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The UK government is coming under pressure to provide back-to-work support for young people amid evidence that the under-25s have been hardest hit by the Covid-19 economic fallout.
In a report published on Tuesday ahead of unemployment figures expected to show the first signs of the pandemic’s impact on the labour market, the Resolution Foundation said younger and older workers were the most likely to have lost their jobs or had their incomes reduced.
The thinktank said ministers should be considering job guarantees to prevent young people being permanently scarred by the crisis.
Here is the full story on Trump’s hydroxycholorquine claims:
Donald Trump has told reporters at the White House that for “a couple weeks” he has been taking a malaria drug as a defense against Covid-19 – despite warnings from his administration that it is dangerous.
The drug is not approved as a treatment for Covid-19 and Trump has not been diagnosed with the disease, to public knowledge.
Trump’s claim to be taking the drug was made as he attacked an administration whistleblower who went before Congress last week and described internal pressure to endorse the drug as an effective coronavirus treatment.
The whistleblower, Rick Bright, was the former director of a federal agency in charge of vaccines.
On Monday, Trump called Bright a hypocrite and then riffed on the supposed benefits of the drug, which the FDA advised has “not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19”.
“You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it … The front line workers many many are taking it,” Trump said.
“I happen to be taking it. I happen to be taking it. I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah. A couple weeks ago I started taking it. Because I think it’s good, I heard a lot of good stories… I take a pill every day.”
Summary
Here are the main developments from the last few hours:
- Trump claims he is taking hydroxychloroquine. The president said he has been taking hydroxychloroquine. This is the dubious treatment for coronavirus that Trump had fiercely touted in the past but thatwas found to have a very mixed effect on patients. The US Food and Drug Administration cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for Covid-19 outside of a hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.
- Some areas of New York City have seen death rates nearly 15 times higher than others, according to data released by New York City’s health department, showing the disproportionate toll taken on poorer communities.For the first time, the data shows a breakdown on the number of deaths in each of the city’s more than 60 ZIP codes, Reuters has reported. The highest death rate was seen on the edge of Brooklyn in a neighbourhood dominated by a large subsidised-housing development called Starrett City.
- Qatar will close all shops and halt all commercial activities, from 19 to 30 May, state news agency QNA has reported, citing a decision by Qatar’s cabinet. The closure excludes pharmacies, food supply stores and food deliveries.
- Italy registers 99 more deaths on Monday, the lowest daily rate since early March, and 451 new infections, down by more than 200 since Sunday. There is also a significant fall in new infections in Lombardy, the region worst affected by the virus, from 326 on Sunday to 175 on Monday. Bars, restaurants, shops, hairdressers, museums, libraries and churches reopened on Monday as Italy continues its gradual move out of lockdown.
- A total of 14,790 people died in April in Belgium – the worst toll since the country was under Nazi occupation in the 1940s, according to a study. The total is substantially higher than the normal April death toll, which is usually fewer than 9,000 people, researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) find.
- UK confirms 160 more deaths. The country’s department of health and Social care releases its latest daily figures, which show a further 160 deaths, taking the total to 34,796.
- Quarantine for UK arrivals expected to cover air, rail, car and sea.Enforced quarantine measures at the UK border expected to be unveiled this week are to cover arrivals by sea, car and international rail, as well as air, the Guardian understands.
- Macron and Merkel present joint EU recovery plan. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have presented a joint plan to spur EU recovery after weeks of debate over how to deploy billions of euros needed to quickly end a painful recession. The full text of the plan is here.
- EU may give green light to sale of possible Covid-19 treatment.The European Union may give an initial approval for sale of the drug remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment, the head of its medicines agency says, fast-tracking the drug to market amid tight global competition for resources.
- UN chief calls for “end to hubris”. The pandemic should serve as a wake-up call to a world that must be more united, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, says.
- Spain reports lowest death toll for two months. Monday’s overnight death toll in Spain is 59, the lowest figure in two months, the country’s government says. The cumulative death toll rises to 27,709, while the number of confirmed cases increases to 231,606 from 231,350 the previous day, according to health ministry figures.
- Brian Cox says politicisation risks undermining public trust in science. UK government ministers may be undermining public trust in science in the way they talk about it when defending their decisions, a leading scientist and broadcaster warns.
- Saint Peter’s Basilica reopens. Visitors are allowed to return to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican after more than two months of lockdown. A handful of visitors queue up, observing social distancing rules and under the watch of police officers wearing face masks, before having their temperatures taken to enter the church.
Updated
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now. I’ll be with you for the next few hours – please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan with any questions, comments, tips or news from where you live.
Some areas of New York City have seen death rates nearly 15 times higher than others, according to data released by New York City’s health department, showing the disproportionate toll taken on poorer communities.
For the first time, the data shows a breakdown on the number of deaths in each of the city’s more than 60 ZIP codes, Reuters has reported. The highest death rate was seen on the edge of Brooklyn in a neighbourhood dominated by a large subsidised-housing development called Starrett City.
The music monthly Q is one of 10 magazines that could disappear from newsagents’ shelves as one of the UK’s biggest publishers considers the future of print titles as the coronavirus crisis hastens the shift of readers and advertisers online.
The German-owned Bauer Media, which owns magazines in the UK including Grazia and Empire as well as the Kiss, Magic and Absolute radio networks, said that many already struggling magazines will not be sustainable after the pandemic passes.
The publisher said that following a review of its portfolio it is considering closing, selling, merging or moving to digital-only format Q, Simply You, Your Horse, Planet Rock, Sea Angler, Mother & Baby, Golf World, Practical Photography, Car Mechanics and Modern Classics. Chris Duncan, the chief executive of UK publishing at Bauer, said:
The pandemic and lockdown has further accelerated the trends already affecting the publishing industry.
Bauer publishes nearly 100 magazines in the UK, and some titles that were already challenged, unfortunately, are not expected to be sustainable after the crisis. We must protect the long-term health of our business and ability to invest in future growth by re-shaping our portfolio.
Police and protesters have clashed in Santiago amid a city-wide lockdown as local officials warned that food shortages have hit one of the Chilean capital’s poorest neighbourhoods.
Reuters reports that a group of protesters threw rocks and burned piles of wood along a street in the destitute neighbourhood on Santiago’s southern fringe. Images on social media and local television showed police spraying tear gas and water cannons to disperse the growing crowd.
The municipality said families were going hungry in the poorest sectors of El Bosque, a neighborhood where many work informally, or not at all. The city district has been under quarantine since mid-April, city officials said.
Qatar will close all shops and halt all commercial activities, from 19 to 30 May, state news agency QNA has reported, citing a decision by Qatar’s cabinet. The closure excludes pharmacies, food supply stores and food deliveries.
If Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine, he is going against the advice of his own administration.
The FDA has warned against using hydroxychloroquine or a related compound, chloroquine, for treating or preventing Covid-19 without medical supervision in a hospital, or as part of a clinical trial. In late April, the FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said:
While clinical trials are ongoing to determine the safety and effectiveness of these drugs for Covid-19, there are known side effects of these medications that should be considered. The FDA will continue to monitor and investigate these potential risks and will communicate publicly when more information is available.
Here’s the clip of Trump saying he’s been taking hydoxychoroquine:
.@jeffmason1: What is the evidence that hydroxychloroquine has a preventative impact?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2020
TRUMP: "Are you ready? Here's my evidence -- I get a lot of positive calls about it ... what do you have to lose?" pic.twitter.com/51b967dypu
“I get a lot of positive calls about it,” Trump said of the antimalarial drug. So far, the scientific evidence that the drug works as a treatment has been thin. It has not been widely investigated as a prophylactic measure.
Trump claims he is taking hydroxychloroquine
Extraordinary news emerging from the White House – the president has mentioned that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine. This is the dubious treatment for coronavirus that Trump had fiercely touted in the past but that was found to have a very mixed effect on patients.
No studies so far have shown that it had a good effect on patients and regulators have advised it not be taken outside of a hospital or clinical trial setting.
Trump said earlier at the White House that he was taking it, it is understood as a prophylactic.
BREAKING: President Trump says he is taking hydroxychloriquine and has been doing so for weeks. @CBSNews #Covid_19
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) May 18, 2020
The US Food and Drug Administration cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for Covid-19 outside of a hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.
Before recent results from larger trials showed the anti-viral medicine was not good for Covid and could be harmful, Trump was promoting it, including at White House briefings, as a possible miracle cure.
Local authorities across Mexico have resisted President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s call to lift emergency measures in municipalities without confirmed cases, warning that the pandemic is far from over.
Mexico has registered nearly 50,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths, and its testing rate ranks among the lowest in Latin America, with just 0.4 tests per 1,000 people.
But, on Monday, approximately 300 municipalities throughout the country – called “municipalities of hope” – were given the green light to restart economic activities and lift sheltering-in-place recommendations. Similar measures are scheduled to start 1 June in the rest of the country, while classes will resume the same day. López Obrador said:
We need to maintain discipline, not relax this discipline since we’re almost there. I have a lot of faith and many expectations that we’re going to finish taming this pandemic.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is planning a nationwide study of up to 325,000 people to track the virus’ spread into next year and beyond, Reuters reports.
Citing the director of the nonprofit Vitalant Research Institute, Dr Michael Busch, the news agency says the study is expected to launch in June or July and will test samples from blood donors in 25 metropolitan areas for antibodies.
Busch is leading a preliminary version of the study – funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – that is testing the first 36,000 samples.
The CDC-funded portion, to be formally announced this week, will expand the scope and time frame, taking samples over 18 months to see how antibodies evolve over time, said the CDC’s spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund. She said researchers aim to publish results on a rolling basis.
The president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has also welcomed the proposed €500bn recovery fund, saying it would bring much-needed relief to the worst-hit EU countries.
“The Franco-German proposals are ambitious, targeted and welcome,” Lagarde said in a joint interview with four European newspapers, after announcement of the plan sent the euro higher and reduced Italian bond yields.
The proposals “open the way for long-term borrowing by the European Commission and above all allow significant direct budgetary aid to the member states worst affected by the crisis”, Lagarde told the newspapers Les Echos, Handelsblatt, Corriere della Sera and El Mundo.
Sudan has extended a lockdown of the state of Khartoum by an additional two weeks from Tuesday, the state news agency has reported. The country had registered 2,591 cases and 105 deaths as of Saturday.
South Sudan’s vice-president Riek Machar and his wife Angelina Teny have tested positive, his office has said. It also said that “a number of his office staff and bodyguards” had also tested positive.
France’s highest administrative court has ruled that the government must lift a blanket ban on meetings at places of worship imposed as part of measures to combat the epidemic, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
After receiving complaints from several individuals and associations, the Council of State said that such a ban on freedom of worship caused “a damage that is serious and manifestly illegal”.
It told the government to lift the ban within the next eight days.
The latest government decree bans all gatherings in places of worship, even after the lockdown was eased from 11 May. Funerals are excepted and are limited to 20 people.
But the Council of State ruled this ban was “disproportionate in nature.”
It remains to be seen what move the government will take to respect the decision while retaining a safe environment in churches, mosques and other places of worship.
Bruno Retailleau, who leads the right-wing Republicans in the French upper house, the Sénat, said the decision was “good news for religious freedom, which is a fundamental right”.
La décision du Conseil d'Etat d’ordonner la levée de l'interdiction de réunion dans les lieux de cultes est une bonne nouvelle pour la liberté de culte qui est un droit fondamental.
— Bruno Retailleau (@BrunoRetailleau) May 18, 2020
In the UK, the opposition Labour party has expressed concern at lockdown measures being eased at the start of June after ministers conceded that a key part of the test-and-trace regime to contain new outbreaks, a phone app, will not be ready for weeks.
The health secretary Matt Hancock announced that anyone over the age of five with symptoms would be eligible for a test. The news is expected to lead to a surge in people visiting the gov.uk website to book home test kits or drive-through appointments.
Until now, eligibility was limited to certain groups including key workers, those aged over 65 years, people who could not work from home, or people who lived with someone from one of these groups.
But there are fresh worries about the NHS phone app, which is designed to be downloaded by millions to curb the spread of Covid-19, as the organisation representing local public health leaders said it was “disappointed” at the level of government engagement on the issue.
The Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg and her colleagues have filmed a physically distanced dance for the country’s Constitution Day. It was aired on 17 May on the government-owned broadcaster NRK.
Mass gatherings and parades are not permitted at least until mid-June to try and slow the spread of the virus.
Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez has welcomed the €500bn (£447bn) recovery fund proposed by France and Germany to help regions and sectors hardest hit by the pandemic.
We welcome the proposal by France and Germany to establish a €500 bn European Recovery Fund based on grants. It is a positive step in the right direction, in line with our own demands. Now its time for #EU to put forward a proper financial package. We should keep moving forward.
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) May 18, 2020
Updated
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson will be taking you through the next few hours of this blog. Thanks for your company, and all your emails and tweets, so far today.
The United Arab Emirates will extend a nightly curfew by two hours, starting this week, after reporting an increase in the number of coronavirus cases.
The curfew, which currently runs from 10pm to 6am, will start at 8pm as of Wednesday until further notice, Saif Al Dhaheri, spokesman for the national emergency crisis and disaster management authority, told a press conference.
On Monday the UAE reported 832 new infections and four deaths from Covid-19, taking its count to 24,190 cases with 224 deaths.
France reports 131 new Covid-19 deaths
French health authorities reported 131 new coronavirus deaths on Monday, constituting a slowing increase of 0.5% and bringing the total to 28,239. The country’s death toll remains the fourth-highest in the world behind the US, the UK and Italy.
The ministry said the number of people in intensive care with Covid-19 fell by 4.3% to 1,998, below the 2,000 threshold for the first time since 22 March.
On a lighter note, here is a scene from a barber’s in Rome today. I can’t be the only person who could desperately do with a similar service sooner rather than later.
The Czech Republic is planning to ease travel between the central European country and other countries deemed safe from risks of coronavirus from 8 June, its health minister Adam Vojtech has announced.
It was among the first countries in Europe to ban entry by foreigners and even banned most Czechs from travelling abroad to keep the spread of the infection under control in March. Some restrictions have been eased but the country is still not open for foreign tourism and Czechs are required to present a negative coronavirus test upon return or go into quarantine.
Discussions have been underway to open borders with neighbours such as Austria and Slovakia, which have also taken steps to relax their border regimes, Reuters reports.
