yemen remains on the brink of “a macabre tragedy”, the UN has warned after a humanitarian fundraising summit raised only $1.35bn for this year, around $1bn short of the target and only half the sum raised at the equivalent pledging conference last year. Dr Abdullah al-Rabiah, the head of the King Salman Centre for Relief and Humanitarian Aid in Saudi Arabia, which co-hosted the virtual summit, put the overall shortfall down to the impact of coronavirus on national budgets and concerns about the restrictions on aid flows imposed by the parties to Yemen’s five-year civil war.
- Hopes were raised of the possible availability of a vaccine. A senior US army researcher said it was reasonable to expect that some sort of vaccine could be available to some parts of the US population by the end of the year.
- France’s death toll rose by more than a 100 in a 24-hour period for the first time in 13 days. It came as the country enacts a new easing of lockdown measures.
- Iran confirmed its second highest number of new cases in a 24-hour period since its outbreak began, with the health ministry saying 3,117 people tested positive. The number of new daily infections in Iran has now returned to levels previously seen at the peak of its outbreak in late March.
- Germany’s travel warning for Europe will be lifted on Wednesday, its foreign minister, Heiko Maas, announced. The worldwide travel warning still applies. But, for the countries of the EU and associated states, the warning will be replaced by travel advice that will give travellers detailed information about the situation in each state.
- The UK’s official death toll passed 50,000, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. The total differs from the government’s daily counts, which only include deaths in hospitals and care homes where the person had tested positive.
- The UK statistics watchdog criticised the government’s testing data. Whitehall’s use of testing data appears to be aimed more at making it look like a lot is being done than actually painting a clear picture, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority warned the health secretary, Matt Hancock.
- A Wuhan doctor who worked with the whistleblower Li Wenliang died of the virus last week, Chinese state media reported. Hu Weifeng, a urologist at Wuhan central hospital, reportedly became China’s first Covid-19 fatality in weeks when he died on Friday after being treated for more than four months.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for now – I’ll be crossing over to the US live blog in a minute. My colleague Martin Farrer will be with you for the next few hours.
Global deaths pass 380,000
Known deaths in the coronavirus pandemic passed 380,000 on Wednesday, with Johns Hopkins University figures showing the toll currently standing at 380,250.
Confirmed infections are nearing 6.4 million, with 6,378,239 so far.
Brazil, with 31,199 deaths, is on the verge of overtaking Italy, where 33,530 deaths have been recorded, as the country with the third highest number of deaths.
But Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismissed Covid-19 as a “little flu”, again brushed off the tragedy on Tuesday.
“I regret each of the deaths - but that’s everyone’s destiny,” Bolsonaro told supporters outside his palace in the capitalBrasília.
These are the ten countries with the highest number of infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker:
- US: 1,831,821
- Brazil: 555,383
- Russia: 423,186
- United Kingdom: 279,392
- Spain: 239,932
- Italy: 233,515
- India: 207,191
- France: 188,450
- Germany: 183,879
-
Peru: 170,039
Updated
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 342 to 182,370, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 29 to 8,551, the tally showed.
South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety approved a request by the country’s health authorities to import Gilead Sciences Inc’s anti-viral drug remdesivir to treat COVID-19, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
The decision came after a government panel concluded last week that remdesivir showed positive results.
The ministry said it will cooperate with the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), other ministries and Gilead Sciences to swiftly import the drug.
More on New Zealand now, which on Wednesday saw its 12th consecutive day with no new cases:
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday she could lift all social distancing measures to return the country to normal life, bar the international border closure, as early as next week.
Ardern will decide on Monday whether the country is ready to shift to alert level 1, more than two months after she imposed a strict level 4 lockdown, shutting most businesses and forcing people to stay home, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Arden said waiting until Monday would allow her to see if recent changes, like the removal of restrictions on the number of people in bars and at social gatherings, had led to a rise in cases.
“If it hasn’t, then we will be in a good position to move,” she said during a televised news conference.
Under level 1 there is no requirement for physical distancing or limits on the number of people allowed in places like bars, clubs, churches, and sports venues, she said.
