Denmark has not registered any new examples of humans infected with a so-called Cluster-5 mutated coronavirus strain stemming from mink, its health minister Magnus Heunicke has said.
Denmark ordered the culling of millions of mink last week after finding that the mutated virus, which infected 12 people in August and September, showed decreased sensitivity to antibodies, potentially lowering the efficacy of future vaccines.
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In Greece, health authorities have announced more than 3,000 cases and another 38 Covid-related deaths, amid mounting concern over the ability of the country’s health system to deal with the surge.
As the nation braced for tighter restrictions, including a 9pm curfew that begins today, officials confirmed that the total number of known cases was now 69,697. Of that number, almost 1,000 are intubated in intensive care.
Doctors have expressed particular alarm over the dramatic rise in infections in Greece’s northern metropolis, Thessaloniki, where 725 new cases were reported today and the hospital system is stretched to its limits. Infection rates are such that almost every family now has a member who has contracted the virus in the city.
By contrast, officials say the greater Athens region, which is home to roughly twice Thessaloniki’s population, is registering fewer new cases with a further 697 virus contractions being reported on Friday.
Greece, like Portugal, had fared comparatively well during the first wave of the pandemic but since the autumn has witnessed a surge in transmissions that is clearly causing growing consternation. Civil protection authorities have stepped up curbs on movement. As of tonight any form of circulation will be banned between 9pm and 5am with the centre-right government calling the coming weeks “especially critical.”
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Slovakia will open theatres, cinemas and churches at half capacity from Monday and let fitness centres and pools operate with limited visitors as it starts easing curbs, its prime minister Igor Matovič said.
Slovakia’s ice hockey and soccer leagues will also restart, without fans, Matovič said on Facebook on Friday.
The country of 5.5 million people is one of the first to ease restrictions as a second wave hits Europe.
Along with strict curbs, the government has sought to control the pandemic using mass testing, which officials have called a success.
Matovič has said widespread testing – using antigen tests that are faster but less accurate than standard PCR tests – had helped cut the proportion of infections by more than half.
Slovakia has reported 83,796 cases via standard testing since the pandemic started, including 2,024 new infections on Thursday and close to its seven-day median figure. That is down from a record daily tally of more than 3,000 in late October.
In total, 491 people have died; a fraction of other countries in Western Europe and almost 12 times fewer than in the neighbouring Czech Republic, which has seen Europe’s highest per-capita infection and death rates in recent weeks.
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Ethnic minority groups in the UK and the USA are disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus, with black and Asian people at greater risk of infection than white people, according to an analysis published in the Lancet’s journal EClinicalMedicine.
About 18.7m patients from 50 studies were included to establish the findings, the analysis said. There were 42 studies from the United States and eight from the United Kingdom. The analysis read:
Asians may be at higher risk of ITU (intensive therapy unit) admission and death.
These findings are of critical public health importance in informing interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality amongst ethnic minority groups.
Ethnic minority groups were found to be more likely to be employed as essential workers and, therefore, less able to work from home. Consequently, they continued to have contact with others through work or commuting.
They were also more likely to have lower socioeconomic status, which may increase the likelihood of living in overcrowded households, or in accommodation with shared facilities, the findings suggested.
Black people are twice as likely to become infected as white people and people from Asian backgrounds are one and a half times as likely, researchers found.
The study was conducted as a review and a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between ethnicity and clinical outcomes. About half of the papers used in the analysis have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and the rest were preliminary findings.
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Italy has registered more than 40,000 new infections and 550 more deaths. Lombardy remains the worst hit region, accounting for 10,634 of the total 40,902 reported in the last 24 hours, followed by Piedmont and Campania.
Campania, in the south, and Tuscany are expected to be upgraded to high-risk red zones from Sunday, meaning people won’t be able to leave their homes apart from for work, health or emergency reasons.
Hospitals across the country are reaching breaking point. However, the government is trying to avoid a national lockdown while it waits to see if recent measures succeed in slowing infections.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Portugal has pushed past the 200,000 mark, Reuters reports.
The country of just over 10 million people has recorded a comparatively low 204,664 cases and 3,250 deaths. There were 6,653 new cases announced on Friday. Reuters reported that it was the highest daily figure since the pandemic started; however, the Worldometers website reported that 7,497 new cases were announced on 4 November.
Most of the cases were concentrated in the northern region.
“When we reach the peak of the disease it will take weeks to see a drop in demand for hospitals and even more weeks to reduce the fatality count,” the health minister, Marta Temido, told a news conference.
Hospitals were treating 2,799 Covid-19 patients, with 388 in intensive care units (ICUs) – more than the first wave peak of 271 in April. Portugal’s health system, which prior to the pandemic had the lowest number of critical care beds per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe, can accommodate 800 Covid-19 patients in ICUs, Reuters reported.
A nationwide state of emergency to combat the spread of the virus came into force on Monday and is due to last until 23 November.
As part of the emergency measures, residents in nearly 200 of Portugal’s 308 municipalities must stay home between 11pm and 5am every night and over the next two weekends a lockdown is in place from 1pm to 5am.
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Iran has blamed US sanctions for preventing it from making advance payment to a global fund set up to provide Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries.
Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for the country’s health ministry, said that the country’s payments to the Covax facility, a fund set up to share the risk of procurement and distribution of vaccines, were held up because of financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
The unilateral US sanctions, which target sectors including oil and financial activities, have deterred some foreign banks from processing financial transactions with Iran deals. Tehran says they have frequently disrupted efforts to import essential medicines and other humanitarian items.
State media quoted Lari as saying:
Our country’s pre-payment to participate in COVAX is under way, but due to the cowardly sanctions of the Americans and the problems in the transfer of currency, this has not happened yet.
Battling a third wave of the coronavirus, Iran is considering imposing a two-week total lockdown in the capital, state media reported as the death toll rose by 461, close to a daily record, to 40,582 on Friday.
Lari told state TV that Iran had identified 11,737 new cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the total number since the beginning of the pandemic to 738,322.
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In the countries of central Europe, which during spring seemed to provide a best-practice model for keeping coronavirus at bay, case numbers have risen sharply, and governments in the region fear that their health systems are close to capacity and may struggle to cope, writes Shaun Walker in Budapest. Central Europe is now just as badly hit as countries further west, and by some parameters is doing worse.