Vojtech said he had proposed that, as of 8 June, travel to and from a list of risky countries – to be determined but currently likely to include Spain, Italy or France – would be subject to the current requirements, while others deemed safe – such as Austria, Slovakia or Croatia – would be exempt.
The list of risky countries would be updated continuously, he added. The prime minister, Andrej Babis, said last week that borders with Slovakia and Austria could be fully opened from 8 June.
Separately, the foreign minister Tomas Petricek said today that borders with all neighbouring states – Poland, Germany, Austria and Slovakia – could be open by mid-June, the news agency CTK reported. The foreign ministry also said Czech tourists may be allowed to travel to Greece from July.
Summary
Here are synopses of the biggest stories from the last few hours:
- Italy registers 99 more deaths on Monday, the lowest daily rate since early March, and 451 new infections, down by more than 200 since Sunday. There is also a significant fall in new infections in Lombardy, the region worst affected by the virus, from 326 on Sunday to 175 on Monday.
- A total of 14,790 people died in April in Belgium – the worst toll since the country was under Nazi occupation in the 1940s, according to a study. The total is substantially higher than the normal April death toll, which is usually fewer than 9,000 people, researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) find.
- UK confirms 160 more deaths. The country’s department of health and Social care releases its latest daily figures, which show a further 160 deaths, taking the total to 34,796.
- Quarantine for UK arrivals expected to cover air, rail, car and sea. Enforced quarantine measures at the UK border expected to be unveiled this week are to cover arrivals by sea, car and international rail, as well as air, the Guardian understands.
- Macron and Merkel present joint EU recovery plan. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have presented a joint plan to spur EU recovery after weeks of debate over how to deploy billions of euros needed to quickly end a painful recession. The full text of the plan is here.
- EU may give green light to sale of possible Covid-19 treatment. The European Union may give an initial approval for sale of the drug remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment, the head of its medicines agency says, fast-tracking the drug to market amid tight global competition for resources.
- UN chief calls for “end to hubris”. The pandemic should serve as a wake-up call to a world that must be more united, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, says.
- Spain reports lowest death toll for two months. Monday’s overnight death toll in Spain is 59, the lowest figure in two months, the country’s government says. The cumulative death toll rises to 27,709, while the number of confirmed cases increases to 231,606 from 231,350 the previous day, according to health ministry figures.
- Brian Cox says politicisation risks undermining public trust in science. UK government ministers may be undermining public trust in science in the way they talk about it when defending their decisions, a leading scientist and broadcaster warns.
- Saint Peter’s Basilica reopens. Visitors are allowed to return to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican after more than two months of lockdown. A handful of visitors queue up, observing social distancing rules and under the watch of police officers wearing face masks, before having their temperatures taken to enter the church.
The German government has released the full text of the French-German Initiative for the European Recovery from the Coronavirus Crisis. This comes after today’s meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, which we trailed earlier in the blog.
Here is the text, written in English and covering four key points.
The Guardian has seen a protocol prepared by Spain’s top football division, La Liga, ahead of a planned return to action. It would be following in the footsteps of Germany’s Bundesliga. Sid Lowe has the story:
The 23-time Olympic swimming champion, Michael Phelps, has said the Covid-19 pandemic is taking a toll on his mental health.
[Phelps] has spoken in the past about his struggles with depression and said that being under lockdown during the pandemic has been a struggle.
“The pandemic has been a challenge I never expected,” he told ESPN in an article published on Monday. “All the uncertainty. Being cooped up in a house. And the questions. So many questions. When is it going to end? What will life look like when this is over? Am I doing everything I can to be safe? Is my family safe? It drives me insane. I’m used to traveling, competing, meeting people. This is just craziness. My emotions are all over the place. I’m always on edge. I’m always defensive.”
Here is our full story:
The president of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, has said a four-day lockdown starting on 23 May will be imposed nationwide as part of efforts to prevent the spread of coronavirus during the Eid al-Fitr religious holiday.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan also said schools would not reopen in this academic year and education would continue in person in September with the new academic year.
Erdogan said mosques would begin allowing mass prayers for midday and afternoon prayers as of 29 May, Reuters reports. He said the house arrest period for prisoners who were released as part of coronavirus measures had been extended for two months
Coronavirus cases in Belgium have continued to fall amid a simmering political row over nurses’ pay and conditions, reports Jennifer Rankin.
Nurses protesting over wages, staff numbers and a government decree that makes it possible for them to be forced to come to work turned away from the official motorcade when prime minister Sophie Wilmès visited the Saint Pierre hospital in Brussels on Saturday.
“Politics constantly turns its back on our appeals for help,” one anonymous nurse told the Francophone state broadcaster RTBF. “The teams are understaffed and the burnout rates show it. We are asking for our work to be valued and for more staff on our teams.”
The piece in full:
Nigeria’s government has extended a coronavirus lockdown on the northern region of Kano after it became a hotspot for new infections.
The head of the country’s coronavirus taskforce, Boss Mustapha, said the lockdown on the economic hub – which includes Nigeria’s second biggest city – would be prolonged for two weeks.
The authorities will also start to impose “precision” lockdowns in any other areas that report a “rapidly increasing number of cases, when the need arises”, he said.
The outbreak in Kano has become a major cause of concern after medics and residents last month began reporting a spike in deaths, AFP reports. Regional officials at first put the “unexplained” fatalities down to other ailments, but government investigators later said coronavirus was suspected in most cases.
Neighbouring states to Kano have also begun reporting suspicious surges in death tolls that authorities are scrambling to investigate.
Nigeria has confirmed 5,959 infections and 182 deaths from Covid-19 across the country. Kano is the second hardest-hit region with 825 confirmed cases and 36 fatalities.
The region has already been under lockdown for a month but enforcement has been lax and measures have been eased sporadically for people to buy food during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Here is another dispatch from our Rome correspondent, Angela Giuffrida. Some Italians are savouring the deep joy of being able to eat out once again.
“I can taste the fullness of the flavour much more,” said Sandro Urbani as he drank a glass of white Sangiovanni wine outside Caffè Barrique in the Umbrian town of Orvieto. “It’s as if I’ve been on a diet over the past few months and all of a sudden I can eat a slice of salami.”
Angela’s full piece can be found here:
The reopening of schools in 22 European countries has not led to any significant increase in coronavirus infections among children, parents or staff, a videoconference meeting of education ministers from around the EU has heard. The assertion comes on the same day that France’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, revealed that 70 cases of Covid-19 had been diagnosed since 40,000 primary and nursery schools reopened last week.
Daniel Boffey and Kim Willsher have more:
Updated
Italy registered 99 new coronavirus deaths on Monday, the lowest daily rate since early March, and 451 new infections, down by over 200 since Sunday.
There was also a significant fall in new infections in Lombardy, the region worst affected by the virus, from 326 on Sunday to 175 on Monday.
Bars, restaurants, shops, hairdressers, museums, libraries and churches reopened on Monday as Italy continues its gradual move out of lockdown.
However, the prime minister Giuseppe Conte warned that citizens must not drop their guard and must still respect social distancing rules and use face masks. “Today the country is getting moving again but it is still a long road,” he wrote in a letter to the newspaper, Leggo.
The government now has a major challenge reviving the economy, which this year is expected to enter the deepest recession since the Second World War. Conte added that his government is “not deaf to the many difficulties that citizens are facing” and that it “intends to face them one by one”.
Italy has 225,886 confirmed cases of Covid-19 to date, including 32,007 deaths and 127,326 survivors.
United Kingdom confirms 160 new Covid-19 deaths
The UK’s Department for Health and Social Care has released its latest daily figures for coronavirus deaths. A further 160 deaths have been recorded, taking the total to 34,796.
For more on this, please join our UK coronavirus live blog:
Updated
Uber has announced it will cut around 3,000 jobs, in addition to the 3,700 it announced earlier this month, as coronavirus-led restrictions sap demand for ride-hailing services.
The company’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, explained the cuts in an email to employees on Monday. The business has suffered a near-total collapse as large parts of the US and the rest of the world shut to combat the spread of the virus.
Nearly two-thirds of Uber’s revenue is generated in the US and Canada, where stay-at-home orders were issued in the middle of March. The company said trip requests had plummeted 80% globally in April, but were slowly recovering.
Khosrowshahi also said the company would wind down its office in Singapore over the next 12 months, and move to a new “hub” in the Asia-Pacific region.
Uber would also close down about 45 of its offices, including the office at Pier 70 in San Francisco. The company, which is also in talks with GrubHub Inc to reinforce its food delivery business, said it plans to reduce investments in several non-core projects.
Updated
Sweden, whose softer approach to the coronavirus pandemic has garnered worldwide attention, recorded its deadliest month in almost three decades in April, according to statistics released today.
Sweden has stopped short of introducing the restrictive lockdowns seen elsewhere in Europe, instead opting for an approach based on the “principle of responsibility”. It has kept schools open for children under the age of 16, along with cafes, bars, restaurants and businesses, and urged people to respect social distancing guidelines.
A total of 10,458 deaths were recorded in the country of 10.3 million inhabitants in April, Statistics Sweden said. “We have to go back to December 1993 to find more dead during a single month,” Tomas Johansson, population statistician at Statistics Sweden, said in a statement.
In total, 97,008 deaths were recorded in Sweden during the whole of 1993, which in turn was the deadliest year since 1918, when the Spanish flu pandemic ravaged the country. Johansson told AFP there was no official breakdown explaining the high death toll in December 1993 but said there was a flu epidemic at the time.
According to preliminary data, the number of deaths has been on the decline since the end of April, including in Stockholm – the epicentre of the Swedish epidemic – where the highest number of deaths were recorded in early April.
The Swedish approach to coronavirus has come under criticism both at home and abroad, particularly as the number of deaths has far exceeded those in neighbouring Nordic countries, which have all imposed more restrictive containment measures.
On Monday, Sweden reported a total of 30,377 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 3,698 deaths.
Spain reports lowest death toll for two months
Spain’s overnight death toll from coronavirus was 59 on Monday, the lowest figure in two months, the government said. The cumulative death toll rose to 27,709, while the number of confirmed cases rose to 231,606 from 231,350 the previous day, according to health ministry figures.
Figures include data for more than 24 hours as the ministry changed its methods on Monday, Reuters reports. It was the second day in a row that the number of deaths was under 100.
Play resumed in Germany’s top football division, the Bundesliga, during the weekend in a development that made headlines far beyond the world of sport. Andy Brassell has looked at how it all went.
The global reaction to the Bundesliga’s return was generally positive, with Obrigado, Bundesliga from Portugal’s A Bola typical of the continent-wide relief that the raising of the curtain had passed relatively setback-free, though Spain’s El Mundo Deportivo commented that it “would have been good if a minute’s silence had been observed for the victims of coronavirus”. The aspect not just of being entertained – and the general standard of play was way better than might have been expected after 66 days of unscheduled stoppage – but of viewing possible best practice is clear.
Eintracht Frankfurt’s sporting director Fredi Bobic, who called the restart “a historic day for the Bundesliga”, also told Sky that the league could be a litmus test for all sports. “We also received a tremendous number of calls from American clubs for information,” said the former Bolton striker. “Not only from football clubs but also baseball, basketball and ice hockey. They all want to know how we’re doing it and how we organised it.”
Here is Andy’s piece in full:
I’m back with you now for the next three hours or so of global coronavirus news and updates. Thanks a lot for all your valued communications so far today – please email any tips, observations, comments or feedback to nick.ames@theguardian.com or direct message me @NickAmes82.
A French court has ruled that the Paris police can no longer use drones to track people not respecting social-distancing rules.
The ruling is a victory for two rights groups who claimed the use of drones to carry out surveillance of the population was a threat to individual privacy.
Patrick Spinosi, lawyer for the Human Rights League in France said there was no reason the decision could not be “applied to the whole of France”.
“It is applicable from today and so from now, no drones can be used. It’s a great victory,” Spinosi told AFP.
According to a report by the upper house of parliament, the Sénat, French police carried out 251 drone surveillance flights between 24 March and 24 April, during the strict lockdown.
Two French plaintiffs, the Human Rights League and the digital advocacy group Quadrature du Net, filed a case against the Paris drone flights with the State Council.
The interior ministry and police insisted they were not trying to identify anyone, but to watch for illegal gatherings so they would know where to send officers to break them up.
The State Council said the cameras in the drones could identify individual people and “there are risks they could be used in contravention of personal data protection rules”.
The court said in future the government and police would need a specific decree setting out conditions for using drones and also obtain the approval of the national data privacy authority CNIL.
If the authorities wish to continue using drones, they have been ordered to fit them with technology that would prevent the cameras from identifying those being filmed.
The French authorities often use drones in normal times to keep an eye on demonstrations. During the lockdown drones were used in the French capital and elsewhere, notably on the French Riviera, to send messages warning people they were breaking the rules during the eight week lockdown that ended on 11 May.
Qatar Airways cabin crew will begin wearing protective suits while passengers will have to wear face masks on board, the airline has said.
Cabin crew have already been wearing face masks and gloves but will also wear suits over their uniforms, while face masks will be mandatory for passengers from May 25.
In a statement, the state-owned airline said interactions between employees and passengers will also be reduced.
“We have introduced these additional safety measures onboard our flights to ensure the continued health and wellbeing of our passengers and cabin crew, and to limit the spread of coronavirus,” chief executive Akbar al-Baker said.
Within Qatar, anyone not wearing a face mask can be fined 200,000 riyals ($50,000) and could face a prison sentence of up to three years.
Earlier this month, the International Air Transport Association, the body representing global airlines, came out in favour of passengers wearing masks onboard.
On short and medium-haul flights, different sets of cabin crew will operate the outbound and inbound flights.
The airline is laying off 20% of its workforce, including cabin crew. It has been one of the few airlines to continue regular flights during global coronavirus lockdowns, maintaining services to around 30 destinations.
It is scheduled to resume flights to destinations in had suspended due to the pandemic by June.
The global economy will take much longer to recover from the coronavirus pandemic than initially expected, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund.
Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, said it was likely to revise downward its forecast for a 3% contraction in GDP in 2020, with only a partial recovery expected next year.
Speaking to news organisation Reuters, Georgieva said data from around the world was worse than expected.
“Obviously that means it will take us much longer to have a full recovery from this crisis,” she said, without giving a specific target date for a rebound.
You can find more global economic updates over on our business live blog:
Public transport has been reopened in New Delhi and other Indian states as the nearly two-month coronavirus lockdown continues to be eased.
