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Brazil reported another 22,294 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 630 deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said on Thursday. The country has now registered 5,612,319 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 161,736, according to ministry data, in the world’s most fatal outbreak outside the United States.
Summary
- The UK death toll from coronavirus rose by 378, taking the tally of people who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 to 48,120, government data showed. As of 9am GMT on Thursday, there had been a further 24,141 lab-confirmed cases in the UK, taking the cumulative total of confirmed infections to 1,123,197.
- Colombia’s lower house abruptly ended its session on and asked lawmakers to quarantine after a member tested positive for Covid-19. At least 150 lawmakers could potentially have been exposed, the chamber’s press office said. They have been told to avoid travel to their home regions and remain in Bogota while they wait 72 hours from potential exposure to have a test.
- A dozen US states reported record one-day increases in Covid-19 cases, a day after the country set a record with nearly 105,000 new infections reported on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally. The outbreak is spreading in every region of the country but is hitting the Midwest the hardest, based on new cases per capita. Illinois reported nearly 10,000 new cases and along with Texas is leading the nation in the most cases reported in the last seven days.Other Midwestern states with record increases in cases on Thursday were Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Ohio. Arkansas, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah and West Virginia also set records for rises in new infections.
- Ireland is on track to get its second wave of Covid-19 infections under control by the end of November when the government hopes to ease some of the strictest restrictions in Europe, a senior public health official said. “The way case numbers are behaving would suggest that case numbers are declining rapidly and that we are on target for the sort of end position we want to be in at the end of the six weeks,” on 1 December, Philip Nolan, the chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, told a press briefing.
UK records another 378 deaths and 24,141 new cases
The UK death toll from coronavirus has risen by 378, taking the tally of people who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 to 48,120, government data showed.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show the number of deaths from Covid-19 to be around 63,000.
As of 9am GMT on Thursday, there had been a further 24,141 lab-confirmed cases in the UK, taking the cumulative total of confirmed infections to 1,123,197.
Updated
Colombia’s lower house abruptly ended its session on Thursday and asked lawmakers to quarantine after a member tested positive for Covid-19.
Lawmakers in Colombia, which has registered more than 1.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 32,000 deaths, have the option to connect virtually or attend sessions in person.
At least 150 lawmakers could potentially have been exposed, the chamber’s press office said.
Representatives should avoid travel to their home regions and remain in Bogota while they wait 72 hours from potential exposure to have a test, said the president of the chamber, Conservative representative German Blanco.
Obviously this is a delicate and grave circumstance. I’m going to end the session, because I have the responsibility not to maintain debate...
Blanco said representative Alejandro Carlos Chacon, of the Liberal party, tested positive for coronavirus after attending Wednesday’s session.
Chacon did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
All lawmakers should remain in the capital until Saturday, said representative Maria Jose Pizarro, relaying recommendations from the city’s health department.
Last month a senator from Mexico’s ruling party died after contracting Covid-19.
Dozen US states report record daily rises in Covid-19 infections - Reuters
A dozen US states reported record one-day increases in Covid-19 cases on Thursday, a day after the country set a record with nearly 105,000 new infections reported on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally.
The outbreak is spreading in every region of the country but is hitting the Midwest the hardest, based on new cases per capita.
Illinois reported nearly 10,000 new cases and along with Texas is leading the nation in the most cases reported in the last seven days.
Other Midwestern states with record increases in cases on Thursday were Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Ohio. Arkansas, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah and West Virginia also set records for rises in new infections.
Some cities and states have announced new measures such as curfews or reduced gathering sizes to combat the spread of the virus, but the United States has taken no action at the federal level. Seventeen out of 50 states do not require masks.
Many countries in Europe are shutting high-risk businesses and even ordering national or regional lockdowns as a second wave sweeps over the continent.
In addition to rising cases, US hospitalisations of patients with Covid-19 rose to over 52,500 on Thursday, up for an 11th day in a row and getting closer to the record of 58,370 set in July.
North Dakota reported only eight free intensive care unit beds in the entire state on Thursday. Hospitalisation are a key metric because they are not affected by the amount of testing done.
Coronavirus deaths are trending higher but not at the same rate as cases. The United States is averaging 850 deaths a day, up from 700 a month ago.
In recent days, six states have reported their highest one-day increases in deaths ever: Arkansas, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of American life, including a record number of voters mailing in their ballots in Tuesday’s presidential election, whose outcome has yet to be decided.
For all things election head over to our US politics live blog:
Updated
A family have spoken of their devastation after losing three loved ones within five days to coronavirus.
Grandmother Gladys Lewis, 74, from Pentre, south Wales, died at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital on 29 October. Her son Dean Lewis, 44, was found unresponsive at his home in nearby Treorchy the following day and pronounced dead a short time later. On Monday, younger brother Darren, 42, died following treatment in intensive care at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.
All three had tested positive before they died and their death certificates state Covid-19 as the cause.
After the unbearable pain of losing their mother and her two sons to the virus, the Lewis family urged people to take Covid-19 seriously.
Debbie Mountjoy, 41, daughter of Mrs Lewis, told Channel 4 News how coronavirus had “just ripped through the family”.
Darren, who had Down’s syndrome, had not left the house since February apart from to attend hospital appointments. Mrs Lewis, who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and emphysema, had also been shielding, with Dean only going out once a week to shop for his parents.
Mrs Mountjoy told Channel 4 News:
We were scared of the virus anyway. But now we are absolutely terrified and I’m so scared because of losing the three of them that I’m going to lose my dad or somebody else.
Ten other members of the family, including Mrs Mountjoy, her father and Gladys’ husband David Lewis, 81, and Dean’s wife Claire Lewis, 44, tested positive for Covid-19 and have been self-isolating.
The three funerals will take place at the same church, with the coffins brought in the night before when the family will be able to visit to say goodbye.
A GoFundMe page to help pay for the funeral costs has been set up and donations at the three funerals will be in aid of the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.
“I’m just devastated.”
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) November 5, 2020
The Lewis family speaks about the unbearable pain of losing three loved ones within five days to coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/ZbUwDE76EF
Coronavirus lockdowns in Europe have led to some environmental improvements such as better air quality and lower carbon emissions, but they are temporary and coupled with a surge in single-use plastic, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said on Thursday.
The pandemic is ravaging Europe, which has now become the global region with the most Covid-19 infections, and governments in the UK, France, Italy and elsewhere are ramping up measures to stop the spread.
The Copenhagen-based EEA said in a statement that lockdowns in European countries “may have some direct, short-term, positive impacts on our environment, especially in terms of emissions and air quality, although these are likely to be temporary.”
The EU agency said its data showed that the concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a gas emitted mainly from vehicles which can cause inflammation of the respiratory system, fell sharply in countries where lockdowns were imposed in the spring of 2020.
The concentration of NO2 fell by 61 percent in Spain, 52 in France and 48 percent in Italy, all countries which had strict lockdowns, the EEA said. Noise pollution also fell significantly.
But the pandemic has also brought about a significant spike in plastic consumption, as demand for protective gear like masks, gloves and hand sanitiser soared.
Restaurants forced to only offer takeaway have used single-use plastic containers, while increased online shopping has also contributed to the problem.
The statement said:
The upsurge in demand for these items may challenge EU efforts to curb plastic pollution and move towards a more sustainable and circular plastics system.
The pandemic has also led to a sharp drop in oil prices, making it cheaper for manufacturers to use oil rather than recycled material to make plastic, it added.
Ireland is on track to get its second wave of Covid-19 infections under control by the end of November when the government hopes to ease some of the strictest restrictions in Europe, a senior public health official said on Thursday.
Ireland moved to the highest level of restrictions to fight the virus two weeks ago, when the government banned visiting other households and travel of over 5 kilometres and closed restaurants and non-essential retail for six weeks, until 1 December.
Over the past two weeks the daily average of cases reported has fallen by more than half to 552, data from the health ministry showed on Thursday.
“The way case numbers are behaving would suggest that case numbers are declining rapidly and that we are on target for the sort of end position we want to be in at the end of the six weeks,” on 1 December, Philip Nolan, the chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, told a press briefing.
Ireland is one the few countries in Europe bucking a trend of rapidly rising infection rates. The 14-day infection rate in Ireland fell to 202 cases per 100,000 on Thursday from 292 a week ago, data showed.
The chief medical officer Tony Holohan told the briefing that Ireland would need to maintain the current level of decline for another four weeks, at which point it would be up to the government to decide whether to ease restrictions.
We’ve made great progress so far, but we are only halfway there.
Several thousand people have joined a chaotic march through central London in protest at lockdown regulations and commemoration of Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up parliament.
The Million Mask March, an annual event, was given added impetus by a new protest movement in opposition to lockdowns which has been building since late summer.
