We’ve fired up a brand new blog at the link below – where I’ll be covering Trump’s student rally in Phoenix, Arizona as US cases surge:
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now.
I’ll be here for the next few hours – and happy to hear from you. News, tips, comments, good tweets all welcome. I’m on Twitter @helenrsullivan and email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
Brazil confirms 39,436 new cases in 24 hours
Brazil recorded 39,436 new confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, as well as 1,374 new deaths resulting from the disease, the country’s health ministry has said. Brazil has registered more than 1.1 million cases since the pandemic began, while cumulative deaths reached 52,645, according to the ministry.
Updated
Summary
- Fauci says US will increase Covid-19 testing despite Trump’s claims of slowing down. The US’s top infectious disease expert said the country will be doing more Covid-19 testing, not less, hours after Donald Trump insisted he was serious when he called for testing to slow down.
-
European Union countries are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control its epidemic, the New York Times reported. More than 120,000 Americans have died from the outbreak; the world’s worst death toll.
-
Novak Djokovic tests positive for Covid-19 amid Adria Tour fiasco. The beleaguered world No 1 tested positive, along with his wife, Jelena, throwing tennis into turmoil as the sport’s official tour prepares to resume.
They join three other leading players and two trainers infected by the disease towards the end of the Serb’s unsanctioned Adria Tour.
-
Texas Children’s Hospital admitting adults as coronavirus surges in Houston. The children’s hospital is admitting adult coronavirus patients due to a spike in serious Covid-19 cases in the Houston area, while a dozen other states from Florida to California grapple with a surge in infections.
Texas reported over 5,000 new infections on Monday, a single-day record for the state. It has also seen Covid-19 hospitalisations hit record highs for 11 days in a row. - French virus tracing app flops with only 14 alerts. The country’s much-heralded new phone app for tracking coronavirus cases has only alerted 14 people that they were at risk of infection since its launch three weeks ago.
- Covid-19 vaccine may not work for at-risk older people, say scientists. A vaccine may not work well in older people who are most at risk of becoming seriously ill and dying from the disease, which may mean immunising others around them, such as children.
- Brazilian judge tells Bolsonaro to behave and wear a face mask. The judge ordered Jair Bolsonaro to rectify his “at best disrespectful” behaviour by wearing a face mask when circulating in the capital, Brasília.
- Virus pushing millions of South Asia children into poverty, says UN. More than 100 million children in the region could slip into poverty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a UN report said of the long-term impact of the crisis.
- England to reopen pubs, restaurants and hotels on 4 July. Members of two different households will be able to drink or dine together as long as they stick to physical-distancing guidelines, as the prime minister confirmed the 2-metre rule would be dropped in favour of a “1-metre-plus” approach.
- Putin ploughs ahead with Victory Day parade despite coronavirus threat. Russia is holding its postponed Victory Day military parade on Wednesday despite steadily rising coronavirus infections, as Vladimir Putin seeks a popularity boost in the run-up to a referendum on extending his time in office.
- Virus lockdown could fuel radicalisation, according to Europol. Coronavirus lockdowns could radicalise more terror suspects, the EU’s police agency has warned, saying both right and leftwing violence are on the rise.
- Iran reports highest virus deaths since April. The country reported 121 new coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, its highest daily toll in over two months.
Top US health officials contradicted Donald Trump over claims the president made at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday when he told supporters that he told his people to “slow the testing down”.
Dr Anthony Fauci and other health officials told a House panel they had never been instructed to slow down testing:
The UK government has given the green light to a night out in a pub or restaurant in England but gym workouts, swimming pools, nightclub dance floors and even manicures are still off limits – prompting accusations of glaring inconsistencies as the lockdown is eased, Zoe Wood and Paul MacInnes write.
The chief executive of PureGym, the UK’s biggest gym chain, said he was “bitterly disappointed” by the delay in opening its 269 gyms and questioned the government’s commitment to tackling obesity. “It is a strange war on obesity that sees pubs and restaurants open before gyms,” said Humphrey Cobbold who highlighted that the company had already safely reopened its gyms in Switzerland and Denmark.
Jane Nickerson, the chief executive of Swim England, called on the government to urgently rethink its decision: “Prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s safer to go into a pub than a pool and I’ll shut up. But if not, examine the evidence, come and see our test sites and let us open.”
Updated
The US has suffered 410 more deaths and recorded 26,643 new cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said. That takes the respective totals to 120,333 and 2,302,288.
The Guardian has just published its editorial on the easing of England’s lockdown measures:
The consequence is that the country’s exit from lockdown in July will be a bigger gamble than it may have been at a later stage. In weighing the risks to public health of easing lockdown against the economic risks of not doing so, Mr Johnson has opted to prioritise the economy and hope his bet pays off. The prime minister said that the government’s guiding principle would be to trust people to “use their common sense in the full knowledge of the risks”. As a scramble takes place to bring the test-and-trace insurance strategy up to speed, the country can only hope his faith in the public is borne out.
Venezuela’s western Zulia state has emerged as a hot spot as poorly supplied hospitals and chronic shortages of water and power make it difficult to prevent the disease from spreading, Reuters has reported.
The government of President Nicolás Maduro has identified Zulia as an epicentre, with official statistics showing 590 cases and 10 deaths in the sweltering border state that shares a frontier with neighbouring Colombia.
But opposition leaders have questioned the official figures, noting a lack of transparency in the reporting of cases and persecution of reporters, doctors and nurses who have contradicted the authorities. Juan Pablo Guanipa, an opposition legislator who represents the state of Zulia said:
There are more deaths from coronavirus than the regime is announcing. The figures they are presenting are not credible.
Venezuela’s information ministry and the Zulia government did not reply to requests for comment from Reuters.
The Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic is refusing to self-isolate following his brief encounter with Novak Djokovic, the men’s world number one tennis player who has tested positive.
The Croatian Public Health Institute said Plenkovic did not have to self-isolate as the risk of infection was low because he only briefly met Djokovic and was not in a close contact with him.
Three other players who played in Djokovic’s Adria Tour exhibition tournament in the Balkan region have also tested positive.
Plenkovic attended the tournament in the northern Adriatic town of Zadar on Saturday, a day before it was cancelled after Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria said he tested positive.
Croatia’s Borna Coric and Viktor Troicki also tested positive as well as Djokovic’s fitness coach Marco Panichi and Dimitrov’s coach Christian Groh.
On Monday, Plenkovic tested negative but calls from opposition politicians for him to self-isolate have grown stronger.
European Union countries are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control its epidemic, the New York Times has reported, citing draft lists of acceptable travellers.
More than 120,000 Americans have died from the outbreak; the world’s worst death toll.
Summary
- Fauci says US will increase Covid-19 testing despite Trump’s claims of slowing down. The US’s top infectious disease expert said the country will be doing more Covid-19 testing, not less, hours after Donald Trump insisted he was serious when he called for testing to slow down.
-
Novak Djokovic tests positive for Covid-19 amid Adria Tour fiasco. The beleaguered world No 1 tested positive, along with his wife, Jelena, throwing tennis into turmoil as the sport’s official tour prepares to resume.
They join three other leading players and two trainers infected by the disease towards the end of the Serb’s unsanctioned Adria Tour.
-
Texas Children’s Hospital admitting adults as coronavirus surges in Houston. The children’s hospital is admitting adult coronavirus patients due to a spike in serious Covid-19 cases in the Houston area, while a dozen other states from Florida to California grapple with a surge in infections.
Texas reported over 5,000 new infections on Monday, a single-day record for the state. It has also seen Covid-19 hospitalisations hit record highs for 11 days in a row. - French virus tracing app flops with only 14 alerts. The country’s much-heralded new phone app for tracking coronavirus cases has only alerted 14 people that they were at risk of infection since its launch three weeks ago.
- Covid-19 vaccine may not work for at-risk older people, say scientists. A vaccine may not work well in older people who are most at risk of becoming seriously ill and dying from the disease, which may mean immunising others around them, such as children.
- Brazilian judge tells Bolsonaro to behave and wear a face mask. The judge ordered Jair Bolsonaro to rectify his “at best disrespectful” behaviour by wearing a face mask when circulating in the capital, Brasília.
- Virus pushing millions of South Asia children into poverty, says UN. More than 100 million children in the region could slip into poverty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a UN report said of the long-term impact of the crisis.
- England to reopen pubs, restaurants and hotels on 4 July. Members of two different households will be able to drink or dine together as long as they stick to physical-distancing guidelines, as the prime minister confirmed the 2-metre rule would be dropped in favour of a “1-metre-plus” approach.