Under the new measures, buses, taxis and three-wheeled rickshaws will return to the streets with restrictions.
Buses in the capital cannot carry more than 20 passengers, each of whom will be screened before boarding, said Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday.
“Corona will stay, and we will also survive,” Kejriwal said, outlining the new guidelines for the city of 20 million people that has one of highest numbers of coronavirus cases in the country.
The southern state of Karnataka also lifted some restrictions on the movement of trains, taxis and buses within the state.
Transportation from outside the state will remain suspended except for essential services.
Updated
I’m taking a break for the next hour, so will leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Amy Walker.
Slovakia is next on the list of European countries attempting a slow return to something resembling normal life. It will reopen shopping malls, theatres and cinemas from Wednesday, under strict hygienic conditions, the prime minister, Igor Matovič, has confirmed.
The central European country, which has had far fewer Covid-19 cases than most western European nations, will also reopen kindergartens and the first five grades of elementary schools from 1 June, Matovič told a press conference.
Updated
The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, is backing calls for an independent review of the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but only after the virus is under control. Here is a video report:
Omid Djalili, Whoopi Goldberg and Sanjeev Bhaskar have joined forces to appeal for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) participants to take part in Covid-19 research to help establish why people from BAME populations are at greater risk from coronavirus.
People from all minority ethnic groups are at greater risk of getting severe illness with Covid-19 compared with the white population in the UK – with recent studies saying they are twice as likely to die from the virus as white people. The actor-comedians Djalili and Bhaskar, and the Oscar-winning Goldberg, urged BAME people to join coronavirus research studies in a bid to help find the reasons behind the link.
Speaking on a video released to support recruitment for the research – which will be conducted by the Centre for BME Health, supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) – Djalili said: “As you know we are in the middle of a devastating pandemic and it seems people from these populaces are affected disproportionality and we want to find out why, now.
“There are a lot of tests and trials going on but very few people from these communities are putting themselves forward for research. We need to get on with this to help people not just here, but globally, so if you know anyone from these backgrounds, relatives or friends, please pass on this message. The sooner we do it the more lives we can save. Now. Thank you.”
To take part in the research, or to view more information, visit this section of the NIHR’s website.
Updated
Denmark is one of Europe’s greatest success stories when it comes to dealing with Covid-19. It has just announced that all adults will be allowed to book a Coronavirus test this week.
The country began easing its lockdown four weeks ago with no obvious adverse effects, while cafes and restaurants are now open. Below are a couple of extracts from a Reuters report into how it has coped.
“The quick shutdown and the fact that Danes actually listened to messages from authorities about good hygiene and social distancing are the main reasons we’ve come this far,” said Hans Jorn Kolmos, a professor in clinical microbiology at the University of Southern Denmark. Contrary to the French and Italians, Danes are less likely to hug and kiss as a form of greeting, which has also been a factor in limiting the spread, Kolmos said.
Coronavirus-related deaths and the ‘R’ reproduction rate – a measure of transmission – are falling. Health authorities on Friday reported no deaths for the first time since 13 March. Health experts now say Denmark is “very unlikely” to be hit by a second wave of the Covid-19 infection that has so far killed 548 people in the country.
When the Copenhagen café Coffee Collective opened its doors to seated customers on Monday, it was quieter than usual. Most enjoyed their coffee alone at tables placed apart, while some sat outside at tables on the street.
“I think it was a good decision (to shut down early), because we can see now on the numbers that everything has worked better than in some neighbouring countries,” said Ellen Vallentin Asmus, a graphic illustrator, enjoying a coffee at the cafe for the first time in two months.
“I think in Denmark there’s a strong culture of following the rules and listening to the government, and I think that has helped with everyone taking the restrictions and social distancing seriously,” said Sydney-Johanna Stevns, a strategist at a research and design lab in Copenhagen. “Mentally it’s nice to be out and have something of a normal life again.”
Updated
If you are just joining today’s global coronavirus blog, do remember that we are always pleased to hear from you. You can email any tips, ideas, feedback or observations to me at nick.ames@theguardian.com or direct message me on Twitter @NickAmes82.
Germany is hoping to replace a travel warning that is in place for all touristic trips abroad until 15 June with softer guidelines, the country’s foreign minister Heiko Maas has said. He warned, however, that there would be no quick return to holidays as usual.
“15 June is not the starting date for taking holidays – 15 June 15 is the date when we need to make a decision on whether we will lift the global travel warning and we’re working on replacing this travel warning with travel guidelines,” Maas said.
Reuters reports that Maas also said he wanted summer holidays to be possible, but stressed that this needed to be done in a responsible way and added that it was too early to say in which countries Germans were most likely to be able to take holidays. Additionally, he said that if there were a second wave of coronavirus infections, new restrictions would need to be introduced.
As you have probably read, Italy is cautiously getting back up and running. Here is how things look aboard a socially-distanced gondola in Venice.
Hungary and Slovenia have agreed on a road map towards a gradual reopening of their border by 1 June, the Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page today. Hungary has started lifting coronavirus restrictions in Budapest, though residents returning to shops or travelling on public transport will have to wear face masks.
“Restarting our economies is not possible without restarting international cooperation,” Szijjarto wrote, adding that annual trade between the two European Union member states was worth more than €2.5bn. “Therefore, without jeopardising the protection of health, which is a priority, an easing of restrictive measures imposed at the borders is needed.”
A phased reopening is the government’s strategy to head off deeper and more lasting harm to the economy, which is expected to shrink by about 4% this year, according to a Reuters survey.
As of Monday, Hungary had reported 3,535 cases of coronavirus, 462 deaths and 1,400 recoveries. Slovenia had reported 1,466 cases and 104 deaths.
Szijjarto said a lockdown in the two countries had helped prevent the large-scale spread of the coronavirus, allowing for a gradual restarting of economic activity. “Taking all this into account, we have started working on a gradual phase-out of measures restricting border crossings, setting 1 June as a target date,” Szijjarto wrote.
Updated
The situation regarding travel restrictions around Europe is, to put it mildly, pretty complex. It’s a constantly-shifting state of affairs, with controls easing in some places and being stepped up in others. This guide by Antonia Wilson provides a country-by-country look at where things currently stand. It’s a useful one to bookmark, as it is being updated whenever things change.
Updated
More news from the World Heath Organization’s assembly, where its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he will initiate an independent evaluation of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic at the “earliest appropriate moment”. He also vowed transparency and accountability on the WHO’s behalf.
“We all have lessons to learn from the pandemic. Every country and every organisation must examine its response and learn from its experience. WHO is committed to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement,” he said.
He thanked early high-level speakers for their “strong support for WHO at this critical time” and said the review must encompass responsibility of “all actors in good faith”.
“The risk remains high and we have a long road to travel,” Tedros added. Preliminary serological tests in some countries showed that at most 20% of populations had contracted the disease and “in most places less than 10%”, he said.
Updated
France’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, has told parents it was more of a risk keeping their children at home than sending them to school now the strict lockdown has ended, reports Kim Willsher in Paris.
“There are always worries and questions, but even so we should not push school to one side in this current difficult period, because there will be terrible damage if we lose a generation of children who have been stopped from going to school for several months,” Blanquer told journalists.
“It’s important to underline today’s good news … the return to school is happening progressively, and not everyone is going back at the same time, but it’s a start and an important start.”
Here is Kim’s piece in full:
Our US live blog is now up and running alongside this and our UK coronavirus blog. It is being steered by Martin Pengelly, and you can join it here:
UN chief calls for "an end to the hubris"
The coronavirus pandemic should serve as a “wake-up call” to the world which must be more united in responding to the crisis, the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has said.
Guterres said Covid-19 was the “greatest challenge of our age” and had demonstrated the world’s fragility, as nations went their own way in tackling the pandemic, Reuters reports. He added that the crisis was an opportunity to rebuild a better world, bu questioned whether countries were up to it.
Despite great scientific and technological advances in recent decades, a virus had “brought us to our knees”, the United Nations chief said at the start of this week’s virtual meeting of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Assembly.
He said the pandemic had exposed the frailties not just in health systems but in international institutions, tackling the climate crisis, cyber-security and nuclear disarmament.
“Covid-19 must be a wake-up call. It is time for an end to the hubris,” Guterres said, slamming countries for their disjointed approach. “We have seen some solidarity, but very little unity in our response to Covid-19. Different countries have followed different, sometimes contradictory strategies and we are all paying a heavy price.
“Many countries have ignored the recommendations of the World Health Organization. As a result, the virus has spread across the world.”
He said Covid-19 was now spreading in the southern hemisphere, where its impact might be “even more devastating”.
Guterres reiterated his call for a WHO-led international response, expanded mental health services and policies to address the social and economic problems caused by the crisis. “Unless we control the spread of the virus, the economy will never recover,” he said.
The former Portuguese prime minister and former head of the UN refugee agency said the recovery from the crisis must lead to more equal and sustainable economies. It is “an opportunity to rebuild differently and better”, he said, referring to the climate crisis and flawed social protection systems.
“Instead of going back to systems that were unsustainable, we need to make a leap into a future of clean energy, inclusivity and equality, and stronger safety nets, including universal health coverage.”
But he asked: “We can do it, but will we? Either we get through this pandemic together, or we fail.”
Updated
More than 100 countries are now backing calls for a global investigation into the origins and spread of Covid-19.
Ahead of a virtual meeting of the World Health Organization Assembly, which will be devoted to Covid-19, several dozen countries have called for an inquiry “to identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population”. The draft text does not mention China, whose government has previously declared its opposition to any international inquiry.
The text also calls for all countries to have “unhindered timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines, and essential health technologies” targeted at Covid-19. It additionally calls for action to tackle disinformation and misinformation that undermine the public health response.
“The European Union and its member states have spearheaded a draft resolution that will be presented at the WHO assembly tomorrow [Tuesday],” a European commission spokesperson said, adding that 110 countries were now co-sponsoring the text.
The text was drawn up with the support of several dozen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, Russia, Turkey and the UK.
Earlier this month the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said there was a need “to look independently at what happened, standing aside from the battlefield between China and the United States, who blame each other for the events in a bidding war that has only exacerbated their rivalry”.
EU may give green light to sale of Covid-19 treatment
The European Union may give an initial green light in the coming days for sale of the drug remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment, the head of its medicines agency has said on Monday, fast-tracking the drug to market amid tight global competition for resources.
The US, which has angered the EU with aggressive tactics in a procurement race during the global pandemic, has yet to issue a similar approval for the drug, made by the US pharmaceutical company Gilead. Demand for remdesivir has been growing as there are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.
“It might be that a conditional market(ing) authorisation can be issued in the coming days,” the head of the European Union’s medicines agency, Guido Rasi, told a hearing in the EU Parliament in Brussels.
An EU conditional marketing authorisation allows a drug to be sold for a year in the 27-nation bloc before all necessary data are available on its efficacy and side effects, Reuters reports.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has already recommended the compassionate use of remdesivir, which allows a drug to be administered to patients even before its sale has been authorised.
EMA’s recommendation on compassionate use matched an emergency authorisation granted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier in May, after Gilead provided data showing the drug had helped Covid-19 patients. But the EU is now moving rapidly to the next step in the authorisation procedure.
Updated
Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, has said that the country’s coronavirus epidemic has “positive dynamics,” as dozens of regions begin lifting quarantine restrictions and allowing businesses to reopen.
“The coronavirus situation in our country remains complicated, but we can still say that we have managed to put a stop to growth in new cases,” Mishustin claimed during an online conference on Monday, adding: “Cautiously speaking, we have positive dynamics.”
The deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova said that the growth rate for the sickness was down 23.4% across Russia and 47.5% in Moscow. On Monday, the country posted 8,926 new cases, the lowest in weeks.
But concerns about the actual death toll of the disease have grown amid worrying reports from Dagestan and several other regions of hundreds of deaths from pneumonia, many of whom may have been infected with coronavirus but not tallied due to Russia’s conservative autopsy standards. The country has tallied just 2,722 deaths from the disease.
The health minister of Dagestan, a southern Russian region of nearly three million people, said on Sunday that while officially 29 people in the republic had died of Covid-19, another 657 people had died of “community-acquired pneumonia,” a sickness often contracted by those infected with coronavirus.
He also confirmed that more than 40 medics in Dagestan had died since the coronavirus crisis began, a concern that had raised concerns across Russia, but claimed that many had died of causes other than coronavirus.
Other regions also appeared to indicate that death rates from pneumonia were many times higher than from coronavirus. The St. Petersburg governor also announced late last week that 694 people had died from pneumonia since 1 March, while just 63 people had officially died of coronavirus and been added to Russia’s tally of deaths from the disease.
Russia’s mortality rate from the disease is considerably lower than other countries with more than 100,000 infections. The Kremlin has said that is attributable to the country’s medical system, while critics have noted that deaths are tallied differently than in most countries in Europe and North America. New data from Moscow last week indicated nearly 1,600 people with coronavirus had died since the outbreak began, but that just 639 were included on official death tolls from the disease after autopsies found other causes of death.
Many academics believe that excess death rates are the best way to evaluate the total death toll from the disease. In Russia, the April data will only be made available in late May, and the May data is likely to come out in late June.
Updated
Macron and Merkel to present joint EU recovery plan
The French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel will present a joint plan to spur EU recovery from the coronavirus crisis, after weeks of debate over how to deploy billions of euros needed to quickly end a painful recession.
Europe is just beginning to emerge from the lockdowns to halt the outbreak, which has taken a huge bite out of national economies and raised the prospects of damaging recessions that could last for months.
But despite widespread recognition that the hardest-hit countries will be unable to repair the economic damage on their own, divisions among EU members on how to craft an overall response have hampered comprehensive action so far.
The bloc has pledged to muster €500bn in emergency funding, and the European commission is hoping to propose a budget that could be used to unleash stimulus worth one trillion euros.
Macron and Merkel aim to define “a French-German initiative to respond to the Covid-19 crisis at the European level, in the areas of health, the economic recovery, the environmental and digital transition, and industrial sovereignty”, the French presidency said.
They will meet via video conference, beginning at 3.30pm (2.30pm BST), followed by a joint declaration and press conference at around 5pm, AFP reports.
Updated
A big day in Greece, where over 200 of its prime archaeological sites have been re-opened almost two months to the day after being closed as part of containment measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The reopening of sites in Athens’ historic centre – capped this morning by the country’s head of state visiting the Acropolis – has sparked a frenzy of activity to properly prepare the antiquities for the post-lockdown age. All personnel have to wear face masks and, on dictate of social distancing, stickers have been placed outside entry points to prevent crowd buildups outside ticket booths.