Must be a couple of thousand people are on this #millionmaskmarch, where crowds are chanting freedom. Strong anti #lockdown vibes. pic.twitter.com/bHAKkxX8vm
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 5, 2020
Police were apparently struggling to control the largely spontaneous protest. Officers were trying to order those taking part to return home and picking some protesters from the crowd and arresting them.
Police have kettled a group of protesters on Oxford Street. pic.twitter.com/Ck7G2gnRYK
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 5, 2020
Four protesters, one of whom was wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, were arrested by police officers near the gates of Charing Cross Station. A number of police vans lined the Strand near the station as officers continued to urge people to go home.
A tweet by the Metropolitan police said:
A large group of protesters have moved off from #TrafalgarSquare and are ignoring officers directions. This gathering is unlawful and is putting others at risk. We are directing those there to go home. Failure to do so will result in enforcement action.
Protesters chanted “freedom” and “take your freedom back” as police chased the crowd through soho and other central London districts.
Police snatch more #millionmaskmarch protesters pic.twitter.com/J9Vb6VcnzL
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 5, 2020
Updated
Summary
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments across the globe over the last few hours:
- Denmark tightens lockdown in north over mink Covid outbreak. An outbreak among farmed mink of a mutant form of Covid-19 with the potential to be resistant to future vaccines has led to the Danish government bringing in tougher lockdown measures in parts of the country. They were announced following the discovery of a new strain of the disease in animals bred for fur in the country’s northern regions. Meanwhile, a Danish vaccine specialist has warned a new wave of coronavirus could be started by the Covid-19 mink variant.
- Coronavirus knock-on effect hitting vital health services in Africa, says WHO. The pandemic is having a knock-on effect on other vital health services in Africa as countries are forced to redirect already stretched resources, a regional head of the World Health Organization said. From January to August, an extra 1.3 million children aged under one missed their first doses of the measles vaccine, compared with the same period last year.
- Second Covid wave risks being more severe than first - French health minister. The second wave of coronavirus infections tearing across France will be more severe than the first experienced in the spring if it is allowed to continue spreading at the current rate, Olivier Véran said. France reported 58,046 new Covid-19 infections over the past 24 hours, setting a daily record for the second time in four days.
- Paris bans night-time food and drink deliveries to tackle worsening Covid-19 crisis. Paris will ban delivery and takeaway services for prepared food and alcohol between 10pm and 6am local time from Friday to limit the spread of the coronavirus, police said.
- Italy reports 445 new deaths, the highest daily toll since 23 April. The country registered 34,505 new coronavirus infections on Thursday and 445 deaths – the highest daily death toll since 23 April. Meanwhile the leaders of Italian regions set to go into partial lockdown on Friday have lambasted the government’s new tiered system, which has categorised some areas with the lowest rates of Covid-19 in the country as high-risk ‘red zones’, while more protests against restrictions are planned in the coming days.
- British government extends Covid job furlough scheme until March 2021. The UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has extended the coronavirus furlough scheme, providing 80% of the pay of temporarily laid-off workers, until the end of March.
- Covid immune response faster and stronger post-infection, scientists say. Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that people who recover from Covid may mount a much faster and more effective defence against the infection if they encounter the virus again.
- Swedish PM in self-isolation. The Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has gone into self-isolation after a person in his “vicinity” had met someone who had been confirmed to have Covid-19.
UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab self-isolating
A foreign office spokesperson has confirmed that Britain’s top diplomat, Dominic Raab, is self-isolating.
The Foreign Secretary was today [Thursday] informed that an individual with whom he has been in recent close contact with has tested positive for Coronavirus.
In line with Government regulations and NHS Track and Trace rules, the Foreign Secretary has taken immediate steps to self-isolate for the required period. He will continue to work remotely during this time.
Updated
Spain has recorded 368 more coronavirus deaths in the sharpest daily increase of the pandemic’s second wave.
The rise to a total of 38,486 deaths comes a day after the government introduced a new method for logging cases and deaths, frustrating direct comparisons with previous days.
Infections climbed by 21,908 to 1,306,316, the data showed.
Under the Spanish system, there is often a delay of several days before a death or infection is logged in the official statistics, meaning only 88 of the fatalities included in Thursday’s tally happened in the past 24 hours. The bulk took place days or even weeks before.
The highest number of single-day deaths so far in the second wave was recorded on 27 October, when 188 people died of the coronavirus, and it remains far below the early April record of about 900.
Updated
Mink appear to be good reservoirs for the Sars-CoV-2 virus, with a mutated strain having caused infections in a dozen people in Denmark, a World Health Organization official has said.
“So there is a risk of course that this mink population could contribute in some way to the transmission of the virus from minks into humans, and then onwards from humans to humans,” Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergency officer at WHO’s European office, said.
Hans Kluge, the WHO European regional director, said Denmark showed “determination and courage” in the face of a decision to cull its mink population of 17 million animals, which has a “huge economic impact”.
Updated
The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has ordered border guards to prevent the return to Belarus of its citizens who are abroad, with the exception of those in Russia, to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
“Don’t bring the virus back to us. And it doesn’t matter what kind of passport the virus is travelling with,” Lukashenko said on state television.
He said the ban did not apply to citizens of Belarus travelling back from Russia, however, due to the two countries’ border arrangements.
Updated
New Delhi, the capital city with the worst air quality worldwide, had its most toxic day in a year on Thursday, recording a concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles at 14 times over the World Health Organization’s safe limit.
The raging coronavirus outbreak, with more than 400,000 confirmed cases in the city of 20 million, has heightened alarm over the health hazard posed by the smog, with doctors warning of a sharp increase in respiratory illnesses.
“We are seeing all round the sky is covered with smoke, and because of this the situation from coronavirus is worsening,” Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister, said.
Delhi’s air pollution typically worsens in October and November due to coal-fired power plants and farmers burning off stubble in surrounding states, traffic fumes and windless days.
Kejriwal has banned use and sale of firecrackers in Delhi ahead of Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, and ramped up critical health infrastructure in state-run hospitals to control a surge in coronavirus cases due to pollution and the festive season, he said.
On Thursday, the federal air quality and weather monitoring agency recorded 4,135 incidents of farm fires, the highest of the season.
“Woke up with a feeling that poisonous garbage is stuck in my windpipe,” said Rahul Ojha, a resident who tagged government authorities in a tweet, blaming them for inaction.
The average level of the tiny PM2.5 particles, which could potentially cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases including lung cancer, was 370 per cubic metre of air, against the WHO’s prescribed safe limit of 25.
The overall air quality index (AQI), which includes other pollutants besides PM2.5 particles, crossed 460 on a scale of 500, the worst since 14 November 2019.
Updated
Second Covid wave risks being more severe than first – French health minister
The second wave of coronavirus infections tearing across France will be more severe than the first experienced in the spring if it is allowed to continue spreading at the current rate, the country’s health minister has said.
France would see the number of Covid sufferers in intensive care peak at 6,000 if the public complied with the new lockdown, or as many as 7,000 if the virus continued spreading as it is now with not everyone respecting the confinement rules, the health minister, Olivier Véran, said.
The country reported more than 4,000 Covid patients in ICU on Wednesday.
“The next days and weeks will be difficult,” Véran told a news conference.
France is scrambling to train more health workers. Student medics could be called on once again for reinforcements, Véran added.
Updated
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the country would rely on testing and better therapeutics and medicines to deal with Covid-19 if vaccines in development had only a limited success in tackling the virus spread.
If you talk to the scientists, they say ... they believe things will start naturally to improve in the spring for a variety of other reasons such as the natural rhythm of these viruses and the improvement in weather conditions, which will mitigate against the spread of the virus.
The real progress we are going to see is with science.
Updated
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said a hard lockdown will be imposed in seven municipalities in northern Denmark after a mutation of the coronavirus that was found in mink had spread to humans.
Bars, restaurants, all public indoor sport activities and public transport will be shut in the municipalities concerned, and people are being encouraged not to travel to and from the region, she said at a news conference.
Updated
Boris Johnson said he hoped Britain could return to some form of normality before Christmas if people stick to the rules, as England enters its second countrywide lockdown.
“I have no doubt that people will be able to have as normal a Christmas as possible and we will be able to get things open before Christmas,” the PM told a press conference.
He also said Britain’s Covid-19 test-and-trace programme has not had the impact the government wanted but it is improving.
I understand people’s frustrations with NHS test and trace and it has come in for a lot of criticism and clearly it has taken too long for people to get their results sometimes, but they are improving.
Yes, it hasn’t had as much impact as we would have wanted, but there’s no doubt that by identifying people who have the disease, identifying the localities where people have the disease, we’ve been able to get the R (rate) down in a way that I don’t think we would otherwise have done.
Updated
Covid immune response faster and stronger post-infection, scientists say
Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that people who recover from Covid may mount a much faster and more effective defence against the infection if they encounter the virus again.
Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York found that the immune system not only remembered the virus but improved the quality of protective antibodies after an infection had passed, equipping the body to unleash a swift and potent attack if the virus invaded a second time.
“It’s very good news,” said Michel Nussenzweig, the head of molecular immunology at Rockerfeller and a senior author of the study. “The expectation is that people should be able to produce a rapid antibody response and resist infection in a large number of cases.”
It is unclear how long the immune system’s memory might last, but Nussenzweig said it could potentially provide some protection for years. The discovery may explain why verified re-infections from the virus are so far quite rare.
When people are infected with coronavirus, the immune system launches a multi-pronged attack. One form of protection comes from T cells, which seek and destroy infected cells, and so prevent the virus from spreading. A second front involves B cells, which release antibodies into the blood. Antibodies latch on to the virus and stop it from invading cells in the first place.
France reported 58,046 new Covid-19 infections over the past 24 hours, setting a daily record for the second time in four days, up from 40,558 on Wednesday.
The figure was published shortly after Paris announced new restrictive measures on top of a second national lockdown enforced since last Friday.
The number of people in France who have died from Covid-19 infections rose by 363 to 39,037, versus 385 on Wednesday and a seven-day moving average of 431.
The cumulative number of cases now totals 1,601,367.
The head of France’s public health service has said the coronavirus crisis in the country is getting worse and every day in the fight to slow the spread of infections counts.
“We’re facing a very high wave (of infections),” Jérôme Salomon told a news conference. “The epidemic is progressing. We must all slow the spread together.”
President Emmanuel Macron imposed a new lockdown late last month, forcing non-essential shops to close and making people use signed documents to justify being out on the streets.
But the government has expressed frustration that the public is not complying with the rules as fully as in the spring.
Salomon: "The situation is deteriorating. Every day counts. We have to break the chain of this epidemic. Each of us must act to put a brake on the virus." He is outlining the health safety measures. "The slightest doubt, take a test."
— Kim Willsher (@kimwillsher1) November 5, 2020
Updated
Greece has reported 2,917 new coronavirus cases, hitting a new daily peak hours after authorities announced a second nationwide lockdown is going into effect this Saturday, 7 November.
Thursday’s cases follow on the 2,646 cases reported on Wednesday, which was a new record. Authorities said infections have risen 20% in recent days.
Latin American nations, including those that have brought down coronavirus transmission rates, should take heed of the second wave hitting much of Europe and not let their guard down, a Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) official has said.
Jarbas Barbosa, the PAHO assistant director, said countries should keep in place mitigation and social distancing measures, while balancing economic and social concerns, because no nation was immune to a second wave of coronavirus.
Updated
Britain is removing Germany and Sweden from its list of countries fromwhere travellers do not have to quarantine on arrival in England.
“From 4am Saturday 7 November, if you arrive into the UK from these destinations you will need to self-isolate,” the transport minister, Grant Shapps, said on Twitter.
He added no countries were being added to the list of travel corridors.
England entered a second countrywide lockdown on Thursday meaning people must stay at home, barring a limited number of exceptions.
Updated
Germany will ensure financial aid gets to firms and individuals hit by a partial coronavirus lockdown in November quickly, the finance minister, Olaf Scholz, said, outlining further details of the €10bn euro programme.
Europe’s biggest economy closed bars, restaurants, gyms, cinemas, theatres and domestic tourism on Monday for a month.
The government has said small and medium-sized firms will be able to claim compensation worth 75% of their revenues from November 2019, up to €1m. Aid of more than €1m has to be agreed by the EU.
“I want the November aid to get to those who are hit quickly. In this crisis, we must stand together so that we can get through the pandemic relatively well,” said Scholz.
In a joint statement, the economic affairs minister, Peter Altmaier, said the conditions for aid had been agreed and payments should take place by the end of November, if possible.
Firms directly affected by the partial lockdown and those who can prove that 80% of their revenues come from those companies forced to shut would be eligible for support, said the ministers in a joint statement. Individuals will also be entitled to aid.
The German economy grew by 8.2% in the third quarter as it started to recover from its worst recession, caused by the pandemic. Economists expect the economy to stagnate or even shrink again in the fourth quarter, however, due to the new lockdown measures.
Updated
Italy reports 445 new deaths, the highest daily toll since 23 April
Italy registered 34,505 new coronavirus infections on Thursday and 445 deaths – the highest daily death toll since 23 April.
Covid-19 deaths in Italy since the start of the pandemic have now reached 40,192, the highest in mainland Europe.
Four regions will go into partial lockdown from Friday as Italy tries to regain control of the pandemic and ease the strain on hospitals.
There were more than 1,000 more hospital admissions on Thursday, bringing the total to 24,256, of which 2,391 are in intensive care, up by more than 100 since Wednesday.
Updated
The husband of a nurse who died of Covid-19 just days after giving birth to their daughter has pleaded with the British prime minister to protect other pregnant women, as research reveals they are being put at greater risk during the second wave of the pandemic.
Ernest Boateng, whose wife, Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong, died on 12 April after contracting the virus, said he didn’t want his wife’s death to be in vain, and called on the government to make it a legal requirement for employers to allow all pregnant women who pass 20 weeks gestation to work from home or be suspended on full pay.
Agyapong died at the Luton and Dunstable hospital in Bedfordshire, where she had worked for five years, five days after giving birth via emergency C-section. “She was never able to hold her baby daughter,” wrote Boateng.
A Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) report on her death was critical of her care. She was admitted to hospital and discharged on 5 April, but readmitted two days later. In September, a pre-inquest review heard that her husband had had concerns about her working conditions; a full inquest into her death will be heard in the new year.
It comes as data from the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed reveals that just 1% of 5,131 surveyed pregnant women who work outside the home say they have been suspended from work because of their pregnancy. This compares with 76% who had been suspended from work when the group asked the same question on 28 April.
A Danish vaccine specialist has warned that a new wave of coronavirus could be started by the Covid-19 mink variant.
Prof Kåre Mølbak, vaccine expert and director of infectious diseases at Denmark’s State Serum Institute (SSI), said:
The worst-case scenario is that we would start off a new pandemic in Denmark.
There’s a risk that this mutated virus is so different from the others that we’d have to put new things in a vaccine and therefore [the mutation] would slam us all in the whole world back to the start.
He added, however, that the world was in a better place than when the Covid-19 outbreak began.“We know the virus, have measures in place including testing and infection control, and the outbreak will be contained, to the best of our knowledge.”
Denmark, the world’s largest mink producer, said on Wednesday that it plans to cull more than 15 million of the animals, due to fears that a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.
Announcing the cull, the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said 12 people were already infected with the mutated virus and mink are now considered a public health risk, based on advice from the SSI.
Updated
Protesting students have staged blockades at several high schools across France, burning trash cans to press for better coronavirus protection measures in an environment many fear could be fuelling the pandemic’s rapid spread.
It was the third day of demonstrations by teenagers at high schools, or lycées, sometimes with the backing of teachers, claiming that “non-existent” anti-infection measures are placing them at risk.
Several hundred students blockaded the lycée of Bourdonnieres in Nantes in western France, holding up traffic outside and burning trash cans, according to police who dispersed the gathering and arrested two people.
In a statement on Instagram, a group calling itself the “Bourdonnieres high school movement” denounced “the endangerment of teachers and pupils... with all the mixing in a high school of 2,000 students, notably in the canteen where social distancing is impossible”.
In nearby Saint-Nazare, police had to intervene at the Aristide Briand high school, and in Tours in central France, teenagers blocked access to their school using trash cans and pallets.
“We are 30 in some of our classes and we are afraid of spreading the virus,” one student, who gave his name as Dimitri, told AFP.
The World Health Organization said they were seeing an “explosion” of virus cases in the European region and warned mortality rates were also rising.
“We do see an explosion ... in the sense it only takes a couple of days to have over the European region an increase of one million cases,” WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, told AFP.
And while the mortality rate could also be seen rising “little by little”, Kluge cautioned that closing schools should be seen as a last resort.
“We need to keep the schools open really until last because we cannot afford a Covid-19 lost generation,” Kluge said.
However the regional director also said that the “status quo is not an option,” and called for “proportionate targeted measures,” which could be scaled up.
Kluge stressed that governments should take into account two things: “coherence, so people see that we don’t flip-flop, and ... predictability, so people know if this threshold is being reached, this is what is going to happen.”
He also called for the widespread use of face masks. “With general mask wearing and strict control of social gatherings we can save 266,000 lives by February in the whole European region,” Kluge said.
WHO Europe encompasses 53 countries, including Russia and countries in Central Asia, and on Thursday reported a total of over 12 million cases in the region, with nearly two million in the last seven days.
Updated
A leading French supermarket chain has said it will share its online retailing network with shuttered bookshops and other local businesses, tapping into resentment over Amazon’s predominance in the new Covid lockdown.