- Putin ploughs ahead with Victory Day parade despite coronavirus threat. Russia is holding its postponed Victory Day military parade on Wednesday despite steadily rising coronavirus infections, as Vladimir Putin seeks a popularity boost in the run-up to a referendum on extending his time in office.
- Virus lockdown could fuel radicalisation, according to Europol. Coronavirus lockdowns could radicalise more terror suspects, the EU’s police agency has warned, saying both right and leftwing violence are on the rise.
- Iran reports highest virus deaths since April. The country reported 121 new coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, its highest daily toll in over two months.
Updated
The US’s top infectious disease expert has testified before Congress that the country will be doing more Covid-19 testing, not less, hours after Donald Trump insisted he was serious when he called for testing to slowdown in the US.
Coronavirus cases have continued to rise in about half of US states, but Trump said at a weekend rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that increased testing was making the US look bad and that he had asked staff to slow down. #
His press secretary had later said the remarks were “in jest” but the president stood by them on Tuesday, telling reporters that the comments weren’t a joke.
Speaking to a congressional committee hours later, however, Dr Anthony Fauci said:
I know for sure that to my knowledge none of us have ever been told to slow down on testing.
That just is a fact. In fact, we will be doing more testing.
Updated
Barcelona disco owners have condemned a regional decision to maintain a ban on dancing, unless you are at a hotel or restaurant and know your partner well.
“We want to dance” the discotheques said in a statement in response to a U-turn by the Catalan regional government on the issue.
It had lifted the dance ban in discos and nightclubs last week as Spain eased one of Europe’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns.
But on Monday, officials backpedaled on the decision, saying night clubs would have to keep people off the dance floor, if necessary by putting tables and chairs there.
Dance floors in hotels and restaurants were allowed to stay open, but only if they were used by “groups of people often together and in close contact”.
Social media had a field day with the decision, but disco owners who have been hoping to open again were not amused.
Ramon Mas, head of the Barcelona discotheque federation, told a regional parliament hearing:
A night club without dancing is like an opera without music or a restaurant without food.
We will not reopen if we cannot let people dance.
Updated
President Vladimir Putin said Russia will from next year increase taxes on high earners, the first hike in decades, as he laid out measures to tackle the economic fallout of the coronavirus.
Addressing Russians in a lengthy televised speech, Putin said the country is facing huge economic challenges after the coronavirus epidemic and associated restrictions on business.
A week before Russia votes for constitutional changes that give him the possibility to run for president two more times, Putin praised Russians for coming through “the most dangerous stage of the epidemic”.
“In all, we have forced the epidemic to retreat... but the virus is still dangerous,” he said. “The fight against the epidemic is ongoing.”
Russia is currently ranked third in the world for the total number of cases with nearly 600,000 people having tested positive for the coronavirus.
The country has however reported a considerably lower number of deaths associated with the infection than other countries where the epidemic was severe, with the total toll at 8,359.
Announcing an extension of the government’s financial aid to families and healthcare workers, Putin suddenly suggested that the country’s income tax policy be changed in order to finance treatment of children with rare diseases.
He said that from 1 January 2021 the tax rate will rise from 13% to 15% on income over five million rubles ($73,000), in Russia’s first move away from a flat tax rate introduced in 2001. Putin said:
Since 2001 we have had a flat tax. Its introduction at the time allowed us to take incomes out of the shadows, to make taxation easier.
But now with a better quality of administration and the introduction of digital technologies, we can spread the tax burden in a differential way and direct the additional funds towards solving specific and important issues.
The extra revenues would be used for “treating children with severe rare diseases,” buying expensive medication and funding complicated surgeries, Putin said.
He said the 15% tax would only be applied to income people make on top of the five million ruble mark, not their entire income.
“But even that would add about 60bn rubles ($872m) to the budget,” he said.
Russia’s economic output fell by 12% in April year-on-year, and by 10.9% in May, according to the government. The central bank predicts the country won’t return to pre-crisis levels of growth before 2022.
“The past months have been a time of massive challenges and difficult trials,” Putin said, outlining various measures to boost Russia’s economic recovery, such as lowering taxes for some industries.
“In essence, a global recession has begun... the depth of this crisis is yet to be evaluated,” he said. “For Russia this is also a serious challenge.”
Updated
The Maldives will reopen its tourist resorts from mid-July after a months-long virus-enforced shutdown, the country’s president said, adding that international travellers would be welcomed to the Indian ocean holiday hotspot.
Tourism is a major earner for the Maldives, a tropical island nation popular with honeymooners and celebrities.
“The country will reopen its borders for international travel, and the government will allow resorts to welcome visitors from July 15,” president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih told reporters.
Foreign visitors would not be required to undergo virus tests or carry virus-free certificates to enter the archipelago of 1,190 tiny coral islets, the government said.
Visitors showing virus symptoms or with high fevers would be tested for the infectious disease at the airport, officials said.
The lockdown would be eased further with schools and restaurants, as well as mosques, to be re-opened in the country of Sunni Muslims in the near future, Solih added, without mentioning any dates.
Tourists were stranded in the Maldives when international flights were halted from late March to combat the spread of the virus.
Most of them left by mid-April on government-organised or privately chartered flights.
International flights have not yet resumed, although charters and special flights are permitted to arrive and leave the main airport in Male.
The South Asian nation, which has a population of 340,000 people, has so far reported 2,217 virus infections including eight deaths.
The Maldives attracted a record 1.7 million foreign tourists last year, a 15% increase from 2018, according to the government. Visitor numbers are expected to halve this year.
Turkey’s coronavirus death toll has crossed 5,000 and the number of infections have exceeded 190,000, health minister Fahrettin Koca has said.
The minister, who shares daily virus data on Twitter, said 27 more deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, while there were 1,268 new cases.
The total number of confirmed deaths now stands at 5,001 and the infections at 190,165 - making Turkey the 12th most affected country.
The nation of some 83 million has removed most restrictions, reopened restaurants and resumed mass prayers but officials have warned against complacency.
Turkey’s daily infections have risen in recent weeks to over a thousand, and authorities have made face masks mandatory in public in several cities including Istanbul.
“For a more normal life we must reduce the number of infections by following measures,” Koca tweeted.
Updated
The boss of a Romanian state-owned company has been charged with corruption over a deal to acquire medical equipment to fight the coronavirus pandemic, prosecutors said.
Adrian Ionel demanded a €760,000 ($860,000) bribe to help a company secure the contract for three million surgical masks and 250,000 medical gowns, according to the Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA).
Ionel is the CEO of Unifarm, a firm responsible for procuring equipment and drugs for public hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
Ionel was charged with abuse of office and bribe taking after prosecutors said he struck a deal in a meeting in a Bucharest restaurant with a middleman for the private company that was awarded the work.
The prosecutors said only one million masks were delivered and even those did not meet safety standards.
Prosecutors further allege that after that shipment, Ionel cancelled the contract when the bribe he demanded was not forthcoming.
“I’m innocent and I’m waiting to prove this”, Ionel told the Mediafax news agency.
The DNA’s chief prosecutor Crin Bologa told a press conference last month that the agency was probing 33 cases of possible corruption in the procurement of virus-related equipment.
Romania’s healthcare system already suffered from corruption and under-investment before the pandemic and over the past few months frontline medical staff have complained of a shortage of equipment, some going so far as to resign in protest.
Romania’s comparatively high levels of corruption mean its judicial system has been under special monitoring from Brussels since it joined the European Union in 2007.
Romania has so far reported 24,505 cases of Covid-19 and 1,539 deaths.
More than 200 pupils and staff who returned to a boarding school in South Africa’s impoverished Eastern Cape province this month tested positive for coronavirus on Tuesday, officials said.
Eastern Cape accounts for around 15% of South Africa’s 101,590 cases, making it the country’s third-worst affected province.
The province’s health department announced the outbreak at Makaula Senior Secondary School in the rural town of KwaBhaca, where 204 students and staff members were found infected with the virus.
“Initially 24 learners tested positive last week with 180 others, which include hostel assistants, testing positive this week,” the department said in a statement, adding that all had been placed in isolation.
National education department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said they were among 283 pupils - final-year students - as well as 47 teachers and 42 support staff at the school.
The 12th-grade students, as well as their middle school counterparts in the seventh grade, were the only ones allowed to return to the school because they are to take their final exams this year.
All others have been required to stay home since March when South Africa shuttered schools as part of measures to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Doctors are tracing and testing contacts in a bid to prevent further infections.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU), the country’s largest for teachers, this week called for schools in Eastern Cape province to close again, citing lack of protective equipment and unreliable water supplies.