Individual sites, according to size, will have caps on the number of visitors they can accept. In sites beneath the fifth century BC Acropolis, including Hadrian’s Library, workers could be seen earlier today in protective suits with weed cutters as they cleaned up the areas in anticipation of the tourist season beginning. The Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said he hopes to reopen the country to foreign tourists by 1 July after managing to keep confirmed cases of Covid-19 and casualties low after early enforcement of measures in a rare success story for Europe.
Updated
Quarantine for arrivals to UK expected to cover air, rail, car and sea
Enforced quarantine measures at the UK border expected to be unveiled this week are to cover arrivals by sea, car and international rail, as well as air, the Guardian understands. Jamie Grierson, our home affairs correspondent, reports.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, in his address to the nation on 10 May announcing the gradual easing of lockdown measures, served notice that quarantine would be imposed on air passengers arriving in the country.
But the plans, which are still being drawn up and are expected to be announced within days, are set to extend to all arrivals into the UK with a number of exemptions, reportedly including hauliers and Covid-19 research scientists.
Ministers have suggested travellers will be asked to quarantine for 14 days when they enter the UK, either in accommodation of their choice or provided by the government if there are no other options. An implementation date has not yet been announced.
Here is Jamie’s piece in full:
Updated
Anti-lockdown protests in the US may have had the effect of spreading Covid-19 to far-away areas, cellphone location data provided to the Guardian suggests. There are fears the protests will play a role in spreading coronavirus to parts of the country that have, to date, experienced relatively few infections.
Jason Wilson reports:
Hello everyone – as Jessica says, I’ll be taking you through the next few hours of global coronavirus news and updates. As always, your tips, feedback and observations are warmly welcomed. You can email me at nick.ames@theguardian.com or send a direct Twitter message @NickAmes82.
That’s all from me today, I’m now handing over to my colleague Nick Ames who’ll be running the blog for the next few hours.
Thanks for your emails, and of course thanks for following the blog.
Summary
Southern European countries ease lockdowns. Italy is reopening bars, cafes, restaurants and hairdressers - with social distancing measures in place - for the first time since its lockdown began. Meanwhile in Spain, almost three quarters of the country progressed to the second phase of its lockdown de-escalation, allowing millions of people to meet up in groups of up to 10, and to have a drink or a meal on cafe and restaurant terraces.
Global infections pass 4.7 million. There are 4,727,625 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide. At least 315,482 people have died over the course of the pandemic. The number of deaths in the US is approaching 90,000, with 89,564 confirmed fatalities and 1,486,742 infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Japan falls into recession. Japan dived into its first recession since 2015, according to official data on Monday, with the world’s third-largest economy contracting by 0.9% in the first quarter as it wrestled with the fallout from the coronavirus.
South Africa reports highest daily increase in cases. It reported 1,160 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily number since the first case was recorded in March. The Western Cape province, popular with tourists, accounted for nearly 60% of the national numbers.
New virus cases in Russia under 9,000 for first time since 1 May. 8,926 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours, as anti-virus restrictions ease and officials say the situation is stabilising.
Mayor of São Paulo, Brazil, says hospitals ‘near collapse’. The BBC has reported that the mayor of São Paulo, the country’s largest city, has warned that hospitals have reached 90% capacity and are “near collapse”. They could run out of space in two weeks’ time, he said. Brazil has the fourth-highest number of infections worldwide, with 241,080, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. It has recorded 16,118 deaths.
Meanwhile, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro greeted hundreds of supporters who gathered before the presidential offices Sunday and joined some in a series of push-ups .
Taiwan blocked from WHO meeting following Chinese pressure. Taiwan had been lobbying to take part in the World Health Assembly, which opens later on Monday, but did not get invited due to Chinese pressure, its foreign minister said, adding they had agreed to put the issue off until later this year.
Thailand’s economy contracts for first time since 2014. The coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered borders and devastated the tourism-reliant country, caused the economy to shrink for the first time in six years.
Ryanair chief accuses UK of mismanaging coronavirus crisis. Michael O’Leary described the UK’s planned introduction of a 14-day quarantine period for travellers arriving from abroad as “idiotic and unimplementable”.
Updated
Virus gives Belgium deadliest April since WW2
Coronavirus brought Belgium its deadliest April since the second world war, according to a study, as the country begins slowly to lift lockdown measures.
A total of 14,790 people died in Belgium last month as Covid-19 swept the country – substantially higher than the normal April total of deaths below 9,000, researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) found.
Not since the Nazi occupation of the 1940s has Belgium had such a high mortality rate in April, the month when high winter death rates usually drop off with the onset of spring, the researchers found.
“Mortality in Belgium is exceptionally high, reaching unprecedented levels, especially in the period from 1 to 12 April,” the university said in a statement.
There were 639 deaths on 10 April, “more than double the number that would have been expected for that day”. It said:
April 2020 was the deadliest April since the Second World War, both in absolute numbers and per capita.
Belgium has been hit hard by the pandemic, suffering one of the world’s highest per capita death tolls, though the virus appears to be easing and lockdown restrictions are starting to be lifted, AFP reports.
The government has also been praised by the World Health Organization for keeping more accurate tolls than some of its neighbours, and the per capita rate may be higher because of this.
Updated
Support for president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania has not wavered despite his coronavirus missteps, and could be key to him winning reelection, Guardian US national affairs correspondent, Tom McCarthy, reports.
Few people understand the terrible cost of the coronavirus like Lee Snover, a Republican party chair in one of the key swing counties that could determine whether Donald Trump is reelected as president in November.
Snover, who helped deliver an upset victory for Trump in 2016 in Northampton county, Pennsylvania, lost her father to the virus this spring. Her husband fell critically ill, too, spending 17 days in an intensive care unit before recovering. Her mother, a cancer survivor, was also in intensive care for eight days before emerging.
“It spread through my entire family,” Snover said.
Trump stands accused of driving up the coronavirus death toll by downplaying the public health threat and urging the country to “reopen” too quickly. But Snover does not see the president as having failed her family.
“I don’t think people give him enough credit,” she said. “If you think about what a businessman he was, and how much he loved that booming economy, do you know how hard it was for him to shut the country down? That was hard. So I give him credit for that.”
At times it has appeared that the pandemic, which has already taken at least 90,000 lives in the United States and wreaked havoc with the economy, would also destroy support for Trump, and his chances for reelection.
But interviews with longtime Trump supporters in Northampton county indicate the extraordinary durability of backing for the president among his base.
Saint Peter’s Basilica reopens to visitors
Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican has reopened to visitors after being closed for over two months under Italy’s lockdown orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
A handful of visitors queued up, observing social distancing rules, and were watched by police officers wearing face masks before having their temperatures taken to enter the church, which has been closed since 10 March.
Italy was the first country to go into a full lockdown over two months ago, bringing the economy to its knees.
The official death toll from the virus in the country now stands at around 32,000.
The government started lifting restrictions on 4 May, and on Sunday joggers, walkers and cyclists were plentiful on the streets of Rome’s historic centre.
Restaurants, bars, cafes, shops and hairdressers, among other businesses, were all expected to reopen on Monday, with public masses also resuming.
In the face of much opposition, including from Pope Francis, churches in Rome were shuttered at the beginning of the coronavirus emergency in early March.
Most, however, opened shortly thereafter, with entry reserved for prayer only.
“I share the joy of those communities who can finally reunite as liturgical assemblies, a sign of hope for all society,” Francis said on Sunday during his live-streamed prayer.
Updated
Health ministers from around the world are expected to call for an independent evaluation of the World Health Organization’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic during a WHO meeting on Monday.
Though they have opposing views of the WHO’s performance, China and the United States are likely to join the consensus for an independent evaluation during a virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s decision-making body, diplomats said.
The call will be made in a resolution being presented by the European Union at the annual two-day meeting.
The text also calls for timely and equitable access to safe and efficacious diagnostics, medicines and vaccines against the disease which has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide.
A fragile consensus emerged after more than a week of intense negotiations on the EU text, which could still change, the diplomats said.
A European diplomat told Reuters:
It looks like the resolution will be adopted. Politically speaking, there is agreement for now on an evaluation of the whole system and an investigation into the origin (of the virus), but not immediately.
It is important we were able to agree to the resolution, everybody.
The EU resolution is supported by a host of countries including Australia - a vocal critic of WHO and of China - as well as Britain, Canada, India, Japan and Russia.
Names on a draft resolution seen by Reuters showed support from 116 of the 194 countries in the WHO.
The text calls on the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to initiate an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of the WHO-coordinated international health response to Covid-19, including the effectiveness of existing mechanisms “at the earliest appropriate moment”.
It backs continued work, including through scientific “field missions”, to identify the zoonotic or animal source of the virus and how it crossed the species barrier to reach humans.
Almost three quarters of Spain progressed to the second phase of the country’s lockdown de-escalation on Monday, allowing millions of people to meet up in groups of up to 10, and to have a drink or a meal on cafe and restaurant terraces.
The Madrid region and the Barcelona metropolitan area remain in the preliminary phase of what the government has called “the transition towards the new normality”.
The health ministry said that despite “huge progress” in and around the capital, the region would not yet be able to join the 70% of the country in the next phase. People in Barcelona and parts of the Castilla y Léon region will also remain in phase-0 for the time being.
However, as elsewhere in Spain, people in phase-0 areas can now shop in small stores without appointments, and places of worship have reopened at 30% capacity.
Spain recorded its lowest single-day death toll in two months on Sunday as the latest figures from the health ministry showed that 87 people had died from Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours, down from 102 the day before.
The country has confirmed 231,350 cases of the virus using PCR tests, and reported 27,650 deaths.
On Saturday the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced that his Socialist-led coalition would be seeking a final, month-long extension of the state of emergency that underpins one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe.
The last lockdown extension was hard-won and was bitterly opposed by the conservative People’s party and the far-right Vox party. Both parties have argued that the state of emergency is no longer necessary.
It’s week two of the end of lockdown and on Monday it was the turn of the two lower secondary school years to return to classes in France but only in “green” areas on the Covid-19 map, meaning departments where the virus has stopped circulating widely and hospital intensive care units are not under pressure.
Classes in years 6ème (ages 11-12) and 5ème (12-13) opened on Monday with around 150,000 pupils expected back at one desk in two in 4,000 secondary schools. All staff and students must wear masks and schools are enforcing strict health measures, including distancing.
The education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, has revealed that 70 cases of Covid-19 have been diagnosed since 40,000 primary and nursery schools reopened last week.
Blanquer said the schools concerned had closed but insisted that not going to school was more of a risk than the virus. “Many doctors say it is less dangerous to go to school than to stay at home. Our children mustn’t be the victims of collateral damage of our health measures,” Blanquer told RTL radio.
The consequences could be psychological or nutritional and lead to students - particularly the estimated 500,000 youngsters in families with financial and social difficulties - dropping out of the system, he said.
“This phenomenon is my main worry. We have to get society used to going back to school. It’s not a secondary issue, it’s fundamental,” Blanquer said.
A decision when to open the other secondary school years and lycées will be taken by the end of this month, with a possible return programmed for the beginning of June.
Around 25 Covid-19 clusters have been reported since France ended its strict eight-week lockdown a week ago - Monday 11 May - but the French health minister, Olivier Véran, has said it will be another two weeks before the authorities know if it has resulted in a second wave of coronavirus cases.
France has reported 28,108 deaths attributed to Covid-19 since March. There was an unexpected jump in the number of deaths in care and nursing homes in the last figures published on Sunday, but this was reported to be a recalculation of figures.
Otherwise, the number of new cases and patients in hospital and intensive care with the virus is falling.
France’s coronavirus figures for 17 May:
- Confirmed cases: 142,411 (+120)
- In hospital: 19,361 (+152 gross, -71 net)
- In intensive care: 2,087 (+24 gross, -45 net)
- Hospital deaths: 17,466 (+54)
- Care home deaths: 10,642 (+429)
- Total deaths: 28,108 (+483)
- Sent home: 61,213 (+147)
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases has passed 7,000 in Afghanistan, following a continued surge of transmissions in Kabul and Herat, while war rages on across the country.
Over the past 24 hours, 408 new cases were confirmed and three patients died of Covid-19, taking the total number of infections to 7,072 and the death toll to 173. There have so far been 801 recoveries.
The heath ministry has pledged to increase the number of daily tests - 23,497 people have so far been tested in Afghanistan.
Wahid Majroh, the deputy health minister, said last week the country is waiting to receive more testing kits from the World Health Organization to increase daily testing capacity to around 2,500 in the first phase, 5,000 in the second and finally to 10,000 tests a day.
Majroh warned over the weekend that “if people continue not to heed, we will witness a big catastrophe among families”.
He said the ministry has a three-phase plan to ease the lockdown and “according to our plan, the lockdown should be in place for one year so we can get back to normal life”.
The capital, Kabul, is the country’s worst affected area in both the number of deaths and transmissions, with 2,066 confirmed cases and 25 deaths reported in the city of around six million.
The first case of Covid-19 in Afghanistan was reported in Herat as thousands of Afghan migrants poured back from Iran in February and March, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined. Herat has so far recorded 1,248 confirmed cases and 24 deaths.
Of three new deaths, two were reported in the eastern province of Khost, where its deputy health director was wounded when a bomb hit his vehicle on Saturday.
War is raging on with full intensity across the country. At least seven people were killed and 40 wounded when an explosion rocked central Ghanzi province on Monday morning.
Javid Faisal, spokesman for the office of national security council, said the war had killed hundreds over the last week.
“At least 249 Taliban were killed and 138 wounded by Afghan National Security Forces in the past week. Meanwhile, the Taliban harmed close to 300 civilians. This catastrophic war is a human tragedy that kills Afghans only, and without distinction,” Faisal said.
Updated
The Philippines has reported seven new coronavirus deaths and 205 additional infections.
In a bulletin, the health ministry said total deaths from the outbreak had increased to 831, while confirmed cases have risen to 12,718. But 94 more patients recovered, bringing total recoveries to 2,729.
Meanwhile, Malaysian health authorities reported 47 new coronavirus cases, bringing the cumulative total to 6,941 cases.
The health ministry also reported no new deaths, keeping total fatalities at 113.
