End of blog
That’s where we will leave this global live blog.
Here’s what we learned today:
- The Australian state of Queensland reported six new cases linked to the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre. The state is reimposing restrictions on gatherings in the local area and limiting access to aged care and disability accomodation as contact tracers look to find all new cases.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that children over 12 should wear masks in the same contexts as adults in the bid to rein in the Covid-19 pandemic.
- STA Travel, a company which offered package tours for backpackers and adventurous young people, has become the latest business to cease trading because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- The WHO hopes the Covid-19 pandemic will be over in less than two years. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 took two years to end, and that we now had more technology and knowledge to stop a crisis.
- Italy has recorded its biggest daily infection increase since May.On Friday, the country’s health ministry registered 947 new infections, the largest 24-hour rise since 14 May, when it was still in lockdown.
- Coronavirus cases are nearing 3 million in India, after it reported 68,898 new infections in a single day. Friday’s tally was the third straight daily increase above 60,000 – taking the total to 2.91 million. Deaths also increased by 983 to 54,849.
- Lebanon has imposed a partial lockdown to contain a surge of infections following the devastating Beirut explosion. On Thursday, the country reported a record 24-hour total of new coronavirus cases, with 613 new infections. Medics have said the virus has spread in the aftermath of the blast as hospitals were flooded with casualties.
- Madrid residents have been advised to stay at home by the Spanish government as it recorded 8,148 new coronavirus cases on Friday. The number of new cases across Spain in the past 14 days now sits at 70,420, while around 30% were detected in the capital.
- Coronavirus infections have been reported by at least 41 schools in Berlin, barely two weeks after they reopened. The disclosure by Berlin city education authorities that hundreds of students and teachers have had to quarantine has underlined once more how little is known about the risk of infection in school settings, despite the insistence of governments and experts that reopening schools is safe with the right precautions.
After France reported 4,771 new cases – its biggest daily increase since lockdown ended – the UK government has announced travellers from France to the UK will be required to self certify that they are not suffering coronavirus symptoms or have been in contact with a confirmed case within 14 days preceding travel.
Updated
Hi, Josh Taylor here taking over the blog.
We have some more information on the Queensland Covid-19 outbreak.
In addition to the limitations on the number of guests, aged care facilities and disability accomodations services in the Greater Brisbane area will not be allowed to have guests.
People working in hospitals and the emergency departments will be required to wear personal protective equipment for every patient they see.
One of the people who tested positive worked for Qbuild and was working at the Springwood School. It is not clear whether the school will open on Monday. Another man who worked at the centre also worked in a disability accomodation service, and a relative of that man worked at the Ipswich hospital.
There were 9,447 tests conducted in the past 24 hours in Queensland.
Updated
Australian state of Queensland announces new restrictions
The latest developments in Australia.The premier of the Australian state of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has confirmed six more cases of Covid-19 at the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre, and another three from crew members on ships. There are now seven active cases linked to the youth detention centre.
As a result, people in Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, Lockyer Valley and Moreton Bay and Redlands will only be allowed to have gatherings of 10 people indoors and outdoors.
For the rest of the state it is limited to 30 people. Palaszczuk said she expects more cases could be linked to the cluster but they are waiting for the test results to come back. She says staff and children at the centre are “well looked after”.
The state is still currently not accepting visitors from NSW, the ACT and Victoria.
In the southern state of Victoria, there is hope the state has passed the peak of its second wave, with daily case numbers dropping below 200 for the first time since 13 July. Also a cause of hope was the fact that just 24 of those cases were so-called “mystery cases” where the source of the infection is unknown.
Authorities are not getting complacent, however, and this weekend marks just the halfway mark of stage four-lockdown and curfew for Melbourne, and stage three for the rest of the state.
Updated
British holidaymakers have endured long last-minute drives and forked out thousands of pounds in a bid to return home from Croatia before the imposition of new travel quarantine rules.
From 4am on Saturday travellers arriving to the UK from the Mediterranean country will have to self-isolate for 14 days after a spike in coronavirus cases led to the British government removing Croatia from its safe travel list.
At London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 on Friday evening, British Airways flights arriving from the Croatian city of Dubrovnik and the capital Zagreb were among the last to arrive in the UK before the quarantine deadline.
Adam and Katie Marlow, from Buckinghamshire, were forced to drive a hire car three hours from the coastal city of Zadar to Zagreb to catch a new flight home instead of returning on Saturday.
The couple decided to come back earlier than planned due to 33-year-old Ms Marlow’s pregnancy and her need to return to work on Monday.
They said their new flights costs around 300, while the care hire was another 100.
Asked about the government’s handling of the travel corridor rules, Mr Marlow, 37, who works for a financial company, said: “With most of the changes I support everything they do, I would say though that they should publish the criteria for where the cases are.
“Then we could have kept have an eye on it... and we could have maybe made a different decision and maybe an earlier decision and it might have cost us a bit less money.”
Mrs Marlow, a sales manager, who is due in October, added: “Completely understand why they are doing it, but it would be good to have a bit more warning, because we only had 24 hours notice. That’s all we had.”
Steve Laws, 53, a company director from Oxfordshire branded the government’s actions as “shambolic”.
The global death toll from coronavirus has passed 796,000, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker.
The figure has reached 796,095 with the US having the most fatalities with 175,204 followed by Brazil with around 113,000.
Updated
Brazil death toll surpasses 113,000
Brazil reported 30,355 new cases of coronavirus and 1,054 deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Friday.
Brazil has now registered 3,532,330 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from Covid-19 has risen to 113,358, marking the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak after the United States.
Updated
Fifteen Minnesota residents have contracted the coronavirus after being exposed during the 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, health officials said, warning that they expect the number to grow.
One patient was hospitalised as of Friday, said Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director at the Minnesota Department of Health.
The first Sturgis-linked case was reported Thursday, she said, while the 14 others were added on Friday.
“We’re expecting that were going to see many more cases associated with Sturgis,” Ehresmann said.
“Thousands of people attended that event, and so it’s very likely that we’ll see more transmission. Obviously it takes a while for people to develop symptoms and get tested and for us to get those results.”
The Sturgis rally, which ended Sunday, brought hundreds of thousands of people to western South Dakota.
An elderly care home resident in Australia who was transferred to hospital from a facility that was beleaguered with Covid-19 died with 18 sores on her body and was suffering from “pure neglect”, a nurse who treated her has told the Guardian.
Swedish prime minister defends coronavirus strategy
Sweden has chosen the right strategy in fighting the spread of the new coronavirus, prime minister Stefan Lofven said, defending his government’s decision not to adopt a strict lockdown as many European countries have done.
More than 5,800 Swedes have died of Covid-19, a much higher death rate than Norway, Denmark and Finland which adopted much tougher measures, leading many to question the government’s approach.
But Lofven said Sweden made the correct choice.
“The strategy that we adopted, I believe is right - to protect individuals, limit the spread of the infection, etc,” he said in an interview in daily Dagens Nyheter.
“What has been discussed most, and what we did differently in Sweden, was that we did not close schools. Now there are quite a few people who think we were right.”
Whereas many countries enforced strict lockdowns, Sweden has relied mainly on voluntary measures focused on social distancing, though public gatherings have been limited and care homes - which saw a heavy death toll - quarantined.
While Sweden has seen more fatalities than its neighbours, it has not been as badly hit as countries like Britain and Spain, which adopted much stricter lockdown measures.
And many parts of Europe are seeing a pick up in new cases as they gradually loosen restrictions on travel and social interactions, Sweden has seen a decline in both infections and deaths in recent weeks.
Lofven also defended the decision by the Public Health Agency not to enforce the wearing of facemasks, as many European countries have done, to fight the spread of the virus.
“What they are saying, and what I absolutely believe, is that they cannot be the main tool we use,” Lofven said.
“What is important still is social distancing, testing and tracking. Those must be our main focus in order to reduce infection.”
Updated
The return of shell money: Papua New Guinea has seen a resurgence traditional farming practices, bartering and the use of tabu after Covid’s blow to economy.
Updated
Rhode Island, the smallest US state, was able to reopen day care programs in the summer without high rates of coronavirus spread, a study said.
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which wrote the research, held it up as an example that could be replicated across the country.
“I think this is an inspiring article to tell individuals that there is a path where one can use or partner with their public health authorities and safely get these childcare programs reopened,” he said.
A total of 666 out of 891 childcare programs, both center- and home-based, reopened in Rhode Island on June 1 following a significant decline in cases and hospitalisations in the state.