The Visegrad Four group of nations – Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – were all notable for their success in keeping case numbers earlier in the year, even as gruesome statistics of deaths and hospitalisations came out of western Europe on a daily basis.
The Czech Republic’s response was so impressive it was invited by Austria to join a small group of nations, including Norway and New Zealand, which had succeeded in keeping the virus at bay and would share best practices.
But that rosy picture has rapidly faded over the past few weeks, as the country has struggled to contain an infection rate that rose to 15,000 new cases a day at its peak at the beginning of the month, making it the worst-hit country in Europe on a per-capita basis.
All four countries are under some kind of lockdown.
The head of Joe Biden’s coronavirus advisory board has said that the new administration’s approach will be targeted at specific areas and there was no plan to shut the US down.
The comments by Dr Vivek Murthy, a former US surgeon general tapped to lead the board, came after another member of Biden’s Covid team suggested earlier this week that the Biden might back a four- to six-week lockdown.
But in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Murthy steered away from the suggestion, saying: “We’re not in a place where we’re saying shut the whole country down. We [have] got to be more targeted.”
Murthy said doctors have learned a lot about how the virus spreads and what steps to reduce risk are effective, according to Reuters.
“Right now the way we should be thinking about this is more like a series of restrictions that we dial up or down depending on how bad spread is taking place in a specific region,” Murthy said.
Murthy cited New York City as an example where health officials are targeting Covid interventions “down to the zip code”.
In his campaign for re-election, Donald Trump had claimed that Biden would seek to lock down the country. The Trump administration pushed hard for the country’s economy to reopen.
Murthy said the Biden team’s priority will be to stop the spread of the virus and focus on hard-hit populations like nursing homes and prisons. Increasing testing capacity will be key to those efforts.
“We still don’t have adequate testing so that anyone who wants a test can get one and get results quickly,” he said.
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Mo Salah tests positive
The Liverpool striker Mo Salah has tested positive on the eve of Egypt’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Togo, the Egyptian Football Association has said.
The medical swab conducted on the mission of our first national football team showed that our international player, Mohamed Salah, the Liverpool star, was infected with the Coronavirus, after his test came back positive.
The player does not suffer from any symptoms. The other members of the team tested negative. Salah underwent the medical protocol after the team’s doctor coordinated with his English club. In addition to his isolation inside his room and also isolating all his contacts.
The federation said he will undergo further checks in the coming hours.
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Canadians have time to bring the second wave under control by Christmas if they act now, the country’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has said, as some provinces impose new health restrictions. Trudeau told 980 CFPL radio:
If you want to gather with your loved ones at Christmas, even in a restrained way, we’re going to have to make sure that we change the trend lines on this Covid crisis right now.
Cases rose by more than 5,500 on Thursday from the previous day, and the average daily increase over the previous week was 4,015.
Ireland may take a staged approach to removing curbs, with the aim of easing them in the run up to Christmas, its prime minister Micheál Martin has said. He told the national broadcaster RTÉ:
There may be a staged approach after 1 December. If we can get the numbers way down, we’ll obviously have to look at that specific Christmas period and the week leading up to Christmas because I do get that people will want to meet with family.
Martin said the government would also issue advice on international travel for the Christmas period by the end of the month after his deputy Leo Varadkar urged people not to book flights home yet.
Hackers working for the Russian and North Korean governments have targeted more than half a dozen organisations involved in Covid-19 treatment and vaccine research around the globe, Microsoft has said.
The software company said a Russian hacking group commonly nicknamed “Fancy Bear” – along with a pair of North Korean actors dubbed “Zinc” and “Cerium” by Microsoft – were implicated in recent attempts to break into the networks of seven pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea, and the US.
Microsoft said the majority of the targets were organisations that were in the process of testing vaccines. Most of the break-in attempts failed but an unspecified number succeeded, it added.
Few other details were provided by Microsoft. It declined to name the targeted organisations, say which ones had been hit by which actor, or provide a precise timeline or description of the attempted intrusions.
The Russian embassy in Washington, which has repeatedly disputed allegations of Russian involvement in digital espionage, said there was “nothing that we can add” to their previous denials, Reuters reported.
North Korea’s representative to the United Nations did not immediately respond to messages from Reuters seeking comment. Pyongyang has previously denied carrying out hacking abroad.
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Germany records largest increase in new cases
Germany’s disease control centre is reporting the nation’s worst daily tally of new infections as it nears the halfway point of its new lockdown measures. The Robert Koch Institute has said Germany’s states have recorded 23,542 daily cases; slightly more than the previous worst – the 23,399 seen on Saturday.
The chancellor Angela Merkel is due to hold talks with state governors on Monday, the midway point into a series of measures the government has called “lockdown-light”.
Germany started a four-week partial shutdown on 2 November that is aimed at flattening a sharp rise in new infections. Restaurants, bars, sports and leisure facilities have closed, but schools and nonessential shops remain open. Officials say it is still too early to tell whether the new measures are having the desired effect.
Merkel has warned Germans to expect “difficult winter months”. The health minister Jens Spahn has said nobody should expect to hold Christmas parties with more than 10 or 15 people.
Austria will likely close schools and tighten contact restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, news website OE24 has reported. The government is due to hold a news conference to present the new measures on Saturday, it added. It also said the retail sector would largely remain open, except for shopping centres where large crowds could gather.
The nation recorded the greatest number of daily infections on Friday, according to the newspaper Kronen Zeitung, which reported 9,586 new cases.
Sweden sees greatest daily increase in infections
Sweden, whose unorthodox virus-fighting strategy has garnered global attention, registered 5,990 new cases on Friday; the highest since the start of the pandemic, statistics from its Health Agency show.
The increase compared with a high of 4,697 daily cases recorded earlier this month.
Sweden registered 42 new deaths, taking the total to 6,164 deaths. Sweden’s death rate per capita is several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours but somewhat lower than some larger European countries such as Spain.
Russia records most daily cases since pandemic began
Russia has reported its worst day for new infections, with 21,983 confirmed on Friday, as Moscow prepares to close restaurants and bars overnight.
Despite a recent surge, Russian authorities have resisted imposing lockdown restrictions as they did earlier this year, stressing instead the importance of hygiene, social distancing and bringing in targeted measures in certain regions.
Moscow, which reported 5,974 new cases in the past 24 hours, has ordered bars, restaurants and nightclubs to close between 11pm and 6am from Friday until mid-January. Officials warned of raids and fines for establishments that do not comply.