But education minister Angie Motshekga said cases in schools simply showed that “many people already had the virus but didn’t know it”.
“We will continue to work hard... to make sure that we protect our learners, teachers and employees,” Motshekga said in a statement.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance party blamed the Makaula outbreak on “negligence” over social distancing in classrooms and boarding facilities.
Texas Children's Hospital admitting adults as coronavirus surges in Houston
A Texas children’s hospital is admitting adult coronavirus patients due to a spike in serious Covid-19 cases in the Houston area, while a dozen other states from Florida to California grapple with a surge in infections.
Texas reported over 5,000 new infections on Monday, a single-day record for the state. It has also seen Covid-19 hospitalisations hit record highs for 11 days in a row.
Arizona and Nevada reported record increases in new cases on Tuesday, after recording all-time highs last week, according to a Reuters tally.
The United States recorded a 25% increase in new cases of Covid-19 in the week ending 21 June, compared to the previous seven days, as Arizona and Florida joined Texas with record surges in new infections, a Reuters analysis found.
Ten states, including Texas, reported weekly new infection increases of more than 50%, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.
While most states are increasing testing, the number of tests coming back positive is rising. At least four states are averaging double-digit rates in the percentage of tests that are positive for the virus: Arizona at 20%, Florida and Utah both at 11%, and Texas at 10%.
By contrast, New York, formerly the centre of the US outbreak, has been reporting positive test rates of around 1%.
The World Health Organization considers positivity rates above 5% to be especially concerning.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday held fast to his claim that the spike in US cases in multiple states was due to testing, not increased spread of the disease.
“Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!” he tweeted.
Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2020
Many of these states are also seeing record hospitalisations
- a metric not affected by increased testing.
The president will speak with students in Phoenix on Tuesday after holding his first campaign rally in months in Oklahoma over the weekend.
Former vice president Joe Biden, who is expected to challenge Trump in the 3 November election, called the president’s plans to speak to thousands of supporters in Phoenix “reckless and irresponsible” at a time when the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus in Arizona is continuing to rise.
Portugal has reimposed restrictions in and around the capital Lisbon to check fresh coronavirus outbreaks, prompting fears the summer tourist season will take a major hit.
The new measures came after official data showed 9,221 new Covid-19 cases were detected, mainly in the capital and the wider Lisbon region, between 21 May and 21 June.
Among new measures being introduced on Tuesday in a region of some 2.8 million people are restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people - 20 in other areas - while cafes and shops must close at 8pm in the capital.
“I prefer that rather than close completely,” said Amandio Oliveira, owner of a kiosk with a terrace in the trendy Principe Real district.
“I hope tourists will come back in the end - these new measures are bad for the economy,” the 66-year-old, wearing a plastic face visor, told AFP.
Portugal took restrictive measures fairly early in the pandemic, hence its comparatively low toll of deaths and cases.
But the past four weeks it has seen more new cases per 100,000 population than in any other European country bar Sweden, according to data compiled by AFP from local authorities.
French virus tracing app flops with only 14 alerts
France’s much-heralded new phone app for tracking coronavirus cases has only alerted 14 people that they were at risk of infection since its launch three weeks ago, the digital affairs minister said.
The StopCovid app keeps track of users who have been in close proximity of one another over a two-week period. If any become infected, they inform the platform, which alerts the others.
French officials defended the app as a vital tool for slowing the spread of Covid-19, although critics expressed data privacy concerns.
Since its launch, 68 people informed the platform they had been infected and only 14 users were alerted that they were now at risk because of their contacts with these people, digital affairs minister Cédric O said.
The minister nevertheless defended the usefulness of the app, arguing that the numbers reflected a decrease in the virus’ prevalence.
But he admitted the number of downloads in France paled in comparison with Germany, where 10 million people downloaded the app versus almost 2 million in France.
And in France, 460,000 then uninstalled the app, leaving around 1.5 million users across the whole country.
The difference with Germany isn’t to do with the app itself, said Cédric O.
It’s probably more to do with our cultural differences and differing attitudes to the coronavirus.
And potentially, it may be linked to a difference in perspective towards respective governments’ behaviour during the pandemic.
The minister said he had no regrets over the choices made regarding the app, which he said would be very useful if there was a new spike in cases.
The app will cost between €80,000 and €120,000 ($91,000-13,600) a month for expenses related to hosting, development and maintenance work, a cost that would increase if there were to be a spike in cases, Cédric O said.
Britain’s car sector could lose one in six jobs or about 25,000 posts due to the economic fallout from coronavirus, industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has warned.
The SMMT survey findings come after the sector has already shed more than 6,000 jobs in June at carmakers including Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar Land Rover and McLaren.
The SMMT called for more urgent government action with one third of automotive employees still furloughed (having most of their wages paid by the state), under a jobs retention scheme that runs out in October.
The nation’s carmakers have been ravaged by the deadly Covid-19 outbreak, with sales falling off a cliff after the government imposed a nationwide lockdown on 23 March.
Car showrooms in England, however, reopened in early June as the UK government finally eased the lockdown.
The SMMT now wants the government to consider support measures including emergency funding access, tax holidays, and cuts in value added tax to help stimulate car sales.
A hugely popular Indian guru touting herbal remedies as a $7 cure for coronavirus has been told by the government he needs to prove his claims before further marketing.
Baba Ramdev, a supporter of prime minister Narendra Modi, said the remedy would be available from next week through his lucrative Patanjali Ayurved company, claiming it was 100% successful on nearly 300 test patients.
The ubiquitous company is worth several hundred million dollars, selling everything from toothpaste to jeans. It is a major player in a vast Indian consumer goods market of 1.3 billion people.
Speaking at his company’s headquarters in Haridwar, Ramdev said that “Coronil” and “Swasari” could cure coronavirus in a week.
“Some 280 patients were included in the clinical trials and 100% recovered,” he claimed. 69% recovered in three days and the rest within seven, he told reporters.
He said the trials were conducted in association the government-run National Institute of Medical Sciences but did not specify whether they received approval from India’s drug authority.
However, the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) said it had asked the firm for more details and told it not to advertise its claims until they were examined.
Ayurvedic medicines have been used for centuries in India but Ramdev - who has a yoga TV channel despite saying he lives an ascetic life - has tapped into booming demand since creating his firm in 2006.
The company has been marred by several controversies, however, including a massive row over a drug called “Divya Putrajeevak Beej” (Divine Son-Bearing Seed) that sparked allegations it promoted child sex selection.
The company - India’s 13th most trusted brand according to rankings published earlier this year - has previously claimed it had cancer remedies, while Ramdev has also said he can “cure” homosexuality and AIDS.
Modi, who is currently battling a surge in coronavirus with almost 450,000 cases and almost 15,000 deaths, last week suggested that yoga could help create a “protective shield” against the coronavirus.
Virus lockdown could fuel radicalisation: Europol
Coronavirus lockdowns could radicalise more terror suspects, the EU’s police agency has warned, saying both right and leftwing violence are on the rise.
Europol director Catherine De Bolle said, as she unveiled the organisation’s latest terrorism trends report, the pandemic’s worldwide economic and social impacts could escalate existing discontents.
De Bolle said in the report:
These developments have the potential to further fuel the radicalisation of some individuals, regardless of their ideological persuasion.
Activists both on the extreme left and right, and those involved in jihadist terrorism, attempt to seize the opportunity the pandemic has created to further propagate their aims.
The report said Islamist terror attacks in Europe had decreased, mainly due to better law enforcement, with seven “completed or failed” jihadist attacks in 2019.
However Europol warned of an increase in attacks by right-wing extremists, partly inspired by attacks such as the 2019 attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. De Bolle said:
While many right-wing extremist groups across the EU have not resorted to violence, they contribute to a climate of fear and animosity against minority groups.
Such a climate, built on xenophobia, hatred for Jews and Muslims and anti-immigration sentiments, may lower the threshold for some radicalised individuals to use violence against people.
Last year three EU member states reported a total of six right-wing attacks of which one was completed, as opposed to only one the year before.
One of the worst attacks was the shooting at a synagogue in the Germany city of Halle last October in which two people were killed.
There were 26 leftwing and anarchist attacks in Europe, mainly in Italy, Greece and Spain - a similar number to two years ago after a drop in 2018.
But the number of arrests on suspicion of leftwing or anarchist terrorist offences more than tripled, compared to previous years, Europol added, with the majority linked to violent demonstrations and confrontations with Italian police.
Finland will scrap travel restrictions and quarantine for European countries such as Italy and Germany from 13 July if infection rates remain at current levels.