Updated
Ireland today takes a cautious step to easing its two-month lockdown by allowing some businesses to reopen and up to four people from different households to meet as long as they respect social distancing.
Gardening centres, hardware stores, bicycle repair shops and outdoor construction are among the handful of sectors cranking back to life on Monday.
It is the first phase of a five-stage plan to lift restrictions spread out over three-week intervals, with the fifth and final phase starting on 10 August.
“We all need to approach the coming days with care and caution, and to show some collective cop-on,” said Simon Harris, the health minister, using an Irish term for common sense. “We want the shops to stay open, so there’s no need to rush down to your local DIY centre or garden shop today.”
Day 1 of new phase, a few thoughts:
— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) May 18, 2020
- your effort has gotten us here
- virus has not gone away
- care & caution needed
- keep following health advice
- just because it’s open doesn’t mean we need to go
- get these 3 weeks right & we can move further then
Keep safe. #Covid19
On Sunday the country reported 64 new cases of Covid-19, the lowest daily figure since mid March. Testing and contact tracing has expanded and speeded up, bolstering confidence in the ability to monitor and contain outbreaks.
However officials worry about a resurgence, with some speculating that the construction sector could become a hotbed similar to nursing homes and meat processing plants.
In Northern Ireland, authorities allowed gardening and recycling centres to reopen, a cautious approach that mirrors its southern neighbour.
Updated
The head of the European Union’s medicines agency, Guido Rasi, has said initial authorisation for remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment could be granted in coming days
“It might be that a conditional market authorisation can be issued in the coming days,” Rasi told a hearing in the EU parliament in Brussels.
The European Medicines Agency has already recommended the compassionate use of US pharmaceutical company Gilead’s remdesivir, which allows a drug to be administered to patients even before it has been fully authorised
Thailand's economy contracts for first time since 2014
Thailand’s economy shrank for the first time in six years because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered borders and devastated the tourism-reliant country.
Forty million tourists were expected to arrive in Thailand this year, drawn to its sandy beaches, nightlife and street food culture.
But the outbreak has sharply bruised the country’s cash cow, with tourist vendors reporting as early as mid-January a drop in visitors after China – Thailand’s largest source of tourists – went into lockdown.
Data released on Monday by its economic planning agency showed a nearly 40% drop in tourist arrivals in the first three months of 2020, compared with the same period last year.
The decrease has translated to the economy shrinking 1.8% year-on-year in January-March.
Thailand has not seen a contraction since 2014 when it was brought to a standstill by political riots that clogged the streets of Bangkok and led to a coup two months later in May.
The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) also forecast the economy to shrink by 5-6% in 2020 - the sharpest drop since the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998.
The International Monetary Fund sets a grimmer outlook, predicting a 6.7% contraction for 2020 - which could make Thailand the worst performer among its peers in Southeast Asia.
The country entered a state of emergency in late March and has banned all international flights until the end of June.
It has more than 3,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, and more than 50 deaths.
Updated
Yemen, already pushed to the brink of famine by a five-year war, could see a “catastrophic” food security situation due to the coronavirus pandemic, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said.
The conflict between a Saudi-led coalition and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement has caused what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Some 80% of Yemen’s population are reliant on aid and millions face hunger.
Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, the FAO’s assistant director-general, told Reuters:
The health system was already under heavy stress and will now be overwhelmed if Covid-19 continues to spread and, in addition, it will affect the movement of people and the movement of goods.
That situation could be really catastrophic if all the elements of worst case scenarios come to be, but let’s hope not, and the UN are working on avoiding that.
Yemen, alongside Syria and Sudan, is one of the most vulnerable states in the Middle East in terms of food security.
Lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus are likely to impact humanitarian supply chains keeping a large part of the population fed, the UN agency said in a report on Monday.
The internationally recognised government has reported 128 Covid-19 infections with 20 deaths in areas under its control.
The Houthis, who control most large urban centres, have announced four cases with one death, both in Sanaa.
The World Health Organization said last Monday the virus was circulating undetected in Yemen, increasing the likelihood of a devastating outbreak among a malnourished population that would overwhelm a shattered health system with limited testing capacity.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will hold a video conference later on Monday with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, a statement from Macron’s office said.
The statement added that the two leaders will present a new Franco-German initiative at the end of the meeting, around 3pm GMT.
It gave no details on what the new initiative might entail, but a source close to Macron told Reuters it would touch on public health, economic recovery, green and digital transition, and industrial sovereignty.
France and Germany have struggled to present a united front in the coronavirus crisis, with France leading a push by mostly southern European countries to convince fiscally conservative countries like Germany to issue joint European debt to help them weather the economic impact.
The two countries, long the engines of EU integration, have also fared differently in dealing with the pandemic, with the number of deaths in France three times higher than in Germany, according to official figures.
Updated
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by coverage of the pandemic, try our list of non-coronavirus articles that our readers spent the most time with over the weekend.
India began evacuating thousands of villagers and halted port operations ahead of a cyclone expected to hit its east coast this week, piling pressure on emergency services grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.
The cyclone, expected to make landfall on Wednesday, comes as India eases the world’s longest lockdown, imposed in April against the virus, which has infected more than 96,169 people and killed 3,029.
The states of Odisha and West Bengal sent disaster management teams to move families from homes of mud and thatch to places of shelter from the severe cyclonic storm, Amphan, which is expected to gain strength in the next 12 hours.
“We have to evacuate people from low-lying areas, and protect them from the coronavirus too,” said a senior official of India’s home ministry who sought anonymity. “It’s not an easy task.”
The cyclone season usually runs from April to December, with severe storms forcing the evacuations of tens of thousands and causing widespread death and damage to crops and property, both in India and neighbouring Bangladesh.
Authorities at the port of Paradip in Odisha ordered ships to move out to sea to avoid damage as the cyclone formed over the Bay of Bengal.
The prime minister, Narendra Modi, is set to hold a meeting in New Delhi to plan how to mitigate damage and injuries.
“The extremely severe cyclonic storm ‘Amphan’...is likely to gain more strength and intensify further into a super cyclonic storm in the next 12 hours,” weather officials said in a statement, forecasting heavy rain in eastern and southern areas.
New virus cases in Russia under 9,000 for first time since 1 May
Russia said under 9,000 new coronavirus cases had been recorded for the first time since early May as anti-virus restrictions ease and officials say the situation is stabilising.
Health officials reported 8,926 new infections in the last 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to 290,678, the second-highest in the world after the United States.
It was the lowest number of new virus cases since 1 May, when Russia announced 7,933 cases.
Russia’s consumer health watchdog chief, Anna Popova, said this weekend that the growth in new cases was slowing and the country has “moved towards the level of stability that we’ve all been waiting for”.
Russia began easing nationwide lockdown restrictions last week and announced the national football league would restart in late June.
Health officials also announced 91 new deaths, down from Saturday’s figure of 119 that was the highest daily toll yet.
Russia’s total fatalities now stand at 2,722, a rate considerably lower than in many other countries hit hard by the pandemic.
Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low official mortality rate, accusing authorities of under-reporting in order to play down the scale of the crisis.
Russian health officials say one of the reasons the count is lower is that only deaths directly caused by the virus are being included.
The deputy prime minister, Tatiana Golikova, over the weekend denied manipulation of numbers, saying hospitals had a financial interest in identifying infections because they are allocated more money to treat coronavirus patients.
Authorities also say that since the virus came later to Russia, there was more time to prepare hospital beds and launch wide-scale testing to slow the spread.
Updated
China says it is premature to immediately begin a Covid-19 investigation
China’s foreign ministry has said it is premature to immediately launch an investigation into the origins and spread of the coronavirus that has killed more than 300,000 people globally.
Spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters during a daily briefing that the vast majority of countries in the world believe the pandemic is not yet over.
The ministry said in a separate statement that president Xi Jinping will give a video speech for the opening ceremony of the World Health Assembly later on Monday.
A draft resolution pushed by the European Union and Australia calling for an independent review into the origins and spread of the coronavirus has support from 116 nations at the assembly, almost enough for it to pass.
Updated
Anatole Bandu, a country representative for HelpAge in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has written this moving piece about the people in Kinshasa have no money, no soap, no water – and when they are struggling to breathe, no ventilators.
We’re used to emergencies and people dying in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whether it’s a result of the long-running conflict or Ebola, cholera and malaria. But coronavirus has knocked us for six, because it has affected people we are very close to.
I’ve been working in development for decades, but I have to admit I have shed tears these past few weeks.
We started getting calls as soon as the lockdown began. Many of the older people we support have chronic diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, and without public transport were unable to get their medicines. They have no money for taxis. So we have been delivering medicines to people’s doors.
One couple in Kinshasa’s Gombe commune both suffered from hypertension. They had been trying to access their medicine for a while before they called us. When we delivered it, the husband was very short of breath. We called an emergency response team, who tested him for Covid-19.
It took a week for the results to come back and he was taken to hospital, where he died two days later. The hospital had no ventilators and very few health workers. Many had left, too scared to work without PPE.
His wife also became very ill. Unsurprisingly, when I last delivered her medicine she was very depressed, frightened and confused. She was struggling to speak and just looked up at the sky, muttering she was offering her life up to God as she had no idea what tomorrow would bring. She died last week in hospital, unable to breathe. There was no ventilator.
The Spanish cabinet is due to approve a programme to grant a basic income to the poorest to help them weather the economic fallout from the coronavirus epidemic, social security minister, José Luis Escrivá, has said.
In an interview with RNE radio station, Escrivá said ministers would likely approve the programme during the weekly cabinet meeting scheduled on 26 May.
He said as many as one million families would receive the new benefit, which would cost the government between €3 - 3.5bn per year.
Brazilian journalist Caio Barretto Briso has this report from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where a recent police raid killed 13 people.
Maria Diva do Nascimento was worried as she set off for her job at one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest hospitals wearing a face mask she hoped would keep her alive.
It had been two days since she had heard from her son Allyson, a 20-year-old drug trafficker whose job made social isolation impossible.
Nascimento knew the risks of Covid-19 well: four days earlier it had killed a friend and fellow security guard at the hospital. More than half of her co-workers had been infected.
But when the 42-year-old reached work on Friday, she received news of another, even more immediate threat to her child.
Armed police were sweeping into the Complexo do Alemão, the vast favela where Allyson worked for Brazil’s oldest drug faction, the Red Command. Helicopters soared overhead.
“Where are you???” Allyson’s panicked mother asked him on WhatsApp at 6.39am. “I’m on my way home,” he answered. But that was the last message he sent her.
By lunchtime, Nascimento would learn her son was dead – one of more than 2,000 mostly young Brazilians gunned down by Rio police since the start of last year.
“I brought him into this world,” she said on Saturday, crying as she prepared to say farewell. “No one had the right to take him away.”
Police operations and body bags are nothing new to Rio, where state police killed a record 1,810 people last year, nearly five a day.
But with the city now in partial shutdown because of Covid-19, and citizens under orders to stay indoors, favela residents are voicing outrage that the police’s terrifying incursions into their communities have not been halted.
A draft resolution pushed by the European Union and Australia calling for an independent review into the origins and spread of the coronavirus has support from 116 nations at the World Health Assembly, almost enough for it to pass, a document showed.
The resolution on Covid-19 will be put forward on Tuesday if it gains backing from two-thirds of the 194 members of the assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization.
China had strongly opposed Australia’s call last month for an international investigation into the pandemic.
Names on a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Monday showed support from 116 members was locked in, although Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, said negotiations were ongoing and she did not want to pre-empt the outcome.
The resolution was “an important part of the conversation we started, and I am very grateful to the efforts of those in the European Union and those many drafters who have been part of the negotiations for the past few weeks,” she told reporters.
The resolution included a call for “an examination of the zoonotic origins of the coronavirus”, she added.
Australia - which has reported 99 deaths from the coronavirus - says it wants to prevent a repeat of the pandemic, and is not looking to cast blame.
“I hope that China will participate,” Australian trade minister Simon Birmingham, said on Monday, as he welcomed building support for an inquiry.
Among the co-sponsors of the resolution are India, Japan, South Korea, the African group of 47 member nations, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Britain and Canada.
The resolution calls for “scientific and collaborative field missions” to trace the path of transmission, saying this will reduce the risk of similar events.
It also says a review should start at the “earliest appropriate moment”. Some countries still suffering high daily death tolls from Covid-19 have said it is too soon for an investigation.
Taiwan blocked from WHO meeting following Chinese pressure
Despite strong efforts, Taiwan did not get invited to this week’s meeting of a key World Health Organization body due to Chinese pressure, its foreign minister has said, adding they had agreed to put the issue off until later this year.
Non-WHO member Taiwan had been lobbying to take part in the World Health Assembly, which opens later on Monday.
Taiwan has said it wanted to share with the world its successful experience at fighting the coronavirus, having only reported 440 cases and seven deaths thanks to early detection and prevention work.
But China, which considers democratically-ruled Taiwan its own with no right to attend international bodies as a sovereign state, strongly objected to Taiwan taking part in the assembly unless it accepted it was part of China, something the Taipei government refused to do.
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told reporters:
Despite all our efforts and an unprecedented level of international support, Taiwan has not received an invitation to take part.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses deep regret and strong dissatisfaction that the World Health Organization Secretariat has yielded to pressure from the Chinese government and continues to disregard the right to health of the 23 million people of Taiwan.
Both the WHO and China say Taiwan has been provided with the help and information it needs during the pandemic, which Taiwan has strongly disputed.
The United States has repeatedly clashed with China over its refusal to allow Taiwan full access to the body, helping to further fuel tension between Washington and Beijing.
Taiwan attended the assembly as an observer from 2009-2016 but China blocked further participation after the election of Taiwan president, Tsai Ing-wen, who China views as a separatist, an accusation she rejects.
Wu said that Taiwan had agreed the issue of its participation would be put off until later in the year so the shorted assembly can focus on the coronavirus.
Understandably, countries want to use the limited time available to concentrate on ways of containing the pandemic.
For this reason, like-minded nations and diplomatic allies have suggested that the proposal be taken up later this year when meetings will be conducted normally, to make sure there will be full and open discussion.
After careful deliberation, we have accepted the suggestion from our allies and like-minded nations to wait until the resumed session before further promoting our bid.
Hungary’s government will submit a proposal to parliament on 26 May to end its special coronavirus emergency powers, hirtv.hu quoted prime minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff as saying late on Sunday.