Officials imposed measures like universal masking for adults, daily symptom screening for everyone, routine disinfection, reduced class sizes (first up to 12, and later 20), and maintaining stable bubbles of staff and children.
South Africa surpasses 600,000 cases
South Africa’s confirmed Covid-19 cases have surpassed 600,000, the health ministry said on Friday, despite the number of new cases declining since a peak in July.
The country now has 603,338 confirmed cases of the virus and 12,843 people have died, the ministry said in a statement.
A summary of today's developments
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that children over 12 should wear masks in the same contexts as adults in the bid to rein in the Covid-19 pandemic.
- STA Travel, a company which offered package tours for backpackers and adventurous young people, has become the latest business to cease trading because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- The WHO hopes the Covid-19 pandemic will be over in less than two years. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 took two years to end, and that we now had more technology and knowledge to stop a crisis.
- Italy has recorded its biggest daily infection increase since May. On Friday, the country’s health ministry registered 947 new infections, the largest 24-hour rise since 14 May, when it was still in lockdown.
- Coronavirus cases are nearing 3 million in India, after it reported 68,898 new infections in a single day. Friday’s tally was the third straight daily increase above 60,000 – taking the total to 2.91 million. Deaths also increased by 983 to 54,849.
- Lebanon has imposed a partial lockdown to contain a surge of infections following the devastating Beirut explosion. On Thursday, the country reported a record 24-hour total of new coronavirus cases, with 613 new infections. Medics have said the virus has spread in the aftermath of the blast as hospitals were flooded with casualties.
- Madrid residents have been advised to stay at home by the Spanish government as it recorded 8,148 new coronavirus cases on Friday. The number of new cases across Spain in the past 14 days now sits at 70,420, while around 30% were detected in the capital.
- Coronavirus infections have been reported by at least 41 schools in Berlin, barely two weeks after they reopened. The disclosure by Berlin city education authorities that hundreds of students and teachers have had to quarantine has underlined once more how little is known about the risk of infection in school settings, despite the insistence of governments and experts that reopening schools is safe with the right precautions.
A plant capable of supplying 50 million N95 face masks a year will help stave off “terrifying” shortages during the coronavirus pandemic, the leader of Canada’s most populous province said on Friday.
Ottawa and the province of Ontario decided to invest C$23 million ($17.5 million) each to expand the facility after experiencing serious problems as they tried to stock up on foreign-made personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers in the first weeks of the outbreak.
“We were left in a terrible, terrible situation ... and the terrifying reality is, at one point back in April, Ontario was left with less one week’s supply of N95 masks,” Premier Doug Ford told reporters.
“I promised the people of Ontario that we would never, ever again be left at the mercy of other countries for this critical PPE,” Ford spoke at the plant in Brockville, a town about 110 km (70 miles) south of Ottawa.
Starting next year, 3M Co Canadian will produce 25 million masks for the federal government and another 25 million for Ontario.
In April, Ford complained the US had blocked the export of more than 3 million face masks Ontario had bought.
Canada has reported 123,873 total cases and 9,054 deaths. Ontario accounts for the 31% of the death toll.
Federal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the plant would help “ensure we have the capacity to make whatever we need, here in our own communities” and could one day export masks.
WHO: Children over 12 should wear face masks
The World Health Organization has recommended that children over 12 should wear masks in the same contexts as adults in the bid to rein in the Covid-19 pandemic.
The UN health agency, in cooperation with UNICEF, published fresh guidance on Friday on when it is appropriate for children to wear masks to impede the spread of the coronavirus crisis.
The two UN agencies had convened a group of experts to review the limited data available on children’s contribution to the spread of COVID-19, as well as on the benefits of mask-wearing by children.
Based on those findings, as well as considerations surrounding children’s developmental needs, they said the advice varied in different age groups.
WHO thus recommends that “children aged 12 and over should wear a mask under the same conditions as adults, in particular when they cannot guarantee at least a one-metre distance from others and there is widespread transmission in the area.”
The document acknowledged that much remains unknown about to what degree children contribute to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
But it said that while there is some limited evidence that young children may have lower susceptibility to infection compared to adults, data indicated that teenagers “may play a more active role in transmission than younger children”.
The UN agencies said that children under five should not wear a mask.
It comes after France’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said schools will reopen on 1 September as normal, but all staff as well as pupils over the age of 11 must wear masks.
The coronavirus pandemic is stabilising in Brazil and any reversal of its rampant spread in the vast country would be “a success for the world”, the World Health Organization said.
The WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual press conference that there was a “clear downward trend in many parts of Brazil”.
Brazil has the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths after the United States.
According to the WHO’s Covid-19 dashboard, more than 3.45 million people have tested positive for the virus in Brazil, with 111,100 people having lost their lives.
The country has recorded nearly 6,900 deaths and more than 290,000 cases in the last seven days, according to the UN health agency.
“The acceleration of cases has stabilised but there’s still a very high number of cases and a large number of deaths,” Ryan told reporters.
“Credit to the health workers and the communities in Brazil for taking the necessary actions to stabilise the situation.
“We’re in that difficult period in Brazil where it looks like things could be getting better.
“The question is: is this a lull, can this be continued and can we see that downward trend?”
STA Travel, a company which offered package tours for backpackers and adventurous young people, has become the latest business to cease trading following the coronavirus pandemic.
The firm employed around 500 staff in 50 high street branches in the UK and its central London headquarters.
A statement posted on the travel agency’s Twitter account read: “To our valued customers, due to the recent announcement that STA Travel UK has ceased trading, unfortunately our team are unable to assist you at this time.
“Please be assured that if you had a previous booking with us, or hold a live booking, you will receive further communication in the coming days.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience and the limited information available to you at this time.”
Updated
Nearly a fifth of 11,000 people enrolled so far in a 30,000-volunteer U.S. trial testing a vaccine from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech are Black or Latino, groups among the hardest hit by coronavirus, a top Pfizer executive said.
“Between Latinx and Black or African American populations, we’re running at about 19 percent or so,” Dr. Bill Gruber, Pfizer’s senior vice president of vaccine clinical research and development, told Reuters in an interview.
“We’re trying to push even higher than that.”
Black and Latino Americans are infected with Covid-19 at more than twice the rate of white Americans, with Native Americans infected at even higher rates, research has shown. The groups are historically underrepresented in clinical trials.
The companies’ vaccine has quickly advanced into late-stage testing, with some participants already getting their second of two doses.
Doctors and scientists have been urging companies testing coronavirus vaccines to include Black, Latino and indigenous Americans in vaccine trials in hopes of building trust among at-risk populations.
“We have a lot of campaigns to reach out to those communities because they are overrepresented in terms of Covid-19 illness, so we are very keen to have those individuals as part of our trial,” Gruber said on Thursday.
“They have higher attack rates and they are most likely to benefit.”
Paraguay’s government announced on Thursday that it will tighten health measures in the capital Asunción and surrounding area to contain quickly increasing numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths.
From August 24, a new two-week “social quarantine” will be implemented that will see movement and alcohol sales restricted each evening after a time that is yet to be set. Long- and medium-distance travel will also be restricted.
Paraguay appeared to be successfully implementing a reopening plan after rapid action by the government at the beginning of the pandemic positioned Paraguay as one of the countries with the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases and deaths in Latin America.
In late June, Paraguay had recorded just 13 deaths and 1,500, while other South American countries faced worrying outbreaks.
However, numbers have been rapidly been increasing over recent days, reaching 170 deaths and 11,817 confirmed cases. Paraguay now has the highest transmission rate of 68 countries analysed in an Imperial College and Sussex University study.
Health minister Julio Mazzoleni said the new measures took into account the difficult economic situation produced by extended restrictions on activities.
“What we are proposing is a change that will affect the economic sector as little as possible. It is a way of protecting vulnerable people and medical personnel”.
However, there is widespread criticism of the state’s use of a $1.6 billion loan contracted to tackle the pandemic. Numerous corruption scandals, limited economic support for the population and low spending on reinforcing an extremely fragile health system have led to strong outcry.
85% of beds at the hospital best equipped to treat the virus are currently occupied.
A previous move in July to implement stricter controls in hard-hit Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second city, saw violence erupt between police and protestors opposing the measures.
Public disapproval at the state’s management of the crisis seemed to reach new heights on August 15 as authorities took no action to stop the sumptuous wedding of the daughter of former president Horacio Cartes—who was recently dragged further into a continent-wide money laundering scandal—despite reported violations of health protocols.