However, there would be one major change from pre-pandemic normality, with no immediate plans to reopen New Zealand’s border.
Australia's economy in recession
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has confirmed Australia is now in a recession as the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Frydenberg’s confirmation came after the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the economy shrank by 0.3% in the March quarter, on the back of the bushfires, drought and coronavirus pandemic.
Asked whether the country was now in recession, he said: “Well, the answer to that is ‘yes’. And that is on the basis of the advice that I have from the Treasury department about where the June quarter is expected to be.”
Updated
In Australia, a world without cheques, fewer ATMs and a regulatory push to lower electronic transaction fees as fewer people use cash are some of the likely impacts of Covid-19 on payments, the Reserve Bank has said.
RBA assistant governor Michele Bullock told a Morgan Stanley disruption conference on Wednesday that cash was now the payment method for just 25% of transactions, or around 10% of their value.
The long-term decline of cash has been accelerated by merchants and consumers concerned about hygiene during the Covid-19 pandemic, with many putting up signs asking for card payments or rejecting cash altogether, she said.
As shoppers flocked instead to online shopping, where cash was not an option, ATM withdrawals in April were down 30% from the month before and more than 40% lower than the year before.
Bullock said it was “likely that a large part of this will become a permanent change in behaviour” and add to pressure on banks to reduce the number of ATMs in their networks – a consolidation that will be “more urgent” and occur “more quickly” as a result.
China reported one new coronavirus case and four new asymptomatic Covid-19 cases in the mainland on 2 June, the country’s health commission said.
The National Health Commission said the one confirmed case was imported involving a traveller from overseas. Mainland China had five confirmed cases, all of which were imported, and 10 asymptomatic cases for 1 June.
China does not count asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but not exhibiting symptoms, as confirmed cases.
Total number of infections to date in the mainland stands at 83,021. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
Updated
Dan Collyns brings you this action-packed update from Bolivia:
“Thanos is beating us” warned a Bolivian government minister in a live televised press conference on Monday as he called for his compatriots to comply with sanitary measures and lockdown restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Bolivia’s public works minister Iván Arias grasped the eponymous action figure along with models of fictional rivals Hulk and Iron Man as he made the comic-book comparison and exhorted Bolivians to protect themselves as the country relaxed its quarantine measures this week.
Mientras tanto, en bolivia pic.twitter.com/5VPR4sDoX3
— Diego Abatecola (@Robbiegol) June 1, 2020
“We must all use masks, keep a metre’s distance and respect the rules, because it’s been shown that Thanos is beating us; chaos, pain, death,” Arias said, prompting amused reactions on social media.
“So, it’s very worrying what’s happening in La Paz region and that’s why I call on all Paceños to get out their best Avenger, the best protector we all have,” he added as he held plastic toys of the three Marvel Comics characters.
Lockdown measures have been eased in La Paz and four other Bolivian cities beginning this month. The country has so far confirmed nearly 11,000 Covid-19 cases and 376 deaths.
The pandemic comes at an uncertain time in Bolivia as the country’s interim president Jeanine Añez has been accused of using the pandemic to delay elections.
Updated
China's service sector bounces back
China’s huge service sector has bounced back to growth for the first time since January in a sign that the world’s second largest economy is recovering strongly from strict coronavirus-induced containment measures.
If the rest of the world bounces back like China, then the recovery will be better than expected. pic.twitter.com/TUYbqkutt5
— Trinh Nguyen (@Trinhnomics) June 3, 2020
Although employment and overseas demand remains weak in the economy, the Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers’ index rose to 55.0 in May from 44.4 in April, hitting the highest level since late 2010. The 50-mark separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.
The news buoyed Asian stock markets that were already riding on a wave of positive sentiment in the United States where stocks rose for a third straight day despite widespread unrest on the country’s city streets.
Tokyo and Hong Kong were both up more than 1% while the ASX200 in Australia was up 0.8% despite GDp figures showing the country is on course for its first recession in 30 years.