Gergely Gulyas said parliament would take a few days to pass the bill, which will end the much-criticised emergency powers by early June.
No end date was set when parliament gave the government permission to rule by decree in matters related to the coronavirus, leading to international criticism and accusations of an autocratic power-grab.
The chief executive of Ryanair has accused the UK government of mismanaging the Covid-19 crisis, as the airline halved its passenger forecast for this year.
Michael O’Leary described the UK’s planned introduction of a 14-day quarantine period for travellers arriving from abroad as “idiotic and unimplementable”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is the same government that has … mismanaged the crisis for many weeks.”
He said the UK was “making this stuff up as they go along”, referring to its transport policy. O’Leary added that face masks were essential for people travelling on mass transport.
Ryanair said it had one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry with cash of €4.1bn (£3.7bn), after recently raising £600m under the UK’s Covid corporate financing facility, which was set up by the Treasury and the Bank of England to help large businesses weather the crisis.
O’Leary spoke as the airline, Europe’s largest, published a €1bn profit for the year to 31 March, up from €885m the previous year.
It said the pandemic had cost it €40m in lost profits, after travel restrictions in Europe forced it to ground almost its entire fleet.
The Irish carrier forecast a loss of more than €200m for the first quarter, followed by a smaller loss in the second quarter. It expects to carry fewer than 80 million passengers this year, almost half its original 154 million target.
Updated
Here is a quick summary of the coronavirus situation across the globe:
Restaurants and churches will reopen in Italy on Monday as part of a fresh wave of lockdown easing in Europe, but rising coronavirus death tolls in Brazil, South Africa and other parts of the world showed the worst is still to come in many countries.
The relaxation of curbs in some places comes as governments around the world struggle to repair the vast economic damage unleashed by the pandemic, with Japan the latest to slump into a recession and the Fed warning of a severe US downturn as the global infection count topped 4.7 million.
But the World Health Organization has warned that reopening too quickly without a vaccine could trigger a second devastating wave of infections, and the body will host a virtual global health assembly this week to help chart a course out of the crisis.
Once the worst-hit country in the world, Italy is now taking its latest step in a cautious, gradual return to normality, allowing businesses and churches to reopen after a two-month lockdown.
“I share the joy of those communities who can finally reunite as liturgical assemblies, a sign of hope for all society,” Pope Francis said on Sunday during his live-streamed prayer, with Saint Peter’s Basilica also throwing its door open to visitors.
Businesses including restaurants, bars, cafes, hairdressers, and stores will be allowed to re-open on Monday. Gyms, pools, cinemas and theatres are allowed to open on 25 May.
Spain is also set to further ease its lockdown measures, while Germany has already taken several steps towards a reopening, including the resumption of its top football league - but with empty stadiums.
There was other welcome relief for Europeans on the weekend too, with people enjoying beaches in France, Greece and Italy, and Britons going to parks to bask in the sun.
Deaths in Brazil have risen sharply in recent days, and with more than 241,000 infections reached over the weekend, South America’s largest country now has the fourth-highest caseload in the world.
But president Jair Bolsonaro has been a staunch opponent of lockdowns, claiming they have unnecessarily hurt the Brazilian economy, but experts and regional leaders have warned that the healthcare infrastructure could collapse.
The far-right leader alongside several ministers greeted hundreds of his supporters in the capital Brasilia on Sunday in defiance of social distancing measures, telling the crowd that the virus restrictions were too much.
Latin America and the Caribbean have recorded more than half a million infections, with almost half of them from Brazil, and there is growing alarm about the impact of the virus on the least privileged in the region.
There was also grim data in Africa, where the number of infections rose rapidly.
South Africa on Sunday reported 1,160 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily number since the first case was recorded in March, taking the total to 15,515 - the highest on the continent.
After more than 50 years fighting for civil rights, the Rev Jesse Jackson is now watching coronavirus ravage African American communities. But he has a warning for the rich and powerful.
Our military cannot defeat this germ. Having the biggest banks, having the biggest military has no meaning in this kind of germ warfare.
The frontline is not soldiers; the frontline is doctors and nurses. The planes are grounded, the bombs are irrelevant.
It turns out that pride precedes a fall. Sometimes people have to learn that we don’t control everything.
Despite lockdown and Parkinson’s disease, Jackson is still working with gusto at the Rainbow Push Coalition, a progressive organisation he founded in 1996.
It has convened thousands of black doctors and lawyers and released a manifesto suggesting that high-risk groups, including African Americans, be prioritised for coronavirus testing.
Jackson has twice written to Donald Trump urging testing for the 2.2 million people currently in prison.
At a time when most Americans are looking inward, he has also called for massive intervention in Africa, a particularly vulnerable continent that is close to his heart.
Japan’s beloved Mount Fuji will be closed during this year’s summer climbing season to prevent the spread of Covid-19, officials have said.
Shizuoka prefecture, home to the country’s tallest mountain, announced they were closing three of the four major routes to the mountain’s peak.
“The routes open in summer but this year we will keep them closed from July 10 to September 10,” the only climbing season for Mount Fuji, a Shizuoka prefecture official told AFP.
“We’re taking this measure so as not to spread the coronavirus,” the official said.
It will be the first time the trails of the 3,776-metre (12,388 ft) volcanic mountain are closed since at least 1960 when the prefecture began managing the routes, he added.
The decision comes after nearby Yamanashi prefecture said it will close the Yoshida trail, the most popular hiking path among the four.
The mountain huts along the four routes will remain closed as well.
The mountain, a UNESCO world cultural heritage site, welcomed about 236,000 climbers last year, according to the Mount Fuji official website.
Updated
Thanks Helen, this is Jessica Murray taking charge of the ship (blog) for the next few hours.
As always, I’d love to hear your suggestions and experiences, so please do get in touch if you would like to:
- Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
- Twitter: @journojess_
I’ll try to respond to as many as I can, and I’ll certainly read them all.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. Thanks as always for following along. My colleague Jessica Murray will be steering the good ship blog for the next few hours.
Summary
Here are the latest developments from the last few hours:
- Global infections pass 4.7 million. There are 4,716,513 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide. At least 315,187 people have died over the course of the pandemic The number of deaths in the US is approaching 90,000, with 89,562 confirmed fatalities and 1,486,757 infections, according to the Johns Hopkins university tracker.
- US Federal Reserve Chair says unemployment could reach 25%. US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Sunday that US unemployment could peak at 25%, but expressed optimism that the economy could begin to recover from a devastating recession in the second half of the year, assuming the coronavirus doesn’t erupt in a second wave.
- Japan falls into recession. Japan dived into its first recession since 2015, according to official data on Monday, with the world’s third-largest economy contracting by 0.9% in the first quarter as it wrestled with the fallout from the coronavirus. The cabinet office reported a drop of 3.4% annual pace in seasonally adjusted real gross domestic product, or GDP, the total value of a nation’s goods and services, for the January-March period, compared with the previous quarter.
- South Africa reports highest daily increase in cases. South Africa on Sunday reported 1,160 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily number since the first case was recorded in March “As of today, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 15,515, with 1,160 new cases identified in the last 24 hour cycle of testing,” the health ministry said in a statement. The Western Cape province, popular with tourists, accounted for nearly 60% of the national numbers.
- Mayor of São Paulo, Brazil, says hospitals ‘near collapse’. In Brazil, the BBC has reported that the mayor of São Paulo, the country’s largest city, has warned that hospitals have reached 90% capacity and are “near collapse”; they could run out of space in two weeks’ time, he said. Brazil has the fourth-highest number of infections worldwide, with 241,080, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. It has recorded 16,118 deaths. Meanwhile, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro greeted hundreds of supporters and joined some in a series of push-ups who gathered before the presidential offices Sunday.
- Death tolls fall in UK, Spain and Italy. In a possible glimmer of hope, Sunday saw lower death tolls reported in the UK, Spain and Italy. The UK’s daily coronavirus death toll was the lowest since lockdown began, with 170 deaths recorded. However, the Sunday and Monday figures tend to be lower than other days because of weekend testing rates. Meanwhile, Spain recorded its lowest single-day death toll in two months. Italy on Sunday recorded its lowest daily toll, 145, since lockdown was declared. There were 153 deaths registered during the previous 24 hour period.
- Move Rohingya on Bangladesh island to refugee camps, says UN chief. Hundreds of Rohingya rescued by Bangladesh and sent to a flood-prone island after being stranded at sea for weeks should be moved to existing refugee camps, the UN secretary general has said.
- WHO committee to discuss Taiwan exclusion. The World Health Organization (WHO) is to raise the question of Taiwan’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly, which opens virtually on Monday, before one of its committees. Diplomatic allies of Taiwan, including Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay, have formally requested to invite Taiwan to the meeting as an observer. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has also said publicly he wants Taiwan in the room.
- India extends lockdown by another two weeks. India has extended its lockdown to 31 May, but with some easing of restrictions. States are being given greater power to reopen markets and standalone stores, bus and other public transport travel being allowed between and within states. However, shopping malls, air travel, cinemas, schools and places of worship will remain closed. Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and other key regions are still fighting to control the rising curve of coronavirus infections. The health ministry on Sunday reported a record jump of nearly 5,000 cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the number of confirmed cases to 90,927, with 2,872 deaths.
Updated
Why the UK fell behind European peers on emergency funding
Across Europe, government-backed business loan schemes in Germany, France and Switzerland have been quicker to distribute emergency funding during the coronavirus outbreak than those in the UK, where teething problems put the British programme weeks behind mainland rivals.
The UK’s coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS), which was initially fraught with controversy over demands for personal guarantees, took a month to distribute 18,595 loans worth £3.1bn.
But the pace of approvals jumped following the introduction of two additional programmes, including the bounce-back loan scheme that handed £2bn to 69,000 Britain’s smallest businesses within the first 24 hours of its launch on 4 May. Seven weeks in, the UK is finally catching up, having handed almost £15bn to more than 304,000 firms
But why did the UK struggle to keep up with its European peers in the first place? Experts say the answer may be linked to borrowing trends, the nature of Britain’s financial system, and the UK’s relationship with government spending.
Global report: US unemployment could hit 25%, warns Fed chairman, as Japan enters recession
Unemployment in the United States could peak at 25% as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the chair of the Federal Reserve, amid warnings the June quarter economic figures will be “very, very bad”. The bleak prediction came as Japan slid into its first recession in five years, with forecasts that worse was to come.
In a sober assessment of the economic impact of coronavirus in the US, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, estimated GDP contraction in the June quarter could be “easily be in the twenties or thirties”, as fallout from the global outbreak worsened.
“So the data we’ll see for this quarter, which ends in June, will be very, very bad,” he said.
Asked about estimates of unemployment reaching 20-25%, Powell said: “I think there’re a range of perspectives. But those numbers sound about right for what the peak may be.”
As the bad news broke in the US, Japan marked two quarters of negative GDP growth, entering into a recession for the first time since 2015. The economy shrank in 0.9% to the end of March, off the back of a 1.9% drop at the end of 2019.
Some analysts predicted more grim news ahead, with the full impact of the pandemic still to be measured.
South Korean football team apologises for using sex dolls to fill stands
A professional football team in South Korea has apologised after “mannequins” it used as substitute fans during a match at the weekend turned out to be sex dolls.
The K-League club FC Seoul said the dolls, which had been dotted around stands currently off-limits to supporters due to the coronavirus outbreak, had been ordered inadvertently after a “misunderstanding” with the supplier.
Earlier this month the K-League became the first major football league to hold matches since the start of the pandemic, with the season’s opening game watched by a worldwide audience of fans starved of live football.
But FC Seoul’s attempt to bring a touch of realism to Sunday’s match against Gwangju FC backfired after social media users noticed that the mannequins looked more like sex dolls.
UK front pages: Monday, 18 May
GUARDIAN: Ministers under fire amid ‘chaos’ over contact tracing #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/2VN8vAaDUQ
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 17, 2020
INDEPENDENT DIGITAL: Hospitals refuse requests for caesarean births #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/WpHu5RF0TU
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 17, 2020
TELEGRAPH: Risk of virus spreading in schools is ‘extremely low’ #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/QDkze3Yvmd
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 17, 2020
TIMES: Tough quarantine plan scuppers holiday hopes #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/pDQUszZ2cs
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 17, 2020
FT: Powell warns that US recovery could take until the end of 2021 #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/cMIPyQ9lh6
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 17, 2020
China facing pressure over Covid-19 and Taiwan at World Health Assembly
Beijing is expected to face new levels of pressure at the World Health Assembly this week as dozens of nations push for an independent investigation into the coronavirus outbreak and the United States mounts a campaign over Taiwan’s status.
More than 120 countries have backed a call for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 while a US-led coalition has been aggressively lobbying countries to support Taiwan’s bid to attend as an observer.
China has blocked Taiwan, which Beijing claims is part of China, from attending the meeting since 2016 as relations between Beijing and Taipei worsened following the election of Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party.
‘Cleaner and greener’: Covid-19 prompts world’s cities to free public space of cars
The mayor of Athens has said he will “liberate” public space from cars. His counterpart in Paris says it is out of the question for the city to return to pre-coronavirus traffic and pollution levels. In Berlin, 14 miles (22 km) of new bike lanes have appeared almost overnight.
Around the world, from Dublin to Sydney, cities are being radically reshaped in favour of cyclists and pedestrians as empty streets give authorities the opportunity to implement and accelerate large-scale projects.
Cycling advocates and environmental activists are urging governments to ensure the revival is long-term and lasts beyond the pandemic, for fear of a pushback by the car lobby.
World Health Assembly: what is it, and what is the coronavirus inquiry proposal?
The World Health Assembly is the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, attended by representatives of the United Nation’s 194 member states.
The two-day 2020 assembly will be held virtually – it usually happens in Geneva – because of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis around the world.
This year’s assembly, the 73rd WHA, will be dedicated almost entirely to strengthening global coordination against the Covid-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 4.7 million people and killed 315,000.
This will be a critical assembly: the annual meeting comes at a time when the WHO has attracted unprecedented global attention for its coordination and advisory role during the pandemic.
Influential states, most notably the US, have criticised the WHO for being slow to react, and alleged it has been biased towards China. The US has withheld funding from the WHO in response to its perceived Covid-19 failings.
Summary
- Global infections pass 4.7 millionThere are 4,716,513 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide. At least 315,187 people have died over the course of the pandemic so far. The number of deaths in the US is approaching 90,000, with 89,562 confirmed fatalities so far and 1,486,757 infections.