During the first four months of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, Malta recorded just 673 infections. By mid-July, it had all but eliminated Covid-19 with only three active cases.
Yet in the last six weeks, Maltas confirmed caseload has more than doubled.
Malta is now considered an at-risk destination by some European countries, which have imposed travel warnings or testing requirements on anyone who goes there.
On Friday the island registered its first death since May.
Earlier this week, the government closed nightclubs again, limited gatherings to 15 people and mandated mask-wearing in public places indoors with a 100-euro ($117) fine for offenders, all in a bid to radically change course.
While Malta’s numbers are still small the country only has 500,000 people and pale in comparison to bigger European countries that were hard hit in the spring, its infection curve is following that of Greece and Cyprus.
Those southern Mediterranean countries also managed to limit infections early on with lockdowns, but are seeing surges now in part due to summer travel.
In all, Malta recorded 673 cases between March 7-July 7, but in the last six weeks the number of registered infections more than doubled to 1,546.
In all, 10 people have died.
A message from the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Throughout history, outbreaks & pandemics have changed economies & societies. #COVID19 is no different, but it gives us a once-in-a-century opportunity to shape the world our children will inherit.pic.twitter.com/ojYoIgk3WG
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) August 21, 2020
Updated
The number of coronavirus-related deaths in the US has risen by 1,074 to 173,490, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday.
Cases of Covid-19 have also risen by 44,864 to 5,551,793, as of 4pm (ET) on 20 August.
Moderately ill Covid-19 patients saw their condition improve after a five-day course of Gilead Sciences Inc’s remdesivir – a drug being used in the US to treat the virus – but a 10-day course did not show a benefit and the drug did not significantly shorten hospital stays, according to new data.
The 600-patient analysis, published on Friday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that moderately-ill patients treated with the antiviral drug for up to five days had significantly higher odds of improvement compared to patients given standard treatment.
But researchers said the clinical importance of the benefit was uncertain.
Remdesivir is currently used under an emergency use authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration for treating patients hospitalised with severe coronavirus.
Gilead earlier this month filed an application seeking full FDA approval of the drug.
The drug, which was shown in a trial of severe COVID-19 patients to shorten their hospital recovery time, has been at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic.
Summary
Here’s a list of the key global coronavirus developments over the past few hours:
- The World Health Organization hopes the Covid-19 pandemic will be over in less than two years. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 took two years to end, and that we now had more technology and knowledge to stop a crisis.
- Italy has recorded its biggest daily infection increase since May. On Friday, the country’s health ministry registered 947 new infections, the largest 24-hour rise since 14 May, when it was still in lockdown.
- Coronavirus cases are nearing 3 million in India, after it reported 68,898 new infections in a single day. Friday’s tally was the third straight daily increase above 60,000 – taking the total to 2.91 million. Deaths also increased by 983 to 54,849.
- Lebanon has imposed a partial lockdown to contain a surge of infections following the devastating Beirut explosion. On Thursday, the country reported a record 24-hour total of new coronavirus cases, with 613 new infections. Medics have said the virus has spread in the aftermath of the blast as hospitals were flooded with casualties.
- Madrid residents have been advised to stay at home by the Spanish government as it recorded 8,148 new coronavirus cases on Friday. The number of new cases across Spain in the past 14 days now sits at 70,420, while around 30% were detected in the capital.
- Coronavirus infections have been reported by at least 41 schools in Berlin, barely two weeks after they reopened. The disclosure by Berlin city education authorities that hundreds of students and teachers have had to quarantine has underlined once more how little is known about the risk of infection in school settings, despite the insistence of governments and experts that reopening schools is safe with the right precautions.
Updated
Coronavirus cases have been reported by at least 41 schools in Berlin, barely two weeks after the German capital’s 825 schools reopened.
Cases are rising across Europe, including in Spain, which registered 66,905 in the past two weeks, resulting in the continent’s highest 14-day infection rate and warnings over the risk of a new wave of deaths.
The disclosure by Berlin city education authorities that hundreds of students and teachers have had to quarantine has underlined once more how little is known about the risk of infection in school settings, despite the insistence of governments and experts, including in the UK, that reopening schools is safe given the right precautions.
You can read the full report by my colleagues Peter Beaumont and Kim Willsher here:
France has reported 4,586 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, its health ministry has said. A further 23 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19 in the country.
Updated
The winners of the Tony awards – the prestigious annual awards celebrating the best in Broadway theatre – will be announced in a digital ceremony this autumn, organisers said on Friday.
The Tonys had been scheduled for June but were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Broadway theatres shut in March and are scheduled to remain closed through the rest of the year.
“Though unprecedented events cut the Broadway season short, it was a year full of extraordinary work that deserves to be recognised,” said the Broadway League president, Charlotte St Martin, and Heather Hitchens, the president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing.
The Tony awards for plays, musicals, directors and performers are regarded as the highest honours in the American theatre world. Organisers did not announce an exact date for the ceremony.
Updated
WHO hopes coronavirus crisis can be over in less than two years
The World Health Organization hopes the coronavirus crisis can be over in less than two years, its chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday.
The Spanish flu that hit in 1918 took two years to end, he said, adding:
Our situation now with more technology, of course with more connectedness, the virus has a better chance of spreading, it can move fast.”
At the same time we have the technology and knowledge to stop it.
More than 22.81 million people have been infected by the coronavirus globally and 793,382 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Updated
The governor of Brazil’s São Paulo state, João Doria, said on Friday he no longer had coronavirus, less than two weeks after announcing he had tested positive.
Doria told reporters he was still quarantined and that his wife, Bia Doria, who had also contracted the disease, had now tested negative.
Brazil has the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak after the US. The president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his wife also contracted the disease and have since tested negative.
Updated
The scale of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico is “under-represented” and “under-recognised”, while testing is limited, the World Health Organization’s Dr Mike Ryan said on Friday.
He told a Geneva briefing that testing in Mexico worked out at about three people per 100,000, compared with about 150 tests per 100,000 people in the US.
Updated
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has infected 100 people and killed 43, the World Health Organization has said.
The latest outbreak of the virus was declared on 1 June in Mbandaka, a city of 1 million people on the River Congo, just before Congo declared the end of a previous outbreak in the east that had dragged on for two years.
It has spread to remote villages in Équateur province spanning more than 300km of dense forest with few roads, the WHO said in a statement.
The pace of the virus’s spread has been relatively consistent, case data shows.
“The virus is spreading across a wide and rugged terrain which requires costly interventions,” said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa regional director.
As in previous outbreaks, the WHO has implemented a ring vaccination strategy, where contacts of infected individuals are vaccinated, reaching more than 22,600 people to date.
Updated
Spain’s health ministry said on Friday that it had registered another 8,148 coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s total number of cumulative cases to 386,054 – the highest in western Europe.
The number of new cases across Spain in the past 14 days now sits at 70,420, or an average of 5,030 new cases a day.
The virus has claimed the lives of 125 people across Spain in the last seven days.
About 30% of the new cases detected in the past two weeks are in Madrid, home to one of Europe’s worst outbreaks in March and April. On Friday the regional government recommended that residents in the hardest-hit areas of the capital remain in their homes and avoid all unnecessary travel.
Apple also said it would temporarily shut down its four Madrid stores starting Monday. “Due to current Covid-19 conditions in some of the communities we serve, we are temporarily closing stores in these areas,” it said in a statement provided to the Guardian.
In recent weeks the country has grappled with a surge in cases, sparking a blunt warning from the country’s health emergency chief Fernando Simón on Thursday. “There should be no confusion: things are not going well,” he said at a press conference. Spain’s 14-day infection rate now stands at 150 per 100,000, compared with 51 in France and 11.5 in Italy.
On Friday two regions, Catalonia and Castilla-La Mancha, said they would close down strip clubs and brothels, after reports of a dozen infections among staff at a brothel in central Spain.
After it emerged that these locales had managed to remain open even as the country shut down nightclubs and ordered restaurants and bars to close early, the country’s equality minister, Irene Montero, sent a letter to region demanding regions to immediately close brothels given the difficulty of contact-tracing in the case of infections.
Updated
Italy records biggest daily infection rise since May
Italy registered 947 new infections on Friday, the biggest daily Covid case rise since 14 May, when the country was still in lockdown.
The total number of cases is now up to 257,065. Nine more people have died with the virus and the death toll now stands at 35,427.
Last week the government obliged holidaymakers returning from Greece, Malta, Spain and Croatia to be tested for the virus. Rome said it was also considering adding France to the list.