Some restaurant owners complained the measures hurt their businesses while doing little to prevent the virus from spreading. Svetlana Pivneva, the manager of Parka Bar in central Moscow, said:
We are a bar after all, and most bars work at night. I do not fully understand the measures that are being taken, to be honest.
The sprawling city of nearly 13 million people has also moved university and college students to online learning and recommended that school children, already learning from home, keep their travel to a minimum.
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The virus has been found in mink at two farms in northern Greece, an agriculture ministry official has said. The strain found in the mink had not mutated from that found in humans, the official added.
According to Reuters, the breeder at one of the farms, which is in the northerly Kozani region, also tested positive and tests were being conducted on workers. A cull of the 2,500 mink at that farm was due to begin shortly.
Denmark’s entire 17m mink population is due to be culled after a mutated coronavirus was found in farms there, More than 15,000 mink in the US have also died after being infected since August.
Fur production is an important industry in Kozani and nearby Kastoria, where the second farm is located. Greece’s population of mink is estimated at hundreds of thousands and fur exports bring in €60m-€70m (£53m-£61m) a year.
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During the first wave of coronavirus, the region around Strasbourg was so badly hit that it had to evacuate hospital patients by helicopter. In the second, other regions are suffering and the French city is returning the favour, Reuters reports.
The same helicopters that were flying patients out of this part of eastern France in the spring have been fetching patients from elsewhere and bringing them in for treatment in the autumn.
“In a way we’re paying back in kind,” said Christophe Di Stefano, one of the crew of an emergency service helicopter that on Thursday had just flown in a patient from Lyon, south-east France, and delivered them to the Hautepierre Hospital in Strasbourg.
A second helicopter was scheduled to head off again to Lyon later the same day to collect a patient, and Di Stefano’s crew was tasked on Friday with picking up someone seriously ill from Bourg-en-Bresse, near Lyon.
We relied on others during the first wave, so now we have the wherewithal to receive and treat people, it’s good for us to take part and take the burden off others.
The region around Strasbourg was the earliest and hardest hit by the first wave of the virus, in part because of a week-long evangelical church gathering that turned into a superspreader event.
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Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, has had no contact with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team and has said he sees no reason to quit to join that effort when there is so much to do now to fight the surging pandemic. In an interview ahead of next week’s Reuters Total Health conference, he said:
I stay in my lane. I’m not a politician. I do public health things.
Since January, Fauci has served on the White House coronavirus taskforce, a position that has frequently put him at odds with the outgoing US president Donald Trump, who has sought to downplay the pandemic and focused instead on opening the economy. Fauci said:
There’s absolutely no reason and no sense at all for me to stop doing something in the middle of a pandemic that is playing a major role in helping us get out of the pandemic.
His advice for the president-elect, he said, is “exactly the same” as what he is recommending now – social distancing, avoiding crowds, wearing masks, washing hands.
Public health principles don’t change from one month to another or from one administration to another.
Fauci has served six administrations and came to prominence fighting the Aids epidemic in the 1980s under the Republican president Ronald Reagan.
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In televised remarks, Netanyahu has said the Israeli government’s deal with Pfizer to receive its potential vaccine marks a “great day for Israel” and added: “The goal is for the vaccine supply to start in January and increase in the months thereafter”.
Israel is due to receive 8m doses, Netanyahu said, enough to cover close to half of Israel’s population.
The agreement still requires approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Israel’s health ministry, Israel’s health minister, Yuli Edelstein, said. Pfizer is expected to apply for approval this month, he added.
The firm’s potential vaccine is likely to be a two-dose course of treatment, meaning that 8m doses would cover 4m of Israel’s 9m population.
In addition to its new deal with Pfizer, Israel has an agreement with Moderna for the future purchase of its potential vaccine. Moderna said on Wednesday it had enough data for a first interim analysis of the late-stage trial of its vaccine candidate.
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Germany has recorded the greatest number of cases in a day since the pandemic began, with more than 23,500 new infections registered since Thursday.
Tighter restrictions to dampen the spread of the virus were introduced at the start of November, but appear to have so far failed to have an effect.
A debate about the extent to which people will have to be prepared to lower their expectations regarding Christmas celebrations is being given a lot of attention in the media. Christmas markets, traditional St Martin parades and the carnival season, which should have started this week, have all been cancelled.
Current restrictions, which have led to the closure of sport facilities and hospitality venues across the country are almost inevitably going to be extended beyond the 30 November deadline, and likely extended into December and possibly beyond.
More than 300,000 school pupils are in quarantine – up from around 50,000 in late September – along with about 30,000 teachers, prompting calls for schools to close. But the government has insisted they should remain open, along with other childcare facilities, such as nurseries and after-school clubs.
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The facility set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the GAVI vaccine group has exceeded an interim target of raising more than $2bn (£1.49bn, €1.67bn) to buy and distribute shots for poorer countries, but said it still needs more.
The GAVI alliance said on Friday that the funds for an advance market commitment (AMC) will allow the Covax facility to buy an initial 1bn vaccine doses for 92 eligible countries that would not otherwise be able to afford them. The GAVI chief, Seth Berkley, told reporters:
We’ve seen sovereign and private donors from across the world dig deep and meet this target and help ensure that every country will get access to Covid vaccines, not just the wealthy few.
He added that there was an “urgent need” to also finance treatments and diagnostics.
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Infections rose by 6,739 cases in a day, data from Swiss health authorities have shown. Total confirmed cases in Switzerland and neighbouring principality Liechtenstein increased to 257,135 and the death toll rose by 97 to 2,960.
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More than 300 drones lit up the sky over Seoul on Friday in a show the government said was meant to give “comfort and hope” to residents enduring the pandemic.
The devices lined up in synchronised light displays, forming multi-coloured images of people wearing masks, and spelling out slogans promoting the government’s “Korean New Deal” programme to rebuild the economy. Kim Sang-do, the deputy minister for aviation policy, said:
I hope this drone show serves as an opportunity to convey joy and hope for a moment to our people experiencing pandemic fatigue.
The show was designed to thank residents for their efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, he added. The first such show in July was held over the city’s Han River without notice, as organisers wanted to prevent crowds from gathering.
This time, the event was announced in advance and held above the park built to host the 1988 Summer Olympics.
South Korea’s aggressive campaign to control the outbreak has won international praise, helped the country avoid lockdowns and insulated its economy from some of the worst impacts of the crisis.