With full-page newspaper ads saying “Sorry Amazon”, the Intermarché group said local businesses – bookshops first of all – would be allowed to sell their products on its online “click and collect” marketplace.
Book lovers have been fuming over the decision to shut bookshops as “non-essential” in the lockdown, to which the government responded by also banning book sales at supermarkets in an effort to alleviate concern about unfair competition.
Other retailers have also complained about having to close again in a lockdown that effectively turns Amazon and other e-commerce sites into the only shopping option for millions of people.
Anger against Amazon has long been fuelled by its exploitation of EU tax rules, which critics say lets the US giant avoid paying taxes in France despite raking in colossal profits.
Intermarché’s cheeky ad campaign even calls out Amazon’s chief, Jeff Bezos: “And sorry Jeff, but we’re already working on rolling this out to other struggling businesses.”
Intermarché’s president, Thierry Cotillard, told AFP: “We heard the anger, the distress of small businesses and bookstores in particular.
“Businesses are being pushed to go digital, to offer click and collect, but not all are necessarily ready for it.”
The French government has promised billions of euros in aid for businesses forced to close in the second lockdown since the coronavirus crisis erupted in March.
On Thursday, it said postage costs would be waived for independent bookstores so they could ship directly to clients; only the legal minimum mail rate of one cent will be applied during the lockdown.
But retailers’ associations say the help might not be enough to prevent many smaller shops from going out of business, especially if the shutdown extends into the crucial holiday season.
Updated
Paris bans night-time food and drink deliveries to tackle worsening Covid-19 crisis
Paris will ban delivery and takeaway services for prepared food and alcohol between 10pm and 6am local time from Friday to limit the spread of the coronavirus, police said.
The police prefecture also said in a statement that the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks in public spaces would be banned at night from 6 November.
President Emmanuel Macron imposed a new lockdown last month, forcing non-essential shops, such as those not selling basic foods or medicines, to close, and making people use signed documents to justify being out on the streets.
But a week into the lockdown, France still registers more than 40,000 new virus infections per day and intensive care units across the country are under stress as more than 4,000 ICU beds are now occupied by Covid-19 patients.
Restaurants, closed under lockdown rules, are allowed to serve takeaway and to deliver, but the prefecture said that at night-time lots of customers and food couriers are congregating, despite the need to limit social interaction.
“When you get people who are not playing by the rules of the game, and are therefore putting at risk the health of a large number of people, that is when you need to put in place new restrictions,” the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said on BFM TV as she warned of restrictions on selling takeaway food and drink.
A French government source said this week they had noted in Paris “clandestine parties, raves, private dinners”, and felt stricter measures were needed.
On Wednesday, France reported 40,558 new Covid-19 cases and a further 385 deaths, taking the country’s total death toll from Covid to 38,674 while the total number of confirmed cases stands at about 1.5m.
Updated
Europe now region hardest hit by virus infections
Europe has become the region with the highest number of registered cases of Covid-19, according to a tally by AFP on Thursday based on health authority data.
The continent’s 52 countries have a combined total of 11.6 million cases including more than 293,000 deaths, ahead of Latin America and the Caribbean which has reported 11.4 million cases with 407,000 deaths.
Europe has again become the centre of the pandemic in recent weeks after experiencing a lull during the northern hemisphere summer.
Since the beginning of October, the region has had the highest number of new infections daily in the world.
Last week, 277,000 new cases a day were recorded, more than half of the total number of cases worldwide of 517,000 daily.
And the pandemic continues to accelerate across the continent, with the number of cases detected last week 20% higher than the previous week.
In terms of deaths, the pace is even faster, with almost 50% more new deaths - 21,500 last week, compared with 14,403 the week before.
The countries in the region with the most new cases in the last seven days are: France (44,000 cases daily on average, up 11% over the previous week), Italy (28,600, up 43%), the UK (22,400, up 2%), Spain (21,100, up 13%) and Poland (20,000, up 46%).
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A UAE court has sentenced two people, including a television journalist, to two years imprisonment over a “fabricated” report on the Covid-19 deaths of five members of one family, state media has reported.
An investigation into the report, aired on the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel, quickly determined that it was false, authorities said in August.
“This incident negatively affected society, afflicted members of the community and left them in a state of confusion and fear of the outbreak,” prosecutors said at the time.
According to official news agency WAM, “the Abu Dhabi federal court of appeal sentenced two defendants to two years in prison after convicting them of broadcasting a fabricated story about the death of five members of the same family from Covid-19”.
The channel’s correspondent, who is a resident in the United Arab Emirates, will be “expelled” at the end of his sentence, it added, without specifying his nationality.
The other defendant was not named, but newspaper reports said he was the interviewee in the story, which was widely shared on social media. His nationality was not specified either.
The United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital, has recorded more than 138,000 coronavirus infections, including 508 deaths.
The country, which prides itself on having managed the crisis decisively and effectively, regularly calls on the media to rely on official information and not spread “fake news” about the pandemic.
Abu Dhabi Media, a government agency that owns several channels, including the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel, was not available for comment when contacted by AFP.
Reporters Without Borders ranks the UAE 131st in its 180-country World Press Freedom Index, saying journalists face long jail terms for offences like “defamation, insulting the state or posting false information with the aim of damaging the country’s reputation”.
Updated
The number of new coronavirus cases in the Netherlands dropped to just under 7,000 on Thursday, marking the lowest daily increase since 12 October.
The daily rate of infections has been declining since reaching a peak of more than 11,000 at the end of last week.
Airbnb said it would restrict bookings in England as the country entered its second national lockdown on Thursday, adding only those with legal exemptions could use the platform to book long-term stays.
Government guidance says that overnight stays and holidays away from a person’s primary residence are not allowed under the new lockdown, with limited exceptions.
The lockdown is scheduled to end on 2 December, but ministers have suggested it could be extended.
Airbnb blocked British bookings on its platform for the vast majority of customers in April, after prime minister Boris Johnson introduced a national lockdown to contain the first wave of infections, and on Thursday the company said it was re-introducing restrictions.
“We’ve heard from hosts who want to help everyone follow the rules and stay safe. That is why we are again introducing temporary booking restrictions on Airbnb,” said Patrick Robinson, the director of public policy at Airbnb.
“We will closely monitor government guidance and keep the policy under review and we look forward to when hosts can safely reopen their doors to guests.”
Under the policy, guests booking legally exempt stays will still be allowed. There are legal exemptions for work trips, or temporary accommodation for those who are homeless, vulnerable, moving house or attending a funeral.
Updated
Coronavirus knock-on effect hitting vital health services in Africa, says WHO
The coronavirus pandemic is having a knock-on effect on other vital health services in Africa as countries are forced to redirect already stretched resources, a regional head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
The continent of more than a billion people has been spared the worst consequences of Covid-19, with relatively lower death rates and infections than seen elsewhere.
Africa has recorded at least 1.8 million cases, with 43,700 deaths, according to the WHO.
“A preliminary analysis by WHO indicates Covid-19 is hitting other health services really hard,” said Matshidiso Moeti, Africa director for the WHO.
Lockdowns imposed by countries to halt the spread of the virus in May, June and July contributed to a more than 50% drop in services monitored by WHO.
From January to August, an extra 1.3 million children aged under one missed their first doses of the measles vaccine, compared with the same period last year, Moeti said.
In Nigeria, for example, more than 362,000 pregnant women missed their ante-natal care between March and August.
In August, there were 310 maternal deaths in health facilities, almost double the number recorded at the same time in 2019, she added.
“So while Covid-19 is not overwhelming African health facilities in the way ... first predicted ... it is really stretching already resourced-limited health systems,” Moeti said.
Moeti said immunisation campaigns against measles and polio had restarted but more needed to be done to protect the gains made in previous years in improving access to health services and outcomes on the continent.
Updated
Sweden, whose pandemic strategy of avoiding lockdowns has gained international attention, reported a record increase in new Covid-19 cases on Thursday as health officials said it was seeing a marked rise of patients in intensive care.
Sweden registered 4,034 new coronavirus cases, the latest in a string of records set in recent days amid a resurgence that has struck the country later than many other parts of Europe, but which now appears to be rapidly gaining momentum.
The Health Agency has said the outbreak was likely more severe during the spring when Sweden periodically suffered some of Europe’s highest per capita death tolls though limited testing at the time had meant many infections went undetected.
“There is continued increase in the number of cases in all regions except one,” said Karin Tegmark Wisell, the head of the microbiology department at the agency.
“We are now also beginning to see a fairly significant increase on the number of intensive care patients.”
The intensifying outbreak has seen Sweden tighten the mostly voluntary recommendations on which it relies across much of the country and Tegmark Wisell said the percentage of positive tests had climbed to 9.7% last week from 5.6% the week before.