“There is continued talk of a second wave of the virus, but in fact the first wave is actually not over yet,’’ the health ministry consultant Walter Ricciardi said on Friday. “We knew that easing [lockdown] measures would have consequences.’’
The number of new infections in recent days seems to be the price Italy is paying in order to put the economy back on track, especially in the tourism sector.
Back in May, as the country began to emerge from lockdown, authorities were obliged to strike a balance between the need to reopen public spaces and national borders, fundamental for economic recovery, and the obligation to safeguard public health. But what if Rome went too far?
Updated
Britain’s demand for cheap food could be fuelling the spread of the coronavirus in its factories, a leading health expert has warned, as analysis shows nearly 1,500 cases across the country.
Cramped conditions in some factories and in low-paid workers’ homes, spurred by the UK’s desire for cheaply produced food, may have driven infection rates in the sector, according to David Nabarro, a World Health Organization special envoy on Covid-19.
Photograph: John Angerson/Alamy
In the early stages of the pandemic, the UK avoided the scale of Covid-19 outbreaks seen in meat factories and other food processing plants in countries such as the US. But a Guardian analysis suggests that reported UK outbreaks of the disease are now increasing in frequency, with examples of cases spreading into the wider community.
You can read the full report by my colleagues Kevin Rawlinson and Henry McDonald here:
Updated
Opportunistic illegal loggers have devastated indigenous lands in Brazil after tourists were banned from the trails on Monte Pascoal to curb the spread of coronavirus in March.
Usually, some of the about 120 inhabitants of Pe do Monte village in the northeastern state of Bahia serve as guides on the mountain, earning money to live on and to help protect the forests around them.
When community leaders closed off the village, they knew they would be forgoing vital income, but did not expect that illegal loggers would move in.
The indigenous leader Toho Pataxo told the Thomas Reuters Foundation:
We used to have five trails, but four of them have been deforested. We are looking into the possibility of opening new trails [after the pandemic], so that tourism doesn’t stop. If tourist income stops, our whole community stops.”
Official government figures show more than 380 indigenous people have died from the illness so far. But indigenous rights groups believe that number is underreported - Brazil’s Association of Indigenous People estimates it to be closer to 680 deaths.
Indigenous rights groups and health bodies like the World Health Organization have warned that indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to the virus, for reasons ranging from lack of healthcare access to invasions of their land by loggers.
At the start of the outbreak in Brazil, Funai, the government’s indigenous affairs agency, suspended all authorisation for outsiders to enter indigenous areas.
In Pe do Monte, Toho believes illegal loggers took advantage of the fact that the tourism freeze emptied the trails of possible witnesses to their crimes.
“There were trees over 200 years old on those trails, but [loggers] cut them all down. They devastated our trails,” he said.
Updated
Tunisia has imposed a 5pm to 5am curfew on two southern towns in an attempt to contain a renewed coronavirus outbreak, the state news agency TAP said.
The country is seeking to counter a second spread of Covid-19 which became evident when it reopened borders on 27 June as part of steps to ease a lockdown and revive the economy.
Since then, however, Tunisia has recorded a major resurgence of infections, exceeding 100 per day over the last two weeks.
The curfew in the towns of Hamma and Hamma Gharbia will take effect from today until 27 August.
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Prolonged school closures in Africa could set back the life chances of a generation of children and deepen inequality, according to the World Health Organization. Hundreds of millions of children have been out of school across Africa for six months, following lockdown measures adopted across the continent.
A WHO survey of 39 countries in sub-Saharan Africa found that just six countries have fully reopened schools, which remain completely closed in 14 countries. A further 19 countries’ schools are partially reopen for exams.
“We are very keen for schools to reopen as soon as possible,” the director of the WHO Africa region, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, told the Guardian. “This is an issue that could deepen the disparities that already exist. Education is vital; we must make sure that we contain Covid-19 but not damage the future of our countries,” she said.
Economic and gender inequalities, as well as those between rural and urban areas, were at risk of widening during the pandemic.
“I know how important educating kids from disadvantaged backgrounds is and how transformative it can be,” she said. “Especially for girls. I’m dead keen on them returning to school. We know how critical it is for their health and their survival.”
The WHO has urged governments to adapt lockdown measures from being state-wide to local where possible, and explore innovative solutions using technology. Countries should also consider outdoor education in some circumstances, Moeti said. “This is one of the few cases where you can possibly find it acceptable for kids to learn outside, which is not ideal at all, but in this case, kids learning out in the open air while we build up the public health capacities to be able to manage the situation is very important.”
Cases of the coronavirus have slowed in Africa over the last two weeks, falling by a quarter compared with the previous two weeks. More than 1.1m infections have been confirmed on the continent, with almost 900,000 recoveries, while almost 27,000 people have died.
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Venezuela has closed entry from Colombia at the most-used crossing along the two countries’ border, Colombian migration authorities said.
Colombian authorities said they were informed by Venezuelan counterparts that the Simon Bolivar bridge connecting the cities of Cúcuta and San Antonio would be closed due to the high number of recently arrived Venezuelans who are in quarantine on the other side.
The Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Colombia is a top destination for Venezuelans fleeing the political, economic and social crisis in their country. Some 1.7 million Venezuelans reside in Colombia.
Since March, when Colombia declared a national lockdown to combat the coronavirus, around 100,000 Venezuelans have returned home.
Another 40,000 are waiting to cross the border, according to Colombian migration authorities, amid weekly limits by Venezuelan authorities on the number of citizens allowed to return.
“We are concerned for the health of everyone along the border and as such we have decided to suspend transport of Venezuelan citizens to Norte de Santander province,” Colombia’s migration director, Juan Francisco Espinosa, said.
Colombian authorities had been bussing Venezuelans who wanted to return home from the interior of the country to Cúcuta, but would stop to avoid border bottlenecks and possible health emergencies, Espinosa said.
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AstraZeneca has received regulatory approval to conduct part of a Phase III trial of its potential Covid-19 vaccine, AZD1222, in Russia, a filing in the Russian registry of clinical trials showed on Friday.
The trial will involve 150 participants and will be handled by four medical facilities in St Petersburg and Moscow, the registry filing, dated Friday, showed.
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Kenya’s police have teargassed protesters holding peaceful demonstrations against alleged corruption including the theft of supplies for the fight against Covid-19, Associated Press reports.
At least 12 demonstrators from a group of 100 protesting in different parts of Nairobi, the capital, were arrested by police, said the central business district police chief, Mark Wanjala.
Picketing and protesting are rights guaranteed by the Kenyan constitution but police argue that they dispersed Friday’s demonstrations because of concerns that large gatherings could lead to the spread of the coronavirus.
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Thousands of British holidaymakers in Croatia are trying to cut their trip short or change their plans to avoid having to quarantine for 14 days on their return home, after the Balkan country was removed from the UK government’s travel corridor list.
You can read Isabel Choat’s report below:
Switzerland recorded more than 300 new coronavirus cases on Friday for the second time this week, as confirmed infections returned to a level not seen since mid-April.
In mid-March, Switzerland introduced restrictions aimed at halting the spread, though it stopped short of the strict confinement imposed by some of its neighbours.
It eased off its restrictions in gradual stages - but case numbers have been steadily on the rise since late June.
The health ministry said on Friday 306 new cases had been reported in the previous 24 hours, taking the total number of cases recorded to 39,232 - of which 1,505 have come in the past seven days.
It has so far recorded 1,719 deaths in the pandemic.
Hi. This is Caroline Davies taking over the blog for a short while. You can get in touch on caroline.davies@theguardian.com
Teams will be withdrawn from the Tour de France if two riders or staff show symptoms or test positive for Covid-19, under strict protocols from race organisers.
However the race, which starts in Nice on 29 August, will continue even if there is a confirmed case of coronavirus in the peloton, according to an 18-page document shared with teams this week.
“If two persons or more from the same team present strongly suspect symptoms or have tested positive for Covid-19, the team in question will be expelled from the Tour de France,” states the document, which has been obtained by the cycling website VeloNews.
“Its riders will not be authorised to start the Tour de France (or the next stage) and the team’s personnel will have their accreditation withdrawn.”
You can read the full report from my colleague Sean Ingle here:
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India cases nearing 3m
Cases of coronavirus in India are nearing 3 million, piling pressure on authorities to prevent huge gatherings this weekend as Mumbai celebrates the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesh.