- US Federal Reserve Chair says unemployment could reach 25%. US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Sunday that US unemployment could hit 25%, but expressed optimism Sunday that the economy can begin to recover from a devastating recession in the second half of the year, assuming the coronavirus doesn’t erupt in a second wave.
- Japan’s economic growth falls into recession in the first quarter. Japan dived into its first recession since 2015, according to official data Monday, with the world’s third-largest economy contracting by 0.9% in the first quarter as it wrestles with the fallout from the coronavirus.The Cabinet Office reported Monday a drop of 3.4% annual pace in seasonally adjusted real gross domestic product, or GDP, the total value of a nation’s goods and services, for the January-March period, compared to the previous quarter.
- South Africa reports highest daily increase in cases. South Africa on Sunday reported 1,160 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily number since the first case was recorded in March, AFP reports. “As of today, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 15,515, with 1,160 new cases identified in the last 24 hour cycle of testing,” said the health ministry in a statement. The Western Cape province, popular with tourists, accounted for nearly 60% of the national numbers.
- São Paulo, Brazil mayor: hospitals “near collapse”. In Brazil, the BBCreports that the mayor of São Paulo, the country’s largest city, has warned that hospitals have reached 90% capacity and are “near collapse”: they could run out of space in just two weeks’ time, he said.Brazil has the fourth-highest number of infections worldwide, with 241,080, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. It has recorded 16,118 deaths.
- Death tolls fall in UK, Spain and Italy. In a possible glimmer of hope, Sunday has seen lower death tolls reported in the UK, Spain and Italy. The UK’s daily coronavirus death toll was the lowest since lockdown began, with 170 deaths recorded. This should be taken with a pinch of salt: due to hospital reporting delays, the numbers reported on Sundays and Mondays tend to be lower than other days. Meanwhile Spain has recorded its lowest single-day death toll in two months. Italy on Sunday recorded its lowest daily toll, 145, since lockdown was declared. There were 153 deaths registered during the previous 24 hour period.
- Move Rohingya on Bangladesh island to refugee camps: UN chief. Hundreds of Rohingya rescued by Bangladesh and sent to a flood-prone island after being stranded at sea for weeks should be moved to existing refugee camps, the UN secretary general has said.The appeal by Antonio Guterres to Bangladesh’s foreign minister in a letter obtained Sunday by AFP comes as concern grows over a coronavirus outbreak in the sprawling camps near the border with Myanmar.A fourth virus case has been detected in the crowded camps, officials said Sunday.
- WHO committee to discuss Taiwan exclusion. The World Health Organization (WHO) is to raise the question of Taiwan’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA), which opens virtually on Monday, before one of its committees.
- India has extended a nearly two-month-old lockdown by another two weeks with Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and other key regions still fighting to control the rising curve of coronavirus infections. The health ministry on Sunday reported a record jump of nearly 5,000 cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the number of confirmed cases to 90,927, with 2,872 deaths.
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Nigeria seizes British plane flouting travel ban. Nigeria has seized a British plane for defying a travel ban imposed as part of measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the aviation minister said Sunday.Flair Aviation, the airline involved, was authorised to conduct humanitarian flights but was caught operating commercial flights, Hadi Sirika said on his Twitter account.
- Qatar makes masks mandatory on pain of prison. Qatar has begun enforcing the world’s toughest penalties of up to three years’ in prison for failing to wear masks in public, in a country with one of the highest coronavirus infection rates. More than 32,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the tiny Gulf country - 1.2 percent of the 2.75 million population - although just 15 people have died. Only the micro-states of San Marino and the Vaticanhave had higher per-capita infection rates, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
- Italy’s shops, restaurants and hair salons have been preparing to reopen on Monday, as the government further eases the lockdown. Businesses are being allowed to gradually go back to work as long they can enforce tight sanitary protocols and keep people at least one metre apart. Economic recovery is expected to be difficult, particularly without tourists.
- Lebanon will gradually reopen its economy beginning on Monday following a four-day shutdown imposed after a rise in coronavirus cases threatened a second wave of the outbreak. The country’s plan to ease restrictions on business was paused last week after a rise in new cases. The country of about 6 million people has recorded 911 infections and 26 deaths.
Updated
The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports from Washington with Dan Sabbagh in London:
Saudi Arabia may be forced to forego new weapons contracts and delay already-agreed weapons purchases as a financial crisis grips the kingdom, experts predict.
The expected delay of new weapons deals could have long-term political repercussions for the country under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler who has waged a bloody war with neighbouring Yemen.
Saudi Arabia is facing an unprecedented budget crunch because of the collapse of the oil markets and the global economic turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has reduced oil demand for the foreseeable future.
“I have no doubt, this is the end of an era. The era of the Persian Gulf having all this money is over,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings in Washington and 30-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, who has served as an adviser on Middle East issues to several US administrations.
Burundi to go to polls amid fears authorities playing down Covid-19
Millions of voters in Burundi will go to the polls on Wednesday to elect a new president in the first competitive election since a decade-long civil war began in 1993.
Amid concern that authorities are deliberately playing down the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic, seven candidates are seeking to replace the incumbent Pierre Nkurunziza, who is being forced to step down by opponents within the country’s ruling CNDD-FDD party.
Rights groups say the government is pressing ahead with the vote irresponsibly, and accuse the CNDD-FDD and its youth wing of crushing dissent and threatening those taking their own measures against coronavirus.
Last week Burundi expelled the World Health Organization’s expert team working on coronavirus. Campaigning politicians have held rallies attended by tens of thousands.
The nation of 11 million people has reported 27 cases of Covid-19 so far but has only carried out about 520 tests in total. Officials have cited divine protection for Burundi’s ostensibly low infection rate and urged citizens to go about their daily lives without fear.
Summer weather is enticing much of the world to emerge from coronavirus lockdowns as centres of the outbreak from New York to Italy and Spain gradually lift restrictions that have kept millions indoors for months, Reuters reports.
People are streaming back to beaches, parks and streets just as a heat wave hits southern Europe and spring-like temperatures allow Americans to shed winter coats.
Greeks flocked to the seaside on Saturday when more than 500 beaches reopened, coinciding with temperatures of 34 Celsius (93 Fahrenheit).
Umbrella poles had to be 4 meters (13 ft) apart, with canopies no closer than 1 meter as the country sought to walk the fine line between protecting people from Covid-19 while reviving the tourism sector that many depend on for their livelihoods.
White circles were painted on the lawn in Brooklyn’s Domino Park in New York City to help sunbathers and picnickers keep a safe distance. About half the people in the park appeared to be wearing some form of face covering as they congregated in small groups on a warm Saturday afternoon with police officers in masks keeping watch.
In Paris’ Bois de Boulogne, health training worker Anne Chardon was carrying disinfectant gel and a mask but said she felt a sense of freedom again for the first time after weeks of confinement.
“It’s as if we were in Sleeping Beauty’s castle, all asleep, all frozen, and suddenly there’s light and space, suddenly we can experience again the little joys of everyday, in the spaces that belong to us, and that we’re rediscovering.”
China’s levels of some air pollutants have risen back to above last year’s levels after dropping when the government imposed strict lockdown measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published on Monday.
The rebound was likely due to industrial activity, the researchers said, adding there were concerns that after months of unusually low pollution levels, a drive to kickstart economic activity was causing emissions to spike.
“There are early warning signs that China’s recovery from the Covid-19 crisis is reversing air quality gains,” the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which produced the study, said.
Average levels of some air pollutants in China dropped in February to significantly below levels for the same period in 2019, as lockdown measures shuttered factories, curbed electricity demand and slashed transport use as swathes of the population stayed home.
But average levels of some pollutants have since rebounded, and were higher in the 30 days ended 8 May compared with the same period in 2019, CREA said in its analysis of data from 1,500 air quality monitoring stations in China.
This was true of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and fine particulate matter, suggesting a rebound in industrial activity drove the trend, CREA said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 2 to 174,355, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The tally showed no further deaths due to the virus.
The reported death toll remained at 7,914.
Meanwhile football team Bayern Munich returned to action Sunday with a 2-0 win at Union Berlin as the restart of German soccer continued in empty stadiums.
Players shouts echoed off the rows of concrete terracing around Unions stadium, AP reports.
Updated
A Canadian aerobatics jet has crashed into a British Columbia neighbourhood during a flyover intended to boost morale during the Covid-19 pandemic, killing one crew member, seriously injuring another and setting a house on fire, AP reports.
Video appeared to show the crew of the Snowbirds’ plane ejecting during the crash on Sunday.
Debris was scattered across Kamloops, the neighbourhood near the airport 260 miles (418km) north-east of Vancouver. The Snowbirds are Canada’s equivalent of the US Air Force Thunderbirds or the UK’s Red Arrows.
In Australia, more than 150 Australian newsrooms have shut since January 2019 as Covid-19 deepens a media crisis.
The closure of BuzzFeed News in Australia may have grabbed the headlines last week but the digital startup is just one victim on a growing list of media casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Five editorial staff at BuzzFeed have lost their jobs, but across the country hundreds more have been stood down in an already fractured media landscape. It’s unclear how many will ever return to their posts.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s partner, everybody:
Helped dye partners hair and gave daughter a haircut with scissors I bought at supermarket for $6. Remarkably both parties still talking to me.
— Clarke Gayford (@NZClarke) May 17, 2020
More from New Zealand now, with the full report on the country passing the population milestone of 5 million people:
It was a much-anticipated milestone likely hastened by Covid-19: New Zealand has reached a population of 5 million people, after citizens and residents rushed home when borders began to close due to the coronavirus pandemic.
New Zealand grew from four to five million in 17 years, the quickest rate of growth in the country’s modern history, according to the government agency Statistics New Zealand. Migration has been the chief driver for the population of the isolated island nation, which increased by half a million people in the past six years alone.
On 18 March, the government urged the 80,000 New Zealanders overseas to return home, adding that the window to travel was closing rapidly. People who are not citizens or residents of the country - or their immediate family - are not currently permitted to enter New Zealand under Covid-19 border controls.
New Zealand braces for spike in child abuse reports as Covid-19 lockdown eases
As hundreds of thousands of children return to classrooms around New Zealand, welfare services are bracing themselves for a spike in reports of abuse and neglect after weeks of “invisible” lockdown.
The country entered lockdown on 25 March and emerged late last week. During lockdown reports of family violence to police dropped, and reports of concern to Oranga Tamariki, the country’s welfare agency for children, fell by around 40%.
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of child abuse and neglect in the OECD, and on average one infant is murdered every five weeks.
Oranga Tamariki’s chief executive, Gráinne Moss, told the Guardian that reports of harm always drop over the school holidays, because the “eyes and ears” that usually identify harm – education, social and health workers – aren’t around.
But the prolonged nature of lockdown and the added stress of job losses among already strained families was creating “a perfect storm”, Moss said, and rises in family violence overseas are likely to hold true in New Zealand too, though no local research has been conducted yet.
“Lockdown is a lot longer than the school holidays so we are right to be concerned that there is hidden, invisible harm occurring to children,” Moss said.
In the US, the Republican senator Ben Sasse’s attempt at humor during a speech for high school students has drawn strong criticism, the AP reports.
Sasse delivered the online speech to students at his former school, Fremont high in Nebraska, on Saturday. Sasse mixed some serious encouragement for students with another shot at China.
“Nobody knows exactly how we’re going to beat this thing, but you know what, we’re Americans, we’re Nebraskans, we’ve got grit and we’re going to beat this thing,” he said. “We will bring the economy back. We are going to beat the virus ... We’re going to have to have a serious reckoning with the thugs in China who let this mess spiral out of control by lying about it,” he said.
Sasse also joked about psychologists: “Ninety-five per cent of all gainfully employed psychologists – and I’m serious, there are dozens of them that are gainfully employed - their job is really just to help people forget high school ... If you’re headed to college, do not do not major in psychology. That part’s not a joke.”
Mexico on Sunday reported 49,219 cases of the coronavirus, 2,075 more than the previous day, as the country prepares to resume economic activities deemed essential.
Deaths from Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, increased by 132, to a total of 5,177. Mexico announced last week a plan to gradually resume economic activity that has been halted by the coronavirus, starting on 1 June.
On Friday, Mexico’s government said the automotive industry could exit the coronavirus lockdown before 1 June if companies had in place approved safety measures.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell told a news conference on Sunday that cases had started to stabilize over the past week in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, which has the highest level of infection in the country.
Authorities have said that the true number of cases could be up to nine times greater than the reported total because many of those infected likely did not go to the doctor, did not develop symptoms or were not properly diagnosed.
Mexico has seen a slightly higher death rate from the coronavirus than the global average so far because of the widespread presence of pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity, experts say.
The Guardian’s Tom Lutz and Jessica Glenza report:
Donald Trump has hit back at Barack Obama’s criticism of his administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, accusing the former US president of being “grossly incompetent” during his time in office.
It is rare for a former president to rebuke a successor, but Obama did so during an online speech to graduating university and high school students yesterday, although he did not name Trump in his comments.
“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge,” Obama said during an online commencement address to graduates of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on Saturday.
On Sunday, Trump said he had not seen Obama’s comments, but added: “Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent.”
In the US, a Roman Catholic priest in the Detroit area has taken aim at his parishioners in a bid to maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, using a squirt gun to shoot holy water.
Photos posted on social media by the St Ambrose Church show the Reverend Timothy Pelc shooting water into a car window as it stopped by the steps of the church. He wore a mask, face shield and rubber gloves as further precautions against spreading the coronavirus.
The photos of the priest at the church in Grosse Pointe Park were taken at Easter but have recently gone viral and have inspired memes online. One shows the 70-year-old priest amid the fires of hell directing the squirt gun at devil-like figures.
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Japan's economic growth falls into recession in the first quarter
Japan dived into its first recession since 2015, according to official data Monday, with the world’s third-largest economy contracting by 0.9% in the first quarter as it wrestles with the fallout from the coronavirus.
The Cabinet Office reported Monday a drop of 3.4% annual pace in seasonally adjusted real gross domestic product, or GDP, the total value of a nation’s goods and services, for the January-March period, compared to the previous quarter.
The annual pace gives what the rate would be when continued for a year. For just the quarter, the drop was 0.9%, AP reports. Exports dived 21.8%. Private residential investments slipped nearly 17%, and household consumption edged down 3.1%.
Analysts say things are expected to get worse, as the world’s third-largest economy undergoes its biggest challenge since the second world war.