But the country has continued to battle small and persistent clusters of infections, with 191 new cases reported on Friday as daily infections creep higher. As of Friday, South Korea will begin fining people who fail to wear masks in public.
Israel has signed a deal with Pfizer to receive the drugmaker’s potential vaccine, the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. The firm and its partner BioNTech SE confirmed a deal was forthcoming in a statement on Thursday but did not disclose financial details.
Early in the pandemic, some cities and countries around the world began testing sewage for evidence of rising infections.
Now some researchers are fine-tuning that strategy by moving upstream to test waste from single hospitals or other buildings, aiming to quickly pinpoint burgeoning outbreaks and stop them with testing and isolation.
While the virus primarily spreads through droplets expelled from the mouth and nose, it can also be shed via human waste.
Testing sewage is cheaper and less invasive than swabbing hundreds of people, and it could be done more frequently. With the virus again surging across much of the world, schools, hospitals and care homes badly need to catch new cases early.
What we’re trying to do is identify outbreaks before they happen,” said Francis Hassard, a lecturer at Cranfield University, part of a project that started collecting samples at 20 London secondary schools last month.
Hassard’s UK government-funded team will expand sampling to at least 70 schools. The programme is a research project, meant to test the approach, and is not yet a fully fledged surveillance system.
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Hello, I’m taking over from Amelia Hill and I’ll be with you for the next few hours. If you’d like to draw my attention to anything, your best bet’s probably Twitter, where I’m KevinJRawlinson.
A facility set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the GAVI vaccine group has exceeded an interim target of raising more than $2 billion to buy and distribute Covid-19 shots for poorer countries, but said it still needs more, Reuters is reporting.
The GAVI alliance said on Friday that the funds for an advance market commitment (AMC) will allow the Covax facility to buy an initial one billion vaccine doses for 92 eligible countries which would not otherwise be able to afford them.
“We’ve seen sovereign and private donors from across the world dig deep and help meet this target,” said GAVI chief Seth Berkley, adding that there was an “urgent need” to also finance treatments and diagnostics.
But Berkley said $3 billion was still needed for diagnostics and $6.1 billion for therapeutics by the end of 2020.
Another $5 billion will also be needed in 2021 to procure Covid-19 vaccine doses as they come through development and are approved by regulators, GAVI said in a statement.
US drugmaker Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, who this week said their experimental Covid-19 vaccine was 90% effective in initial trials, had expressed an interest in supplying doses to the Covax facility, Berkley said.
“We continue to advance negotiations with a number of manufacturers in addition to those we’ve already announced who share our vision of fair and equitable distribution of vaccines,” he added.
Germany’s health minister said on Friday that it is too early to say whether restrictions imposed last week to curb the spread of the coronavirus will need to be extended beyond November, Reuters is reporting.
The number of new daily coronavirus cases in Germany hit a record of 23,542 on Friday, around 1,700 more than on Thursday, bringing the total to 751,095, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases reported.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s states are due to meet on Monday to review whether partial lockdown measures imposed on November 2 have been enough to slow a steep rise in new infections that risks overwhelming hospitals.
Officials have already warned that it is unlikely that life will go back to normal in December and said winter events like office Christmas parties, birthdays and wedding were unlikely to go ahead.
Bavarian premier Markus Soeder also cautioned against lifting curbs too quickly, saying the aim must be to reduce the seven-day incidence of the virus to below 50 per 100,000 residents. Germany currently has 139 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the RKI.
Russia has reported a record 21,983 new coronavirus infections on Friday as Moscow prepared to close restaurants and bars overnight in an effort to contain the Covid pandemic, Reuters is reporting.
Despite a recent surge, Russian authorities have resisted reimposing the lockdown restrictions of earlier this year, stressing instead the importance of hygiene, social distancing and bringing in targeted measures in certain regions.
Moscow, which reported 5,974 new cases in the past 24 hours, has ordered bars, restaurants and nightclubs to close between 11pm and 6am from Friday until mid-January. Officials warned of raids and fines for establishments that do not comply.
The sprawling city of nearly 13 million has also moved university and college students to online learning.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has additional restrictions would be imposed if the situation worsened.
Russia’s coronavirus taskforce reported on Friday 411 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, raising the official death toll to 32,443.
With 1,880,551 infections since the start of the pandemic, Russia has the world’s fifth largest number of cases behind the US, India, Brazil and France.
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SeaDream Yacht Club has halted a cruise in the Caribbean after several passengers tested positive for coronavirus, the company said in a statement on Friday.
The SeaDream I vessel has returned to port in Barbados and all passengers are being re-tested, the privately owned company said.
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The Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, has said that emergency authorisation is being sought to start a mass covid vaccination programme in late December. He is being reported by Reuters as saying that health workers, police and military will be the first to receive the vaccine.
The vaccination campaign will, he said, use China’s Sinovac, Sinopharm vaccines.
Cases in Indonesia are flattening, he added despite Indonesia reporting 5,444 new coronavirus infections on Friday, its biggest daily rise in cases, with 104 more deaths.
The latest figures from the country’s Covid-19 task force take the total infection number to 457,735 and fatalities to 15,037, the highest in south-east Asia.
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Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain says president-elect Joe Biden will appoint a “Covid coordinator” who will lead the administration’s pandemic response.
Klain, speaking on MSNBC on Thursday night, said the individual will have “direct access” to the president and will brief him daily on the pandemic. They will also have a team of people underneath them, who will coordinate vaccine distribution, address supply chain disruptions and improve access to testing.
Klain served in a similar role in 2014 under President Barack Obama, when he was the administration’s Ebola response coordinator.
His comments illuminate how the incoming Biden administration is considering addressing the pandemic when he enters office next year.
This week, he announced a panel of doctors and public health experts tasked with turning his campaign trail proposals for tackling Covid-19 into actionable plans.
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The surge of new coronavirus cases appears to be slowing in Germany and France, generating hopes that the two European heavyweights are beginning to regain control over the pandemic, AP is reporting.
But authorities have said that hospitals are crowded and are likely to face further strain in the coming weeks with numbers of confirmed cases hitting records and contact-tracing efforts being overwhelmed even in Germany, which was credited with handling the pandemic’s first cases well and is still in better shape than most of its neighbours.
Germany embarked on its four-week “lockdown light” on 2 November. Restaurants, bars, sports and leisure facilities have closed, but schools and shops remain open.
