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Summary
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Global confirmed death toll exceeds 285,000. The number of people known to have died since the pandemic began has reached at least 285,445, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. They say at least 4,168,427 people are known to have been infected. The figures are likely to significantly underestimate the true scale of the pandemic.
- White House staff ordered to wear masks. The White House directs staff working in the West Wing, where the daily operations of Donald Trump’s administration are carried out, to wear masks. A senior administration official says the directive will apply at all times other than when staff are at their own desks.
- Trump accused of racism over press conference comments. The president was criticised for telling an Asian-American journalist to direct her questions on the US’s epidemic to China, instead of to him. Trump insisted he would have answered the question the same way regardless of who had asked it. Trump refused to take further questions and abruptly ended the press conference. CNN’s influential chief media correspondent, Brian Stelter, said Trump’s actions had “racist overtones”, adding: “It’s racist to look at an Asian-American correspondent and say ‘ask China’; it’s part of a pattern from the president.”
- Senegal eases restrictions. The west African nation is reopening mosques and churches and easing other restrictions, even as it sees its largest one-day rise in cases. The president, Macky Sall, had ordered places of worship closed in March and imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew. Since then, the daily pace of new cases has picked up – 177 on Monday from a previous high of 104 – with increasing community transmission in hotspots such as the holy city of Touba.
- Algeria touts rapid test kits. Algeria starts producing rapid test kits with a detection time of 15 minutes and a production capacity of 200,000 units per week, its government says.
- ‘No guarantee’ of vaccine, UK’s PM says There is no guarantee of a Covid-19 vaccine, says the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, but he adds that the UK is heavily involved in the work to develop one.
- ‘Extreme vigilance’ needed as lockdowns end – WHO. The World Health Organization says “extreme vigilance” is needed as countries begin to exit lockdowns imposed to curb the virus’ spread.
- Germany has reported an acceleration in new infections after taking early steps to ease its lockdown. South Korea, another country that succeeded in limiting infections, has seen a new outbreak in nightclubs.
- Putin eases Russia lockdown despite infection surge. The Russian president announces an easing of the nationwide lockdown, even as the country sees a record number of new infections. Vladimir Putin says people in some sectors will return to work, though restrictions on public gatherings will remain in place. “We have a long and difficult process ahead of us with no room for mistakes,” he tells Russians.
Updated
Donald Trump’s press conference on coronavirus testing ended abruptly after a terse exchange with two female reporters. Asked by CBS’s Weijia Jiang about his focus on international comparisons rather than US deaths, Trump snapped: ‘Don’t ask me, ask China that question’. After being asked by Jiang, who is Asian-American, why he had directed the remark at her, Trump cut off the CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins as she asked a question and walked away from the podium:
Hi, Helen Sullivan with you now. The best way to get in touch with me – and I welcome questions, comments or tips – is on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Here’s the PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor on how the ending to Trump’s briefing played out:
Why did Trump end WH briefing? @weijia asked Trump why he sees this as "a global competition" when 80K have died. He said: "Ask China."
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 11, 2020
He tried to move on but wouldn’t let @kaitlancollins ask her Q.
He called on me but I motioned for Kaitlin to ask her Q so Trump walked off.
Updated
Trump abruptly ends White House press briefing after clash with reporter
In Washington, Trump has ended his briefing on a sour note.
Asked by CBS White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang why he is fixated on comparing the US’s testing capability with other countries as opposed to focusing on the lag that still exists in the US, Trump replied: “Maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, OK?”
He then called on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who ceded the mic to Jiang so she could ask her follow-up. Jiang, who is Asian-American, replied to Trump: “Sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically, that I should ask China.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not saying it specifically to anybody. I’m saying it to anybody that would ask a nasty question like that,” he said.
Collins then tried to ask her question but Trump skipped her. He then refused to take any more questions and left the podium.
Updated
Senegal is reopening mosques and churches and easing other restrictions, even as it sees its largest one-day jump in cases.
Its president, Macky Sall, ordered places of worship closed in March and imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew. Since then, the daily pace of new cases has picked up – 177 on Monday from a previous high of 104 – with increasing community transmission in hotspots such as the holy city of Touba.
Senegal has recorded 1,886 cases in total, including 19 deaths.
Sall, like other leaders in West Africa, has confronted public pressure to find more sustainable ways to balance public health with economic realities in the face of an epidemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned could drag on across Africa for years. He told the nation:
In the best of cases, Covid-19 will continue to circulate in the country until the month of August, or even September. In this new phase, that will last not a few weeks but three or four months, we need to learn to live in the presence of the virus.
Updated
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 985 more deaths and 23,792 more confirmed cases since the weekend’s update, taking the overall totals to 79,756 and 1,324,488.
The CDC said the weekend’s numbers were preliminary and had not been confirmed by individual states.
The Guardian has published its editorial on the British prime minister’s message to the country as it moves into a dangerous new phase of the epidemic.
For more than 30 years, the term “consensus politics” fell out of fashion in Britain. For generations of Conservative politicians schooled in the dogmas of Thatcherism, the phrase came to connote unpleasant images of sandwiches with union leaders in No 10 and weak government.
Boris Johnson urgently needs to discover the virtues of consensus-building now, after a chaotic few days of mixed messages and confused assertions.
Updated
Donald Trump has been taking questions at his White House briefing. The first was about the White House staff who tested positive.
“I don’t think the system broke down at all,” he said. He said the person who tested positive “will be fine” and will be “out of quarantine very soon”.
He says it is “shocking”, given the number of people who come in and out of the White House every day, how few positive cases there have been. He adds: “I’ve felt no vulnerability whatsoever.”
Asked when Americans can get tested every day like his senior staff can, Trump said it would be “very soon”.
“We’re leaving that up to the governors,” Trump said when asked how Americans should feel about going back to work without more testing capacity. He then argued that some governors are being too slow to lift their restrictions.
Trump said it was his decision to require West Wing staffers to begin wearing masks.
Updated
Morocco has cleared disposable face masks for export after reaching a daily production capacity of 10m by 24 factories during its epidemic, the country’s industry minister, Hafid Elalamy, has said.
An average of 2m masks are sold daily in Morocco and the surplus will be exported now that a strategic stockpile of 50m masks has been secured, Elalamy told members of parliament.
Reusable masks will only be cleared for export once Morocco secures a stockpile of 15m, he said.
Morocco, which has been on lockdown since 20 March, has made wearing face masks mandatory since 7 April.
The north African country has been exporting medical protective gear and face shields, the minister said. He added that Morocco has secured self-sufficiency in ethanol, key to making sanitisers, with a daily production capacity of 24,000 litres.
Energy demand has plummeted during the Covid-19 crisis and global carbon dioxide emissions are anticipated to be 8% lower this year, compared with 2019. Is this affecting our weather and will it affect the global climate in years to come?
Carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for decades so it takes a long time for the impact to play out. Keith Shine, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, estimates the Covid-19 effect might reduce warming by a measly 0.0025C in about 20 years time.
This is far below anything we can observe. If we were to sustain this 8% reduction over the coming years, Shine calculated, we would avoid about 0.15C of warming but, sadly, we would still massively overshoot our Paris agreement target of 1.5C.
This emphasises the scale of the task we have ahead of us.
Updated
Algeria has started producing rapid test kits with a claimed detection time of 15 minutes and a production capacity of 200,000 units per week, its government has said.
A laboratory in the capital, Algiers, developed the test kits in partnership with Canadian and Jordanian firms, the junior minister in charge of pharmaceutical production, Lotfi Benbahmed, said on state television, without naming the two foreign partners.
Updated
Slovenia will admit international air passengers from Tuesday, ending an eight-week suspension. The country’s government said:
The prohibition of international air flights from the EU area and from other countries to Slovenian international public airports is no longer needed.
Updated
In the US, the governor of California Gavin Newsom has said he and local health officials will speak to Tesla bosses after the company ordered workers back on the job despite ongoing local restrictions.
Newsom said he expected the plant to open as soon as next week and that he did not know about the order to return to work or photographs circulating on San Francisco Bay Area news sites showing its full parking lot.
Updated
Fears of foreigners bringing infectious disease into the country. Enhanced border checkpoints. And the use of disinfectant spray to sanitise human beings.
These aren’t notes from one of Donald Trump’s freewheeling press conferences. The United States’s troubled response to the coronavirus pandemic is such that the Mexican border city of Nogales, Sonora, has set up “sanitising tunnels” to disinfect people leaving the US through Nogales, in Arizona.
Updated
Albania has seen its lowest daily number of infections in eight weeks as half of its 2.8 million population began enjoying more freedom in green zones and life went on almost as normal in the other half.
With its economy heading for a recession of up to 5%, or 6.9% if most of the economy starts working by late summer, Albania has begun to gradually restart parts of its economy over the last two weeks.
Just four new infections were traced in the last 24 hours, the lowest daily number in the last eight weeks, said Eugena Tomini of the health institute in her daily update.
Updated
White House staff ordered to wear masks
The White House has directed staff working in the West Wing, where the daily operations of Donald Trump’s administration are carried out, to wear masks.
A senior administration official said the directive would apply at all times other than when staff are at their own desks.
ABC News first reported that a new memo directed everyone who enters the wing to cover their faces. With Trump’s valet and vice-president Mike Pence’s press secretary both testing positive for the virus last week, pressure is growing for the White House to take further steps in protecting the health of country’s 73-year-old president.
Updated
There is no guarantee of a Covid-19 vaccine, the British prime minister Boris Johnson has said, though he said the UK was heavily involved in the work to develop one.
I’m hearing some very encouraging things from what’s going on at Oxford to achieve a vaccine [but] this is by no means guaranteed. I believe I’m right in saying that, even after 18 years we still don’t have a vaccine for Sars. What I can tell you is that the UK is at the forefront of concerting international activity to try to deliver a vaccine.