For most of western India, especially the country’s financial capital, Ganesh Chaturthi marks the beginning of an 11-day festival usually marked by big public celebrations.
Social media was flooded with pictures of shoppers crowding markets to buy flowers and sweets, but it is expected to be a quieter Ganesh festival this year.
“You can see everyone’s shops are full of idols. No one is coming out to buy anything,” Ramdas Ghodekar, who sells Ganesh idols in central Mumbai, told Reuters.
India has reported 68,898 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours – the third straight daily increase above 60,000 – taking the total to 2.91 million, the third worst in the world after the United States and Brazil. Deaths increased by 983 to 54,849.
Cases have plateaued in Mumbai, which now averages 1,000 a day and has recorded more than 120,000 in total, but strict government regulations have meant that the festival season, which begins this month, has been lacklustre.
“People are buying cheaper idols and cutting down their budgets because there have been pay cuts and job losses. Last year, I sold all the idols in my shop – this year I will sell half of that,” idol-maker Nandkumar Patil said.
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Lebanon imposes partial lockdown following Beirut explosion
Lebanon has imposed a partial lockdown for two weeks to counter coronavirus infections, which have spiralled since the catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port.
The spread of Covid-19 is compounding the problems in the country, still reeling from the blast on 4 August that killed at least 179 people and wounded 6,000, and a financial meltdown that has devastated the economy since last October.
On Thursday, Lebanon recorded its highest 24-hour tally of new coronavirus infections, with 613 new cases. Medics say infections have spread in the aftermath of the explosion as hospitals were flooded with casualties.
Iman Shankiti, the World Health Organization representative in Lebanon, told Voice of Lebanon radio:
Before the explosion, the total cases were 5,000-6,000, now we are approaching 10,000 and above.
In the last two weeks, the total is equal to everything from February to the day of the explosion.
The partial lockdown, which includes a curfew from 6pm to 6am, allows for clearing rubble, making repairs and giving out aid in neighbourhoods demolished by the blast.
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Doctors in most public hospitals in Kenya’s capital went on strike on Friday to protest against delayed salaries and a lack of protective equipment when handling patients suspected of having Covid-19.
The strike began at midnight on Friday, said Thuranira Kaugiria, secretary general for the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union.
He said 320 doctors employed by the Nairobi County government were taking part in the strike because they had inadequate health insurance, poor quality protective gear and too few isolation wards to treat coronavirus patients.
The strike will not affect private hospitals and public hospitals within Nairobi run by the national government.
Latest data show 31,441 confirmed coronavirus cases in Kenya, 532 deaths and 18,157 recoveries out of 411,630 tests done so far. The majority of confirmed cases have been in the capital.
Kenyan doctors have been posting pictures on Twitter of what they say is inadequate gear supplied by the government, including porous overalls meant to protect against dust that would not prevent the spread of the virus.
Winemakers in France’s champagne region are gathering a bumper grape harvest with a bitter aftertaste as the slump in demand for bubbly caused by the pandemic means some will go to waste.
“We make the wine of happiness, and when people are sad, like during the lockdown, sales of champagne tend to collapse,” said Vincent Leglantier, 34, a wine grower in Bethon, in north-eastern France.
At the Brun de Neuville vineyard collective, to which Leglantier belongs, teams of pickers are working their way along rows of vines, collecting grapes by hand. Most are migrant workers from eastern Europe who come every harvest season.
But this year, sales are sharply down because weddings and parties around the world have been cancelled.
In response, French champagne producers decided this month to put a cap on the amount of grapes they send for processing into wine to avoid driving down the price and exclusivity of the drink.
But the cap – limiting the amount of grapes that can be harvested from a hectare to 8,000kg – means that anything over that figure must be left to rot.
“You could say it’s maybe the best of the bad deals we could have reached,” Damien Champy, the head of the Brun de Neuville vineyard cooperative, said of the quota as he stood in the cellar where bottles of champagne are left to mature.
Updated
Singapore is to reopen its borders to visitors from New Zealand and Brunei next month, in its first steps towards resuming leisure travel since it closed its borders to control Covid-19 outbreaks.
The city-state, which currently only allows official and business travel to selected countries, also said it would allow students to travel for overseas study if remote learning was not possible.
The new measures will take effect on 1 September with various restrictions, the health ministry said.
Singapore sealed its borders in March and subsequently went into a two-month lockdown as mass outbreaks emerged in cramped migrant worker dormitories.
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New York City, once the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak in the US, has managed to contain the virus as it reopens, but could face an uptick in cases in the autumn, public health experts have warned.
The success of easing lockdown measures in the city comes from high rates of compliance with anti-coronavirus guidance and substantial immunity among the general population as a result of the severity of the outbreak in the spring, experts in the city told Reuters.
“There was an alignment in New York with the state government, the healthcare system and the media on what to do – namely, lock everything down,” said Mark Jarrett, the chief quality officer at Northwell Health. “The lockdown didn’t please everyone, but was really well accepted.”
He added that the compliance among the public contrasted with other parts of the US, where political opposition to mask wearing and lockdowns was more widespread.
The rate of contagion has also declined more quickly because the initial outbreak left between 25% and 50% of New Yorkers with some level of immunity, said Mara Lima, an associate dean for research at the City University of New York school of medicine.
But New York is at risk of an uptick in cases as schools reopen and cold weather encourages more people indoors, experts said.
“The big challenge is schools reopening, recreating that density anew,” which had been reduced by social distancing, said Troy Tassier, a professor of economics at Fordham University who specializes in epidemiology.
After peaking in early April at a seven-day average of more than 5,000 cases per day, New York City has reduced its daily case count to an average of less than 200, according to city data.
The percentage of people tested who turned out to have the virus declined from around 70% in late March to less than 1%, and confirmed deaths have declined from over 500 per day in April to the low single digits.
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Here’s a bit more on the resignation of Ireland’s agriculture minister following his attendance at a social event that police are investigating for an alleged breach of Covid-19 regulations.
Dara Calleary was among more than 80 guests at a hotel dinner hosted by the Irish parliament’s golf society, the night after he and his cabinet colleagues significantly tightened nationwide restrictions to try to curb a spike in infections.
Ireland has maintained some of the strictest anti-Covid controls in Europe while the government has been criticised over the new restrictions – including limiting indoor gatherings to six people – which have been viewed as poorly communicated and contradictory.
Other prominent figures, including the EU trade commissioner, Phil Hogan, attended the dinner that drew a wave of public anger.
Calleary told his local radio station, Midwest Radio:
I want to apologise to everyone ... I have damaged the national effort to try and take on Covid.
“I’ve let people down, I’ve angered a lot of people, I’ve stressed a lot of people who have had to make very difficult calls over the last six months.”
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, accepted his resignation, saying Calleary had made the right decision for the country and that the event should never have gone ahead.
Updated
South Korea’s efforts to contain a new outbreak of Covid-19 have been complicated by a political and religious fight between President Moon Jae-in’s administration and some of his fiercest critics.
Sarang Jeil Church is the second religious group at the centre of a major coronavirus outbreak in the country.
The government has accused the church of obstruction by not providing complete lists of its members and by spreading fake news that is hindering anti-Covid efforts, while church members have claimed they are victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt.
After the first infections were reported among church members on 12 August, the government said the group flouted social distancing instructions, with the church leader and others attending a massive anti-Moon rally in downtown Seoul on 15 August.
Speaking at the rally, the Rev Jun Kwang-hun said Moon had “terrorised our church with the Wuhan virus.” Jun, an outspoken government critic, later tested positive for the virus.
As of Thursday, at least 739 people affiliated with the church have tested positive, out of 3,415 tested, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Myanmar has locked down the state capital of the conflict-torn Rakhine state after an outbreak of a coronavirus strain that officials said was more infectious than that previously seen in the country.
Since Monday, 19 people have tested positive for the virus in the western region, health officials confirmed on Friday, the first local transmission in Myanmar in months, bringing the total number of cases to 409.
Myat Htut Nyunt, the deputy director at Myanmar’s department of medical research, said the type of virus was the same as a mutation detected earlier this week in Malaysia, which has been found in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia and is thought to be more infectious.
“So we would like to inform the people that this kind of virus has a faster rate of transmission,” Nyunt said.
The vast majority of recent cases have been in the town of Sittwe, where officials have issued a stay-at-home order and imposed a curfew. Domestic airlines have suspended services between Sittwe and the commercial capital of Yangon.
Tens of thousands of people are living in displacement camps across Rakhine due to fighting between government troops and ethnic insurgents.