The Finnish government will allow in travellers from European countries where infections remain at a maximum eight cases per 100,000 inhabitants over a period of two weeks, Finland’s minister of interior, Maria Ohisalo, said.
The travel restrictions and the quarantine rule will remain in place for travellers from neighbouring Sweden.
Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov will be fined 300 levs ($174) for violating an order to wear a protective face mask during a visit to a church on Tuesday, the health ministry said.
Health minister Kiril Ananiev on Monday ordered Bulgarians to resume wearing masks again at all indoor public venues after the Balkan country last week recorded its highest weekly rise in coronavirus cases.
“All persons who were without protective face masks in the church at the Rila Monastery during the prime minister’s visit will be fined,” the health ministry told Reuters in an email.
As well as Borissov, journalists, photographers and camera people who accompanied him into the church without masks will also be fined, the ministry said.
It did not say whether clergy who failed to wear masks inside the church would also be penalised.
Bulgaria has weathered the Covid-19 pandemic relatively well due to rigorous lockdown restrictions including the compulsory wearing of face masks in public places.
It had begun to relax the measures this month, but last week it reported 606 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the total to 3,984, with 207 deaths, prompting Ananiev’s decision to reimpose the mask requirement at indoor public venues, including on trains and buses.
On Monday, chief state health inspector Angel Kunchev said Borissov’s ruling centre-right GERB party and the opposition Socialist Party would each be fined 3,000 levs for failing to enforce social distancing at recent large-scale events they organised.
As coronavirus chaos has enveloped Pakistan, with hospitals overflowing, doctors dying and infections escalating at an unmanageable rate, a dangerous black market in blood plasma has emerged, write Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch.
The blood plasma of recovered coronavirus patients is now being sold for upwards of £3,000 to those who are desperately looking for a cure, at a time when doctors say Pakistan’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse.
Convalescent plasma is being trialled around the world as a possible treatment for the disease. It contains antibodies generated by the immune systems of people who have fought off the virus.
Doctors in government hospitals in Islamabad told the Guardian they had witnessed transactions between patients and intermediaries. The Guardian has also seen multiple text messages between people across Pakistan who are buying and selling the plasma of recovered patients.
“The hospitals are not involved but I have seen deals happen in front of me,” said a doctor at a government hospital in Islamabad, who asked not to be named. “Usually a patient’s attendants or family will approach someone who has recovered, asking them to donate blood. When a certain amount is agreed as payment, usually between 200,000 and 800,000 rupees (£950-£3,800), they go to a private lab and extract the plasma, which is then ‘donated’ to the patients.”
Brazilian judge orders Bolsonaro to wear face mask in public
A Brazilian judge has ordered Jair Bolsonaro to rectify his “at best disrespectful” behaviour by wearing a face mask when circulating in the capital, Brasília.
The president has sparked outrage by repeatedly flouting measures designed to slow the advance of a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 Brazilians.
The rightwing populist has made a succession of public appearances – at protests, shops and even a floating barbecue - wearing a mask incorrectly, or not at all.
On Monday, a federal judge ruled Bolsonaro was not above the laws of the federal district, which contains Brazil’s capital, and would face a daily fine of 2,000 reais (about £330) if he continued to break the rules. The use of masks has been compulsory there since late April.
According to a transcript published by the Estado de São Paulo newspaper, Renato Coelho Borelli ruled:
The president of the republic must take all necessary measures to avoid the transmission of Covid-19 – be that in order to protect his own health or that of those around him.
Even though there is no consensus within the medical/scientific community about the dissemination of Covid-19 by asymptomatic carriers, it is at best disrespectful to go out in public without using PPE – putting other people’s health at risk.
A straightforward Google search is enough to find numerous images of the defendant Jair Messias Bolsonaro moving around Brasília and the surrounding federal district without using a mask and exposing others to the spread of this infirmity that has caused a nationwide upheaval.
The judge cited Brazil’s oath of office in which presidents vow to “uphold, defend and fulfil the constitution, obey the laws [and] promote the well-being of the Brazilian people”.
“That’s to say, the president is constitutionally obliged to follow the country’s existing laws, as well as promote the wellbeing of the population, which means taking the necessary measures to … prevent the propagation of a virus that is spreading rapidly and often silently.”
“No one, not even the head of the executive, is above the constitution and laws of the republic,” the judge concluded.
Bolsonaro made no immediate comment on the ruling.
Smoking shisha will remain banned in Egypt even after a partial reopening of cafes, restaurants, places of worship, cinemas and sporting clubs on Saturday, the prime minister, Mostafa Madbouli, has said.
Madbouli said cafes and restaurants will restart operations at a reduced capacity of 25 percent in the first phase of relaxing the lockdown, but warned that shisha (water-pipe) smoking, a popular social activity among Egyptians, is still banned to prevent the spread of the disease. Cafes and restaurants will be allowed to remain open to customers until 10 pm, while shops can operate until 9pm.
A night-time curfew was imposed in late March restricting movement from 8pm to 6am, but it has been eased in recent weeks. The curfew will run from midnight to 4am, Mabouli said in a televised address in which he announced a number of decisions that would take effect on 27 June.
“We have the ability to move past this pandemic with the best results at hand and the minimum number of losses,” he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
Mabouli also said daily services in mosques and churches in the deeply religious country will resume, but weekend services, which attract large congregations, remain suspended. Cinemas, cultural centres and sports clubs will reopen at 25% capacity to ensure social distancing, while public transport running times are to be extended. Beaches and public parks remain out of bounds.
“We all have to live with the pandemic... We have been trying to balance between opening up the country and maintaining the necessary health measures,” Madbouli said.
Egypt has officially recorded over 56,000 coronavirus cases and more than 2,000 deaths.
A vaccine against Covid-19 may not work well in older people who are most at risk of becoming seriously ill and dying from the disease, say scientists, which may mean immunising others around them, such as children, writes Sarah Boseley, the Guardian’s health editor.
Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial, one of the members of the UK’s Sage scientific advisory sub-group NERVTAG, told the House of Lords science and technology committee it was this week considering a paper on targeting different groups in the population with vaccines.
“Sometimes it is possible to protect a vulnerable group by targeting another group and this, for example, is being done with influenza,” he said. “In the past few years, the UK has been at the forefront of rolling out the live attenuated vaccine for children.”
Giving the nasal spray flu vaccine to children who do not often get severe flu protects their grandparents, he said. Immunising health and care workers – who are likely to be the first to get the vaccine – would also help protect older people who have the most contact with them.
Global trade in goods and services fell by nearly a fifth in the second quarter of 2020, compared to a year earlier, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the World Trade Organization said the plunge fell short of a worst-case scenario.
The Geneva-based body forecast in April that global trade in goods would fall by between 13% and 32% in 2020 - numbers that the WTO director‑general, Roberto Azevedo, described as “ugly” - before rebounding by 21-24% in 2021.
The volume of merchandise trade in fact shrank by 3% in the first quarter, the WTO said, and initial estimates pointed to a year-on-year decline of 18.5% for the second quarter.
In a press release issued by the WTO, Azevedo said:
The fall in trade we are now seeing is historically large – in fact, it would be the steepest on record. But there is an important silver lining here: it could have been much worse.
This is genuinely positive news but we cannot afford to be complacent. Policy decisions have been critical in softening the ongoing blow to output and trade, and they will continue to play an important role in determining the pace of economic recovery. For output and trade to rebound strongly in 2021, fiscal, monetary, and trade policies will all need to keep pulling in the same direction.
Hi this is Damien Gayle keeping tabs on the blog for the next hour or so while Jessica has a break.
Virus pushing millions of South Asia children into poverty, says UN
More than 100 million children in South Asia could slip into poverty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a UN report said of the long-term impact of the crisis.
Cases across the densely populated region – home to almost a quarter of the world’s population – have risen in recent weeks even as the countries lift lockdowns to revive economies badly shattered by the virus.
“While they may be less susceptible to the virus itself, children are being profoundly affected by the fallout, including the economic and social consequences of the lockdown,” the report by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said.
South Asia – which includes India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bhutan – is home to some 600 million children, with about 240 million already living in poverty, the agency said.
In a worst-case scenario, the virus could push a further 120 million into poverty and food insecurity within six months, it warned.
Unicef’s South Asia regional director, Jean Gough, said:
Without urgent action now, Covid-19 could destroy the hopes and futures of an entire generation.
Progress in healthcare – such as immunisation, nutrition and other services – were being “severely disrupted”.