He said the UK government was putting “huge sums” into finding a vaccine, but added:
If you ask me am I absolutely certain that we won’t be living with this for a long time to come, I can’t say that.
It may be that we have to become ever more flexible, ever more agile, ever smarter in the way that we tackle, not just this infection, but potentially future infections as well.
The UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, agreed the development of a vaccine could not be guaranteed, but said:
I’d be surprised if we didn’t end up with something.
Updated
The crew of a virus-stricken cruise ship have finally been allowed to disembark after nearly two months stranded off the coast of Uruguay.
Passengers on the Greg Mortimer – 60% of whom had tested positive – flew home from Montevideo on two chartered medical flights to Australia and the US in mid-April.
But the original 85 crew remained onboard anchored off the coast of Uruguay, with 37 continuing still carrying the virus and confined to their cabins, in many cases for more than a month. Crew members greeted the news in joyful WhatsApp videos, audios and messages to the Guardian.
“I thank Jesus for answering our prayers and the press for drawing attention to our plight,” said the ship’s Colombian medical officer, Mauricio Usme.
Marvin Paz Medina, a Honduran crew member who had been confined to his cabin since 4 April and tested positive four consecutive times, said: “As long as we remained onboard on this virus-loaded ship there’s no way we could start testing negative.”
Some crew members had started to entertain suicidal thoughts from the confinement, said Usme, who has tested positive five consecutive times.
The risk of suicide, of individual or collective psychosis, of mutiny, was there. There’s people who thought of leaving their rooms and lighting flares, who thought of jumping overboard and swimming to the coast for help.
Updated
The reproduction rate in Germany remains above the critical threshold of 1, with an estimated value of 1.07 on Monday after 1.13 on Sunday, the Robert Koch Institute for public health and disease control (RKI) has said.
The number indicates that 100 infected people on average infect 107 others, meaning the number of new infections is accelerating again. That could signal the beginning of a second wave of the pandemic in Europe’s largest economy. The RKI said:
The increase in the reproduction number R makes it necessary to observe the development very closely over the coming days.
Summary
Here are the latest headlines in our global coronavirus news coverage.
- The World Health Organization says “extreme vigilance” is needed as countries begin to exit lockdowns imposed to curb the virus’ spread. The warning comes after Germany reported an acceleration in new infections after easing its lockdown, and South Korea, another country that succeeded in limiting infections, saw a new outbreak in nightclubs.
- Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, denied reports his senior scientific and medical advisers were not consulted on the much-maligned new messaging attached to his plan to ease the country’s lockdown as he set out the details in parliament. Amid muddled guidance from ministers on what the new rules actually allow, Johnson insists the public understands his government’s message.
- Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, announced an easing of the nationwide lockdown, even as the country reported a record number of new infections. Putin said people in some sectors would return to work, though restrictions on public gatherings would remain in place.
- Men’s blood has higher levels of an enzyme used by the Sars-CoV-2 virus to infect cells, the results of a study published in the European Heart Journal show. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is found in the heart, kidneys and other organs. It is thought to play a role in how the infection progresses into the lungs.
- The Afghan capital, Kabul, recorded its worst day for infections, as 161 new cases were reported, and the health ministry warned transmission would continue to surge across the country. The total number of confirmed cases in the city, Afghanistan’s worst-affected area, reached 1,257, with about half of the 325 tests carried out coming back positive on Monday.
- Saudi-backed authorities in Yemen declared Aden an “infested” city as the number of cases there rose. The Aden-based national coronavirus committee announced 17 new cases, 10 of them in the southern port city. That raises the total count in areas under the Saudi-backed government’s control to 51, with eight deaths.
- Half a million more people could die from Aids-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa if efforts are not made to overcome interruptions to health services as a result of the pandemic, the World Health Organization warned. According to modelling, the disruption to health services could take Aids-related deaths in the next year back to 2008 levels, when it claimed 950,000 lives.
- The UK and WHO are to lead a global information campaign around the coronavirus pandemic. The “Stop the Spread” campaign, intended to counteract “incorrect and false information” about the virus, will appear across BBC World television channels, websites and apps from this month and throughout June.
Updated
A potential deal to release a renowned Iranian scientist from a US jail and return him to Iran appears to be in danger of breaking down after a senior US official questioned whether Tehran really wanted him returned, writes Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, claimed on Monday that Sirous Asgari had been freed by US authorities and would be able to return to Iran immediately if he tested negative for coronavirus.
But his remarks were dismissed as “BS” by a senior US Department of Homeland Security official, who accused Iran of slow-walking a deal.
A well-regarded materials scientist, Asgari was acquitted on charges of stealing US trade secrets but remains in immigration detention where he contracted the coronavirus.
Zarif said on Monday thatAsgari “has been acquitted of false charges and we have been very active in preparing the ground for his return. If his coronavirus is negative he could return on the first flight”. Zarif’s statement was reported on the margins of an Iranian parliament foreign and security committee meeting in Tehran.
Updated
A day of record high coronavirus infection numbers is an odd time to announce a route out of lockdown, but that’s what Vladimir Putin did on Monday as he announced the “non-working days” imposed by the Kremlin at the end of March would come to an end from Tuesday, writes Shaun Walker.
“We have a long and difficult process ahead of us with no room for mistakes,” said Putin by video link from his residence outside Moscow, on a day when the country registered more than 11,000 new infections. Russia now has the second fastest rate of infections in the world after the US. The prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, is among those in hospital with the virus.
Rather than an invitation to Russians to stream back into the streets, however, Monday’s announcement seemed to be the latest gambit in Putin’s plan to delegate responsibility for tackling the crisis to local leaders, who he said would make their own decisions on when to end lockdown.
Certainly, Russia’s vast size means there is little point in lockdown restrictions in Vladivostok being tied to the epidemic growth seven timezones away in Moscow. But the health minister Tatiana Golikova later clarified that so far only 11 of Russia’s 85 regions had an epidemiological situation that could allow for a loosening of restrictions, making Putin’s announcement look to some like passing the buck.
Updated
Health authorities in Norway have said opening up nurseries and primary schools has not rekindled the country’s coronavirus epidemic, AFP reports.
Norway was among the first countries in Europe to open up nursery schools on 20 April, followed by schools for pupils between ages six and 10 the following week.
The reopening of the schools, which had been closed on 12 March, was initially met with concern among parents. But fears appear to have been unfounded.
“We have so far not seen that opening nurseries and schools have had a negative effect on the infection situation,” Frode Forland, a senior official from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told a daily press briefing.
“If the opening would have had a negative effect, we would have begun to see that in an increased number of infections..
The same seemed to be true for hair salons, physiotherapists, as well as some other healthcare-related professions that have been allowed to operate since 27 April, according to Forland.
The rest of the country’s primary schools, high schools and colleges are due to reopen later in the week.
As of Monday, Norway had confirmed 8,106 cases of coronavirus, and 224 people had died in the country of 5.4 million people.
Updated
Updated
Forty-seven vulnerable migrants have arrived in the UK on an “unprecedented” family reunion flight from Greece, Harriet Grant reports.
British refugees travelled to Heathrow to greet nephews, brothers, husbands and wives after Monday’s flight brought people from Syria, Somalia and Afghanistan to join close family in the UK. The reunion was the result of two months of intense lobbying by the campaign group Safe Passage and the British peer Alf Dubs.
Many of the individuals, some with severe health problems, had been living for several months in the dire conditions of Greek refugee camps.
Updated
'Extreme vigilance' needed as lockdowns end - WHO
The World Health Organization has said “extreme vigilance” is needed as countries begin to exit from lockdowns, Reuters reports.
Germany earlier reported an acceleration in new coronavirus infections after it took early steps to ease its lockdown. South Korea, another country that had succeeded in limiting virus infections, has seen a new outbreak in nightclubs.
“Now we are seeing some hope as many countries exit these lockdowns,” Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies programme, told an online news briefing.
“If the disease persists at a low level without the possibility to investigate clusters, there’s always the possibility that the virus takes off again,” he said.
Governments around the world are struggling with the question of how to reopen their economies while still containing Covid-19.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told the same briefing that lifting restrictions was “complex and difficult” and that the “slow, steady lifting of lockdowns” was key.
Tedros said Germany, South Korea and China all had systems in place to respond to any resurgence in cases.
Updated
Updated
Mike Pence, the US vice-president, will not enter quarantine despite a rash of coronavirus cases in the White House in recent days, including a positive test for Pence’s press secretary, writes Tom McCarthy, the Guardian US national affairs correspondent in New York.
“Vice-president Pence has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow,” Devin O’Malley, a backup spokesman for Pence, said in a statement on Sunday night.
As the Trump administration urges Americans to return to workplaces and Donald Trump touts a “transition to greatness” ahead, the White House faces a delicate balancing act in projecting business as usual even as coronavirus cases spread through the halls of power.
Updated
There were 179 new coronavirus fatalities in Italy on Monday, bringing the death toll to 30,739, while the number of new infections rose by 744, 58 less than on Sunday, writes Angela Giuffrida, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent.
While new infections have been declining across all the Italian regions, there has been an unusual rise in Molise, the sparsely populated southern region. After registering several days of zero infections during the first week of May, the rate suddenly went up, with 81 new cases recorded since 7 May, reportedly from among the Roma community in the regional capital of Campobasso.
The region has had 383 confirmed cases to date, the lowest in Italy, and 22 deaths.
Updated
The president of Madagascar has dismissed criticism over his promoting a homegrown remedy for Covid-19, accusing health experts of taking a condescending attitude towards traditional African medicine, AFP reports.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly warned that the infusion, derived from artemisia and other indigenous herbs, has not been clinically tested.