Sittwe is also home to camps where about 100,000 Rohingya Muslims have been confined since an outbreak of violence in 2012.
This is Amy Walker, taking over from my colleague Archie Bland. I’ll be guiding you through the key global coronavirus developments for the next few hours.
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Spanish health chief: 'things are not going well'
As cases continue to climb in Spain, the country’s health emergency chief has issued his strongest warning since the country emerged from one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.
“There should be no confusion: things are not going well,” Fernando Simón told reporters on Thursday. “If we continue to allow transmission to rise, even if most cases are mild, we will end up with many in hospital, many in intensive care and many deaths.”
Spain has registered 66,905 cases in the past two weeks – resulting in Europe’s highest 14-day infection rate.
More than a quarter of these new infections have been in Madrid, the centre of the country’s crisis in March and April. “We can’t say that the epidemic is out of control at a national level, but there are some specific places where it is,” Simón added, without giving details.
Deaths have increased across Spain, with 131 lives claimed in the last seven days compared with 12 deaths one month ago. Around 1,400 Covid-19 patients were admitted to hospital in the last week, nearly double from one week earlier.
The rise in cases has prompted officials across Spain to roll out a raft of measures, from closing nightclubs to forcing restaurants and bars to close their doors by 1am. On Friday the central Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha is expected to go further by shutting a sector that has slipped through the cracks to remain open: strip clubs and brothels.
The move comes after a brothel in the region reported an outbreak of eight positive cases among its staff, according to the news website ElDiario.es. Amid difficulties in tracking down patrons, government officials are urging them to get tested.
Prostitution was decriminalised in Spain in 1995 and has since grown into a booming business, with estimates suggesting revenues of as much as $26.5bn a year.
Campaigners in Spain have long warned that these workers rank among the most vulnerable in the pandemic, facing pressure to work and little in the way of protection from the virus.
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Human consumption dipped in 2020 because of coronavirus
Alex Mistlin reports on research finding that lockdown has led to a 9.3% reduction in humanity’s ecological footprint compared with the same period last year - but while that may be a silver lining, the Global Footprint Network warned that we would still need 1.6 times Earth’s available resources to consume at even that rate.
Mike Childs, the head of policy for Friends of the Earth, warned that “this year’s improvement in the way we use our natural resources is solely down to Covid-19 and subsequent lockdowns. Unless there is a significant change in the way we act the situation is likely to return to normal, or worse, in the following years.”
More here:
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Forty-one Berlin schools report cases among students or teachers
At least 41 schools in Berlin have reported that students or teachers have become infected with the coronavirus less than two weeks after schools reopened in the German capital, AP reports:
Daily Berliner Zeitung published the numbers Friday and city education authorities confirmed the figures.
Hundreds of students and teacher are in quarantine, the newspaper reported. Elementary schools, high schools and trade schools are all affected, the paper wrote. There are 825 schools in Berlin.
The reopening of schools and the possible risks of virus clusters building up in educational institutions and then spreading beyond to families and further into society have been a matter of great concern and it’s an issue that’s hotly debated in Germany.
Education in Germany isn’t in the hands of the federal government, but is under the auspices of the country’s 16 states, and thus there are many differing Covid-19 rules in place, especially when it comes to wearing masks. While some states are still on summer vacation, others have been back to school for about two weeks.
Berlin was one of the first places in Germany to reopen its schools after the summer holidays. Children are obliged to wear masks in the hallways, during breaks and when they enter the classroom, but they can take the masks off once they sit in their places and classes begin. Some critics say the measures in Berlin are too relaxed and both students and teachers should wear masks during lessons as well.
In general, Germany is determined to not send schools back into a lockdown as was the case in March, even as the infection rates go up again. Schools have been ordered to send single students or classes that had possible exposure into quarantine, but the goal is to avoid shutting down entire schools.
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Poland reported 903 new coronavirus cases on Friday, according to the health ministry’s Twitter account, the highest daily increase since the pandemic outbreak. Poland has reported 60,281 cases in all, and 1,938 deaths.
Updated
France sees biggest jump in new cases since end of lockdown
France has marked another large jump in new coronavirus cases, by far the highest increase since the end of the lockdown in May. The latest figures released by Santé Publique France on Thursday evening showed a rise of 4,771 new cases in the previous 24 hours, 1,000 more than the previous day. There are currently 266 clusters under investigation, an increase of 33, and an additional 12 deaths in hospitals; 31 French departments are deemed to be in a situation of “moderate or significant risk”.
Health experts say the increase in the number of new cases cannot be explained by the widespread testing being carried out as the rise in new cases is significantly higher than the rise in the number of tests.
Hospital and intensive care admissions, however, remain stable, say the authorities, suggesting the paradox of an epidemic that is spreading but not getting markedly worse.
In its weekly summary for 10-16 August also published on Thursday, Santé Publique noted the number of new cases rose 42% on the previous week and there was a “strong progression in the circulation of the virus especially among young adults”.
The health authority reported an “upward trend” in new hospital and intensive care admissions, with 228 new patients in hospital and six more in i/c. There were 31 new deaths attributed to Covid-19 in France last week, bringing the estimated total to 30,451.
France’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, has said schools will reopen on 1 September as normal, but all staff as well as pupils over the age of 11 must wear masks. The authorities will provide masks for teachers, but students must have their own. The September return to school and work after the long summer holidays, known as la rentrée, is the most important date in the French calendar.
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Unexpected winners of the virus era: webcams in US aquariums.
Since Monterey Bay aquarium in California closed to the public in March, visits to its website have tripled compared to the previous year. Nearly 80% of traffic goes to its 10 live webcams, with the sea otter, jellyfish and shark exhibits proving the most popular...
Georgia aquarium recorded an approximate 3,000% increase in daily traffic to its webcams at the start of lockdown in mid-March, in particular to its 6.3m-gallon whale shark tunnel.
(Sadly the whale shark tunnel is currently “closed for the night”, so it may not be worth clicking through.) People say ‘I eat breakfast every morning with the sea otters’, apparently. More of this here:
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The Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has now issued a statement confirming the agriculture minister Dara Calleary’s resignation over his attendance at a golf club event in apparent breach of lockdown rules.
“His attendance at this event was wrong and an error of judgment on his part. I have accepted his resignation,” Martin said. “People all over the country have made very difficult, personal sacrifices in their family lives and in their businesses to comply with Covid regulations. This event should not have gone ahead in the manner it did.”
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From Reuters:
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Friday that mass testing of residents for coronavirus in the Asian financial hub will begin on 1 September, as she warned people not to be complacent despite a steady fall in the number of new infections.
The testing, which will be done with the assistance of a 60-person team from the mainland, is the first time Chinese health officials have assisted the special administrative region in its battle to control the epidemic.
Updated
4,870 new coronavirus cases in Russia, 1,427 in Germany
Russia reported 4,870 new coronavirus cases on Friday, pushing its confirmed national tally to 946,976, the fourth largest in the world. Authorities said 90 people had died over the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 16,189.
Meanwhile in Germany the number of confirmed cases increased by 1,427 since Thursday to 230,048, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 7 to 9,260.
Updated
RTE reports that Calleary had been scheduled to appear on the outlet’s Morning Ireland programme but withdrew shortly before the news of his resignation emerged. RTE also said that he had confirmed his resignation and that a statement would be issued shortly.
Minister for Agriculture @daracalleary was scheduled to appear on our programme this morning to address the Clifden function he attended in breach of government guidelines. A spokesperson has informed the programme that the Minister is no longer "immediately available".
— Morning Ireland (@morningireland) August 21, 2020
Ireland agriculture minister resigns over Covid-19 breach - reports
Irish media reported on Friday that agriculture minister Dara Calleary has resigned after he took part in a golf club event attended by more than 80 people in what appeared to be a breach of coronavirus rules.
The story of the breach, which was broken by the Irish Examiner newspaper, is reported by the Irish Times to have left Taoiseach Micheál Martin “furious”. Calleary tweeted late on Thursday that he apologised “unreservedly”. He has not yet commented on the resignation reports.
Last night I attended a function I committed to a number of weeks ago, to pay tribute to a person I respected and admired greatly. In light of the updated public health guidance this week I should not have attended the event. I wish to apologise unreservedly to everyone 1/2
— Dara Calleary (@daracalleary) August 20, 2020
The timing of the breach was viewed as particularly unfortunate because it emerged a day after the government significantly tightened nationwide restrictions in the hope of bringing a spike in new cases under control.