On Thursday, 90 Covid-19 patients were receiving intensive care at Swedish hospitals, 19 more than on Wednesday, while a further 661 were being treated in other modes of care.
Sweden registered five new deaths, taking its death toll during the pandemic to 6,002. Sweden’s death rate per capita has been several times higher than its Nordic neighbours but lower than some larger European countries, such as Spain and Britain.
Updated
Updated
Ukraine registered a record 9,850 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the health minister said, up from a high of 9,524 reported a day earlier.
Total infections so far stood at 430,467 with 7,924 deaths by Thursday, Maksym Stepanovsaid.
The daily tally of coronavirus infections rose in late September and remained consistently high throughout October, prompting the government to extend lockdown measures until the end of this year.
Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said later on Thursday the number of new cases could jump to 15,000 a day by the end on November and to 20,000 daily by the end of the year.
Stepanov this week said the coronavirus situation in Ukraine was close to catastrophic and that the nation must prepare for the worst.
Updated
The UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has extended the coronavirus furlough scheme, providing 80% of the pay of temporarily laid-off workers, until the end of March.
“To give people across the UK certainty over the winter, I can announce today that the furlough scheme will not be extended for one month – it will be extended until the end of March,” Sunak told parliament.
Earlier on Thursday, the Bank of England said it was increasing the size of its government bond purchases by a further £150bn ($196bn), helping the government to fund the surge in public spending.
As well as the furlough extension, Sunak increased support for self-employed people and raised guaranteed funding for the UK’s devolved administrations by £2bn to £16bn.
Sunak said he would review the furlough policy in January.
Updated
Italian regions angry over partial lockdowns
The leaders of Italian regions set to go into partial lockdown on Friday have lambasted the government’s new tiered system, which has categorised some areas with the lowest rates of Covid-19 in the country as high-risk ‘red zones’, while more protests against restrictions are planned in the coming days.
The southern region of Calabria, which registered 245 new infections on Wednesday, will join the worst hit Lombardy region, as well as Piedmont and Aosta Valley, in partial lockdown from Friday, meaning people will only be able to leave their homes for work, health or emergency reasons and bars, restaurants and non-essential shops – apart from hairdressers – will have to close.
Nino Spirlì, the acting president of Calabria, said he would appeal against the decision, arguing that the lockdown was unjustified. “This region does not deserve an isolation that will be fatal to it,” he said.
Campania, next to Calabria, is currently recording the second-highest daily caseload in the country but has been put in the lower-risk yellow zone, as has Lazio, the region surrounding Rome.
Meanwhile, Puglia, also in the south, and Sicily are in the medium-risk orange zone, meaning bars and restaurants will have to close and people will be banned from moving beyond their towns or cities.
“The decision to relegate Sicily to the orange zone is absurd and unreasonable,” said Nello Musumeci, the island’s president.
Antonino Giarratano, a member of the scientific committee for Sicily, said: “How is it that Liguria, Campania and Lazio, where we know from the press that there is a crisis with hospital beds, aren’t in the orange zone?”
The leaders of Lombardy, Piedmont and Aosta Valley have also demanded clarification on how the tier system was decided. Lombardy president Attilio Fontana said putting the region in the red zone was a “slap in the face” to its citizens and that the decision was based on data that is 10 days old.
The restrictions, which will be in place until 3 December, are said to have been determined by the rate of Covid-19 transmission, the number of infections and people with symptoms and the availability of hospital beds.
The prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said intensive care capacity would be at risk in 15 of Italy’s 20 regions within a few weeks unless new measures were enacted.
Italy registered 30,550 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and 352 fatalities.
The number of people hospitalised across the country stood at 22,116 Wednesday, of whom 2,292 are in intensive care, more than double the number on 24 October.
Updated
New coronavirus cases in Austria rose by a record 7,416 in the past 24 hours, the newspaper Kronen Zeitung has reported, adding that 41 more deaths had been counted.
The tabloid has accurately reported the figures before their official publication in the past.
It said the number of people being taken into hospital had risen dramatically again.
Updated
Coronavirus infections in Switzerland rose by 10,128 in a day, data from Swiss health authorities showed on Thursday.
The total confirmed cases in Switzerland and the neighbouring principality Liechtenstein increased to 202,504 and the death toll rose by 62 to 2,337.
Hospitalisations rose by 399 as the government deployed army personnel to help the hard-pressed healthcare system cope with the surge in admissions.
Updated
Swedish PM goes into self-isolation
The Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has gone into self-isolation after a person in his “vicinity” had met someone who had been confirmed to have Covid-19.
Löfven said in a Facebook post that he had isolated together with his wife and would be working from home, and would try to get tested as soon as possible.
“It’s the only responsible thing to do in this situation,” Löfven said.
The head of government also noted that the “development was going in the wrong direction quickly”.
“More people are infected. More people are dying. It is a serious situation,” he said.
Löfven said he had not been in direct contact with someone confirmed to have the coronavirus but someone in his “vicinity” had, and even if that person had since tested negative he had decided to self-isolate on the advice of his doctor.
After seeing a heavy death toll, over 5,000 in a country of 10.3 million inhabitants, the country registered a decrease in both cases and fatalities between July and mid-October.
However, since then the number of cases has soared and deaths have also started climbing in recent days.
On Wednesday, the country reported 28 new deaths linked to Covid-19, and the total is expected to cross the 6,000 mark on Thursday.
In neighbouring Denmark, which is also facing a resurgence in cases, the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, is also in self-isolation after the justice minister tested positive.
An initial test proved negative, but her cabinet said on Wednesday evening that she would remain in isolation pending a second test.
Updated
AstraZeneca will start discussing emergency approval of its experimental Covid-19 vaccine with US regulators once it has good trial data from Britain, South Africa and Brazil, as it has no indication the watchdog would favour US data.
If and when AstraZeneca reaches the first statistically reliable efficacy and safety results from those trials, based on more than 25,000 volunteers in total, it would present them to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) even though any read-out from an ongoing US trial will be months later.
“If you hit those thresholds we are going to have a conversation with them,” executive team member Mene Pangalos told Reuters.
“What the FDA has signalled is what their expectations of data are for an approval,” he said, adding the company had not spoken to the US watchdog about where the data should some from.
Updated
English weekly Covid cases up 8% with traced contacts at near record low
Positive Covid-19 cases in England are up 8% on the previous week, the country’s test-and-trace scheme has said, slower than the previous week’s 23% rise, but the proportion of contacts reached stayed near record lows.
Of the 327,203 people identified as coming into close contact with someone who had tested positive between 22 and 28 October, 59.9% were reached and asked to self-isolate, little changed from the record low proportion of 59.6% reported two weeks ago.
Updated
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, taking over the blog for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any story tips or personal experiences you would like to share
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
For those staring down the barrel of another lockdown in the UK, or Greece or anywhere else, the Guardian has just published a list of cultural recommendations to keep you busy. Whether to play Spider-Man or watch the Bolshoi Ballet first is up to you.
That’s it from me. My colleague Jessica Murray will pick up the reins now.
Updated
More on the lockdown in Greece from Reuters:
Under the new countrywide restrictions to take effect from Saturday, retail businesses will be shut with the exception of supermarkets and pharmacies. Civilians will need a time-slot permit to venture outdoors.
Primary schools will stay open, but high schools will shut.
The country has reported fewer cases than most in Europe, mainly due to an early nationwide lockdown that it imposed when the pandemic broke out in February. It started unwinding those restrictions in May.
Since early October it has seen a surge in infections and has been reimposing curbs. The resurgence was “particularly aggressive”, chief government scientific adviser Sotiris Tsiodras said, speaking alongside Mitsotakis.
R number in Ireland below 1 after two weeks of restrictions
Ireland has started to suppress Covid-19 and has one of Europe’s lowest disease incidence rates after two weeks of maximum tier restrictions.
The R number, which indicates the number of people on average an infected person will infect, is now 0.7 and 0.9. To suppress the virus it must be below 1.
The cumulative 14-day incidence rate has fallen to 212.7 per 100,000 people, a 30% reduction. It gives Ireland the seventh lowest rate of 31 European countries, above Finland, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Greece.
Authorities on Wednesday reported eight coronavirus-related deaths and 444 new cases, bringing the death toll since the pandemic began to 1,930. The total number of cases is 63,483.
Health officials attribute the improving numbers to moderate restrictions imposed on Dublin city and county on 18 September, followed by nationwide severe restrictions on 21 October.
They are due to end on 2 December, by which time authorities hope the daily case numbers will be between 50 and 100. There have been a handful of small, fleeting protests.
Rates in Northern Ireland have also fallen but health officials have advised the Stormont executive to extend restrictions on the hospitality sector which are due to end on Friday.
Updated
Malaysia’s health ministry reported 1,009 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, taking the total to 36,433 infections.