But the Madagascan leader, Andry Rajoelina, claims the infusion cures patients within 10 days. In an interview with French media, he said:
If it wasn’t Madagascar, and if it was a European country that had actually discovered this remedy, would there be so much doubt? I don’t think so
African scientists … should not be underestimated.
I think the problem is that (the drink) comes from Africa and they can’t admit … that a country like Madagascar … has come up with this formula to save the world.
Already Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Tanzania have taken delivery of consignments of the potion, which was launched last month.
“No country or organisation will keep us from going forward,” Rajoelina said in response to the WHO’s concerns.
He said proof of the tonic’s efficacy was in “the healing of our sick”.
Madagascar has officially reported 183 coronavirus infections and 105 recoveries, with no deaths.
Updated
The government of Jordan decided on Monday to allow civil servants to return to work from 26 May following a break of around two months imposed as part of measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Reuters reports.
Amjad al-Adailah, a government spokesman, said civil servants, who comprise the bulk of Jordan’s public sector, would return after the three-day Eid holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.
The government will maintain a night curfew until further notice despite the easing of a tight lockdown over the last two weeks that has allowed most businesses to resume work, he added.
Updated
The European commission will tell airlines and travel companies to offer vouchers valid at least 12 months for travel cancelled as a result of the coronavirus crisis when it presents this week its recommendations to help the ailing tourism industry, officials told Reuters.
Vouchers should offer the same services, same route in case of a flight and same travel conditions as the original booking. Customers who end up not using the vouchers would still be able to ask for a full refund no later than 12 months after the vouchers were issued, the officials said on Monday.
The EU executive is also due to tell member states to guarantee vouchers to convince customers to accept them instead of a cash refund, according to a document seen by Reuters before official publication due on Wednesday.
The proposal will come as guidance to the 27 EU member states and European companies, rather than a law they would be obliged to follow.
Germany and other countries have urged a suspension of EU rules that force cash-drained airlines and the hospitality industry to offer full refunds for cancelled flights and trips.
Updated
Tunisia on Monday urged continued vigilance against the coronavirus, a day after recording no new cases for the first time since 2 March as it eases strict lockdown measures, AFP reports.
The country’s overall toll stood at 1,032 cases on Sunday, the same as the previous day, with 45 deaths – unchanged for several days – and 700 recoveries.
But the health minister, Abdellatif Mekki, urged caution despite the encouraging figures.
“It’s true that it boosts morale, but there could be a return of cases tomorrow,” he told the parliamentary health committee.
He called on Tunisians to continue respecting hygiene and social distancing measures.
Tunisia closed its schools, places of worship and non-essential shops in mid-March, despite having recorded fewer than 20 cases of the Covid-19 illness.
It began a partial easing of the lockdown in late April, although schools will largely remain closed until September.
Updated
Richard Branson is to sell $500m (£405m) in Virgin Galactic shares in order to prop up his airline and leisure interests, which have been ravaged by the coronavirus crisis.
In a statement to the New York stock exchange, Branson’s Virgin Group said it intended to sell 25m shares via a series of transactions, prompting a 5% fall in the share price of Virgin Galactic during pre-market trading.
The shares, which account for just over a fifth of the billionaire’s stake in the space tourism business, were worth $500m at their pre-announcement price of $20. The company said:
Virgin intends to use any proceeds to support its portfolio of global leisure, holiday and travel businesses that have been affected by the unprecedented impact of Covid-19.
Updated
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, is now giving one of his thrice-weekly press conferences on coronavirus.
Media briefing on #COVID19 with @DrTedros https://t.co/5hUoJNRUc7
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) May 11, 2020
You can also view it in the player embedded at the top of the blog.
Updated
Particular focus in Germany in the struggle against coronavirus is being paid to the meat industry, where there has been a disturbingly high number of infections, writes Kate Connolly, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent.
Critics of the industry have said they believe that working conditions, including the accommodation where workers – mainly from eastern European countries – are often housed collectively in very close quarters, are at least in part to blame.
In one abattoir in particular, in the municipality of Coesfeld in North Rhein-Westphalia, there have been 249 confirmed cases of coronavirus among workers.
The meat industry has hit back at the claims, insisting the working conditions are not to blame. Instead, it says the reason is that the meat industry had to keep going even as the virus took hold in Germany, while other industries, such as the automobile industry, were forced to stop.
“The industry had to keep going in order to ensure that the food supply was not interrupted”, Heike Harstick, the CEO of the association of the German meat industry, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in an interview. She said if workers had to be kept in separate rooms, that would lead to higher rent and many abattoirs would go out of business or be forced abroad.
As a result of the scandal in Coesfeld, and other incidents elsewhere, all workers at abattoirs across NRW will now have a coronavirus test by the end of this week, said Karl-Josef Laumann, the state’s health minister.
The opposition Green party has called for a debate in the Bundestag for the coming week on working conditions in the meat industry across the country and is calling for tighter controls and better worker protection to be introduced.
Updated
This is Damien Gayle back again after my break, so please do send on any tips, comments or suggestions for coverage. You can reach me via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.
This is Caroline Davies now handing the blog back to my colleague Damien Gayle.
On an unseasonably chill grey May morning, in coats and scarves, Paris came out of lockdown in much the same mood as it went into it two months ago: a bit hesitantly, dragging its feet, not entirely sure what the rules were of another new non-normality, writes Jon Henley, the Guardian’s European affairs correspondent.
“I’m a little bit frightened,” admitted Marianna Mota, reopening her florist’s on Rue Condorcet in the 9th arrondissement for the first time since 17 March. “I only hope the customers will come and I only hope they’ll be careful. We need them to be.”
It nearly did not happen at all. According to local media, the government hesitated until the last minute before finally confirming last week it would lift the lockdown in the French capital and its surrounding area, the country’s most densely populated region and the hardest hit by Covid-19.
Unlike most of the rest of France, classified green, and to a much greater extent than the three other regions coloured red for high-risk – broadly the country’s north-east quarter – the coronavirus is still circulating in and around Paris, where Covid-19 patients currently account for more than 10% of admissions to emergency care wards.
The UK government has given the all clear for the Premier League and other professional sports to return behind closed doors from 1 June, providing its five tests on controlling the coronavirus are met.
The news was contained in a 60-page document, Our Plan to Rebuild, which sets out in broad terms the government’s strategy for recovery from the pandemic.
Sport would be able to resume as part of the second stage of the government’s recovery plan. This would permit “cultural and sporting events to take place behind closed-doors for broadcast, while avoiding the risk of large-scale social contact”.
Full report by Paul MacInnes here.
Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape province have become South Africa’s coronavirus hotspot, accounting for more than half of the nation’s confirmed cases, which have climbed above 10,600, Associated Press reports.
Western Cape province has had 5,621 cases, according to figures released Monday, and of the country’s 206 deaths registered from Covid-19, 116 have occurred in the province.
Cape Town, with its poor, densely populated townships, is the centre of the cases in the province.
South Africa has the continent’s highest number of confirmed cases and has eased its restrictions to allow an estimated 1.6 million people to return to work in selected mines, factories and businesses.
However, the concentration of cases in Cape Town may lead to the city returning to a stricter lockdown, according to the health minister, Zweli Mkizhe.
Updated
Putin eases Russia lockdown despite infection surge
Vladimir Putin announced an easing of Russia’s nationwide lockdown on Monday, even as Russia recorded a record number of new coronavirus infections.
Putin said people in some sectors would now return to work, though restrictions on public gatherings would remain in place. “We have a long and difficult process ahead of us with no room for mistakes,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
He noted the size of Russia and said the epidemiological situation in different regions varied greatly, thus local governments would retain the right to keep lockdown measures in place. In Moscow, the centre of Russia’s coronavirus epidemic, the lockdown is due to remain in force until the end of May at least.
Russia on Monday announced 11,656 new cases over the past 24 hours, a record number. The country has had a total of 221,344 confirmed cases of the virus and 2,009 deaths. It has the second highest rate of new infections after the US.
“This should be remembered. Putin has ended national self-isolation measures aimed at fighting the epidemic on the very day when we have registered a record for new infections. W for Wisdom,” wrote the opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Twitter.
In a long address, Putin also surveyed the economic situation in the country, noting that the number of registered unemployed had doubled since early April, and he announced a new package of economic measures.
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Hi. This is Caroline Davies taking over the blog while Damien goes for a break. Please do drop me a line via email caroline.davies@theguardian.com with any tips or suggestions for things we should be covering
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has just given the briefest of briefings following relaxation of the lockdown rules over the weekend, writes Kate Connolly, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent.
Appearing in the sky lobby of her chancellery in Berlin, she said:
It is very important to me to bring attention to the fact that we are coming into a new phase of the pandemic and that it will now be necessary that along with the relaxations we really have certainty that people will stick to the basic precepts, which are: keeping distance, wearing a mouth and nose covering in consideration for other people. That is very important. Thank you very much.
That was it. Then she disappeared. Her statement, delivered in an unusually breathless voice and lacking her usual calm, was widely interpreted as a reaction to the news at the weekend that thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities around the country protesting against the infringement of their civil liberties, and reports that many people were failing to abide by the distancing or face covering rules.
The number of infections in Germany as of Monday afternoon was 172,658, and 7,681 people had died from the virus.
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Covid-19 disruption could double Aids deaths - WHO
Half a million more people could die from Aids-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa if efforts are not made to overcome interruptions to health services as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization has warned.
According to the modelling carried out on behalf of the WHO and UNAids, the disruption to health services could take Aids-related deaths in the next year in the region back to 2008 levels, when it claimed 950,000 lives.
“And people would continue to die from the disruption in large numbers for at least another five years, with an annual average excess in deaths of 40% over the next half a decade,” the agencies said. “In addition, HIV service disruptions could also have some impact on HIV incidence in the next year.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, was quoted as saying:
The terrible prospect of half a million more people in Africa dying of Aids-related illnesses is like stepping back into history.