Japan is in a technical recession, defined as two quarters straight of contraction, as its economy contracted 1.9% in October-December. It remained flat July-September, and eked out 0.5% growth for April-June, according to the latest numbers.
Japan is extremely vulnerable to the economic damage from the ongoing outbreak. It is dependent on trade with both China and theUS, the country where the pandemic began and the country where it has hit hardest. The manufacturers that are pillars of Japan’s economy, such as Toyota Motor Corp, have reported dismal financial results results.
Travel, tourism and trade with those countries and others have faded.
New Zealand’s population has grown to 5 million people as a result of the lockdown, with citizens returning home from living overseas, AAP reports.
New Zealand grew from four to five million in 17 years, the quickest rate of growth in the country’s modern history.
On Monday, Stats NZ released its quarterly estimate resident population figures which showed New Zealand notching the major milestone. As of 31 March, the South Pacific nation has 5,002,100 residents. In all likelihood, New Zealand has reached the figure because of the pandemic.
“COVID-19 has caused some unusual and unprecedented travel patterns,” Stats NZ senior demographer Kim Dunstan told AAP.
“We’ve had people that have been in New Zealand prolong their stay which has given some boost to migration.
“We’ve also had more New Zealand citizens returning from living overseas in recent months.
“And we’ve also had fewer citizens departing New Zealand to live overseas.
“The combined impact has seen an upswing in migration which has helped New Zealand reach that five million milestone.”
China reported seven new coronavirus cases for 17 May, up from five a day earlier, the country’s health authority said on Monday.
Of the new cases, four were imported from the Inner Mongolia province.
The country also reported 18 new asymptomatic cases on 17 May, versus 12 the day before.
Apple Inc will this week reopen more than 25 of its branded stores in the United States, a company spokesman said on Sunday, continuing a gradual process that has unlocked doors at nearly a fifth of its worldwide retail outlets, Reuters reports.
The iPhone maker in March shut all its stores outside of Greater China in response to the spread of the coronavirus. It started shutting its China stores in January and reopened them by mid-March.
“Our commitment is to reopen our stores when we are confident the environment is safe,” Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s head of retail, wrote on Sunday in a note on the company’s website.
The stores will impose social-distancing rules, limit occupancy and some will offer only curbside or storefront service, she said.
Last week, Apple reopened its first five stores in the United States, requiring customers and employees to undergo temperature checks and wear masks before entering the premises.
Apple has 510 stores worldwide and 271 in the United States. The website 9to5Mac reported that the company would reopen 10 of its stores in Italy beginning on Tuesday.
US Federal Reserve Chair says unemployment could reach 25%
US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Sunday that US unemployment could hit 25%, but expressed optimism Sunday that the economy can begin to recover from a devastating recession in the second half of the year, assuming the coronavirus doesn’t erupt in a second wave.
He suggested that a full recovery won’t likely be possible before the arrival of a vaccine.
In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,”, Powell played down comparisons to the Depression. While acknowledging that unemployment could peak near the Depression high of 25%, he noted that US banks are far healthier now and that the Fed and other central banks are much more able and willing to intervene to bolster economies than they were in the 1930s.
Powell pointed out that the downturn wasn’t a result of deep-seated financial instabilities, like the housing meltdown and the excessive risk-taking among banks that ignited the Great Recession. Rather, it resulted from an external event a pandemic that required a shutdown of the economy. That may mean, he said, that “we can get back to a healthy economy fairly quickly.”
“When the virus outbreak is behind us, the economy should be able to recover substantially,” says Fed Chairman Jerome Powell because of the strength of economy and financial system before coronavirus. https://t.co/nHKWIFeqKD pic.twitter.com/VtHotdWCbp
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 17, 2020
In the meantime, though, American workers are enduring their worst crisis in decades. More than 36 million people have applied for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus first forced businesses to close down and shrink their workforces. The unemployment rate, at 14.7%, is the highest since the Great Depression, and is widely expected to go much higher.
São Paulo, Brazil mayor: hospitals "near collapse"
In Brazil, the BBC reports that the mayor of São Paulo, the country’s largest city, has warned that hospitals have reached 90% capacity and are “near collapse”: they could run out of space in just two weeks’ time, he said.
Brazil has the fourth-highest number of infections worldwide, with 241,080, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. It has recorded 16,118 deaths.
Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro greeted hundreds of supporters and joined some in a series of push-ups who gathered before the presidential offices Sunday to back his open-the-economy drive even as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the country, AP reports.
Demonstrators in Brasilia and Sao Paulo defied local stay-at-home orders to join the pro-Bolsonaro rallies at a time when the president is facing increasing pressure over his handling of the pandemic.
“We hope to be free of this question soon, for the good of all of us, Bolsonaro told the crowd in Brasilia. Brazil will come back stronger.”
Bolsonaro later invited a group of about 20 paratroopers, who were taking part in the protest, to join him on the stoop of the presidential office. The men, wearing camouflage trousers, black Bolsonaro t-shirts and red berets, swore allegiance to the president and his family, stretching their right arms, before some joined him in a series of push-ups.
Supporters have gathered daily at the presidential residence, with larger crowds turning out on weekends.
India’s lockdown extension also brings what the Times of India calls “the most significant easing of the national lockdown yet,” with states being given greater power to reopen markets and standalone stores, bus and other public transport travel being allowed between and within states.
States will colour-code zones according to the level of infection, and allow greater or lesser economic activity depending on this.
NDTV explains the easing as follows:
The practice of work from home should be followed to the extent possible, the Centre said. At workplaces, staggering of work hours should be adopted. There should be provision for thermal scanning, hand wash and sanitizers and common areas and rules of social distancing should be maintained.
The government has also not allowed any re-opening of areas which draw a large number of people -- shopping malls and multiplexes, gymnasiums, swimming pools, entertainment parks, theatres, bars and auditoriums, assembly halls, hotels, restaurants and other hospitality services.
Move Rohingya on Bangladesh island to refugee camps: UN chief
Hundreds of Rohingya rescued by Bangladesh and sent to a flood-prone island after being stranded at sea for weeks should be moved to existing refugee camps, the UN secretary general has said.
The appeal by Antonio Guterres to Bangladesh’s foreign minister in a letter obtained Sunday by AFP comes as concern grows over a coronavirus outbreak in the sprawling camps near the border with Myanmar.
A fourth virus case has been detected in the crowded camps, officials said Sunday.
The Rohingya on Bhashan Char island - a silty strip of land prone to violent and potentially deadly monsoon storms - were rescued in early May after floating adrift in the Bay of Bengal.
Dhaka has said they were not initially sent on to the camps in the southeast as authorities were afraid they might have coronavirus.
Guterres said the 308 refugees should be moved to the camps after their time in quarantine is completed.
A bit of background on Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO:
Taiwan - officially the Republic of China - was a founding member of the WHO when the global health body was created in 1948.
But it was expelled in 1972 a year after losing the “China” seat at the United Nations to the People’s Republic of China.
Between 2009 and 2016 Beijing allowed Taiwan to attend the WHA as an observer under the name “Chinese Taipei”.
It lost that status with the election in Taiwan of President Tsai Ing-wen who views the island as a de facto independent nation and does not subscribe to Beijing’s idea that it belongs to a “one China”.
WHO committee to discuss Taiwan exclusion
The World Health Organization (WHO) is to raise the question of Taiwan’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA), which opens virtually on Monday, before one of its committees, AFP reports.
Taiwan is currently excluded from the WHO but in the midst of escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing around the novel coronavirus, the administration of US President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the island’s participation at the WHA in spite of opposition from China.
Many heads of state, government and ministers are expected to attend the two-day virtual meeting on the pandemic which the WHO hopes will take a physical form later in the year.
Asked repeatedly on the subject at a news conference, the WHO said that it only has the role of secretariat of the assembly and that only member states can decide to invite Taiwan or not.
In a document relating to the WHA agenda and dated 15 May, the head of the WHO said that the proposal was being “submitted to the General Committee for its consideration”.
Due to the pandemic this ad-hoc committee will not be able to sit on Monday, delaying any ruling. It will have to decide on the issue during the physical meeting that the WHO hopes to organise at the end of the year.
Nothing, however, prevents a country calling on Monday for a vote on the presence of Taiwan.
Updated
The coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating the existing vulnerabilities of the world’s refugees and internally displaced people, according to a report.
Research from the University of Birmingham has revealed that many undocumented migrants were anxious about seeking medical help – fearful of being reported to immigration authorities and being deported – and were therefore suffering in silence.
The report, Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on Forced Migrant Survivors of Sexual and Gender-based Violence, due to be published on Monday, took witness testimonies from more than 90 survivors and organisations in five countries, including the UK.
It found that victims were finding themselves locked in with perpetrators, with no access to shelters or advice organisations, and as a result were having to suffer abuse.
India extends lockdown
In case you missed it: India has extended a nearly two-month-old lockdown by another two weeks with Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and some other key regions still battling to control the rising curve of coronavirus infections, reports the Associated Press.
The government-run National Disaster Management authority said in a statement on Sunday that fresh guidelines will be issued that keep in view the need to open up economic activity.
Indian media reports said that travel by air, rail and metro will remain shut down until the end of May. Schools, hotels, restaurants, bars, shopping malls, cinemas and places of worship will also be closed nationally.
South Africa reports highest daily increase in cases
South Africa on Sunday reported 1,160 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily number since the first case was recorded in March, AFP reports.
“As of today, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 15,515, with 1,160 new cases identified in the last 24 hour cycle of testing,” said the health ministry in a statement.
The Western Cape province, popular with tourists, accounted for nearly 60% of the national numbers. The numbers of deaths rose by three to 263 from Saturday.
Africa’s most industrialised economy has the highest numbers of infections in Africa, followed by Egypt, which has so far recorded 11,719 Covid-19 cases, including 612 deaths.
The country has been under lockdown since March 27 and has embarked on an aggressive mass testing strategy with 460,873 tested so far.
But some health experts are beginning to see the limits of the country’s lauded mass screening strategy, with results taking up to two weeks to come through.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
We welcome questions, comments, tips and news from your part of the world – get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
South Africa has recorded its highest daily increase in cases, with 1,160 new cases confirmed. Africa’s most industrialised economy has the highest numbers of infections in Africa, followed by Egypt, which has so far recorded 11,719 Covid-19 cases, including 612 deaths.
The country has been under lockdown since March 27 and has embarked on an aggressive mass testing strategy with 460,873 tested so far.
But some health experts are beginning to see the limits of the country’s lauded mass screening strategy, with results taking up to two weeks to come through.
- Global infections pass 4.7 million. There are 4,702,603 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide. At least 314,476 people have died over the course of the pandemic so far.
- South Africa reports highest daily increase in cases. South Africa on Sunday reported 1,160 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily number since the first case was recorded in March, AFP reports. “As of today, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 15,515, with 1,160 new cases identified in the last 24 hour cycle of testing,” said the health ministry in a statement. The Western Cape province, popular with tourists, accounted for nearly 60% of the national numbers.
- Death tolls fall in UK, Spain and Italy. In a possible glimmer of hope, Sunday has seen lower death tolls reported in the UK, Spain and Italy. The UK’s daily coronavirus death toll was the lowest since lockdown began, with 170 deaths recorded. This should be taken with a pinch of salt: due to hospital reporting delays, the numbers reported on Sundays and Mondays tend to be lower than other days. Meanwhile Spain has recorded its lowest single-day death toll in two months. Italy on Sunday recorded its lowest daily toll, 145, since lockdown was declared. There were 153 deaths registered during the previous 24 hour period.
- India has extended a nearly two-month-old lockdown by another two weeks with Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and other key regions still fighting to control the rising curve of coronavirus infections. The health ministry on Sunday reported a record jump of nearly 5,000 cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the number of confirmed cases to 90,927, with 2,872 deaths.
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Nigeria seizes British plane flouting travel ban. Nigeria has seized a British plane for defying a travel ban imposed as part of measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the aviation minister said Sunday.Flair Aviation, the airline involved, was authorised to conduct humanitarian flights but was caught operating commercial flights, Hadi Sirika said on his Twitter account.
- Qatar makes masks mandatory on pain of prison. Qatar has begun enforcing the world’s toughest penalties of up to three years’ in prison for failing to wear masks in public, in a country with one of the highest coronavirus infection rates. More than 32,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the tiny Gulf country - 1.2 percent of the 2.75 million population - although just 15 people have died. Only the micro-states of San Marino and the Vatican have had higher per-capita infection rates, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
- Italy’s shops, restaurants and hair salons have been preparing to reopen on Monday, as the government further eases the lockdown. Businesses are being allowed to gradually go back to work as long they can enforce tight sanitary protocols and keep people at least one metre apart. Economic recovery is expected to be difficult, particularly without tourists.
- Lebanon will gradually reopen its economy beginning on Monday following a four-day shutdown imposed after a rise in coronavirus cases threatened a second wave of the outbreak. The country’s plan to ease restrictions on business was paused last week after a rise in new cases. The country of about 6 million people has recorded 911 infections and 26 deaths.
- Benin is staging local elections, minus key opposition parties, with authorities pushing ahead despite the coronavirus. The West African nation of 11 million this week lifted a series of restrictions aimed at halting the spread of the virus, which has caused 339 confirmed infections and two deaths in the country.
- Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy, with the country announcing nearly 15,000 new infections on Saturday. This takes Brazil’s total to more than 230,000, the fourth-largest confirmed caseload after the US, Russia and the UK.
- The city of Wuhan conducted 222,675 nucleic acid tests on 16 May, the local health authority said, nearly doubling from a day earlier. Wuhan kicked off a campaign on 14 May to look for asymptomatic carriers after confirming last weekend its first cluster of Covid-19 infections since its release from lockdown on 8 April.
- Quebec is considering making masks mandatory, after banning the veil. The Canadian province at the centre of the country’s outbreak is is currently “strongly recommending” that citizens wear masks, but has not made the measure mandatory. Quebec’s public health director stressed “You need to have a good argument for infringing on individual rights for the sake of a collective right.”
- The growth of new coronavirus cases in Russia is stabilising, a top health official has said, as the daily tally fell under 10,000 for the third time this week. The country has the world’s second highest number of infections at 281,752, topped only by the United States.
- Madagascar has reported the first death of a patient suffering from the coronavirus, nearly two months after the virus was first detected in the country. The victim was a 57-year-old man with underlying conditions. Madagascar has reported 304 cases.