In Bangladesh, Unicef said it found that some of the poorest families could not afford three meals a day, while in Sri Lanka its survey showed that 30% of families had cut their food intake.
With schools shut, poorer children have struggled to keep up with their education, particularly those in rural households without internet access - or even electricity.
“There are concerns that some disadvantaged students may join the nearly 32 million children who were already out of school before Covid-19 struck,” the report added.
Other major concerns include the risks of domestic violence, depression and other mental health issues with youths spending more time at home.
Updated
Russia is holding its postponed Victory Day military parade on Wednesday despite steadily rising coronavirus infections, as Vladimir Putin seeks a popularity boost in the run-up to a referendum on extending his time in office.
The parade celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany and has grown to outsize proportions in the years since Putin came to power at the turn of the century.
On 1 July, Russians will vote on amending their country’s constitution to allow Putin to run twice more for president, potentially extending his stay in the Kremlin to 2036,
Online voting will begin less than 24 hours after an estimated 14,000 Russian troops, as well as tanks, artillery, and aircraft, traverse Red Square in a patriotic display of the country’s military prowess.
The preparations for the parade have involved complex political considerations over Russia’s hurried exit from coronavirus shelter-in-place measures to accommodate the crucial political season.
The Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, appeared to yield to pressure to end Moscow’s lockdown earlier this month but he has urged spectators to avoid crowding the streets to catch sight of the passing military hardware.
“It’s better to watch it on television,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any crowds, there shouldn’t be spectators there.”
Updated
Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly has announced widespread reopening measures, even as Covid-19 cases continue to climb in the country.
In a speech this afternoon, Madbouly said social clubs, coffee shops and restaurants can open at 25% capacity and houses of worship will reopen, but social distancing and mask-wearing will be strictly enforced.
He also blamed absentee doctors for the rising case numbers and said those not showing up to work will face legal action by the state.
Egypt is currently reporting 56,809 confirmed cases but unofficial estimates say true numbers could be far higher.
A telephone poll by the Egyptian centre for public opinion research, known as Baseera, estimated Egypt has 616,000 cases.
Egyptian officials have repeatedly spoken of a need to “coexist” with Covid-19 and pressed ahead with reopening, despite reports of skyrocketing case numbers and vastly overstretched hospital facilities.
Meanwhile, anyone seen to be questioning the government’s actions faces extreme punishment, including by the country’s fearsome security forces.
The family of prominent activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, detained without charge inside a maximum security prison in the Tora prison complex south of Cairo endured assault yesterday morning in front of the facility, after his mother, professor Laila Soueif, attempted to receive a letter from her son.
Prisoners have been denied visits that provide vital supplies and communication since March due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and his family say Abd El-Fattah has faced additional restrictions in getting a letter out of prison.
Egypt’s ministry of interior has attempted to quash stories of the spread of Covid-19 inside the vast facility, despite evidence from rights groups that sections of two prison blocks have been cordoned off to quarantine infected prisoners.
Laila Soueif and her sister, the Booker-nominated author Ahdaf Soueif, were briefly arrested in March for standing in front of the Egyptian cabinet building to demand the government combat the spread of Covid-19 inside prisons.
Earlier today, security forces bundled Abd El-Fattah’s sister, activist Sanaa Seif, into an unmarked microbus outside the Egyptian Public Prosecutor’s office in Al Rehab, New Cairo, when she and her family went to complain about their assault.
Mona Seif, sister to both Sanaa and Abd El-Fattah, said Sanaa Seif reappeared at State Security Prosecution, a national security court branded a tool of repression against peaceful critics by Amnesty International.
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, tweeted her concern about the case:
Am hearing disturbing reports from #Egypt that Sanaa Seif was forced into a vehicle earlier today & taken away. https://t.co/sNAd0SuyZV
— Mary Lawlor UN Special Rapporteur HRDs (@MaryLawlorhrds) June 23, 2020
Updated
Netflix will stream a collection of short films made by celebrated filmmakers around the world during lockdown.
The films, made with whatever equipment and family members were close at hand, will be launched next week.
Hollywood stars Kristen Stewart and Maggie Gyllenhaal were among 17 of those who rose to the challenge, with Stewart shooting hers in Los Angeles while Gyllenhaal sheltered in Vermont.
Jackie director Pablo Larrain made his film at home in Santiago, Chile - which had been battered by months of civil unrest before the virus struck - while French-Malian filmmaker Ladj Ly shot around the tough Paris suburb where his Oscar-nominated movie Les Miserables is set.
David Mackenzie of Hell or High Water fame got to grips with his hometown Glasgow, while Nadine Labaki used the backdrop of Beirut, which also featured in her 2018 hit Capernaum.
Larrain said it was “an extraordinary chance to keep working... in days (that were) so confusing and unique.”
The shorts will be streamed on Netflix from 30 June, with the company saying a donation is being made to its hardship fund for cast and crew who have lost their jobs in the crisis.
Thai schools are holding rehearsals to prepare students for classes in the coronavirus era, giving lessons in hygiene and social distancing to children as young as three ahead of next week’s return.
Schools across Thailand have been modifying classrooms, dining halls and play areas to prepare for a phased return of students, in another step towards normalcy as the country nears one month without a domestic transmission.
Bangkok’s Wichutit School has since last week been putting students through a day of drills in hand-washing, playground etiquette and forming orderly lines one metre apart.
On Tuesday, the school of more than 1,600 students invited children age 3 and 4 to put on masks and face shields for mock lessons in classrooms with barriers installed on desks.
They queued for temperature checks and wash basins and were introduced to hand-cleaning techniques and a new lunchtime routine of eating behinds screens.
“This is going to be something new for the kids and they’re excited. They’ve been cooperative because parents also practise the same new normal at home,” said the school’s director, Pornnicha Chatapun.
It’s normal life for them now, and they won’t feel weird about it.
Thailand’s return to school is sooner than much of Southeast Asia, owing to its low infection numbers. Of its 3,156 cases, 58 have died and 3,023 patients have recovered.
That compares to nearly 48,000 cases in Indonesia and close to 32,000 in the Philippines, whose president has vowed to keep schools shut until a Covid-19 vaccine is available.
Updated
The British prime minister Boris Johnson said any changes to the country’s quarantine policy would be based on public health guidance and not a desire to open up the economy.
“We will have a policy on air bridges that is based on public health,” he told parliament as he announced an easing of some lockdown measures in England on Tuesday.
Britain has a 14-day quarantine policy in place for arrivals into the country from abroad, but the government has said it is looking at “air bridges” which would allow restriction-free travel between countries with low infection rates.
Russians soaked up the sun on boat cruises on the river Moskva for the first time in three months after authorities lifted many of the city’s last remaining restrictions aimed at halting the spread of Covid-19.
Officials in the city of 12.7 million, the centre of Russia’s outbreak, say new infections have been falling from a peak in May and there were just over 1,000 on Tuesday.
Russia’s national case load, the world’s third highest, is nearly 600,000.
The city, which began rapidly relaxing an array of lockdown restrictions earlier this month, on Tuesday allowed restaurants, cafes, libraries, playgrounds and gyms to open properly and for river cruises to resume.
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said late on Monday that life in the capital had already largely returned to its normal rhythm, but warned that some restrictions remained in force including a ban on mass public events such as protests.
Sobyanin’s critics accuse him of rushing to ease the lockdown in time to allow a Red Square military parade on Wednesday and a 1 July nationwide vote that could extend president Vladimir Putin’s rule until 2036.
Authorities have urged residents to continue wearing masks and gloves and to observe social distancing rules. But on Tuesday the streets were bustling and many people were ignoring those guidelines.
Novak Djokovic tests positive for Covid-19
Novak Djokovic, the men’s world No 1 tennis player, has tested positive for Covid-19, the Serbian said in a statement on Tuesday.
Croatia’s Borna Ćorić, Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria and Viktor Troicki have previously tested positive after playing in Djokovic’s Adria Tour exhibition tournament in the Balkan region.
Italy has seen a surge in bicycle sales since the government ended its coronavirus lockdown as people steer clear of public transport and respond to government incentives to help the environment.
Some 540,000 bikes have been sold nationwide since shops across the country reopened in early May, according to sector lobby Ancma, a 60% increase in the first month compared to the same period in 2019.
To keep people off metros and buses, and avoid road congestion, the government has offered to contribute up to €500 ($562.70) for city-dwellers who buy traditional or “pedal-assisted” electrical bicycles.
The subsidy, which kicked in on 4 May and runs to the end of the year, has accelerated the trend even in small centres where it is not available.