We must read this as a wake-up call to countries to identify ways to sustain all vital health services. For HIV, some countries are already taking important steps, for example ensuring that people can collect bulk packs of treatment, and other essential commodities, including self-testing kits, from drop-off points, which relieves pressure on health services and the health workforce. We must also ensure that global supplies of tests and treatments continue to flow to the countries that need them.
In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 25.7 million people were living with HIV and 16.4 million (64%) were taking antiretroviral therapy in 2018.
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The Netherlands reported 16 more Covid-19 deaths on Monday, the fewest in nearly two months, bringing the total death toll from its outbreak to 5,456.
In its daily report, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) also said 161 more people had tested positive for the virus, the lowest daily figure in almost as long.
The Netherlands has registered 42,788 cases of coronavirus, although RIVM says the actual numbers of infections are higher since not all patients are tested.
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Kenya has reported 28 new confirmed cases of coronavirus.
In the last 24 hours we have tested 841 samples, out of which twenty eight (28) people tested positive for corona virus.
— Ministry of Health (@MOH_Kenya) May 11, 2020
This brings the total number of those who have tested positive to 700.#KomeshaCorona updates. pic.twitter.com/3xP095wMGg
UK and WHO to lead global Covid-19 information campaign
The UK government and its national broadcaster, the BBC, is joining forces with the World Health Organization to implement a global information campaign around the coronavirus pandemic
The “Stop the Spread” campaign, intended to counteract “incorrect and false information” about the virus, will appear across BBC World television channels, websites and apps from this month and throughout next month.
According to a WHO statement:
The campaign aims to raise awareness among BBC audiences of the risks of misinformation on Covid-19. It encourages them to double check information from unreliable sources and promotes WHO and national health authorities as trusted sources of information.
The UK government is funding the campaign and will track engagement, and will also provide a campaign toolkit to partner governments to translate and use in their own countries, to create a worldwide unified message around the coronavirus outbreak.
The WHO added:
This tripartite partnership campaign supports WHO’s work for addressing the infodemic of false information about Covid-19 and for busting myths about the spread and treatment of the disease.
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Key enzyme puts men at higher risk of Covid-19
Men’s blood has higher levels than women’s of a key enzyme used by the new coronavirus to infect cells, the results of a European study showed on Monday, Reuters reports.
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is found in the heart, kidneys and other organs. In Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, it is thought to play a role in how the infection progresses into the lungs.
The study, published in the European Heart Journal, also found that widely prescribed drugs called ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) did not lead to higher ACE2 concentrations and should therefore not increase the Covid-19 risk for people taking them.
ACE inhibitors and ARBs are widely prescribed to patients with congestive heart failure, diabetes or kidney disease. The drugs account for billions of dollars in prescription sales worldwide.
“Our findings do not support the discontinuation of these drugs in Covid-19 patients,” said Adriaan Voors, a professor of cardiology at the University Medical Centre (UMC) Groningen in the Netherlands, who co-led the study.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 4 million people worldwide and killed almost 277,000, according to a Reuters tally. Death and infection tolls point to men being more likely than women to contract the disease and to have severe or critical complications if they do.
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Kosovo’s caretaker prime minister has said he is in self-isolation after an official in his government “had close contact” with someone who tested positive for coronavirus, according to AFP.
Albin Kurti made the announcement on his Facebook page, saying he would stay in his apartment until test results were available for the official from the ministry of European integration who had contact with the infected person.
“Today is the first day when I will not go to work at the prime minister’s office,” the 44-year-old wrote.
With tight restrictions on movement and early moves to shut down public activities, Kosovo has so far prevented a widespread outbreak of Covid-19 among its population of 1.8 million.
According to government figures, 884 infections have been detected and 28 people have died from the disease.
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South Korea has pushed back its reopening of schools by a week as health authorities try to isolate virus carriers and trace their contacts after finding dozens of coronavirus infections linked to clubgoers, the Associated Press reports.
Before discovering the new transmissions, the country had relaxed social distancing guidelines amid what had been a slowing caseload and scheduled the reopening of schools, starting with high-school seniors on Wednesday.
But the vice-minister for education, Park Baeg-beom, said in a briefing on Monday that the school openings for high-school seniors would be pushed back to next Wednesday.
Local education authorities including Cho Hee-yeon, the superintendent of Seoul’s education office, had earlier called for the government to postpone the reopening of schools, raising concerns that children could be exposed to larger infection risks.
The country’s elementary, middle and high schools have been providing remote learning since April.
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Sunday’s presidential election in Poland had a record low turnout of 0%, Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, reports.
The vote was not officially cancelled but polling stations stayed closed, leading to a strange ghost election after weeks of legal wrangling over whether or not it should go ahead.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has been accused of rolling back democratic norms in recent years, tried to hold the election despite the challenges of voting in times of Covid-19.
The PiS-allied incumbent, Andrzej Duda, was the firm favourite to win, and the opposition accused the government of trying to push through the vote now to make it easier for him to win in the first round. Up until Wednesday evening, the government insisted a postal vote would go ahead.
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In a televised address on Sunday night, Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, extended a ban on public gatherings until at least the end of the month, writes Emmanuel Akinwotu, the Guardian’s West Africa correspondent.
Addo’s address primarily set out to defend the government’s easing of the lockdown three weeks ago, amid fierce criticism.
Since Ghana’s measures were eased, cases of Covid-19 in the country have accelerated, doubling in the last week to 4,263. Twenty-two people have died and 378 have recovered from the virus.
On Saturday there were almost a thousand new cases announced by the government. The rate of infections has fuelled worries that the relaxed measures have caused the virus to spread further. In what is still technically an election year, criticism of the government has grown more intense.
The former president John Mahama, a candidate against Akufo-Addo’s re-election, tweeted on Saturday: “From 3,091 to 4,012 #COVID19 cases within 24 hours. Government is certainly failing the people of Ghana.”
In the president’s address the following day, he indirectly responded: “I know some political actors would want you to believe that the new numbers represent a failure on our part, do not begrudge them.”
The government insists that its fairly robust testing and tracing measures allow it to track the spread with precision and focus restrictions on specific locations rather than entire cities. So far 160,000 tests have been administered in Ghana, one of the highest totals in Africa.
Addo said a sharp rise in cases was partly due to a backlog of tests, which had now been cleared. Many recently confirmed cases were not new infections. Clusters of cases were being tightly traced, such as 533 infections at a fish processing factory which he said were all linked to one individual.
Health officials in Ghana feel the larger case numbers, among the highest in Africa, are largely a result of its more comprehensive and widespread testing campaign relative to other countries. Yet each new rise in cases casts the lockdown in a more critical light.
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Sweden has reported 348 new cases of coronavirus, as the country begins to see a downward trend in new infections despite having eschewed the kinds of strict lockdowns seen elsewhere in Europe.
The latest figures from Sweden’s public health authority pushed the total number of cases in the country to 26,670. So far 3,256 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19, with 31 new deaths reported on Monday.
Earlier on Monday the head of Sweden’s civil contingencies agency admitted authorities could have acted “a little faster” to contain the spread of coronavirus among vulnerable people.
In a radio interview, Dan Eliasson said that “when major crises occur, you will always look at it afterward. So comes the question, did we react fast enough?”
Last month the health minister, Lena Hallengren, told Swedish television that “we failed to protect our elderly. That’s really serious and a failure for society as a whole. We have to learn from this.”
In recent weeks Swedish media have reported cases of large death tolls at retirement homes where staff were continuing to work despite a lack of protective gear or despite exhibiting symptoms.
Some retirement homes have faced shortages of staff because employees have refused to work or have been encouraged to stay home with mild symptoms.
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More from Africa: Zambia reports no new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours!
UPDATE: Zambia has recorded ZERO new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24hrs.
— Ministry of Health Zambia (@mohzambia) May 11, 2020
COVID-19 #49 UPDATE - MOH pic.twitter.com/DlP44SHGuF
The World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa says that more than 63,000 cases of coronavirus were confirmed across the continent as of Monday morning.
So far African countries have reported 2,283 deaths associated with Covid-19, it adds. Fears of a widespread outbreak in Africa have so far failed to materialise, although there are suggestions that numbers of infections and deaths linked to the virus could be underestimates due to relatively limited testing.
Over 63,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 2,283 associated deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTg pic.twitter.com/2huZFgBZr0
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) May 11, 2020
The latest coronavirus figures from Iran appear to show a trend towards increased transmission is continuing in the country, with 1,683 new cases recorded in the past 24 hours, the highest daily figure since 11 April, writes Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.
At the same time the number of deaths reported by the Iranian health ministry was 45, the lowest number since the early days of the outbreak two months ago. A total of 6,685 Iranians have died.
Deaths tend to lag behind infections which should suggest the death toll will rise again in the coming days although it is possible that improved testing means those lightly infected are showing up in the official figures. The recent incline in the number of infections has lasted about a fortnight.
It came as the Iranian government continued to lift restrictions with the move justified by pointing to the number of provinces that are now coming out of the crisis. Religious places, restaurants and hairdressers are all due to open gradually after Ramadan subject to health protocols. Many mosques opened at on Friday
But two provinces Tehran and Khuzestan a province bordering Iraq are suffering badly. The province is being put in effective quarantine for a week with the authorities blaming locals for failing to follow guidelines.
The total numbers infected in Iran since the outbreak began is 109,286, and the Iran government is unofficially projecting fewer than 10,000 will die.
Iranian opposition groups dispute the official figures and say the number of deaths is already close to 40,000.
The supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was confidently tweeting at the weekend that the outbreak had shown the failure of the west. He tweeted “Western civilisation’s failure in their global trial of combating coronavirus is obvious and quite visible. The West and westernised people do not want this failure to be seen. However it is necessary to study and speak about the various dimensions ands reasons for failure.”