The Southeast Asian country also recorded six new fatalities, raising the death toll from the pandemic to 277.
New nationwide lockdown in Greece
Greece’s conservative government on Thursday ordered a nationwide lockdown for three weeks to help contain a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the new restrictions will come into effect this Saturday.
According to the Twitter feed of the English edition of Kathimerini, Mitsotakis said that a sharp increase of cases in the last 5 days “forces me” to take measures now and that if the measures failed the pressure on hospitals would be “unbearable”.
Mitsotakis says "aggressive increase" of infections in the last 5 days "forces me" to take measures now, instead of waiting to see if recently announced restrictions will work. If the gov't waited and the measures didn't work pressure on hospitals would be "unbearable".
— Kathimerini English Edition (@ekathimerini) November 5, 2020
“Once again, I choose to take measures sooner rather than later,” he said in a televised address. He added that high schools will switch to distance learning but kindergartens will remain open, Kathimerini reported.
Details of a financial package for affected citizens are to be announced later on Thursday.
Greece registered 2,646 infections on Wednesday, the highest daily tally since its first case surfaced, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 46,892. So far, 673 people have died of the disease.
Updated
As well as a record number of new cases, Reuters reports that Poland also reported 367 deaths on Thursday, just short of a record.
With 27,143 cases announced today, the next threshold at which tougher measures would be required is 29,000-30,000 average daily cases for a week, government spokesman Piotr Muller told public radio station Polskie Radio 1 early on Thursday.
The patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church has been hospitalized after testing positive for the new coronavirus, days after leading prayers at a large public funeral for the head of the church in Montenegro, who died after contracting the virus.
AP reports that the Serbian Orthodox Church said late on Wednesday that the 90-year-old Patriarch Irinej was hospitalized, but has no symptoms and is in “excellent general condition.”
Patriarch Irinej last Sunday led the prayers inside a packed church for the church head in Montenegro, Bishop Amfilohije, who had died after contracting COVID-19.
Many of those inside the church did not wear protective face masks or keep their distance from each other, in violation of coronavirus-fighting restrictions. Many kissed the bishop’s body in an open coffin.
Among those in the church were Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic and the Montenegrin Prime Minister-designate Zdravko Krivokapic.
Another Serbian church top cleric, Bishop Joanikije, the acting head of the church in Montenegro following Bishop Amfilohije’s death, also has tested positive for the virus, the church said Wednesday.
Updated
More on Norway’s new restrictions from Erna Solberg, who told the country’s parliament as she announced them: “We now see a sharp increase in the number of people testing positive. The situation is very serious, and ... we don’t have time to wait and see if the measures we introduced last week are enough.”
Last week, Norway tightened restrictions on gatherings and foreign workers entering the country after a rise in coronavirus infections.
Norway recorded a revised 3,118 new COVID-19 cases last week, up from 1,718 the week before - both higher than the previous peak of 1,733 cases posted in the week March 16-22, according to data from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI).
New record number of cases in Poland
Poland has reported 27,143 new coronavirus cases, a new daily record.
The number is significantly up on Wednesday’s total of 24,692 cases - which was also a record. Covid-19 patients occupied 18,654 hospital beds on Wednesday and were using 1,625 ventilators, out of available 27,143 and 2,094 respectively.
The country is expected to announce new restrictions to combat the spread of the virus given the escalation there.
In Norway, prime minister Erna Solberg has warned that the country is close to losing control of the Covid-19 outbreak there and announced new restrictions to combat the spread of the virus.
The government said that the number of guests allowed to visit a household would now be limited to five and that unnecessary travel should be avoided. Bars were ordered to stop serving at midnight and a new rule was introduced saying that visitors to Norway must have proof of a negative Covid-19 test.
A reduction in in-person teaching at schools and universities is also under consideration, Reuters said.
The number of cases has risen in many parts of Norway with last week’s number setting a new record in infections in a country which long had one of Europe’s lowest rate of infections.
Updated
More than 4,000 new coronavirus cases in Indonesia
Indonesia reported 4,065 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking the total to 425,796, data from its COVID-19 task force showed.
It also added 89 new deaths, taking total fatalities to 14,348. Indonesia has the most coronavirus cases and deaths in Southeast Asia.
The news comes as the country enters its first recession in over two decades, with millions of people losing their jobs because of the pandemic. GDP shrank by 3.49% year-on-year in the third quarter, slightly more than expected.
Updated
Indian government-backed vaccine could launch in February - report
Reuters has just reported that a senior government scientist in India has told the wire service that Covaxin, a Covid-19 vaccine backed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), could launch as early as February - months earlier than previously expected.
Reuters said that final-stage trials are beginning this month and that studies so far have shown Covaxin to be safe and effective.
Bharat Biotech, a private company that is developing Covaxin with the government-run ICMR, had earlier hoped to launch it only in the second quarter of next year.
“The vaccine has shown good efficacy,” senior ICMR scientist Rajni Kant, who is also a member of its COVID-19 task-force, said at the research body’s New Delhi headquarters on Thursday.
“It is expected that by the beginning of next year, February or March, something would be available.”
Kant, who is the head of ICMR’s research management, policy, planning and coordination cell, said it was up to the health ministry to decide if COVAXIN shots can be given to people even before the third-stage trials are over.
“It has shown safety and efficacy in the phase 1 and 2 trials and in the animal studies - so it is safe but you can’t be 100% sure unless the phase 3 trials are over,” Kant said.
“There may be some risk, if you are ready to take the risk, you can take the vaccine. If necessary, the government can think of giving the vaccine in an emergency situation.”
More from Russia, where Moscow’s mayor has said that the city’s coronavirus situation was getting worse, and extended a remote learning period for secondary schools.
The Kremlin has said there are no plans for a broad lockdown for now and that targeted measures are enough because Russia is better prepared than it was at the beginning of the pandemic, Reuters reported.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said pupils at secondary schools from Class 6 (age 12) upward would continue online classes for two more weeks until Nov. 22. They began remote learning three weeks ago.
“The coronavirus situation in Moscow began to get worse again at the start of this week, as we can see from the number of patients and hospitalisations,” Sobyanin said on his website.
In France, Paris will be placed under more restrictions to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, including a requirement for more shops to close in the evening, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told BFM TV on Thursday.
Hidalgo said that bars and takeaways would have to close from 10pm. Here’s a clip of the interview, which my shaky French is probably not reliable enough to quote from in further detail.
🔴 SUIVI - #Paris : Durcissement du #confinement : Anne #Hidalgo annonce la fermeture à 22h de la vente à emporter dans les débits de boisson et les épiceries.#confinementSaison2 #reconfinement2 pic.twitter.com/nYEe7BBk6k
— FranceNews24 (@FranceNews24) November 5, 2020
Russia reports more than 19,000 new cases
Russia reported 19,404 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, close to a record high that included 5,255 infections in Moscow and took the national tally to 1,712,858.
Authorities also reported 292 virus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 29,509.
In Cambodia, prime minister Hun Sen has become the latest world leader to be affected by the virus after he and four members of his government were forced to quarantine after a meeting with the Hungarian foreign minister.
Peter Szijjarto did not wear a mask for his meeting with Hun Sen and the four cabinet ministers, photos show. Nor did Hun Sen or Cambodian foreign minister Prak Sokhonn, who greeted his visitor with a handshake.
Hun Sen on his Facebook page said he has tested negative and would abide by the country’s coronavirus guidelines and stay quarantined for 14 days, during which he would not meet with family members or attend public events. He said his wife and 16 of his staff — bodyguards and drivers — also tested negative.
Hun Sen, 68, has ruled Cambodia for 35 years. Cambodia has reported about 300 cases of coronavirus in total and reopened schools on Monday for the first time since March, with class sizes and hours limited by anti-virus precautions.
Hi, this is Archie Bland picking up the live blog, and trying not to think about that particular mink.
In England, as a new national lockdown gets underway, Denis Campbell reports on warnings that the NHS is “woefully short of hospital beds” because of longterm underfunding:
[The 118,451 beds available] are something over a third of the 299,000 beds that the NHS had in 1987-88. Since then, numbers have fallen relentlessly. This has been driven by a rise in day-case surgery, recognition that being an inpatient can involve hospital-acquired infections and loss of muscle mass, and also the NHS’s often-professed but still unachieved ambition of keeping people out of hospital through better home-based care. Last year the NHS England boss, Simon Stevens, urged an end to bed cutting, but the fall has continued anyway.
The decline has been particularly marked since 2010, when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government ushered in a decade of austerity funding for the NHS. That included a squeeze on capital funding, which the NHS uses to build facilities and buy equipment such as scanners, and also the exacerbation of shortages of nurses and doctors.
You can read that story here:
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today.