“May has been an extraordinary month for the e-bike market,” Gian Franco Nanni, chief executive of Italian electric vehicle producer Askoll EVA told Reuters. “We have seen triple-digit growth in orders compared with a year ago.”
With more than 34,600 deaths, Italy has the world’s fourth highest Covid-19 toll and authorities have warned the risk of infection is still high in crowded places.
The government has set aside €120m for its incentive plan, and has said it will make more funds available if needed.
Bicycle use has been traditionally popular in the flat northern cities of the Po Valley such as Bologna and Parma, but is now also becoming more common in cities further south.
“We have sold more than 50 bikes since we reopened,” said Simone Lazzaretti, who runs a bike shop in the hilly capital Rome, where bicycles had never really caught on as a means to get around town.
“We’ve sold out of all the less expensive pedal-assisted models and only have top-of-the-range ones left,” he said.
England to reopen pubs, restaurants and hotels on 4 July
England’s pubs, restaurants and hotels will be allowed to reopen on 4 July in the next stage of easing the country’s coronavirus lockdown, prime minister Boris Johnson said.
All hospitality indoors will be limited to table service and our guidance will encourage minimal staff and customer contact.
We will ask businesses to help NHS Test and Trace respond to any local outbreaks by collecting contact details from customers.
Updated
Iran reports highest virus deaths since April
Iran on Tuesday reported 121 new coronavirus deaths, its highest daily toll in over two months, as it battles to contain the Middle East’s deadliest Covid-19 outbreak.
Health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said the new fatalities brought the overall virus death toll to 9,863.
That is Iran’s highest single-day fatality rate since 11 April, when 125 deaths were recorded.
Lari also announced another 2,445 people had tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the country’s caseload to 209,970.
The Islamic republic recorded a drop in its daily fatalities in early May, but there has been a rise in recent weeks.
There has been scepticism at home and abroad about the country’s official Covid figures, with concerns the actual toll could be much higher.
Iran has not imposed a mandatory lockdown on people to stop the virus’s spread, but it closed schools, cancelled public events and banned movement between the country’s 31 provinces in March.
The government progressively lifted restrictions from April in order to reopen its sanctions-hit economy.
Egypt will reopen restaurants, cafes and places of worship from the end of the week but will keep some restrictions in place to try to limit crowding, the prime minister has said.
Restaurants and cafes will operate at 25% capacity and shut at 10pm from Saturday, while mosques will be open for daily praying but not for weekly Friday prayers, Mostafa Madbouly said.
England's social distancing rule cut to '1-metre-plus'
The social distancing rule in England will be cut from 2 metres to “1-metre-plus”, Boris Johnson has said, in a move to help the hospitality sector reopen.
The prime minister unveiled a significant easing of England’s coronavirus lockdown on Tuesday, saying it had been allowed due to a decline in the number of new infections and the belief that currently there is no risk of a second peak.
He told parliament:
The number of new infections is now declining by between 2-4% every day .
This pandemic has inflicted permanent scars and we mourn everyone we have lost … While we remain vigilant, we do not believe there is currently a risk of a second peak of infections that might overwhelm the NHS (National Health Service).
Updated
Around 4,000 recovered Covid-19 patients from a religious group at the centre of South Korea’s largest outbreak will donate plasma for research, an official said, a day after local officials filed a lawsuit against the church.
In February and March, a massive outbreak among members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus made South Korea the scene of the first large outbreak outside of China.
At least 5,213 of the country’s total 12,484 cases have been linked to the church outbreak, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Church founder Lee Man-hee had internally advised recovered members to donate their plasma, which is badly needed for coronavirus research, Shincheonji media coordinator Kim Young-eun told Reuters.
Many of the recovered church members wanted to donate to express thanks to the government and medical staff, she said.
The city of Daegu – where most of the church infections were centred – filed a civil lawsuit against the church on Monday, seeking 100bn won ($82.75m) in damages.
Daegu authorities had previously filed a complaint against the church accusing it of not submitting a full list of members and facilities, and not cooperating with city health efforts.
Shincheonji says it fully complied with government efforts.
The National Institute of Health said 185 people have so far come forward to donate plasma as of Monday and said they were in talks with Shincheonji for donations.
South Korea health officials have said that in the absence of other treatments or vaccines, plasma therapy may be a way to lower the death rate, especially in critical patients.
At least 17 South Koreans have received the experimental therapy, which involves using plasma from recovered patients with antibodies to the virus, enabling the body to defend against the disease.
South Korea has reported 281 deaths from Covid-19.
Updated
Thailand has started sterilising hundreds of monkeys in a city famous for its macaque population, as the coronavirus pandemic has left them hungry, aggressive and wrestling food from terrified residents.
Lopburi province and its 2,000 monkeys have long been a draw for tourists from around the world, who typically feed them and pose with them for selfies.
But since Thailand closed its borders on 4 April to control coronavirus infections, the monkeys are not adapting well to their new normal.
Supakarn Kaewchot, a government veterinarian, told Reuters:
They’re so used to having tourists feed them and the city provides no space for them to fend for themselves.
With the tourists gone, they’ve been more aggressive, fighting humans for food to survive.
They’re invading buildings and forcing locals to flee their homes.
Unlike monkeys in the wild, city monkeys need not hunt for food, giving them more time and energy to reproduce and cause trouble, Supakarn said.
To try to control their fast-growing population, authorities have this week placed big cages around the city with tantalizing fruits in them, hoping to lure around 300 monkeys for sterilisation.
From the cages, the monkeys are transferred to an operating table, where they are sedated, shaved and tattooed with a unique reference number under their arms, before vets perform a vasectomy or a tubal ligation operation.
The sleeping monkeys get one night to recover before being taken back to their respective tribes.
The government aims to sterilise 500 of the macaques over the next two months.
Supakarn said the sterilisation would pose no threat to the monkey population and the aim was just to slow down the rate of its urban growth.
“We’re not doing this in the wild, only in the city areas,” she added.
It’s mega shark vs giant dinosaur at the US box office. Twenty-seven years after its first release, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 dinosaur-rampage blockbuster Jurassic Park has regained the number one spot at the US box office, just beating another another back-catalogue Spielberg blockbuster Jaws, in a commercial landscape severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Deadline reports that Jurassic Park earned just over $517,000 over the weekend of 19-21 June, having displaced last week’s top film The Invisible Man, which had earned around $383,000.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jurassic Park played in 230 locations across the US, the vast majority being drive-in cinemas.
German economists see summer growth rebound after virus
A panel of economists that advises the German government has said Europe’s leading economy will likely shrink 6.5% this year but the post-coronavirus recovery will begin “from the summer”.
“Economic developments in Germany are likely to fall close to the deep ‘V’ scenario” described in an emergency forecast in March,” the so-called “Wise Men” panel (SVR) said, referring to a sharp plunge and relatively swift rebound.
“From the summer, a gradual recovery should get going, making for 4.9% growth in 2021,” said the Wise Men – who for the first time this year include two women on their five-strong panel.
The economists singled out “the bad foreign trade environment”, set to impose a “significant” burden on some of Germany’s most important industries this year as infection control measures persist around much of the globe.
Highlighting Berlin’s generous support to business and workers, they said:
Nevertheless, as the year continues, falling numbers of infections and gradual loosening of contact restrictions in Germany and important trade partners will create the conditions for a recovery.
Separately, Federal Labour Agency chief Detlef Scheele said unemployment would probably rise above 3 million in the summer. But “hopefully the number will sink back down after that,” he told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.
Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann said at the weekend that “the trough should be behind us by now”.
Things are looking up again. But the deep slump is being followed only by a comparatively gradual recovery.
German MPs are debating an update to the 2020 budget, including measures such as a temporary VAT cut to boost consumption and a €300 per child bonus for families.
The moves come on top of loan guarantees for businesses, an extended shorter-hours scheme to prevent mass layoffs and other measures totalling over €1tn in a coronavirus rescue package announced in March.
Finance minister Olaf Scholz plans to borrow about €218bn this year to pay for the government largesse, blasting through a financial crisis-era “debt brake” written into the constitution in 2009.
Updated
A court in Kenya has charged a police officer with the murder of a 13-year-old boy in a Nairobi slum as authorities enforced a coronavirus curfew.
Yassin Hussein Moyo was shot dead on the balcony of his home in March as police officers used force to clear the streets in the poor neighbourhood of Huruma.
His death came to illustrate the chaotic and sometimes violent enforcement of a night-time curfew by Kenyan police, who have been accused of murdering more than a dozen others since the coronavirus lockdown began in late March.
Police constable Patrick Ndiema was arraigned before a judge in Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi and charged with murdering the teenager.