Such remarks – turning treatment of the disease into a test of rival ideologies – are hardly likely to encourage the Iranian medical authorities to challenge the official figures.
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Our US-focused coronavirus liveblog has just got going in the past half an hour. If you are interested in more coverage from the country then take a look.
The authority that sets the rules of the French language has decreed that Covid-19 is a feminine noun, according to an AFP report.
In French, every noun has a gender, with, for example, bread – “pain” – referred to with the masculine article “le” and beer – “bière” – referred to with the feminine “la”.
Now l’Academie Francaise has proclaimed “Covid-19” is a feminine noun and urged an end to what has become the widespread practice in France of referring to it as masculine.
“The use of the feminine would be preferable,” the Academie Francaise said in a directive published on its website under the category “faulty use”.
“It is perhaps not too late to give this acronym back the gender it should have.”
The “Office quebecois de la langue francaise” also recommends its feminine use, and the Royal Spanish Academy has issued similar guidance, citing the same grammar rationale.
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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Pakistan passed 30,000 on Monday, after 1,476 new infections were detected in the past 24 hours, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The latest increase brings the total number of people found infected with the virus to 30,941, of whom 667 have died and 8,212 have recovered. The country’s has so far conducted 277,698 tests.
The most affected province is Punjab, with 11,568 cases, followed by Sindh, which has 11,480.
Cannes abandons 'physical' festival for 2020
The Cannes film festival appears to have halted any plans for a physical edition for 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but is aiming to sponsor screenings at other festivals and cinemas of the films that would have been selected for the festival, Andrew Pulver, the Guardian’s film editor, reports.
In an interview with Screen, the Cannes artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, said he “could never have imagined” something like the cancellation of the festival, which was originally due to start tomorrow and was “overcome with a great sense of melancholy and nostalgia”.
He added:
Under the circumstances, a physical edition of Cannes 2020 is hard to envisage, so we’ll have to do something different … Everyone understands that [it is] impossible this year.
The festival announced in April that it had been forced to call off its event in its traditional mid-May slot, after restrictions by French government effectively banned mass gatherings until mid-July at the earliest. However, tentative suggestions that a postponed version could be mounted later in the year appear to have been abandoned. Cannes has also appeared to resist calls to go down the digital route and construct a “virtual” festival online.
Frémaux said that, at the beginning of June, Cannes would announce a list of films that would have screened in the 2020 festival. Then, Frémaux said, “the aim is to start organising events in cinemas” – what he termed “Cannes hors les murs”, or “Cannes outside the walls”.
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Authorities in South Korea are struggling to contain a new coronavirus outbreak linked to the capital’s nightclub district as a backlash against the country’s gay community increases, prompting fears LGBT people will fail to get tested out of fear of being outed, Nemo Kim in Seoul reports.
South Korea had been praised for its innovative efforts to contain the pandemic, going from the second most infected region outside China to having just a handful of cases before the latest outbreak a week ago.
But the increasing number of cases related to nightclubs in Seoul is raising concerns about a possible second wave as well as over the high level of deeply entrenched homophobic attitudes in the conservative society.
Of 35 new cases, 29 were found to be linked to Itaewon, the capital’s gay district, according to officials from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), bringing the total number of cases related to the clubs to 86.
After Kookmin Ilbo, a local media outlet with links to an evangelical church, reported that businesses visited by an infected man over the long weekend were gay clubs, many other South Korean media followed suit, revealing not only the identity of clientele but also some of their ages and the names of their workplaces.
The media frenzy reached a new level when another infected man was found to have been to an LGBT sauna in Gangnam, prompting a slew of homophobic content in newspapers and online.
Lurid reporting, along with South Korea’s use of the trace and test method, has led to members of the gay community reporting feeling scared to get tested and even suicidal. Officials said 3,112 people who were in the nightclubs were currently not contactable.
Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his 30s, told the Guardian:
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now.
Spain’s health ministry reported 123 coronavirus deaths on Monday, the country’s lowest level in seven weeks and down from a peak of 950 in early April, Reuters reports.
The overall death toll from the epidemic rose to 26,744 on Monday from 26,621 on the previous day. The number of confirmed cases rose to 227,436 from 224,390 on Sunday.
It came as about half of Spain’s 47 million people progressed to the so-called Phase 1 of a four-step plan to relax one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns after the government decided that the regions in which they live met the necessary criteria.
In regions that qualify, including most of Andalusia - Spain’s most populous - as well as the Canary and Balearic Islands, bars, restaurants, shops, museums, gyms and hotels were allowed to open, most at reduced capacity.
But Madrid, Barcelona and other cities including Valencia, Malaga and Granada will remain in Phase 0.
Church services resumed with limited capacity and chairs, rather than pews, were spaced out inside for worshippers to keep 2m apart.
Under the lockdown relaxation, up to 10 people can gather together and people are allowed to move freely around their province.
Europe’s largest minority, the Roma people, are being particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic in many countries, because they face a combination of health risks, economic deprivation and increased stigmatisation, reports Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, in Budapest.
Around 80% of Europe’s 10 million Roma live in densely populated neighbourhoods and overcrowded houses, and many do not have access to running water. This means the basic distancing and sanitary measures required to combat the spread of the virus are more difficult. In some countries this has already led to scapegoating of Roma communities as potential illness hotspots.
“This disaster will not only affect the Roma but also mainstream societies, economies, and politics, and heighten inter-ethnic conflict to a level not seen in the last three decades,” according to a recent report by the Open Society Foundations on the impact of coronavirus on Roma in six countries with sizeable communities: Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.
Roma neighbourhoods in Bulgaria and Slovakia have been cordoned off amid fears of the virus spreading. Police checkpoints were introduced outside two large neighbourhoods in Sofia, and people were only allowed to leave the area if they could show a work contract or prove another urgent reason for doing so.
Forty-five more people in Iran have been recorded as dying from coronavirus in the past 24 hours, according to the spokesman for the country’s health ministry.
In a televised statement, Kianoush Jahanpour said said that 1,683 new infected cases have been detected since yesterday, bringing the total number of infections to 109,286.
So far 87,422 people have recovered from the virus, while 6,685 have died and 2,703 are currently in hospital in a critical condition, Jahanpour was quoted as saying by the Islamic Republic News Agency.
He added that 601,324 tests have so far been carried out in Iran.
Aden declared an 'infested' city
Saudi-backed authorities in Yemen have declared Aden an “infested” city after the number of coronavirus cases there rose, Reuters reports.
The Aden-based national coronavirus committee late on Sunday announced 17 new Covid-19 cases, 10 of them in the southern port city, to raise the total count in areas under the Saudi-backed government’s control to 51 with eight deaths.
The Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which controls Sanaa, the national capital, and most large urban centres, has reported two cases, with one death. The Aden-based government has accused Houthi authorities of covering up an outbreak in Sanaa, an accusation they deny.
The committee said Aden had been declared an “infested city” due to the spread of the coronavirus and other diseases already rife in the country after recent flooding. It said movement from Aden to other regions was barred, except for transport of goods.
“The administrative and political situation in Aden is also hampering efforts to combat the coronavirus and this should be remedied so relevant entities can carry out their duties,” the committee said on its Twitter account.
A five-year war has shattered Yemen’s health system, pushed millions to the brink of famine and divided the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says there is community transmission of the virus in Yemen, with the disease spreading undetected among a population with some of the lowest levels of immunity to disease compared with other states.
Testing capabilities are inadequate but the WHO has also urged local authorities to transparently report confirmed cases.
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Hi this is Damien Gayle taking the reins on the blog now for the next eight hours, with the latest coronavirus developments from around the world.
As usual, I’m keen to hear your input. If you have any tips, suggestions or ideas for things we could be covering from your part of the world, please do drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via a direct message through Twitter to @damiengayle.
This is Paul MacInnes signing off. Damien Gayle will be taking over till 7pm UK time. Thanks for reading and for your emails too.
India is to reopen parts of its railway network this week, despite an ongoing rise in the coronavirus infection rate in the country.
The government’s railway ministry said it would gradually restart passenger services on Tuesday with 15 trains connecting Delhi to Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and other big cities.
“Thereafter, Indian Railways shall start more special services on new routes,” the government said in a statement.
India’s 1.3bn people are currently under lockdown until May 17 and a growing number of politicians and business groups are clamouring for an end to the measures.
An estimated 20m Indians use the railways each day under normal circumstances, and any resumption of services will be essential to restarting the Indian economy.
Figures released by the government on Sunday, however, showed coronavirus infections had jumped by 4,214 to 67,152, the biggest recorded daily rise.
India’s rising numbers of infections are in part the result of increased testing, which has grown from 2,000 tests per day in late March, to 85,000 to 90,000 a day now, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was due to hold a meeting with state chief ministers later on Monday to determine a path out of the lockdown even as infections spread.
Passengers taking the trains that will start up on Tuesday will have to wear masks and undergo screening at the stations, a government official said.
Afghan cases 'will continue to surge'
In Afghanistan, the capital, Kabul, recorded its worst day for coronavirus infections after 161 new cases were reported and the health ministry warned transmission will continue to surge across the war-torn country.
The total number of infections in Kabul, which has so far been Afghanistan’s worst affected area, reached 1,257 confirmed cases. Around half of 325 tests in Kabul went back positive today.
Wahid Majroh, deputy health minister said out of 709 tests across the country in the past 24 hours, 285 were positive and two patients had died of Covid-19, taking the total number of infections to 4,687 and death toll to 122. There have so far been 574 recoveries.
Majroh warned that the country is going toward the peak of the virus and that the number of transmissions “will continue to surge”. He also said the testing capacity of the country will increase.