If you’re thinking about the US election, here is where things stand at the moment. If you’re thinking about the condemned Danish coronavirus-infected mink, here is something a little more cheerful:
thinking about this particular mink pic.twitter.com/KfRObaGpZR
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 5, 2020
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- England entered its second national lockdown, placing 56 million people under new coronavirus restrictions for at least the next four weeks. Despite a bruising vote in which the prime minister Boris Johnson’s strategy was rejected by dozens of his own MPs, the stay-at-home order was approved in parliament on Wednesday by 516 votes to 38.
- Indonesia fell into its first recession in over 20 years. Indonesia’s virus-hit economy contracted in the third quarter, plunging it into its first recession since the archipelago was mired in the Asian financial crisis more than 20 years ago. Activity in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy slumped 3.49% on-year in July-September, the statistics agency said Thursday, with tourism, construction and trade among the hardest-hit sectors. The data marked the second consecutive quarter of contraction after a 5.3% decline in April-June.
- China bars entry to travellers from Britain and Belgium. Mainland China has barred entry to some travellers from Britain and Belgium and set strict testing requirements on visitors from the United States, France and Germany, Reuters reports, as it reimposed border restrictions in response to rising global cases.
- Sydney Mardi Gras will go ahead but will look very different. Sydney’s iconic Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which traditionally draws hundreds of thousands of revellers and international tourists, will not march through the city’s centre in 2021.Instead, the 43rd edition of the parade on Oxford Street, which has been celebrated annually along the strip since 1978, will move to the nearby Sydney Cricket Ground, in a scaled-back, Covid-safe event.
- India reported over 50,000 cases for first time in 10 days. India reported a daily jump of 50,210 coronavirus infections, taking its total to 8.36 million, the health ministry said on Thursday. This was the highest daily jump in cases since 25 October, according to a Reuters tally, and the first time over 50,000 cases were reported in the 10 days since then. Cases in India have been dipping since hitting a peak in September, but experts warn that the Diwali festival season could lead to a spike. Deaths rose by 704, with total mortalities now at 124,315, the ministry said.
- Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Latvia and Estonia see record daily case rises. At least six European nations have seen record case rises in the last 24 hours. Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Latvia and Estonia each confirmed their highest new infections to date. Russia, which has the fourth-highest cases in the world, added over 18,000 new infections on Wednesday, bringing its total to 1,680,579, according to Johns Hopkins University. Swiss authorities announced a record 10,043 coronavirus cases in Switzerland in the last 24 hours.Austria’s daily tally of new coronavirus infections climbed above 6,000 for the first time on Wednesday to a new record of 6,211, data from the health ministry showed.Poland hit a daily high of nearly 24,700 coronavirus cases as the government introduced new restrictions on shops, schools and culture institutions through November. And finally, the Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia say they have both registered a record daily number of coronavirus infections since the start of the outbreak.
- The US set a record for daily new cases average one day after election. Daily new coronavirus cases in America have increased 45% over the past two weeks to a record seven-day average of 86,352, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Deaths are also on the rise, up 15% to an average of 846 deaths every day. There were more than 91,000 new cases recorded on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins. The university counted nearly 99,000 US cases on 30 October.
More now on Indonesia falling into recession:
Indonesia’s central bank cut interest rates several times this year in a bid to boost the struggling economy, while the government has unveiled more than $48 billion in stimulus to help offset the impact of the virus, which forced a large-scale shutdown that hammered growth.
Several million Indonesians have been laid off or furloughed as the vast country, home to nearly 270 million people, battled to contain the crisis.
Covid-19 infections have topped 420,000 and more than 14,000 deaths, putting Indonesia among the worst hit Asian countries.
However, the true scale of the crisis is widely believed to be much bigger in Indonesia, which has one of the world’s lowest testing rates.
President Joko Widodo has been widely criticised over his government’s handling of the pandemic as it appeared to prioritise the economy.
Boosting annual growth above five percent had been a key priority for Widodo in his second term, which began late last year.
On Monday, the president signed into law a package of pro-business bills aimed at cutting red tape and drawing more foreign investment as he pushes an infrastructure-focused policy.
But the controversial legislation has sparked mass protests in cities across the nation, as activists warned it would be catastrophic for labour and environmental protections.
Vikram Dodd and Josh Halliday report:
England’s police have warned the public to expect tougher action against Covid rule-breakers after the home secretary told them to “strengthen enforcement” ahead of England’s second lockdown.
Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), said those blatantly and deliberately flouting the regulations should expect punishment.
A police source stressed this did not mean officers would start “policing people’s private lives” but officers would be quicker to fine or close premises in clear and wilful breach of the new regulations:
Indonesia falls into first recession in over 20 years
Indonesia’s virus-hit economy contracted in the third quarter, plunging it into its first recession since the archipelago was mired in the Asian financial crisis more than 20 years ago, Reuters reports.
Activity in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy slumped 3.49% on-year in July-September, the statistics agency said Thursday, with tourism, construction and trade among the hardest-hit sectors.
The data marked the second consecutive quarter of contraction after a 5.3% decline in April-June.
Indonesia last suffered a recession 1999 during a regional currency crisis that helped force the resignation of long-term dictator Suharto less than a year earlier.
However, the depth of the current decline was easing, the agency said adding it pointed to stronger figures in the last quarter of the year.
China bars entry to travellers from Britain and Belgium
Mainland China has barred entry to some travellers from Britain and Belgium and set strict testing requirements on visitors from the United States, France and Germany, Reuters reports, as it reimposed border restrictions in response to rising global cases.
Spare a thought for the minks:
In case you missed it, the world’s largest mink producer, Denmark, says it plans to cull more than 15 million of the animals, due to fears that a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said 12 people are already infected with the mutated virus and that the mink are now considered a public health risk.
thinking about this particular mink pic.twitter.com/KfRObaGpZR
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 5, 2020
“The mutated virus in mink may pose a risk to the effectiveness of a future vaccine,” Frederiksen said.
She said the army, police, and national emergency service would be mobilised to help farms with the mink cull, which will eradicate the entire Danish herd.
The full story on Sydney’s Mardi Gras now:
India reports over 50,000 cases for first time in 10 days
India reported a daily jump of 50,210 coronavirus infections, taking its total to 8.36 million, the health ministry said on Thursday.
This was the highest daily jump in cases since 25 October, according to a Reuters tally, and the first time over 50,000 cases were reported in the 10 days since then. Cases in India have been dipping since hitting a peak in September, but experts warn that the Diwali festival season could lead to a spike.
Deaths rose by 704, with total mortalities now at 124,315, the ministry said.
US sets record for daily new cases average one day after election
The US has set a new record for average daily confirmed Covid-19 cases, with surging infections and hospitalisations as the country remains on edge waiting for a winner to be declared in the presidential race.
Daily new coronavirus cases in America have increased 45% over the past two weeks to a record seven-day average of 86,352, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Deaths are also on the rise, up 15% to an average of 846 deaths every day.
There were more than 91,000 new cases recorded on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins. The university counted nearly 99,000 US cases on 30 October.
Here is the very latest knowledge about the US election:
here is what we doth know and dothn't know so far:https://t.co/gwMEIfP8e3
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) November 5, 2020
Sydney Mardi Gras to go ahead next year – but look very different
Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras will go ahead next year with a Covid-safe celebration at the Sydney Cricket Ground, with spectators seated for a scaled down parade, AAP reports.
A maximum of 23,000 spectators will be allowed into the SCG, as the parade moves away from the traditional large floats and instead focuses on the “outlandish pageantry of costumes, puppetry and props”.
Mardi Gras CEO Albert Kruger said it was important that Mardi Gras give the community a creative platform to express their pride to the world after COVID had severely impacted so much art and culture.
“The 2021 parade may look different to how it has been in the past, but we feel very lucky to be able to give this opportunity to our communities during these times,” he said.
“The team at Mardi Gras have worked tirelessly with NSW Health to develop a Covid Safe event plan to ensure the parade can go forward and we’re excited by the prospect of staging the event at the SCG.
“Not only is the SCG close to our spiritual home of Oxford Street, but it also provides the safest venue for us to hold the event and meet requirements of physical distancing and contact tracing.”
The ticketed event will take place on 6 March.
Updated
Taxi drivers in Tokyo have been given the green light to refuse fares from passengers who are not wearing face masks. Japan’s transport ministry approved the rule change this week after 10 taxi companies in the capital voiced concern over the safety of drivers and passengers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Although mask wearing is widespread in Japan, the Kyodo news agency speculated that other sectors could follow the taxi firms’ lead in adopting a tougher approach towards customers who refuse to cover their faces. The measure, however, will not apply to people who have medical or other good reasons for not wearing a mask.
“The provision does not endorse an across-the-board refusal of people who are not wearing face masks,” a transport ministry official said, according to Kyodo, adding that drivers should check whether passengers have reasonable grounds for not wearing a mask before turning them away.