One death in four in France is linked to Covid, and there were more virus patients in French hospitals as of Thursday than there were during the peak of the country’s first epidemic in the spring.
But the number of people infected per 100,000 has been dropping for 10 days, and the number of virus patients is hospitals is expected to peak early next week.
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President Donald Trump has publicly disengaged from the battle against the coronavirus at a moment when the disease is tearing across the US at an alarming pace, AP is reporting.
Trump, fresh off his reelection loss to president-elect Joe Biden, remains angry that an announcement about progress in developing a vaccine for the disease came after election day.
Aides say the president has shown little interest in the growing crisis, which has killed more than 240,000 Americans and infected more than 10 million people in the US, with new confirmed cases skyrocketing and hospital intensive care units in parts of the country nearing capacity.
Public health experts worry that Trump’s refusal to take aggressive action on the pandemic or to coordinate with the Biden team during the final two months of his presidency will only worsen the effects of the virus and hinder the nation’s ability to swiftly distribute a vaccine next year.
With more than 100,000 new confirmed US cases reported daily for more than a week, Trump has been more focused on tracking the rollout of a vaccine, which won’t be widely available for months.
He has fumed that Pfizer intentionally withheld an announcement about progress on its vaccine trial until after election day, according to a White House official. Pfizer said it did not purposely withhold trial results.
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More on AP’s story about how a resurgence of the coronavirus in New York City is threatening to halt the nation’s biggest experiment with in-person learning.
The city’s public school system this autumn became one of just a few large, urban districts in the US to welcome students back into classrooms. A little more than a quarter of the city’s 1.1 million pupils have been attending classes in person between one and three days a week.
A few weeks ago, parents were told to send their children back to school or forfeit the option of having them return later this academic year.
But as the Sunday deadline, the city also approached the mayor’s threshold for closing all school buildings: if 3% of the Covid-19 tests performed in the city over a seven-day period come back positive. On Thursday, that citywide positivity rate was at 2.6%.
Some parents expressed frustration that they were being asked to make a decision about sending children back into classrooms, when the city itself is not even sure what will happen in the days ahead.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has insisted it is safe for children to be in school as long as officials are quick to close things down when there is a problem. If a shutdown does happen, he said, “we’re going to figure out what it takes to come back as quickly as possible”.
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A quick update, courtesy of AP, on some coronavirus news across the world:
US: Trump has publicly disengaged from the battle against the coronavirus at a time when the disease is tearing across the United States at an alarming pace.
Experts are warning that Massachusetts could be headed for a bleak winter as coronavirus cases climb again and confirmed deaths surpass 10,000.
A resurgence of the coronavirus in New York City is threatening to halt the nation’s biggest experiment with in-person learning
Asia: South Korea has reported its biggest daily jump in covid-19 cases in 70 days as the government begins fining people who fail to wear masks in public.
Singapore: Volunteers spend Sundays to help Singapore’s less fortunate.
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Good morning, Amelia Hill here taking over the reins in the northern hemisphere to bring you the news that matters across the globe.
As beleaguered Croydon council declared effective bankruptcy on Wednesday afternoon its interim chief executive, Kathryn Kerswell, sent an ominous wake-up-call memo to staff: “Too many of us are still operating like business as usual,” she warned, “and are not facing up to our new reality that we are actually in a financial crisis.”
The methodical drip-drip erosion of council budgets in recent years had maybe inured some to the scale of the challenge now facing the south London borough. Bankruptcy came suddenly, but the origins of the council’s woes go back years, driven by heady dreams of making Croydon a major housing developer, and hampered by a culture of lax financial controls and poor governance:
The lateral flow test bought by the UK government for mass testing in Liverpool, and potentially the whole country, could miss up to half of those who have Covid-19, according to experts.
The government has great expectations of the Innova test, having signed two contracts with the California-based company behind it. Innova told the Guardian it was now shipping more than one million tests a day to the UK.
The Guardian understands the government also hopes to use the test to reduce the length of self-isolation among people identified as the contacts of those with the coronavirus.
Results of an evaluation of the lateral flow tests, which pick up the antigen of the virus from a nose or throat swab or saliva within half an hour, were released by the government on Wednesday. It said they could be used to pick up infection in people with no symptoms:
Urgent preparations are under way across the UK for the rollout of the Covid vaccine, after the momentous news on Monday that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had proven 90% effective. Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, has said the country and the NHS is gearing up for the “most important vaccination programme we’ve done for decades”. But that has raised questions about which organisations inside and outside government will be doing what to speed delivery:
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. In Trump-not-talking-about-coronavirus-but-tweeting-about-a-lot-of-other-stuff news:
World suffers highest deaths, cases of pandemic so far
The world has suffered the highest death toll of the pandemic so far, with 11,617 people dying in 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The number of cases confirmed was also a record, at more than 666,000 in a day.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- The US topped 140,000 daily cases, again breaking world record. As the US confirmed a world record 143,231 coronavirus cases in 24 hours, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he doesn’t believe the United States will need to go into lockdown to fight the coronavirus if people double down on wearing masks and social distancing.The nation’s top infectious disease expert says “the cavalry is coming” in the form of vaccines. He says, “Help is really on the way.”
- UK confirms record new cases. Britain hit a new daily high of 33,470 confirmed coronavirus cases on Thursday. That’s an increase of 10,520 more positives reported Wednesday and pushed the total number of cases in the UK to nearly 1.3 million, AP reports.
- Five passengers test positive for Covid-19 on Caribbean cruise ship. One of the first cruise ships to ply through Caribbean waters since the pandemic began ended its trip early after five passengers tested positive for Covid-19.The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the US, according to Sue Bryant, a cruise ship reporter who is aboard the ship.
- California becomes second state in US to surpass 1m Covid-19 cases. California crossed a grim milestone in its battle against the coronavirus, as the state became the second in the US to surpass 1m cases of Covid-19 on Thursday. With 1,000,631 total cases as of Thursday, California saw nearly 7,000 cases in the past 24 hours, with a seven-day test positivity rate at 5%.
- Japan confirmed a record daily case increase. Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has said there is no need to declare a second state of emergency after the country recorded a record number of daily coronavirus cases. Japan reported 1,660 infections on Thursday - including 393 in Tokyo - beating the previous record set in early August. The surge prompted the president of the Tokyo Medical Association, Toshio Nakagawa, to warn that the country had entered a “third wave” of infections.