Despite government authorised lockdown in the capital and several other provinces, cities are still crowded and some provinces eased lockdowns on Sunday.
Majroh said there is “a need for people to act responsibly and take the lockdown seriously”. He called on people to stay at home and asked the people to “adapt their life with the coronavirus and observe health guidelines”.
The Afghan government has announced that it has started a plan to distribute bread amongst the country’s poor after around two million Afghans lost their jobs due to the pandemic. The announcement came after at least six people were killed in a protest against unfair distribution of the aid in central Ghor province on Friday.
Officials in Kandahar announced over the weekend that governor of Kandahar tested positive as 30 new confirmed cases reported today, pushing the total number of infection to 537 with 12 deaths.
Kandahar governor is the second high profile official in Afghanistan to get infected to Covid-19 after Ferozuddin Feroz, the health minister infected to virus last Thursday. Heath ministry spokesman said Feroz is in good condition.
The western province of Herat recorded 7 new cases overnight. Herat borders Iran and first case of Covid-19 confirmed in the province as thousands of Afghan migrants poured back from Iran in February and March, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined. Herat is the country’s second worst affected city with 901 confirmed cases.
Toward the east, six out of the eight of Sunday’s positive cases in Nangarhar were from province’s prison, said Shah Mahmoud Meyakhil, provincial governor, adding there are 12 other suspected cases are in the prison, 16 new cases confirmed today in Nangarhar.
Meanwhile, the war has intensified as at least six security forces were killed and five others were wounded in a Taliban attack in Laghman province on Sunday night, defense ministry said Monday.
At least 25 civilians were killed and 75 wounded in Taliban attacks over last week, according to country’s National Security Council spokesman.
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Russia has reported a record rise in the number of new coronavirus infections with 11,656 new cases in the last 24 hours.
The Russian government attribute the spike in cases to an increased testing programme.
The country’s coronavirus response centre also reported 94 new deaths, taking the overall death toll to 2,009 people.
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Schoolchildren began trialling temperature-monitoring bracelets at Beijing schools on Monday, in China’s latest high-tech measure for tracking possible exposure to Covid-19.
The bracelets collect real-time temperature data that can be monitored by schools and parents via an app, the Beijing Daily reported. If a student’s temperature rises above 37.2 degrees, the bracelet will prompt their teacher to alert the police,
The bracelets were rolled out in five Beijing districts as middle school students went back to school for the first time in months.
“The bracelet is similar to a normal fitness tracker ... We recommend that students wear them 24 hours a day,” one unnamed teacher told the Beijing Daily.
Over the past few weeks, a wave of schools have gradually reopened across China with extra health and safety measures that include daily temperature monitoring, compulsory mask-wearing and social-distancing policies.
This follows measures taken in Chinese society more broadly. Thermal cameras have been in public areas and most places require people to show an app with green, yellow and red ratings that determine a person’s infection risk based on travel history.
Some Chinese regions have taken back-to-school measures that are even more vigilant. The southern province of Guangdong required all 167,000 of the first batch of returning high school students and 30,000 teachers to undergo nucleic acid testing in late April.
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Confirmed coronavirus infections in the Philippines have broken past the 11,000 mark, the health ministry said on Monday.
In a bulletin, the health ministry reported 292 additional cases, bringing the total to 11,086. It recorded seven more deaths, increasing the total to 726 while 75 more patients have recovered, bringing total recoveries to 1,999.
Tróndur Arge writes: The last time KI Klaksvik and B36 Torshavn met, last October, it was to decide the destiny of the Premier League title, a match that attracted a record 6,000 people – about 11.5% of the population of the Faroe Islands. On Saturday they played again, with no more than 50 people allowed into the stadium including the 22 players on the field, as European domestic football got back under way on the rocky archipelago between Scotland and Iceland.
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Saudi Arabia has announced plans to raise taxes and cut public spending as it attempts to deal with both the Covid-19 pandemic and a collapse in oil prices.
Taxes on basic goods are to triple to 15%, spending on major projects cut by $26bn and a ‘cost of living allowance’ for individuals is to be scrapped.
“We are facing a crisis the world has never seen the likes of in modern history, a crisis marked by uncertainty,” said the Saudi finance minister and acting minister of economy and planning, Mohammed Al-Jadaan.
“These measures that have been undertaken today, as tough as they are, are necessary and beneficial to maintain comprehensive financial and economic stability.”
Saudi Arabia has experienced a substantial coronavirus outbreak, reporting 39,000 confirmed cases and 246 deaths. But the country has also been hit hard by the fall in oil prices, with crude now trading at around $30 a barrel, less than half the price at the end of 2019.
This is far below the range Saudi Arabia needs to balance its budget. The kingdom has also lost revenue from the suspension of Muslim pilgrimages to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which were closed to visitors due to the virus.
The decision to cut $26bn in expenses, or about 100 billion Saudi riyals, includes cancelling, extending, or postponing some operational and capital expenditures for government agencies, as well reducing costs for major Vision 2030 projects that are the centerpiece of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans for the country.
The cost-of-living allowance, is also to be withdrawn from June, a supplement that had cost the state about $13.5bn a year.
VAT will also rise from 5% to 15% in July. The tax on most goods and services was only introduced in Saudi Arabia in 2018.
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Switzerland eases lockdown restrictions
Switzerland has announced a range of measures to loosen lockdown conditions in the country.
From today, primary and ‘lower secondary’ schools will reopen, meaning children up to the age of 15 can resume their education.
Shops, markets, museums, libraries and restaurants will also be allowed to reopen provided they comply with “precautionary measures”.
The level of threat from coronavirus in the country remains ‘extraordinary’ however, according to the government’s classification.
Switzerland has reported 30,305 cases of the disease, according to the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with 1,833 deaths.
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Many of us have turned to the television set for solace during the coronavirus lockdown. But with much of the world behind closed doors, production of new content for the small screen has ground to a halt.
In Japan, this has led to an almost unprecedented situation: a lack of new episodes of “Sazae-san”, the world’s longest running cartoon.
A mainstay of the Japanese weekend, production of the cartoon has been interrupted by the coronavirus, forcing the broadcast of re-runs for the first time in decades.
“Sazae-san”, which first aired in 1969, revolves around the life of Mrs Sazae, a cheerful but klutzy housewife who lives with her parents, husband, son, brother and sister.
The 30-minute episodes aired Sunday nights are very popular, and for many in Japan have come to denote the end of the weekend.
But the cartoon, recognised as the longest-running animated TV series by Guinness World Records, has been hampered by the outbreak of the virus, with animation dubbing halted to keep staff safe, broadcaster Fuji Television Network said.
“We will halt broadcast of new episodes of ‘Sazae-san’ for the time being from May 17 and instead air re-runs,” it announced on Sunday.
It is the first time the network has been forced to air re-runs since 1975, when the economic effects of an earlier oil crisis lingered..
Updated
A customer waits to enter a McDonald’s after three weeks of closure due to the pandemic in Singapore. Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images
Hi this is Paul and I’ll be taking you through for the next four hours. My Twitter is largely defunct (I just lurk really), but you can mail me here
I’ll now hand over to my colleague Paul MacInnes in London. Thanks for your company.
You can catch up on the most recent developments with our global wrap here:
Donald Trump is culpable in the deaths of thousands of Americans by using the coronavirus pandemic to boost his electoral prospects and line the pockets of big business, Prof Noam Chomsky has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, the radical intellectual argued the US president was stabbing average Americans in the back while pretending to be the country’s saviour during the worst health crisis in at least a century.
He said Trump, who will seek re-election later this year, had cut government funding for healthcare and research into infectious disease for the benefit of wealthy corporations.
Chomsky said: “That’s something that Trump has been doing every year of his term, cutting it back more. So [his plan is] let’s continue to cut it back, let’s continue to make sure that the population is as vulnerable as we can make it, that it can suffer as much as possible, but will of course increase profits for his primary constituents in wealth and corporate power.”
Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, professor Michael Kidd, is addressing media about the pending easing of restrictions in some states.
“We have very serious risks if overcrowding starts to occur,” Kidd says. “Covid-19 is still out there in our country.”
“If you see a crowd, please go in the other direction.”
Kidd says ideally employers would have people working from home if possible, otherwise having staggered start and finish times.
Individuals also need to take personal responsibility, for example not getting into a lift if it looks too full.
Kidd reports there are no new cases in the ACT, the Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia, or Tasmania.
Taiwan’s leader, Tsai Ing-wen has posted a clip of an interview affirming Taiwan’s wish to rejoin the World Health Organisation.
Taiwan’s membership has been blocked by the Chinese Communist Party government, which claims ownership over Taiwan as a Chinese territory. Amid tensions between China and other nations (including the US and Australia), there has been growing international pressure on the WHO to allow Taiwan to be given back its observer status.
Tsai expressed gratitude to the countries supporting Taiwan’s acceptance into the WHO, and reasserted the country’s right to as the world for help.
“We have the right to participate in the WHO as a world organisation responsible for the health of everybody in the world,” said Tsai.
“And of course we do have a right to be part of it.”
She said Taiwan wanted access to information and to exchange experiences and learn from the international community, but also “to be useful and helpful to the international community”.
“We are more than happy to share with the rest of the world.”
During an interview with Ku, I was asked if Taiwan still wants to participate in the @WHO after being unfairly excluded in the past. This was my answer.
— 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) May 11, 2020
Full interview: https://t.co/K9LNXKmmjw pic.twitter.com/0NBkw41Ts0
Footage showing half a dozen dead bodies lying on beds next to Covid-19 patients in hospital has horrified India and exposed how the nation’s health system is struggling, in some areas, to cope during the pandemic.
The footage from Sion hospital in Mumbai showed the bodies, wrapped in black plastic, lying next to patients undergoing treatment. Families tending to the patients were also seen moving around the ward, with the bodies lying nearby .