He pleaded not guilty, and was ordered to remain in police custody until Wednesday when a judge will hear his bail application.
Earlier this month, the police oversight agency IPOA said at least 15 deaths had been “directly linked” to curfew enforcement.
Human Rights Watch has accused police officers of murder and using excess force, whippings and tear gas to violently force Kenyans indoors during the early days of the curfew.
Activists have seized the global groundswell against police brutality following George Floyd’s death in the US to highlight Kenya’s own record on unlawful killings by law enforcement.
A small protest against police violence was held in June in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s bigger slums, which has rarely seen officers convicted for brutality.
Updated
Kazakhstan’s biggest city, Almaty, may convert two sports arenas into Covid-19 hospitals as existing facilities for patients with suspected and confirmed cases are nearly full, the city’s healthcare chief said.
The Central Asian nation bordering China and Russia is struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus after lifting a nationwide lockdown in mid-May.
One indoor arena on the outskirts of the city of 2 million could house about 1,000 beds, Kamalzhan Nadyrov told a briefing after residents started complaining on social networks that hospitals were refusing to take in patients.
Kazakhstan had reported almost 29,000 Covid-19 cases as of Tuesday, up from about 5,000 at the end of the lockdown.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the authorities and the people had let their guard down too early, prompting a resurgence in the virus.
Kentucky, New York and four other states face another possibly messy day of voting on Tuesday, as officials try to balance a crush of absentee mail ballots with a reduced number of in-person polling locations amid the coronavirus outbreak.
That combination has led to long lines, delays and confusion during primaries in other states, including Wisconsin and Georgia, offering a preview of possible problems if the 3 November general election is conducted under the threat of Covid-19 infections.
Kentucky and New York, which are conducting statewide primaries, encouraged mail-in balloting as a safe alternative to in-person voting during the pandemic, resulting in record numbers of absentee ballot requests.
Both also encouraged early voting, while cutting back on polling locations as a safety precaution.
But officials and activists are concerned about the potential for trouble in Kentucky, where polling locations statewide were cut to fewer than 200 from more than 3,000 normally, leaving one each for the biggest counties of Jefferson and Fayette.
“It’s just a recipe for disaster. I fear there will be a lot of people who want to vote but won’t,” said Jason Nemes, a Republican state legislator who joined an unsuccessful lawsuit trying to force the largest counties to open more polls.
A competitive Democratic US senate nominating battle between progressive Charles Booker and establishment choice Amy McGrath has driven up voter interest in Kentucky. They are vying to take on senate majority leader Mitch McConnell in November.
Nearly 900,000 absentee ballots were issued, or about 27% of registered voters, the Kentucky secretary of state’s office said.
Fayette county clerk Don Blevin said Kentucky officials pushed mail-in voting in hopes of keeping the numbers down at polling places.
“We have warned people from day one - please don’t do this. It’s not safe,” Blevin, a Democrat, said of voting in person on election day.
New York has seen a similar explosion of interest in absentee ballots, issuing nearly 1.9 million, the board of elections said.
In the 2016 primary, about 115,000 absentee ballots were cast.
The board did not provide the number of polling places closed across the state, but activists said consolidations had not been as widespread as in Kentucky and some other states.
There are also primary elections for some congressional, state and local offices in areas of South Carolina, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia.
France’s state-supported ‘StopCovid’ contact-tracing app has been downloaded by 1.9 million people, roughly 2% of the population.
This has led to 1.8m activations as of 22 June, the digital affairs minister, Cédric O, said.
The StopCovid smartphone app, which was launched on 2 June, warns users if they have come into contact with anyone infected with the coronavirus to help to contain the epidemic as France emerges from lockdown.
Updated
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, I’ll be running the global coronavirus blog for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any story suggestions, comments or experiences you’d like to share.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
I’ll be keeping you up to date with the latest coronavirus developments across the globe, mainly outside the UK. For UK-specific coverage, including details of Boris Johnson’s plans to reopen pubs and restaurants, head over to UK coronavirus live blog:
Updated
Handing over now to my colleague Jessica Murray, who will take you through the next few hours. Thanks for your company so far today.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours.
- The French drugmaker Sanofi SA says it expects to get approval for the potential Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline Plc by the first half of next year.
- Muslims around the world hoping for a once-in-a-lifetime journey to Mecca to perform the hajj will have to wait until next year, after Saudi Arabia drastically curtailed the pilgrimage due to the coronavirus pandemic.
- The “R” rate in Germany is currently believed to be around 2.76, while the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia said this morning he was putting the Guetersloh area back into lockdown until 30 June after a coronavirus outbreak at a meatpacking plant.
- Confidence in the Swedish authorities’ ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic has fallen, according to a poll published today.
- The Philippines has reported 1,150 additional cases of coronavirus, the country’s biggest single-day increase in infections.
- People in France are being urged to go back to their places of work in a new easing of the coronavirus regulations following a “significant improvement in the health situation”.
Updated
Germany imposes first local lockdown since easing restrictions
Germany has for the first time put an entire district back into a localised lockdown since restrictions were eased in early May, following an outbreak of the Covid-19 virus at a slaughterhouse.
Around 360,000 people in the western city of Gütersloh will be affected by newly enforced social distancing measures and closures of bars, museums and swimming pools, after 1,553 employees at the Tönnies meat-processing plant tested positive for the virus.
Armin Laschet, the state premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, on Tuesday said the second lockdown could be relaxed after 30 June, “as soon as we have control over the infections”.
The Gütersloh outbreak has caused Germany’s “R” number to shoot up to 2.76, though the head of the country’s disease control agency said on Tuesday he was treating the rise as a peak rather than the sign of a second wave while the overall number of infections remained relatively low.
“We have to continue to be watchful”, said Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute. “The virus is still in our country, and if we give it a chance to spread, it will take it”.
Updated
Not really Covid-19 related, but a story with a relatively harmless ending. An overwhelming smell coming from a suspicious package at a Bavarian post office caused six workers to be taken to hospital and many more to be evacuated – only for police to discover that durian fruit, and not a dangerous gas, was the reason for the panic. Rebecca Ratcliffe reports:
Nurses and support staff at HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the US, are planning to strike this Friday in protest over cuts and concessions the corporation is pushing on frontline healthcare workers as coronavirus continues to spread through the US. Michael Sainato has more:
The Philippines has reported 1,150 additional cases of coronavirus, the country’s biggest single-day increase in infections. Its health ministry said total cases have now reached 31,825, while deaths have increased by nine to 1,186.
Updated
People in France are being urged to go back to their places of work in a new easing of the coronavirus regulations following a “significant improvement in the health situation”.
The employment minister, Muriel Pénicaud, will announce a new protocol for employers and staff this week that calls for homeworking to stop being “the norm” as the daily death toll of Covid-19 in the country is reduced to low double figures.
The advice will be that the distance between workers can be reduced from a 4 sq metre-diameter around each to 1 metre between them – also the new rule in schools that fully reopened on Monday – according to Les Echos newspaper, which obtained a leaked copy of the new proposals. This will allow more workers to return to workplaces. Homeworking should be maintained only for those for whom the virus is a particular risk or who live with someone who is vulnerable to severe illness, according to the new protocol.
Masks will no longer be obligatory at work except when the 1-metre distancing rule is impossible to maintain, but in a separate regulation masks are likely to be made obligatory on public transport until November.
A member of the French government’s scientific committee has said the country should be well prepared for a second wave of Covid-19 in the autumn or winter. The latest French Covid-19 figures show an increase of 23 deaths from the virus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 29,663 since the pandemic began.
Updated
Mongolia will elect a new parliament tomorrow amid controversy over candidates flouting Covid-19 lockdown rules and thousands of people stranded overseas who are unable to vote. Here, an elderly resident prepares to vote from home.
Confidence in the Swedish authorities’ ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic has fallen, according to a poll published today, as the death toll has soared amid a highly publicised light approach.
Unlike most European nations, Sweden never closed society down, opting instead to keep schools for under-16s open, as well as cafes, bars and restaurants and most businesses.
The public health agency argued that lockdowns only work temporarily, insisting that drastic short-term measures are too ineffective to justify their impact on people, AFP reports.
The country of 10.3 million has reported 5,122 Covid-19 deaths, far exceeding the combined total of its Nordic neighbours, which all adopted much stricter measures. As a result, many countries now opening up to tourism have barred Swedes from entry, including closest neighbours Denmark, Finland and Norway. Stockholm has also been slow to roll out mass testing.