Eurozone shares +2.6%, with German shares +3.7% on move towards more fiscal support
— Shane Oliver (@ShaneOliverAMP) June 2, 2020
US shares +0.8%
US 10 yr +3bp to 0.69%
Oil +3.7% to $36.9
Gold -0.6% to $1729.5
Iron ore +1.2% to $101.8
ASX futures +0.5%$A 0.6892 with $US index -0.3% as "risk on" continues
The Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay has this report:
Jacinda Ardern has had to wrestle with perhaps an unusual problem for a world leader at the moment: wishing people would stop wanting to stand so close to her.
Those jostling for selfies with the New Zealand prime minister have occasionally stood “closer than advised”, she has said, risking her adherence to her government’s own physical distancing measures.
At a news conference this afternoon, Ardern was asked by a reporter about pictures of her “embracing” fans in public, a characterisation she said she disagreed with.
People had approached her for selfies when she was out and about, she said, and sometimes they stood “closer than would be advised.” New Zealanders are still required to remain two metres from people they don’t know.
Recent polls have showed Ardern’s approval rating soaring to 65% during the lockdown she imposed over Covid-19, which is widely credited for curbing the spread of the virus.
Politicians in New Zealand are remarkably accessible; the prime minister does her own shopping and groceries, and last month made world headlines when she was turned away from a popular Wellington cafe on a date with her partner because they did not have a table available. (The story had a happy ending when space became free and a staff member chased the couple down the street to let them know.)
Updated
As always, I’d love to hear from you – please get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com with comments, questions and news tips from where you live.
Updated
French anti-racism protestors defy coronavirus gathering ban
Clashes broke out between police and protesters in Paris on Tuesday after around 20,000 people defied a ban to rally over the 2016 death of a black man in police custody, galvanised by US demonstrations against racism and deadly police violence, AFP reports.
The protesters used slogans from the American protest movement to call for justice for Adama Traore, whose death four years ago has been a rallying cause against police brutality in France.
The demonstration, which came after the release of two differing medical reports into the cause of Traore’s death, had been prohibited by police citing a coronavirus ban on gatherings of more than 10 people.
The protest started in the late afternoon outside the court in northern Paris, before projectiles were thrown and the police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, AFP journalists witnessed.
Many of the protesters drew inspiration from the protest movement raging across the United States over the police killing last week of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, holding up slogans in English such as “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe”.
Dan McGarry in Port Vila and Tess Newton Cain:
Here is the latest news about the Covid-19 outbreak across the Pacific, from Dan McGarry and Tess Newton Cain on Wednesday 3 June.
The total number of cases of Covid-19 infection across the region stands at 294, an increase of two since last week, both in Guam.
As the global and regional situation stabilises and the direct threat of Covid-19 recedes, Pacific countries are beginning to ramp up repatriation efforts. Thousands of agricultural and cruise ship workers, diplomats and officials, as well as people simply caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, are finally being afforded the chance to return.
Some people in virus-free countries, such as Palau, remain ultra-cautious about any potential for infection by these new arrivals.
New Zealand sees 12th consecutive day with no new cases
The Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay has this report:
New Zealand has reported a 12th straight day of no new cases of Covid-19, as the government considers abandoning as early as next week all remaining restrictions on the country except stringent border controls.
Just one person in New Zealand is still recovering from the illness, health officials said on Wednesday. They are not in hospital. There have been fewer than 1,500 confirmed cases of the virus in the country, with 22 deaths.
“Even though are in this very favourable position in New Zealand, there are record numbers of cases being reported globally every day,” Ashley Bloomfield, the director-general of health told reporters on Wednesday.
“This pandemic continues apace outside our borders and we cannot afford to let our guard down.”
Currently, New Zealand has physical distancing measures and gathering limits of 100 people in place, although businesses and schools are open.
The government will consider lifting those restrictions next Monday. Border restrictions would remain; only New Zealanders and their families can enter the country and must enter government-run quarantine for two weeks.
Ukrainian football club Karpaty Lviv has been placed in quarantine after 25 people among the players and staff tested positive for the coronavirus, the country’s Premier League said Tuesday.