The vision provoked public outrage and echoed the fears expressed by many Indians that some states might be overwhelmed if there is an increase in cases. The country’s official Covid-19 figures remain low compared with the scale of the pandemic in Europe and the US, and given its population.
The hospital’s dean, Pramod Ingale, blamed the families of the dead for failing to collect the bodies of their loved ones and said the bodies were left in the ward because the morgue was full. Ingale said the rules were not clear about what the hospital should do with unclaimed bodies.
Regulations state the body of a Covid-19 patient has to be removed 30 minutes after being declared dead.
Updated
Summary
- New Zealand to move to level 2 lockdown, easing some restrictions. Jacinda Ardern said parties, weddings, stag dos, and funerals will be capped at 10, both inside and outside, as the director-general of health had deemed these events “high-risk”, with the country’s largest Covid-19 clusters spreading from a wedding, a St Patrick’s day party and a conference. It came as the country reported three new cases.
- South Korea has reported 35 new cases on Monday, 29 linked to Seoul clubs and bars which were attended by a man in his 20s. More than 1,500 people have been contacted as possible contacts.It was the single biggest daily toll since 9 April, and the country’s containment measures are being put to the test, Yonhap News reports.
- Japan could lift a state-of-emergency in many regions this week if new coronavirus cases are under control, the economy minister said on Monday, as it inches towards a gradual return of economic activity.
- In Ghana, one worker at a fish-processing factory in the Atlantic seafront city of Tema infected 533 other workers, according to President Nana Akufo-Addo.
- The first Disneyland resort has reopened, in Shanghai. Chinese state media reports the park is reopening to guests with restrictions on numbers and traffic flow. Children’s playgrounds and indoor theatres are staying closed for the time being.
- An untraced coronavirus outbreak in a Chinese city near the Russian border and a spate of new cases in Wuhan has prompted fears of a fresh wave of infections in China. Wuhan has recorded its highest number of new infections since 11 March, reporting five new cases for 10 May, among 17 new cases nationwide, the highest in almost two weeks. Five locally transmitted cases were in three provinces bordering Russia and/or North Korea - Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning.
- Scientists have found evidence for mutations in some strains of the coronavirus that suggest the pathogen may be adapting to humans after spilling over from bats.
- US vice president Mike Pence is self-isolating, or at least distancing somewhat, from others at the White House. His office said Pence was not in quarantine and plans to be at the White House on Monday, local time, but was taking precautions.
- In the United Kingdom Boris Johnson has announced plans to ease restrictions, but they’ve been labeled divisive, confusing and vague after he said some places could reopen and the government was “actively encouraging” people to return to work, without giving details of how.
Updated
Thailand reported six new coronavirus cases on Monday, bringing its total to 3,015 cases since the outbreak began in January, Reuters has reported.
The new cases were all in Thailand’s southern provinces, including four on the tourist island of Phuket and one each in Narathiwat and Yala provinces, said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman of the government’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration.
Daily new cases in the single digits have prompted Thailand to begin cautiously reopening some businesses that had been closed to slow the spread of the virus.
The death toll remained at 56, while 2,796 patients have recovered.
Earlier I posted coverage of a protest in Australia, where a small group of demonstrators in Melbourne were angry about lockdown restrictions, Bill Gates, and 5G.
Australian health authorities are now using social media trying to combat the growing conspiracy theories about the (non-existent) link between the 5G network and Covid-19.
COVID-19 does not spread via mobile networks or wireless technology. COVID-19 is spread through contaminated droplets by coughing or sneezing, or by contact with contaminated hands, surfaces or objects.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) May 11, 2020
Find the facts: https://t.co/HbdohSPJs3 pic.twitter.com/WolbwTu46m
Four days after many newspapers looked forward to a widespread easing of restrictions on “Magic Monday”, the story was very different following Boris Johnson’s Sunday’s night’s televised address to the nation.
“Boris keeps handbrake on”, says the Mail’s front page headline alongside a large picture of the prime minister clenching his fist as he makes a point during the broadcast. It says Johnson set out the “first steps to free Britain”.
Freedom is also the theme of other front pages with the Express proclaiming “Boris: our route to freedom… in baby steps”, and the Telegraph saying: “The long road to freedom”. However, the broadsheet also carries a front page commentary which says that the prime minister “gave us the map, but only a few vague directions”.
Daily Mirror: Lockdown Britain: It’s chaos #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/LoNf3lJvYP
— Helena Wilkinson (@BBCHelena) May 10, 2020
Monday's @DailyMailUK #MailFrontPages pic.twitter.com/92u9n32qlf
— Daily Mail U.K. (@DailyMailUK) May 10, 2020
So that was Jacinda Ardern announcing New Zealand will move from level 3 restrictions to level 2 on Thursday.
Ardern praised the public’s efforts in staying home to protect the country’s most vulnerable and thanked New Zealanders for the huge sacrifices they had made in protecting the country’s most vulnerable, including the elderly and the immunosuppressed.
She said parties, weddings, stag dos, and funerals will be capped at 10, both inside and outside, as the director-general of health had deemed these events “high-risk”, with the country’s largest Covid-19 clusters spreading from a wedding, a St Patrick’s day party and a conference.
Ardern says: “In 10 days time we will have reopened most businesses in New Zealand... Our plan was go hard, go early so we can get our economy going sooner.”
Malls, playgrounds and gyms will reopen.
“You can begin to move around New Zealand,” Ardern says.
On Monday 18 May, all schoolchildren will be able to return to school and nursery. On 21 May, bars will be able to reopen.
New Zealand to move to level 2 lockdown
Ardern is talking about what has worked - including strong border controls and strict hand hygiene, but warns “we have not won the war.”
“There is still a chance of silent spread in the future... so today I am announcing that cabinet agrees we are ready to move to level 2, to open up the economy as safely as possible.”
We are expecting an update from New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern on her plans to ease lockdown measures further. New Zealand has recorded three new cases of coronavirus today. Stay tuned...
“Emerging from weeks of strict coronavirus lockdown, itself a cause of serious mental health disruption, the lifting of restrictions brings for many a sense of trepidation and unease. While some are bucking at the gate, waiting to return to life in the new normal, others are experiencing a lingering fear of contagion of the virus about which little is still understood.”
As several nations plot a course back to an approximation of normal life, Celina Riberio takes a look at the phenomenon of return anxiety:
Here is our full report on the latest from China, where new cases in two cities are causing concern:
Updated
South Korea has reported 35 new cases on Monday, most linked to Seoul clubs and bars.
It was the single biggest daily toll since 9 April, and the country’s containment measures are being put to the test, Yonhap News reports.
29 new cases are linked to clubbers in the Itaweon district after man in his 20s tested positive. More than 1,500 people, from 85 nationalities, are believed to have visited five venues at the same time as the man.
Reuters: Japan could lift a state-of-emergency in many regions this week if new coronavirus cases are under control, the economy minister said on Monday, as it inches towards a gradual return of economic activity.
The state of emergency, in place since last month, gives governors of the 47 prefectures stronger legal authority to urge people to stay at home and businesses to close, but there are no fines or arrests for non-compliance.
The government last week extended the emergency to the end of May, saying it would reassess the situation on May 14. Some non-essential businesses, even in the 13 hardest-hit prefectures designated “special alert districts”, including Tokyo and Osaka, have already reopened despite the extension.
Japan has avoided an explosive outbreak of the novel coronavirus, with some 15,800 domestic cases and 630 deaths. The number of new infections has been on a declining trend over the past week.
“We have been able to proceed steadily towards an end,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliamentary session, referring to the epidemic.
Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said the government could lift the emergency this week in regions that have seen a notable improvement, even among the 13 hardest-hit prefectures, while warning that any reversal of the trend could change that.
“If signs of an overshoot emerge after the lifting, we would need to consider a re-implementation,” he said in parliament.
Abe has warned of a long battle against the virus and asked the public to continue practising social distancing. People would need to adopt a “new lifestyle” for the coronavirus era, he said, even after the state of emergency is lifted.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 357 to 169,575, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by 22 to 7,417, the tally showed.
In Ghana, one worker at a fish-processing factory in the Atlantic seafront city of Tema infected 533 other workers, according to President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Via Reuters: Ghana’s health authorities reported the outbreak at the industrial facility late on Friday, but did not provide details.
“All 533 persons were infected by one person,” President Akufo-Addo said. He did not provide details of how the disease spread in the facility or if safety measures had been in place.
He said that the 533 positive cases, which represents around 11.3% of Ghana’s total infections, were part of a backlog of about 921 cases going back as far as April 26 that are only recently being reported.
The new cases pushed Ghana’s total since the pandemic was first reported in the West African nation in mid-March to 4,700 as of Sunday night, the highest number of infections in West Africa.
New Zealand records three new cases ahead of decision on lockdown lift
Reuters: New Zealand reported three new Covid-19 cases on Monday, ahead of a decision on whether to ease restrictions further and allow more business and recreational activities to resume after weeks of disruptions.
The cases - two hospital nurses and one related to overseas travel - bring New Zealand’s total confirmed infections to 1,147, the ministry said, adding that 93% of all confirmed and probable cases have recovered.
The Pacific nation was locked down for more than month under “level 4” restrictions that were eased by a notch on April 28. It has continued to enforce strict social measures on many of its citizens and businesses, helping prevent widespread community spread of the virus.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is expected to announce at 4pm local time her decision on easing restrictions further and putting the country under alert level 2, which would allow retail, domestic travel and local sport to resume.
If the country moves to alert level 2, children can return to schools while staff could return to offices, Ardern has said.
Malls, cafes, hairdressers and other services would be also be allowed to re-open, but the country’s borders would remain closed except for returning New Zealanders.T
hree new cases of CovidD-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, were confirmed on Monday, the health ministry said in a statement.