Indoor gatherings of more than 50 people have been banned in Ireland since June, while tables in restaurants are supposed to hold no more than six people from three households. Calleary attended the golf club dinner with 82 guests and up to 10 people per table - though the Irish Times reports that the room was divided in two by a partition for part of the evening and Calleary’s own table had six guests on it. Other politicians also attended the event.
An eyewitness told the Irish Times that they saw “no masks. no distancing” at the event and said:
My 11 year old who is Covid anxious was hugely upset. The hotel has been brilliant all week on all Covid aspects. This was a really strange event with all that in mind.
“At the reception people were being introduced to each other and shaking hands. No distancing and no masks. We were flabbergasted.”
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In Hong Kong, Reuters reports that the streets have become overwhelmed with rubbish because restaurants forced to focus on takeout are producing huge quantities of plastic waste.
The news agency reports:
Plastic from eating out has doubled from last year since takeaway food is the only option for many people who do not cook at home. Hundreds of thousands of people in the crowded city live in compact apartments with tiny or non-existent kitchens.
Pavements in residential and office areas are littered with Styrofoam boxes and coffee cups spilling out from bins, while plastic bags and wrappers are seen floating at popular swimming sites.
“For many people, the biggest issue is they don’t deal with their own waste on a daily basis so they aren’t realising the scale of their own consumption,” said Tracey Read, founder of Plastic Free Seas in Hong Kong.
The city’s residents are consuming more than 101 million disposable plastic items for takeaway every week, according to environmental group Greeners Action, more than double the amount discarded last year.
The UK coronavirus blog is up and running, starting with the latest on fears of a new lockdown in Birmingham, where cases have risen 27% in a week. You can follow it here:
Good morning - this is Archie Bland picking up from Martin Farrer. You can reach me on Twitter or by email if you have questions or tips.
In Hungary, Viktor Orban has told state radio that he will tighten border crossing rules from the beginning of September to prevent the spread of coronavirus as the number of new infections is rising in neighbouring countries.
The far right prime minister also said the government would draft a two-year plan to boost the economy by the middle of next month, after a deeper-than-expected 13.6% plunge in second-quarter economic output, Reuters reports.
Summary
If you’re just waking up to join us, these are the main developments in the past few hours:
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The global death toll from Covid-19 has edged closer towards 800,000. There have been 793,698 fatalities from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University, and almost 22.7 million cases. India has registered almost 3 million cases after an increase in the past 24 hours of 68,000.
- A senior US health regulator has vowed to resign if the Trump administration tries to rush approval of a vaccine. Peter Marks of the Food and Drug Administration said there was growing concern that the White House will try to approve a treatment before the November election even if it is not safe.
- Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said that a vaccine could be up for regulatory review by October. The move boosted stock markets in Asia.
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South Korea faces “very serious situation” as it seeks to trace thousands who attended a conservative rally at the weekend. It has seen a spike in cases centred around a church whose members were among thousands who attended the anti-government rally.
- New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has hit back at Donald Trump. Shthee was said she was “very proud” of her country’s efforts after the US president implied New Zealand – which recorded 11 new cases on Friday – was struggling with a new coronavirus outbreak.
- Ireland’s agriculture minister has apologised for attending a golf society dinner with dozens of other people. Dara Calleary’s government had restricted gatherings to six only 24 hours earlier.
- The Australian state of Victoria has recorded 179 new cases of Covid-19. It was the the lowest one-day increase in five weeks and a sign that the outbreak that brought a lockdown on Melbourne was being brought under control.
Citizens of Beijing can go mask-free for the first time in months, health authorities said on Friday, as new cases coninued to decline in the Chinese capital.
Many people wer still choosing wesr the masks in public, however, because social pressure made them feel obliged to do so.
One woman interviewed by Reuters said: “I think I can take off my mask anytime, but I’ll need to see if others accept it. Because I’m afraid that people would be scared if they see me not wearing mask.”
Global death toll nears 800,000
The global death toll from Covid-19 is creeping towards 800,000, according to the data collated by Johns Hopkins University.
It says there have been 793,698 fatalities from coronavirus and almost 22.7 million cases.
The United States has the most deaths, with nearly 175,000, while Brazil is the second highest on 112,304 and Mexico third on 56,100.
A cross-party group of MPs has accused the UK’s privacy watchdog of failing to hold the government to account for its failures in the NHS coronavirus test-and-trace programme.
The group of 22 MPs say the government has been allowed to play “fast and loose” with data protection issues during the pandemic.
Here’s the full story:
Birmingham, Britain’s second-biggest city, could be placed back into lockdown after a 27% rise in new coronavirus cases in a week.
The city has seen a rise to 30 cases per 100,000, up from 22.4 the week before and 12 at the start of the month, its director of public health said.
Read the full story here:
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Vanuatu’s economy has been hit hard by the virus like many others, but one unusual source of income has kept money coming into the pacific island nation’s coffers: passport fees.
It managed to rake in a 3.8bn Vanuatu vatu (US$33.3m) surplus in the first half of 2020, with its controversial citizenship-for-sale programmes account for nearly all of that
You can read Dan McGarry’s full here:
Updated
India has edged closer to 3 million coronavirus cases, reporting 68,898 new infections in the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry.
The country now has 2,905,823 cases, the ministry says, although more than 2 million have recovered.
Deaths in the same period jumped by 983, with the total now at 54,849. India is the worst-hit country in Asia, and third behind the United States and Brazil in terms of total cases of the coronavirus.
Pfizer vaccine hope lifts stock markets
A statement by Pfizer and BioNTech that a Covid-19 vaccine they are working on could be up for regulatory review by October has boosted markets in Asia.
The Kospi in Seoul rose 2% and the Nikkei was up 1% on the news, with Sydney, Shanghai and Hong Kong all also in positive territory.
AxiCorp analyst Stephen Innes in Bangkok said the Pfizer announcement had “raised some expectation... that life around the world could return to normal sooner than expected”.
This is not only for good market concerns, this is a world desperately anxious for a cure to put an end to the most severe global recession since the 1930s so people can start to piece their lives back together.
From a stock market concern, it’s great for growth assets as planes will fly, the oil will flow, and laggard industries will emerge from the Covid-19 fog, and their stocks will soar. Indeed, with a vaccine cure, a trip to your local clinic could be the one-stop recession plugger before the year is out.
It’s Ardern v Trump, round three.
Eleanor Ainge Roy has field a full report on what a “very proud” Jacinda Ardern has had to say about Donald Trump today.
In other news, Joe Biden has vowed to end America’s “season of darkness” as he accepted the Democratic party nomination to take on Donald Trump in November’s election.
You can read all about his convention speech here:
South Korea faces 'serious situation'
South Korean’s vice health minister has warned of the “very serious situation” facing the country as it tries to contain the latest coronavirus outbreak.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday reported 324 new cases as of midnight Thursday, bringing the country’s total to 16,670, with 309 deaths. It was the highest daily count since 8 March.
South Korea has been placed back on high alert after a spike of cases centred around a church in Seoul whose members were among thousands who attended a conservative political rally in the capital on Saturday.
“This is a very serious situation,” Kim Gang-lip told a briefing on Friday, adding that the government was trying to track and trace people who had attended the rally for fear that it has helped spread the virus.
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Disaster-hit Lebanon is about to lock down for two weeks from Friday to stem a string of record daily infection rates that have brought the number of Covid-19 cases to 10,952, including 113 deaths.
Still recovering from the huge fertiliser explosion in Beirut two weeks ago, the country’s interim government fears the fragile health sector will be unable to cope if there is a big surge in cases.
The new lockdown measures, which include a nighttime curfew from 6:00am (0300 GMT) to 6:00pm (1500 GMT), will not affect the clean-up or aid effort in areas ravaged by the blast.
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US health regulator vows to resign if vaccine rushed through
A top US health regulator has vowed to resign if the Trump administration approves a vaccine before it is shown to be safe and effective, Reuters is reporting.
Growing concern among scientists and health officials that the White House will seek to rush approval before the November election prompted Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s center for biologics evaluation and research, to make the statement, Reuters says.
It follows voicing of concerns at a conference call last week of government officials, pharmaceutical executives and academics who serve on a vaccine working group organized by the National Institutes of Health.
Marks told Reuters he has not faced any political pressure and that the FDA would be guided by science alone. Should that change, “I could not stand by and see something that was unsafe or ineffective that was being put through.
“You have to decide where your red line is, and that’s my red line,” he said. “I would feel obligated (to resign) because in doing so, I would indicate to the American public that there’s something wrong.”