All those infected have self-isolated while the club was “put in quarantine for at least two weeks,” the league said in a statement. Training has been suspended. The next two games for the Lviv side, scheduled for mid-June, have been cancelled.
Karpaty said that 65 people were tested for the coronavirus, and urged other clubs to view testing of its players and staff with “utmost responsibility.” A game set for last Sunday between Karpaty and Lviv had been cancelled after the first positive test results came back.
A sports official told AFP under condition of anonymity that most of those who have the coronavirus have “no symptoms”. Ukrainian football matches restarted last weekend behind closed doors, as part of easing of the virus lockdown.
Ukraine on Tuesday registered a total of 24,340 cases of the coronavirus, and 727 people died from the illness.
Latvia said Tuesday it will drop coronavirus quarantine rules for travellers from more than 20 European countries, a move already adopted by its Baltic eurozone neighbours Estonia and Lithuania, AFP reports.
Mandatory two-week self isolation will no longer apply to visitors arriving from “low risk countries” from Wednesday, Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told reporters in the capital Riga.
A free travel list published by Latvia’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control did not include countries like Sweden and Britain, where the rate of infection remains high. Borders with neighbouring Russia and Belarus will also remain sealed for passengers, but open to goods.
With the pandemic believed to be virtually extinguished in Latvia, authorities plan to lift all emergency measures on 9 June.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania reopened their shared borders on May 15, becoming among the first in Europe to allow citizens free movement for business and pleasure after two months of restrictions.
A country of 1.9 million people, Latvia has confirmed 1,071 cases of coronavirus, including 24 deaths.
Health experts cast doubt on UK hopes for holiday ‘air bridges’
The Guardian’s Peter Walker and Jamie Grierson report:
Public health experts and officials have warned that the idea of “air bridge” links between the UK and overseas holiday destinations may prove impossible this summer, amid continued concern over how they could operate safely.
A number of Conservative MPs are pushing for air bridges – mutual agreements with other countries to allow travellers to fly in and out without coronavirus quarantine restrictions – ahead of the imposition of the UK’s 14-day quarantine system next week.
The home secretary, Priti Patel, is to announce how the quarantine process will work in a statement to the Commons on Wednesday, and is coming under significant pressure from Tory MPs to signal a willingness to implement air bridges amid fears over the new measures’ effect on the tourism and hospitality sectors.
Writing in Wednesday’s Telegraph alongside the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, Patel said: “We owe it to the victims of Covid-19 to impose quarantine,” arguing it was crucial and tourism would be up and running faster if tough measures were taken.
In Japan, facilities have been warned against using devices that atomise hypochlorous acid to disinfect against coronavirus, The Mainichi reports:
An increasing number of facilities in Japan are suspending use of devices to atomize hypochlorous acid solution as a disinfectant, which has been commonly been adopted by schools, day cares and public facilities to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, following a government call for caution.
On May 29, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) introduced guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) stating that in indoor spaces, “routine application of disinfectants to environmental surfaces by spraying or fogging (also known as fumigation or misting) is not recommended for COVID-19.”
...
METI is still evaluating the effectiveness of the solutions as a disinfectant on object surfaces contaminated with viruses. But misting of the solutions is not recommended in terms of effectiveness or safety.
The true number of Covid-19 infections among inmates at Manhattan’s federal lockup was likely about seven times what the Bureau of Prisons has previously publicly reported, a government lawyer conceded Tuesday.
The bureau’s website says five inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center have had the virus. But Assistant US Attorney Jean-David Barnea, representing the MCC’s warden at a court hearing, said at least 34 inmates had been quarantined with symptoms because they were believed to have it, AP reports.
Barnea made the revelation at a federal court hearing for a lawsuit that seeks court oversight over conditions for the nearly 800 inmates at the MCC. Despite conceding the number of virus cases was probably much higher than five, Barnea fought claims that the caseload could’ve been more than a few dozen.
The MCC has been able to keep the epidemic under control at the prison, he said, adding that no inmates have been found to have the virus since 23 April. The judge did not immediately rule.