The firms said they were particularly concerned about well-oiled, maskless passengers talking loudly with drivers or fellow passengers. The ministry agreed that respiratory droplets emitted inside a taxi by a maskless passenger posed a risk both to drivers and subsequent customers.
Japan’s taxi firms have taken several measures to prevent Covid-19 transmission, including regularly disinfecting vehicles and requiring drivers to wear masks and have their temperatures taken before going on duty.
Australia’s efforts to secure the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine candidate may be compromised by huge global demand and a lack of local manufacturing capability, experts say, as Labor warns that Australia may struggle to distribute it at the required temperatures.
On Thursday, Scott Morrison announced Australia had reached two new deals for Covid-19 vaccines, one for 10m doses with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and another with the US corporate Novavax, which would supply 40m vaccines.
That adds to the two prior deals struck with AstraZeneca/Oxford and the University of Queensland and further diversifies the vaccine types available to Australia, as researchers race to find a safe and effective candidate:
Chelsea took a grip on Champions League Group E on a night when they announced a positive coronavirus test for Kai Havertz, the £72m signing from Bayer Leverkusen. They were helped by a pedantic VAR penalty decision that also resulted in a Rennes red card. It was an occasion that encapsulated the challenges and bitter frustrations of football in 2020:
How doughnuts became Australia’s symbol of Covid hope
Aleksandra Bliszczyk writes for the Guardian:
In Australia in March, daily images of empty supermarket shelves conjured dread as toilet paper and pantry supplies were stockpiled across the world. On 26 October one photo of an empty Woolworths shelf in Melbourne, cleared of that day’s doughnuts, sparked hope.
“Everyone in Melbourne’s had the same idea! Sold out donuts!” Sally Rugg, author and executive director of change.org, tweeted to her 46,000 followers.
Everyone in Melbourne’s had the same idea!
— Sally Rugg (@sallyrugg) October 25, 2020
Sold out donuts! 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/tsMpIoCT9V
Just hours after Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services announced the state’s first day of zero new cases and zero deaths since early June, locked-down residents started celebrating the end of the second wave of Covid-19 infections with doughnuts, posting photos and emojis on social media with the hashtag #donutday.
Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, declared it a “good day” and posed with a classic glazed, while the state’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton (who has replaced the “O” in his Twitter username with a doughnut emoji) was welcomed home from work with a mixed box:
Any extension to the four-week English lockdown would be “catastrophic” for struggling retailers who risk losing billions of pounds in Christmas sales, the industry’s trade body has warned.
About 363,000 specialist shops will remain shuttered in England from Thursday as new government restrictions kick in. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said the warning that the public should only buy essentials would mean overall shopper numbers would plummet. The impact on sales could potentially trigger further store closures and job losses, it said:
The wellbeing of New Zealanders plummeted during the country’s nationwide lockdown, research has found, with nearly a third experiencing “moderate to severe psychological distress” – especially young people.
On 15 March Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, ordered the total closure of the country’s borders and on 26 March the entire population of five million entered a strict lockdown.
From an infection point of the view the lockdown worked, but the social toll is continuing to be understood, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and domestic abuse, as well as widespread sleeping problems:
US tallies 100,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday – Covid Tracking project
As the nation awaits election results, more than 100,000 Americans have tested positive for Covid-19 – the first time over the course of the pandemic so far, per the COVID Tracking Project.
Johns Hopkins has not yet added its most recent 24-hour tally, but it has so far also never registered 100,000 cases or more. The highest toll on Johns Hopkins was 30 October, with 99,321 cases.
Infections are surging in nearly every state, with major cities including Omaha, Nebraska pausing elective surgeries to free up staff and resources to treat coronavirus patients.
Hospitals in Arkansas are facing shortages of healthcare workers and midwestern states including Minnesota and Indiana have set single-day records for new infections. South Dakota – where officials have not enacted a mask mandate – is seeing some fastest growth in the country for new cases, recording nearly 1000 new cases per day.
Nor can I:
Dude, I can’t... pic.twitter.com/RXYmTDIBDq
— Jiayang Fan (@JiayangFan) November 5, 2020
Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Latvia and Estonia see record daily case rises
At least six European nations have seen record case rises in the last 24 hours. Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Latvia and Estonia each confirmed their highest new infections to date.
Russia, which has the fourth-highest cases in the world, added over 18,000 new infections on Wednesday, bringing its total to 1,680,579, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Swiss authorities announced a record 10,043 coronavirus cases in Switzerland in the last 24 hours.
Austria’s daily tally of new coronavirus infections climbed above 6,000 for the first time on Wednesday to a new record of 6,211, data from the health ministry showed.
Poland hit a daily high of nearly 24,700 coronavirus cases as the government introduced new restrictions on shops, schools and culture institutions through November.
And finally, the Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia say they have both registered a record daily number of coronavirus infections since the start of the outbreak.
Health officials in Estonia say the country of 1.3 million confirmed 208 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, putting the cumulative total to 5,333 cases with 73 deaths.
Latvia, Estonia’s southern neighbor, says it had a record number of new coronavirus cases: 313 in the past 24 hours. Latvian health officials say the nation of nearly 2 million has recorded 6,752 confirmed cases and 85 deaths.
Baltic News Service, the region’s main news agency, reported Tuesday that Latvia’s government has in principle agreed on declaring a state of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic a decision expected to be formally taken up by the Cabinet.
England enters lockdown
As of 00:01 GMT England has entered its second national lockdown, placing 56 million people under new coronavirus restrictions for at least the next four weeks.
Updated
England's lockdown to begin in 10 minutes
As of 00:01 GMT England will have entered its second national lockdown, placing 56 million people under new coronavirus restrictions for at least the next four weeks.
Despite a bruising vote in which the prime minister Boris Johnson’s strategy was rejected by dozens of his own MPs, the stay-at-home order was approved in parliament on Wednesday by 516 votes to 38.
The pandemic claimed another 492 lives across the UK on Wednesday – up 24% on the previous day – and saw more than 12,000 people hospitalised.
NHS England warned that within two weeks more hospital beds could be filled than at the peak of the first wave, and said its alert level would rise to 4 from Thursday, meaning the pandemic response would be handled nationally as opposed to regionally.
All non-essential shops and venues will close and, while exemptions for support bubbles and childcare will remain in place, households will be banned from mixing indoors. People have been told to stay at home as much as possible, unless for education, medical appointments, essential goods, or to work if they can’t work from home.
Outdoor exercise is permitted, with members of the same household or one person from another household.People can leave home to care for vulnerable people, or to escape injury or harm. Takeaways and deliveries are still allowed.
Unlike the first national lockdown introduced in March, schools, colleges and universities will remain open, as will childcare and early years care.
Scientists believe the R number is still above 1 in most parts of the country, meaning that even though infection rates are slowing in Liverpool and other tier 3 areas, the decline is not by enough to avoid a prolonged second wave and excess deaths.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next while.
Say hello on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
At least six European nations have seen record case rises in the last 24 hours. Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Latvia and Estonia each confirmed their highest new infections to date. More on this shortly.
Four Italian regions will go into partial lockdown from Friday as the government scrambles to regain control of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
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England will enter its second national lockdown at 00:01am GMT, placing 56 million people under new coronavirus restrictions. People will be ordered to stay at home as much as possible from Thursday to combat a surge in new infections that scientists say could, if unchecked, cause more deaths than a first wave that forced a three-month lockdown earlier this year.
- France registered 40,558 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, compared to 36,330 on Tuesday and a record of 52,518 on Monday, health ministry data showed.The total number of cases increased to 1,543,321 but the ministry added that the number of new cases reported on Wednesday was a minimum number due to problems with data gathering.The ministry also reported that the number of people who have died from the virus increased to 38,674, up from 38,289 on Tuesday. It said there were 394 new deaths in hospitals over the past 24 hours.
- Four Italian regions will go into partial lockdown from Friday as the government scrambles to regain control of the coronavirus pandemic. Giuseppe Conte’s government is trying to avoid a full national shutdown and has instead introduced a three-tier system that divides the country’s 20 regions up according to level of risk. The northern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Aosta Valley, along with Calabria in the south, have been placed in the “red zone”, meaning people will only be able to leave their homes for work, health or emergency reasons and bars, restaurants and non-essential shops – apart from hairdressers – will close. People will be banned from travelling in or out of their regions.
- Cyprus announced a new night-time curfew to combat a resurgence of Covid-19 after a rise in cases in recent weeks. A curfew on movement from 11:00pm to 5:00am will start on Thursday and remain in force until 30 November.
- Irinej, the ageing patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox church, the country’s largest Christian denomination, was hospitalised after testing positive for the coronavirus. Irinej, 90, was “routinely tested following an epidemiological assessment,” and remains “without symptoms and in excellent health”, a statement said. His office said he is hospitalised in a Covid-19 hospital in Belgrade.