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New Zealand reopened downtown Auckland on Friday after contact tracing of a new coronavirus case revealed it was linked to a known case from a border isolation facility, reversing an earlier call for people to work from home.
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Australia will not allow foreign students to return as Canberra prioritises the return of locals stuck overseas, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday. Australia has since March closed its borders to all non-citizens and permanent residents in a bid to slow the spread of Covid-19.
South Korea will begin fining people who fail to wear masks in public on Friday as it reported 191 new coronavirus cases, with daily infections continuing to creep higher, Reuters reports.
People caught without masks in public venues, including nightclubs, malls, theme parks and hair salons, face fines of up to 100,000 won ($90), while the operators of those places could pay up to 3 million won in fines.
The country had been praised for its response to the pandemic including aggressive testing and contact tracing, but has struggled to contain small cluster outbreaks, with daily cases hovering around 100 in recent weeks.
Thousands of ordinary people around Britain volunteered to take part in the Imperial College London coronavirus vaccine trial. Who are they, what motivated them to take part, and what’s it been like?
The answers – and a delightful portrait gallery – below:
The surge of new coronavirus cases appears to be slowing in Germany and France, generating hopes that the two European heavyweights are beginning to regain control over the pandemic. But authorities said Thursday that hospitals are crowded and are likely to face further strain in the coming weeks, AP reports.
Countries across Europe have implemented lockdown measures of varying intensity in recent weeks as they try to tamp down a second wave of the pandemic, with numbers of confirmed cases hitting records. They have largely overwhelmed contact-tracing efforts even in Germany, which was credited with handling the pandemic’s first cases well and is still in better shape than most of its neighbours.
One death in four in France is now linked to Covid-19, and there were more virus patients in French hospitals as of Thursday than there were during the peak of the country’s first epidemic in the spring, Prime Minister Jean Castex said.
But the number of people infected per 100,000 has been dropping for 10 days, and the number of virus patients is hospitals is expected to peak early next week, French officials reported.
“That’s good news, but not sufficient” to lift lockdowns just yet, Castex said.
Germany’s health minister told his compatriots to brace for a long winter, regardless of whether a partial shutdown succeeds in bringing down the caseload.
“This doesn’t mean that things can really get going again everywhere from December or January, and that we can have wedding parties or Christmas celebrations as if nothing were happening — that won’t work,” Jens Spahn told RBB Inforadio.
“I don’t see having events with more than 10 or 15 people this winter.”
Germany embarked Nov. 2 on its four-week “lockdown light.” Restaurants, bars, sports and leisure facilities have closed, but schools and shops remain open.
Neighbouring France, which has confirmed more infections since the pandemic started than any other European country, is two weeks into a tougher monthlong lockdown that has left most adults confined to their homes for all but one hour a day, although schools remain open.
Donald Trump has become the first US presidential candidate to ever lose the popular vote twice and the first one-term president of the 21st century.
Instead of accepting his fate though, he is calling election fraud of which no evidence has been found to date. As the Trump administration starts culling top senior defence officials, replacing them with an array of “yes men” you have to wonder, is Donald Trump planning a coup?
This week, Jonathan Freedland and Richard Wolffe look at how those closest to the president are dealing with the loss, and what the likely outcome will be for the outgoing commander-in-chief:
Australia scraps plans to allow foreign students back
Australia will not allow foreign students to return as Canberra prioritises the return of locals stuck overseas, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.
Australia has since March closed its borders to all non-citizens and permanent residents in a bid to slow the spread of Covid-19.
With foreign students worth about A$35 billion ($25.3 billion) a year to the Australian economy, Canberra had hoped to slowly allow overseas students to return in 2021. Trials began earlier this year.
But with thousands of Australians wanting to return, Morrison said there is not enough quarantine facilities.
“There is a queue, and Australians are in the front of the queue,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
Australia caps the numbers of locals allowed to return home each week in order to minimise the risk of spreading Covid-19.
Once locals arrive, they enter hotel quarantine for two weeks.
Australia on Friday was on course to record a sixth straight day without any locally acquired infections. Australia has recorded about 27,700 Covid-19 infections and 907 deaths, far fewer than many other developed nations.
The World Health Organisation has removed social media filters which were censoring the words “Taiwan” and “China” from its Facebook page after an online backlash, but said the blocks were because of an “onslaught” of cyber attacks.
The about-face comes amid intense criticism over China’s continued blocking of Taiwan – which has gone more than 215 days without a local case of Covid-19 – from participation in meetings of the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly.
This week internet users began reporting the WHO’s Facebook page would not allow comments that included the word Taiwan. The Guardian’s attempts to post comments found it was also blocking the word “China”. Posters began replacing characters in the word to get past the censors, including “ⓉⒶⒾⓌⒶⓃ ⒸⒶⓃ ⒽⒺⓁⓅ”, or using the island’s former name, “Formosa”.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said the block ran contrary to the neutrality the WHO should be upholding, and expressed its “strong regret and dissatisfaction”, but a spokesman for the WHO said the moves were a “practical measure” which didn’t reflect a value judgement or policy.
“During the World Health Assembly, WHO faces an onslaught of cyberattacks by online activists on a number of controversial issues, using keywords such as ‘Taiwan’ and ‘China’,” the spokesman said.
The social media team applied filters as the “onslaught” hindered its ability to moderate conversations, he said. After the block was lifted the WHO’s page was flooded with pro-Taiwan and anti-China messages.
The WHO’s history with Taiwan has been controversial, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. China, which considers Taiwan a rogue province and its government to be separatists, has blocked its admission to the WHA despite an increase in international support for their inclusion:
This blog is not the only think that has been running for 24 hours a day for many months:
still thinking about how Trump retweeted an account called B Boobers that claims to have had fox news running at home throughout the night for seven years: pic.twitter.com/i8PdrUbws2
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 13, 2020
A Fijian rugby player has returned a positive Covid-19 test, just days ahead of the team’s test match against France in Vannes.
The Fiji Rugby Union did not name the player but French rugby newspaper Midi Olympique said Semi Radradra had returned a positive test at the team’s training base in Saint-Galmier. He is understood to be asymptomatic and will be retested today.
Fiji coach Vern Cotter told the Fiji Sun newspaper yesterday Radradra would captain the team against France on Monday but Radradra was not in the 23-man squad named this afternoon.