Lawyers for inmates estimated that 75 to 150 inmates infected by the coronavirus went largely untreated.
Updated
Here is the full story on Mumbai bracing for a historic storm, ahead of which authorities in the financial capital, which is struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, evacuated nearly 150 virus patients from a recently built field hospital to a facility with a concrete roof as a precautionary measure:
It’s enough to make your head swim:
When swimming lessons go ahead without having to enter the pool pic.twitter.com/Sp77ICPL7x
— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) June 2, 2020
Zoom booms as teleconferencing company profits from coronavirus crisis
The teleconferencing company Zoom has seen a massive increase in profits and has doubled its annual sales forecast, driven by a surge in users as more people work from home and connect with friends online during the coronavirus crisis, AP reports.
The once-obscure Zoom Video Communications, which has rapidly emerged as the latest Silicon Valley gold mine, released financial results on Tuesday showing the astronomical growth that has turned it into a stock market star.
Zoom’s boom has come despite privacy problems that enabled outsiders to make uninvited and sometimes crude appearances during other peoples video conferences.
Zoom’s revenue for its fiscal first-quarter between February and April more than doubled from the same time last year to $328m, turning a profit of $27m compared with $198,000 a year ago.
The numbers exceeded analysts already heightened expectations, providing another lift to a rocketing stock that has more than tripled in price so far this year. After a big run-up leading up to Tuesday’s highly anticipated announcement, Zoom’s stock gained nearly 3% in extended trading to $213.60 – more than five times the company’s initial public offering price of $36 less than 14 months ago.
British poverty campaigners have called for an emergency cash support scheme to help struggling low-income households after UK food bank charities reported that the first full month of coronavirus lockdown was their “busiest ever”.
The charities said their experience of record food bank use in April, following a huge surge in food aid in March, showed it was clear that current social security safety net measures were not enough to prevent poorer families being swept into destitution.
The Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest food bank network, said it gave out 89% more food parcels in April, compared to the same month last year, while the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan) recorded a 175% increase over the same period.
The number of families with children who received food parcels almost doubled in April compared to the the same period last year, the Trussell Trust said, a rise it described as unprecedented.
Updated
Brazil deaths pass 30,000 after record daily rise
A record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Brazil today - taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199 - but the president continues to downplay the pandemic.
The figures were announced on Tuesday evening by Brazil’s health ministry, which also said the number of coronavirus cases had risen to 555,383, second only to the United States.
The South American country is now on the verge of overtaking Italy, where 33,530 deaths have been recorded, as the country with the third highest number of deaths.
But Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismissed Covid-19 as a “little flu”, again brushed off the tragedy on Tuesday.
“I regret each of the deaths - but that’s everyone’s destiny,” Bolsonaro told supporters outside his palace in the capitalBrasília.
Brazil’s most populous state, São Paulo, registered a record number of deaths on Tuesday taking the total number of fatalities there to nearly 8,000. Rio de Janeiro has Brazil’s second highest death toll with 5,686 deaths, followed by the northeastern state of Ceará where 3,421 people have died.
For all Bolsonaro’s dismissiveness, scientists and medical experts believe the situation is dire and likely to get worse. “Not even in our most dreadful nightmare could we have imagined the situation we are now in,” Drauzio Varella, a doctor and broadcaster, wrote in one of Brazil’s top newspapers last week.
India evacuates 100,000 from homes, virus hospital ahead of cyclone
At least 100,000 people, including some coronavirus patients, were being moved to safer locations according to officials Tuesday, as India’s west coast braced for a cyclone, the first such storm to threaten Mumbai in more than 70 years, AFP reports.
Authorities in India’s financial capital, which is struggling to contain the pandemic, evacuated nearly 150 Covid-19 patients from a recently built field hospital to a facility with a concrete roof as a precautionary measure, officials said.
The chief minister of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, said people living in flimsy homes near the shore were being moved to safer places before Cyclone Nisarga makes its scheduled landfall on Wednesday afternoon or evening.