Updated
Disneyland Shanghai is the first Disney theme park to reopen after the pandemic caused global closures.
Chinese state media reports the park is reopening to guests with restrictions on numbers and traffic flow. Children’s playgrounds and indoor theatres are staying closed for the time being.
This morning #Disneyland Shanghai reopens! After three-month I’d shutdown amid #COVID19, the theme park becomes the first one among other parks across the world to resume, major symbol showing #China back to normalcy after months of anti-epidemic combat despite of sporadic cases. pic.twitter.com/LOHPP6o25f
— Qingqing_Chen (@qingqingparis) May 11, 2020
In Australia, restrictions in various states are beginning to ease.
Victoria’s premier has just announced the state’s residents can have five visitors inside their home, and can go outside for outdoor activities in groups of up to 10.
Schools will start looking at a return to on-site learning
Professional sports may restart training, and counselling services and community groups can restart for up to 10 people in a group, and with physical distancing measures.
In Queensland and New South Wales children also began returning to school on Monday after the outbreak saw many of them pulled from school before holidays began a few weeks ago.
From AP:
The NSW government said it has delivered thousands of litres of soap and hand sanitiser to schools, as well as personal protective equipment and temperature monitors. Class sizes will be reduced and activities will involve minimal physical contact between the students, many of whom have not attended school since mid-March.
“I know this is a huge relief for families,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.
“It is a huge relief for the state government because we know how important it is for students to receive that face to face teaching,” she added.
Final year students, whose exams were interrupted by the virus response, would attend at least three days per week in class, Berejiklian said, with the plan to return to full-time class attendance for all students by the end of May.
Reuters: In Indonesia a traditional market on the island of Java has moved outdoors and set stalls at least a metre (3.3 ft) apart as Indonesia looks to safely maintain the bazaars where most people go to get affordable food and are part of the fabric of society.
The 857 vendors at the Salatiga market in Central Java province, as well as visitors, are required to wear masks and avoid physical contact with each other to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, the head of the vendor association said.
A vegetable seller said the social distancing measures made him feel safe and comfortable at work. At least eight confirmed cases of the virus have been found in the city of Salatiga, local media has reported.
Indonesia, which had over 14,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Sunday, has been reluctant to enforce a complete nationwide lockdown. Instead, many cities have adopted “large-scale social restrictions” that have closed businesses and encouraged people to stay home.
The Chinese city of Wuhan has recorded its highest number of new infections since 11 March, reporting five new cases for 10 May.
The five are among 17 new cases nationwide, the highest in almost two weeks.
Of the new cases, seven were imported cases involving travellers from overseas, compared with two imported infections the previous day.
Five locally transmitted cases were in three provinces bordering Russia and/or North Korea - Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning.
China’s has reported a total of 82,918 cases and the death toll remained unchanged at 4,633.
The number of asymptomatic Covid-19 cases, those who were infected but not exhibiting symptoms, fell to 12 on 10 May compared with 20 reported a day earlier.
Scientists have found evidence for mutations in some strains of the coronavirus that suggest the pathogen may be adapting to humans after spilling over from bats.
The analysis of more than 5,300 coronavirus genomes from 62 countries shows that while the virus is fairly stable, some have gained mutations, including two genetic changes that alter the critical “spike protein” the virus uses to infect human cells.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stress that it is unclear how the mutations affects the virus, but since the changes arose independently in different countries they may help the virus spread more easily.
“This is exactly what we need to look out for,” Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases and a senior author on the study, said. “People are making vaccines and other therapies against this spike protein because it seems a very good target. We need to keep an eye on it and make sure that any mutations don’t invalidate any of these approaches.”
We are seeking clarity on the reports that Mike Pence is self-isolating, or at least distancing somewhat, from others at the White House.
His office has just released a statement to say that despite reports, Pence is not in quarantine and plans to be at the White House on Monday, local time.
“Vice President Pence will continue to follow the advice of the White House Medical Unit and is not in quarantine,” spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement.
“Additionally, Vice President Pence has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow,” the statement added.
NBC reported Pence had just had a “low key weekend”.
.@VP @Mike_Pence is not in self isolation or quarantine after his press secretary tested positive. Officials tell me he has no restrictions on his schedule, "out of caution" he had a low key weekend and is following doctors' advice.
— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) May 10, 2020
The Trump administration has no plans to keep President Donald Trump and Pence apart, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, as concerns rise about the spread of the coronavirus within the White House.
Updated
In Australia, a small group of people staged a protest in Melbourne echoing some of the wilder theories that we’ve been seeing in the US in recent weeks.
Demonstrators in Melbourne held signs about 5G, China and the Murray-Darling River while chanting “arrest Bill Gates”. Various speakers claimed Covid-19 was a conspiracy orchestrated by “globalists”, while one of the main organisers of the rally, Fanos Panayides, told the crowd he promised his father he would never be microchipped.
Panayides, previously a contestant on the Nine Network program Family Food Fight, was later arrested by police as he tried to find a verse from the Bible on his mobile phone.
In India: One of the world’s largest train networks will “gradually” restart operations from Tuesday as India eases its coronavirus lockdown.
India has recorded more than 60,000 cases of Covid-19 including more than 2,000 deaths.
Some 30 train journeys - 15 pairs of return trips - will run from the capital New Delhi to other cities including Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, Indian Railways said late Sunday.
“Indian Railways plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from 12th May, 2020... Thereafter, Indian Railways shall start more special services on new routes,” the railways ministry added in a statement.
“It will be mandatory for the passengers to wear face cover and undergo screening at departure and only asymptomatic passengers will be allowed to board the train.”
The vast train network, which had carried more than 20 million passengers daily, was halted in late March as India imposed a strict lockdown to stem the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus.
Since early May, the government said some 366 special trains carrying up to 1,200 passengers on each service have operated to help stranded poor, rural migrant workers who lost their jobs in cities in the lockdown to return to their villages.
“I appeal to all the states to give permission to evacuate and bring back their stranded migrants so that we can get all of them back to their homes in the next 3-4 days itself,” Railways Minister Piyush Goyal tweeted Sunday.
Local media reported some provinces were charging for the rail tickets, which most migrants can’t afford.
AP has more details on reports that US vice president Mike Pence is self-isolating after an aide tested positive for the coronavirus last week.
He joins three of the nation’s top scientists in taking protective steps after possible exposure.
An administration official said Pence was voluntarily keeping his distance from other people in line with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has repeatedly tested negative for COVID-19 since his exposure but was following the advice of medical officials.
Vice President Pence will continue to follow the advice of the White House Medical Unit and is not in quarantine,” spokesman Devin O’Malley said Sunday. “Additionally, Vice President Pence has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow.
Pence has been at home since returning to Washington from a day trip to Iowa on Friday and did not appear at President Donald Trump’s meeting with military leaders Saturday at the White House. Pence was informed of the aide’s positive test shortly before departing for that trip.
An official initially said Pence planned to continue working from home, before Pence’s office clarified that he planned to work from the White House on Monday.
t was not immediately clear how Pence’s steps to self-isolate would impact his professional or public engagements.
Hello, and welcome to our continuing global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, which has now infected more than 4.09m people, killing 282,000.
You can catch up on the latest developments here.
In the United Kingdom Boris Johnson has announced plans to ease restrictions, but they’ve been labeled divisive, confusing and vague after he said some places could reopen and the government was “actively encouraging” people to return to work, without giving details of how.
The UK is about to start requiring all international arrivals to quarantine for 14 days “soon”. Arrivals from France are exempt. The measure, which is to ensure that any potential carriers of the virus do not spread it further before being tested, has been in place in numerous other countries for months.
Britain has the second highest number of recorded fatalities in the world, at almost 32,000.
Italy, which has the third highest number of fatalities (30,560), recorded 165 new deaths on Sunday. The number of new infections rose by 802, which was the lowest daily rise since 6 March. The country, which started easing lockdown restrictions last Monday, has recorded a total of 219,070 cases.
France and Spain are also preparing to lift their restrictions. In France hair salons, clothes shops, florists and bookshops will open again on Monday, while bars, restaurants, theatres and cinemas remain closed. Primary schools will take small numbers of pupils, depending on space. Masks will be obligatory on public transport. Everyone will be able to move outside without having to present a form on demand but people will only be able to go 100km from their place of residence.
Half of Spain’s 47m people will be able to meet with family or friends in gatherings of up to 10, within provinces, as of Monday. Outdoor spaces at bars and restaurants can reopen with limited capacity. Hardest-hit Madrid and Barcelona are excluded from the easing, though football clubs FC Barcelona resumed training on Friday and Real Madrid will follow Monday.
US vice-president Mike Pence is reportedly self-isolating after an aid tested positive for Covid-19. It’s one of several cases of the illness among White House staff who are in close proximity to the president.
What Pence’s self-isolation actually entails isn’t clear, as both Reuters and the New York Times are reporting - per unnamed sources - that there is no plan to keep him separated from Donald Trump. The two are being tested daily.
Trump’s personal valet has been diagnosed with Covid-19, as has Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller.
Three members of the White House coronavirus taskforce are self-isolating: Top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci; director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, and the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn.
The US has recorded more than 79,000 Covid-19 fatalities.
More than 90% of the 2,000 hospital beds reserved for Covid-19 patients in Tokyo have already been occupied, the Japanese health ministry has announced.
In China the city of Wuhan, where it all began, has reported its first case in weeks, but in the northeast of the country there is a possible new wave of cases, with one city in Jilin province being reclassified as high-risk.
In Colombia Avianca Holdings, Latin America’s No. 2 airline and one of the oldest in the world, has filed for bankruptcy, after failing to secure aid from Colombia’s government and with a bond payment deadline looming.