New Zealand reopens Auckland city centre
New Zealand reopened downtown Auckland on Friday after contact tracing of a new coronavirus case revealed it was linked to a known case from a border isolation facility, reversing an earlier call for people to work from home, Reuters reports.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said genome sequence testing of the locally transmitted case, which was discovered on Thursday, had shown it was linked to a known case and there was less risk of a wider unseen spread.
“Though we do want to increase testing over the weekend and over the coming weeks to give ourselves greater assurance on that,” he told a news conference.
Auckland will remain at alert level 1, which means there are no restrictions on movement but he added the government is making mask wearing mandatory on public transport in the city and on airlines.
Hipkins added that scanning of QR codes for contact tracing purposes may become mandatory at places where a lot of people gather, such as large public events, he said.
Authorities have also asked everyone who attended locations of interest in Auckland at key times to get tested for Covid-19, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
New Zealand, which has managed to virtually eliminate community-transmitted Covid-19 twice, reported four new cases on Friday, all in managed isolation. It has had 1,639 infections and 25 deaths.
More now on the plans for the Tokyo Olympics next year:
Athletes competing at next summer’s Olympics in Tokyo will not be required to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in Japan, organisers have said, as Japan works out the logistics of holding the Games during a global pandemic.
The Tokyo 2020organising committee has yet to work out the details, but has suggested that competitors will be exempt from quarantine measures that are currently required for all overseas visitors to Japan.
Instead, 11,000 athletes, along with tens of thousands of officials, judges, sponsors and journalists will have to test negative for Covid-19 within 72 hours of their arrival, media reports said.
“Athletes, coaches and Games officials ... will be allowed to enter the country, provided significant measures are taken before they get to Japan,” Tokyo 2020’s chief executive officer, Toshiro Muto, told a news conference.
No decision has been made on overseas spectators however, with Muto conceding that requiring them to spend 14 days in isolation in Japan would be “impossible”.
A decision on access for foreign sports fans will be made next spring, with testing before and after arriving in Japan, and limiting visitors to those from countries that have brought the outbreak under control among the options under consideration. They could also be asked to download tracking and health apps.
“By next spring, we will be coming up with a plan for spectators, including non-Japanese spectators,” Muto said. “It is impossible to set a 14-day quarantine period for foreign spectators, so tests before and upon arrival are needed.”
Japan has used domestic football and baseball matches to gauge coronavirus prevention measures that could feature at the Olympics, which have already been postponed by a year due to the pandemic. They include requesting fans not to shout or sing.
“There’s a possibility that we may ask the spectators to refrain from shouting and speaking in a loud voice. But we haven’t reached a conclusion,” Muto said.
Some baseball stadiums in Japan have experimented with fan capacity at 80%.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, will travel to Tokyo next week on his first visit since the Games were postponed in March.
Bach responded with a firm “no” when asked by journalists if his discussions with Japanese officials would include contingency plans for canceling the Olympics.
Updated
Almost three-quarters of frontline care workers in England are earning below the “real” living wage, which experts say is the bare minimum to allow families basics such as a secondhand car and a week’s annual UK self-catering holiday, research has revealed.
The proportion of care workers below the threshold is even higher in northern areas, where care homes have been hit hardest by Covid-19. In the north-east, 82% of care staff earned less than the England-wide real living wage of £9.50 per hour, while the proportion was 78% in the north-west. One care worker in Lancashire earning £8.72 per hour who recently had her pay cut told the Guardian some colleagues have been using food banks:
While some people might not have been that familiar with Boris Johnson’s right-hand man before his trip to Barnard Castle to “test his eyesight” during the spring, many across the country will be familiar with Dominic Cummings’ work.
There are reports that the prime minister’s chief adviser could step down by Christmas, with Cummings telling the BBC that his “position hasn’t changed since my January blog” when he said that he wanted to make himself “largely redundant” by the end of 2020.
Japan confirms record daily case increase
Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has said there is no need to declare a second state of emergency after the country recorded a record number of daily coronavirus cases.
Japan reported 1,660 infections on Thursday - including 393 in Tokyo - beating the previous record set in early August. The surge prompted the president of the Tokyo Medical Association, Toshio Nakagawa, to warn that the country had entered a “third wave” of infections.
The first significant rise in cases in the spring forced the then prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to declare a state of emergencythat lasted for about seven weeks.
People were encouraged to avoid non-essential outings and work from home, while restaurants and bars were asked to close. Japan does not have the legal powers to impose the kind of tough lockdown measures seen in parts of Europe.
Shigeru Omi, the head of a panel of health experts advising the government, said that if new measures were not taken, “there will be no other choice but to implement restrictions on social and economic activity,” according to the Kyodo news agency.
But Suga said on Friday that the situation did not warrant a new state of emergency, adding that there were no plans to revise a government-subsidised campaign to encourage domestic travel that some experts have blamed for spreading the virus.
The government’s chief spokesman, Katsunobu Kato, said this week that just 131 of the 31.8 million people who used the Go To travel scheme between July and October had contracted the virus. In addition, not a single case has been linked to the Go To Eat campaign launched to support the struggling restaurant sector.
Japan has recorded a total of 114,512 Covid-19 cases, including 712 linked to the Diamond Princess cruise liner, according to a tally by public broadcaster NHK. The death toll stands at 1,882, including 13 people on board the ship.
California becomes second state in US to surpass 1m Covid-19 cases
California crossed a grim milestone in its battle against the coronavirus, as the state became the second in the US to surpass 1m cases of Covid-19 on Thursday.
Following a period in which new infections dipped and sectors began to cautiously reopen, the state of nearly 40 million residents has recently joined the rest of the country in a surge that was predicted to come with the flu season.
With 1,000,631 total cases as of Thursday, California saw nearly 7,000 cases in the past 24 hours, with a seven-day test positivity rate at 5%. Hospitalizations have increased by nearly a third in the past 14 days, with intensive care hospitalizations going up by 29.6%. The state is averaging 44 deaths a day; in total more than 18,000 people have died from the virus.
Just one month ago, the state was reporting daily numbers below 3,000 and a positivity rate of 2.5%.
“Obviously, it’s sobering, these numbers,” said Gavin Newsom, California’s governor:
SeaDream 1: five passengers test positive for Covid-19 on Caribbean cruise ship
One of the first cruise ships to ply through Caribbean waters since the pandemic began ended its trip early after five passengers tested positive for Covid-19.
The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the US, according to Sue Bryant, a cruise ship reporter who is aboard the ship.