Ardern has just been asked again for a response to Donald Trump’s recent disparaging comments regarding New Zealand’s resurgence battle.
Everyone can see in New Zealand we’ve got 11 cases, while the United States is dealing with over 40,000 cases. But it’s not just whether you have cases, it’s how you choose to deal with them.
Ardern hits back at Trump
In a dig at Donald Trump, Jacinda Arden also said that NZ had one of the lowest Covid death rates in the world – especially compared with the US.
Trump this week made a weak attempt to suggest New Zealand’s outbreak was getting out of control.
Arden has also thanked Aucklanders for their adherence to Level 3 lockdown, but says the effort “has not concluded yet” after 10 days.
Cabinet has agreed nothing suggests “we need to escalate our response, but at this stage, we need to stay the course”, meaning lockdown will continue for Aucklanders.
New Zealanders’ willingness to be tested is world-leading, Ardern said, with WHO citing them as having one of the highest rates of testing in the world.
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11 new cases in New Zealand
Eleanor Ainge Roy has this update from New Zealand:
Eleven new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in New Zealand on Friday, nine of them related to the community outbreak in south Auckland. Half of the cases came from churches and the rest from family contacts.
Two of the cases arrived from overseas recently, both are now in quarantine. Eight people are now receiving hospital care, all of them infected from the community. Some 89 cases are now considered part of the south Auckland cluster.
New Zealand’s cabinet will meet on Monday to decide alert levels for the whole country, including Auckland, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said.
Stocks lifted by Pfizer vaccine hope
Stocks in Asia Pacific are on the up on Friday morning thanks to a positive showing by tech shares on Wall Street and news that Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company, is on track to seek regulatory review of its Covid-19 vaccine by October. .
The Nikkei is up nearly 1% in Tokyo, Sydney is 0.44% to the good and the Kospi in Seoul has lifted 0.6%.
Pfizer's vaccine reportedly on track for regulatory review as early as October.
— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) August 21, 2020
Seeing mild moves up. pic.twitter.com/CsXJpqxlad
Mexico has recorded another 6,775 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 625 deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.
The country has registered 543,806 cases and 59,100 deaths.
La Secretaría de Salud reportó 625 nuevas muertes por Covid-19, con lo que suman 59 mil 106; en México hay 543 mil 806 casos acumulados, 6 mil 775 más que ayer. https://t.co/kgCmua9mxP
— EL NORTE (@elnorte) August 21, 2020
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More vaccine news. Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings, an American company, says it is in talks with about a dozen countries to supply a coronavirus vaccine that it currently has going through early human testing.
Joseph Payne, the company’s chief executive, told Reuters on Thursday that he was talking to some countries in Europe, Latin America and south-east Asia, as well as with several US government agencies.
Arcturus recently began testing its vaccine in humans in an early-to-mid stage study.
On Tuesday it signed a supply agreement with Israel for delivery of an initial 1 million doses, with the potential to buy additional doses – a deal that could eventually be worth $275m, pending regulatory approval.
Irish minister apologises for golf outing
An Irish cabinet minister is in hot water after attending a golf society event with more than 80 people just a day after his government tightened Covid-19 restrictions, including limiting indoor gatherings to just six people. Ireland is facing one of Europe’s fastest increases in infections.
Agriculture minister Dara Calleary apologised “unreservedly” for attending the dinner hosted by the Irish parliament’s golf society in a hotel in Galway onWednesday.
Amid anger from people who have been unable to attend funerals because of the restrictions or had to cancel holidays or weddings, Calleary said:
I wish to apologise unreservedly to everyone. We are asking quite a lot from everyone at this difficult time. I also offer this apology and my sincere regret to my government colleagues.
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And while we’re still with finance, markets in Sydney, Tokyo and Seoul will be opening in about 20 minutes. They’re expected to see a lift this morning after those losses yesterday but we’ll see how it pans out.
Here are the scores on the doors from the good folk at IG Markets:
APAC Opening Calls:#ASX 6139 +0.43%#NIKKEI 23030 +0.66%#HSI 24917 +0.60%#NIFTY 11374 +0.75%#A50 15331 +0.68%#TWSE 12459 +1.00%#IGOpeningCall
— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) August 20, 2020
Two days ago the S&P500 stock market index reached an all-time high and today it’s the turn of the tech-heavy Nasdaq index.
Shares in Apple, Microsoft and Tesla all rose strongly to lift the Nasdaq 1.1% despite a so-so showing from other indices, including the S&P which slipped from its Wednesday peak. In London the FTSE100 slipped 1.5% and other major markets saw similar falls.
The Nasdaq’s rise typifies how technology stocks have soared despite an increasingly dire situation for more traditional areas of the US and world economy. Thursday marked the end of $600 emergency welfare payments for millions of Americans and also saw government data showing that more than 1 million people in the country are claiming unemployment benefit after two weeks of declines.
Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA in New York, told Reuters:
The love for technology stocks grew as the favorite pandemic plays, such as Apple and Tesla, saw strong demand. No one wants to short this market, so we are seeing investors just rotate back into technology stocks today.
Japan relaxes entry restrictions
Japan will ease its Covid-19 entry restrictions on foreigners with resident visas from next month, public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday morning.
Japan on course to ease re-entry restrictions https://t.co/xkJNG6LENd
— NHK WORLD News (@NHKWORLD_News) August 20, 2020
After an outcry about the impact the ban was having, re-entry will be permitted for visa holders including permanent residents and exchange students on condition that they undergo testing for the coronavirus and quarantine for 14 days.
Novak Djokovic, the world’s No 1 men’s tennis player, says he has faced a “witch-hunt” over his ill-fated Adira tournament in Croatia and Serbia in June that led to him and several others contracting Covid-19.
Djokovic, who is preparing to play at the US Open in New York next month, said he didn’t think he had done anything wrong and would host the event again despite criticism over the lack of social distancing at the event leading to infections.
I don’t think I’ve done anything bad. I do feel sorry for people that were infected. Do I feel guilty for anybody that was infected from that point onward in Serbia, Croatia and region? Of course not. How can you blame one individual for everything?
We tried to do something with the right intentions. Yes, there were some steps that could have been done differently, but am I going to be then forever blamed for doing a mistake?
Read the full story here:
The Australian state of Victoria has reported another 179 cases and nine deaths on Friday. That represents another significant fall in infections – it was 240 on Thursday – as the second lockdown and curfew in Melbourne takes effect.
You can follow all the news from Australia, including a federal-state spat over border closures, at our live blog here:
Updated
Good morning/afternoon/evening. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be bringing you the latest coronavirus updates from around the world.
Here’s a summary of the main developments of the last few hours just to get us started:
- The total number of fatalities across Latin America are close to 250,000, following the recording of a further 1,204 deaths in the past 24 hours in Brazil.
- More than 22.5 million people have been infected worldwide, with more than 790,000 fatalities.
- Mass testing of Russia’s potential vaccine will involve more than 40,000 people and starts next week. It will be overseen by a foreign research body. Mexico will also receive 2,000 doses to carry out tests.
- Birmingham, Britain’s second biggest city, faces a new lockdown after a sharp rise in cases. It has seen a rise to 30 cases per 100,000 up from 22.4 the week before and 12 at the start of the month.
- Morocco could return to a complete coronavirus lockdown as cases continue to rise. New cases have surged to more than 1,000 a day since the country lifted a strict three-month long lockdown in late June.
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Slovenia has added Croatia to its quarantine list. The UK also added Croatia to its list while Germany advised against travel to the tourist regions of Sibenik-Knin and Split Dalmatia.
- France reported a new post-lockdown record in daily cases. The country has seen 4,711 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, a new post-lockdown record and a level last seen during the height of the epidemic in France.
- Belgian schools will reopen in September with masks mandatory for older children. Schools will reopen on 1 September when the academic year starts, with children above 12 years old and teachers required to wear masks, prime minister Sophie Wilmes said.
- Northern Ireland reduced number of people allowed to meet under new Covid-19 restrictions. Outdoor gatherings are now limited to 15 people, reduced from 30, while indoor gatherings in private dwellings are now limited to six individuals from two households, from 10 previously.
- Italy hit a new daily record in Covid-19 infections since 16 May. Italy has reported another sharp rise in Covid-19 infections, as the country registered 845 new coronavirus cases, 203 more than Wednesday.
You can reach me on Twitter at @MartinFarrer or by email at martin.farrer@theguardian.com