“Slum-dwellers... in low-lying areas have been instructed to evacuate,” Uddhav Thackeray said in a message posted by his office on Twitter.
In Maharashtra’s Palghar district, more than 21,000 villagers were being evacuated, local media reported, citing officials.
Indian meteorologists have warned of heavy rainfall - with winds of 100-110 kilometres (60-70 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 120 kph - causing damage to thatched huts, power lines and one to two metre-high (three to 6.5 feet) storm surges inundating low-lying areas of Maharashtra.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m Helen Sullivan, and I’ll be bringing you the latest global updates for the next few hours.
As always, I’d love to hear from you – please get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com with comments, questions and news tips from where you live.
As India’s West coast braces for what is expected to be its strongest cyclone in 70 years, authorities have moved 100,000 people to safer locations – including coronavirus patients.
In Brazil, meanwhile, the death toll has passed the sombre milestone of 30,000 deaths, after a record increase of 1,262. The current toll is 31,199.
Here are the latest developments from the last few hours:
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
-
The number of officially confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world has passed 6.3 million. According to researchers from Johns Hopkins University, 6,340,811 people are known to have been infected, while 378,359 are known to have died since the outbreak began.
- Brazil deaths pass 30,000. A record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Brazil today - taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199 - but the president continues to downplay the pandemic. The figures were announced on Tuesday evening by Brazil’s health ministry, which also said the number of coronavirus cases had risen to 555,383, second only to the United States. The South American country is now on the verge of overtaking Italy, where 33,530 deaths have been recorded, as the country with the third highest number of deaths.
- Yemen aid funding falls short by US$1bn. Yemen remains on the brink of “a macabre tragedy”, the UN has warned after a humanitarian fundraising summit raised only $1.35bn for this year, around $1bn short of the target and only half the sum raised at the equivalent pledging conference last year. Dr Abdullah al-Rabiah, the head of the King Salman Centre for Relief and Humanitarian Aid in Saudi Arabia, which co-hosted the virtual summit, put the overall shortfall down to the impact of coronavirus on national budgets and concerns about the restrictions on aid flows imposed by the parties to Yemen’s five-year civil war.
- Hopes were raised of the possible availability of a vaccine. A senior US army researcher said it was reasonable to expect that some sort of vaccine could be available to some parts of the US population by the end of the year.
- France’s death toll rose by more than a 100 in a 24-hour period for the first time in 13 days. It came as the country enacts a new easing of lockdown measures.
- Iran confirmed its second highest number of new cases in a 24-hour period since its outbreak began, with the health ministry saying 3,117 people tested positive. The number of new daily infections in Iran has now returned to levels previously seen at the peak of its outbreak in late March.
- Germany’s travel warning for Europe will be lifted on Wednesday, its foreign minister, Heiko Maas, announced. The worldwide travel warning still applies. But, for the countries of the EU and associated states, the warning will be replaced by travel advice that will give travellers detailed information about the situation in each state.
- The pandemic is exposing “endemic inequalities” that must be addressed, according to the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, who highlighted the protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd and data showing the crisis has had a worse impact on ethnic minority groups.
- The UK’s official death toll passed 50,000, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. The total differs from the government’s daily counts, which only include deaths in hospitals and care homes where the person had tested positive.
- The UK statistics watchdog criticised the government’s testing data. Whitehall’s use of testing data appears to be aimed more at making it look like a lot is being done than actually painting a clear picture, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority warned the health secretary, Matt Hancock.
- A Wuhan doctor who worked with the whistleblower Li Wenliang died of the virus last week, Chinese state media reported. Hu Weifeng, a urologist at Wuhan central hospital, reportedly became China’s first Covid-19 fatality in weeks when he died on Friday after being treated for more than four months.
- Meanwhile, Chinese officials sat on releasing the genetic map of the coronavirus for more than a week after multiple government labs had fully decoded it, according to an Associated Press report.
- The rise in unemployment slowed in Spain. The number of new jobseekers was close to 27,000 in May, about 10 times lower than in March and April during the country’s lockdown, the labour ministry said.
Updated