She told the Associated Press that one passenger became sick on Wednesday and forced the ship to turn back to Barbados, where it had departed from on Saturday. However, the ship had yet to dock in Barbados as local authorities tested those on board. The captain announced that at least five passengers had tested positive, Bryant said:
NHS leaders are urging Rishi Sunak to fulfil his pledge to give the service “whatever it needs” to respond to the coronavirus crisis, by boosting its budget by £4bn next year.
NHS services need the money to tackle the huge backlog of patients waiting for surgery and the sharp increase in people needing mental health care as a direct result of the pandemic.
Patients will suffer if the money for those problems does not arrive, they claim.
NHS Providers, which represents trusts in England, wants the chancellor to unveil a major financial boost for the service in his comprehensive spending review on 25 November. It will set departmental budgets across Whitehall for 2021-22 at a time when the government has committed to spend at least £210bn to deal with the Covid public health emergency:
In Ohio, Republican governor Mike DeWine has urged Ohioans to take the coronavirus more seriously.
The speech on Wednesday included threats to close bars, restaurants and gyms for a second time. But it stopped short of the type of severe crackdowns implemented in the spring.
The speech followed record numbers of coronavirus cases in recent weeks. DeWine also announced the state would take over monitoring businesses’ compliance with the statewide mask order.
More on the restrictions being introduced in US states.
Michigan’s largest school district will suspend in-person classes next week, joining other districts shifting to online classes with the surge of coronavirus cases.
Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says he can’t ignore a climbing infection rate that reached nearly 5% last week. The suspension will last until 11 January.
Vitti faced criticism from some teachers and activists for offering an in-person option for the district’s roughly 50,000 students. He said families deserved choices.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer plans to speak about the coronavirus later Thursday. In a separate event, officials from major hospitals plan to speak about the impact of rising coronavirus cases.
The state reported 6,008 new infections Wednesday and 42 more deaths.
UK confirms record new cases
Britain hit a new daily high of 33,470 confirmed coronavirus cases on Thursday.
That’s an increase of 10,520 more positives reported Wednesday and pushed the total number of cases in the UK to nearly 1.3 million, AP reports.
Britain on Wednesday reported 595 deaths, raising the death toll to more than 50,000.
The government has imposed a one-month national lockdown on England through 2 December.
Updated
Chicago has issued new Covid-19 restrictions, including limiting social gatherings to 10 people, in hopes of combating the surge in cases ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is urging people to stay home except for essentials, like work or getting groceries. The restrictions take effect Monday.
Lightfoot said Thursday the city must work to counteract the rapid rise of Covid-19 cases, including canceling traditional Thanksgiving plans to gather with friends and family.
A month ago, Chicago reported 500 daily cases on average. The city is now averaging roughly 1,900 daily cases.
Updated
US tops 140,000 daily cases, again breaking world record
As the US confirms 143,231 coronavirus cases in 24 hours, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he doesn’t believe the United States will need to go into lockdown to fight the coronavirus if people double down on wearing masks and social distancing.
The nation’s top infectious disease expert says “the cavalry is coming” in the form of vaccines. He says, “Help is really on the way.”
Fauci told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday that vaccines being developed “are going to have a major positive impact” if they prove to be safe and effective. He says they may be deployed in December and early into next year. He says he hopes by April, May and June “the ordinary citizen should be able to get” a vaccine.
In the meantime, Fauci says there are fundamental things Americans can do to stem the spread of the deadly virus. They include “universal” wearing of masks, avoiding crowds, keeping social distance and washing hands. He says that sounds simple against a very difficult challenge but “it really does make a difference.”
Fauci’s message echoes that of President-elect Joe Biden, who this week signaled strongly that fighting the raging pandemic will be the immediate priority of his new administration.
The US leads the world with more than 241,000 deaths and 10 million coronavirus cases.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
As the world confirmed a record 666,053 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University, the French prime minister, Jean Castex, said there would be no easing of a second Covid-19 lockdown in France for at least two weeks, with the number of people in hospital infected by the coronavirus now higher than at the peak of the first wave.
Castex said that one in four deaths in the country were due to the virus and that while the R number was now below 1, it was too early to contemplate relaxing measures.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Portugal announced an expansion of a nightly curfew and weekend lockdown already in place across more than 100 municipalities to a further 77 areas as it scrambles to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
- The UK government said a further 563 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday, bringing the official tally to 50,928. However, separate figures from the UK’s statistics agencies, which take into account all deaths where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate, put the death toll at almost 67,000.
- The Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, issued a 30-day advisory telling residents to stay at home and not to have visitors in the home, including for Thanksgiving. If residents travel out of the state, they must quarantine for 14 days or submit a negative virus test, she said.
- Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government has agreed to extend Covid-19 restrictions for between one and two weeks, falling short of stricter measures demanded by Irish nationalist parties. The five-party power-sharing executive agreed the reopening of cafes and close-contact services such as hairdressers will be delayed by a week and the reopening of bars and restaurants serving alcohol will be delayed by two weeks.
- Italy recorded 636 Covid-related deaths over the past 24 hours – its highest daily figure since 6 April. The number of new infections also rose by more than 5,000 compared with Wednesday – up from 32,961 to 37,978. The northern region of Lombardy remains the hardest-hit area.
- Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus has risen above 40,000 after 457 more fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours. The number of people who have died from Covid in Iran, which has the highest death count in the Middle East, now stands at 40,121.
- A senior health department official in Delhi has said that Diwali, starting on 14 November, could be “a super spreader event”. India has so far reported about 8.6 million coronavirus infections – the world’s second highest after the US – and 127,571 deaths. But overall, it has been adding fewer cases daily since a mid-September peak, and its fatality figure of 92 per million people is well below the world’s tally of 160 and the US’s 711.
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A controversial French professor who touts the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment – without evidence, scientists say – is to appear before a disciplinary panel charged with ethics breaches. Marseille-based Didier Raoult is accused by his peers of spreading false information about the benefits of the drug, which has been trumpeted by the US and Brazilian presidents, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.
- Russia, Croatia, Greece were among countries to report respective daily records in the number of infections.
- Germany is seeing tentative signs that a surge in coronavirus infections may be easing, officials said today. “The curve is flattening,” said Lothar Wieler, who heads the country’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). He said it showed anti-transmission measures were working but warned there was still scope for the situation to deteriorate in coming weeks.