An Ipsos poll of 1,191 Swedes published in daily Dagens Nyheter showed that in June, 45% had “strong confidence” in authorities’ ability to handle the crisis.
That compared with 56% in April, while those who had “little confidence” rose from 21% to 29%. And 57% now have “strong confidence” in the public health agency, down from 69% in April.
Support for the agency’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who has become the face of Sweden’s coronavirus strategy, remains relatively strong although it has declined from 69% to 60%.
Those who believed the centre-left government was coping well with the crisis, meanwhile, dropped from 50% in May to 38% in June. Prime minister Stefan Lofven’s support also dropped from 49% to 39%.
“The differences are big enough that we can say with certainty that there has been a real change. The view of authorities’ capabilities has taken a clear negative turn,” Ipsos analyst Nicklas Kallebring told Dagens Nyheter.
Updated
The coronavirus reproduction rate in Germany is currently estimated at 2.76, probably mainly due to local outbreaks, the head of the Robert Koch Institute for public health, Lothar Wieler, has said. A reproduction rate, or ‘R’, of 2.76 means that 100 people who contracted the virus infect, on average, 276 others.
Today is UN Public Service Day. Rosa Pavanelli – the general secretary of Public Services International – writes that, while it is a perfect opportunity to thank all the workers combating Covid-19, we must also help them fend off punitive budget cuts.
Of course it’s good to see their efforts recognised through the applause of millions around the word. But presenting workers as heroes, expected to perform superhuman and dangerous feats under harsh conditions, is not solidarity. It is not enough to acknowledge them during a crisis. Instead, let’s recognise them as vital professionals and join their struggle to ensure public services are truly valued.
There is no time to lose. Corporations and special interests are already seizing the pandemic as a chance to undermine progressive change and entrench their outsized power even further. Publicly, they present themselves as part of the solution and too many leaders at all levels accept this. Yet in reality, these organisations want a new normal where they can get away with paying even less tax, trade deals restrict government action even further, and privatisation is promoted as the best recovery tool. They want the public-funding tap on full blast when it suits them, yet starved dry when it comes to vital services.
The full piece is here:
Russia has reported 7,425 new cases of coronavirus, bringing its nationwide total to 599,705 – the world’s third-highest tally. The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre also confirmed 153 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 8,359.
The Afghanistan health ministry has detected 324 new Covid-19 infections, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 29,481. The number of deaths has risen by 20 to 618, while meanwhile the country recorded its “deadliest” week in 19 years of war.
Afghanistan, which has admitted it has a lack of testing capacity, has tested 66,800 suspected patients since the outbreak began. There have been 9,260 recoveries and 19 patients are in critical condition. The capital, Kabul, which has been the country’s worst-affected area, has so far recorded 12,185 confirmed cases and 147 deaths.
The acting health minister has offered conflicting accounts of the crisis in Afghanistan in recent days. Ahmad Jawad Osmani warned the nation on Saturday that, according to the ministry’s knowledge, Afghanistan is “near the peak of the crisis and it will continue for the coming one or two months and from then the daily infections will drop”. But he revised that the next day by saying: “The number of daily infections is dropping and if people cooperate, we can control the spread of the virus”.
Meanwhile, violence continues to rage across the country as five employees working in the Bagram justice and detention centre were killed by armed men on their way between Kabul and Bagram.
The US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, condemned the attack on Tuesday and said it was conducted by “spoilers” who want to disrupt the peace process.
“Both sides should not be deterred, and push forward to take the steps necessary to reach intra-Afghan negotiations, where a comprehensive ceasefire and a political settlement can be negotiated as quickly as possible. This is what the Afghan people want and we stand with them,” Khalilzad said. The Taliban said they were not behind the attack.
Last week was the worst of the past 19 years, as at least 841 Afghan security force members and 147 civilians were killed or wounded – at least 41 from the forces were killed each day – according to the country’s national security council.
“The past week was the deadliest of the past 19 years. The Taliban carried out 422 attacks in 32 provinces, martyring 291 ANDSF [Afghan national defence and security force] members and wounding 550 others,” said Javid Faisal, the spokesman for the national security council. “The Taliban’s commitment to reduce violence is meaningless, and their actions inconsistent with their rhetoric on peace.”
He also said at least 42 civilians were killed and 105 others wounded in the Taliban attacks over the past week.
Muslims around the world hoping for a once-in-a-lifetime journey to Mecca to perform the hajj will have to wait until next year, after Saudi Arabia drastically curtailed the pilgrimage due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The kingdom said late on Monday that only a very limited number of pilgrims would be allowed to perform the hajj in Mecca from among residents of various nationalities already inside the country, AP reports.
While the decision to drastically curb this year’s hajj was largely expected, it remains unprecedented in Saudi Arabia’s nearly 90-year history and effectively bars all Muslims from outside the kingdom from travelling there to performing the pilgrimage.
It is a blow to those who have waited and saved money for years to afford the journey. The hajj is not only a requirement for all Muslims to perform once in a lifetime, but it is also a chance to wipe away past sins and connect with Muslims from all walks of life. The hajj typically draws 2.5 million people from inside Saudi Arabia and around the world.
Each country is allocated a specific quota of hajj visas according to its population of Muslims, with Indonesia having the largest contingency at close to 221,000. In countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and India, securing a slot can require hefty fees, a connection to a local official or simply years of patience.
Pakistani officials said Saudi authorities had been in touch to inform them about the decision to limit this year’s hajj. Pakistan usually sends about 180,000 pilgrims to the hajj each year. Instead, Pakistan said its diplomats already in Saudi Arabia will represent the country during the pilgrimage this year, which begins at the end of July.
The Saudi ministry of hajj said the decision was aimed at preserving global public health because of the risks associated with large gatherings.
The government said its top priority was to enable Muslim pilgrims to perform the hajj safely and securely. It defended its decision on religious grounds, as well, saying the teachings of Islam require the preservation of human life.
Updated
A passenger on the Ruby Princess has said a doctor on the ship took a swab from him and told him “you don’t have coronavirus”, despite the ship having no coronavirus testing capacity on board, reports Naaman Zhou in Sydney. An inquiry is under way regarding events on the cruise ship.
Updated
Here is a way to practise yoga in a non-Zoom context during Covid-19 – it’s a new pop-up event in Toronto called “hot yoga”, which allows people to take part in classes inside their own private dome to prevent the virus spreading.
Updated
A 72-year-old man in Hong Kong has died from coronavirus, taking the death toll in the city to six, the local channel Cable TV has reported.
Hong Kong has avoided the large numbers of infections seen in other big cities around the world, but on Monday it reported its biggest spike in months, with 30 imported new cases taking the total to 1,162.
Our UK coronavirus live blog is now up and running, in the hands of Nazia Parveen:
New Zealand’s government today announced it was stepping up Covid-19 testing at the border for those who work there – including international flight crews, and staff in customs, biosecurity, and aviation.
Currently the country has 10 active cases of Covid-19, all of them travelers returning to the country from overseas. The new cases – including two reported today – came after New Zealand had recorded almost a week with no active instances of the virus.
Eight of those diagnosed were already staying in government-run quarantine – a mandatory two weeks for all returning travellers, with any compassionate exemptions now revoked. Two women were wrongly allowed to leave isolation without being tested more than a week ago, and later turned out to have the coronavirus.
Now all travellers must be tested on days three and 12 of their isolation. As New Zealand’s only current cases have all been diagnosed at the border, and because of discoveries that quarantine facilities have recorded a litany of mistakes and lax practices so far, the government has been at pains to point out in recent days that it’s tightening up.
That included bringing in the military to oversee the quarantine hotels where returning travellers are staying, and today, an announcement that health checks and Covid-19 tests would be bolstered at the border.
Flight crew on “high risk” routes – including to the United States – will have to enter quarantine and return a negative coronavirus test before they are allowed back into the community, said David Clark, the health minister.
“We took swift action at the start of the outbreak to bolster our testing and our programme has served us well to date,” Clark said in a statement. “With over 340,000 tests done to date, we have the highest rate of tests ‘per confirmed Covid-19 case’ in the world.”
He added: “The greatest risk for us now is the thousands of New Zealanders coming back from global hotspots so our testing strategy will focus on our border.”
French company expects vaccine approval in first half of 2021
The French drug maker, Sanofi SA, says it expects to get approval for the potential Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline Plc by the first half of next year, faster than previously anticipated.
Sanofi, which is hosting a virtual research and development event, and GSK had said in April that the vaccine, if successful, would be available in the second half of 2021.
“We are being guided by our dialogue with regulatory authorities,” Sanofi research chief John Reed told reporters, when asked about the accelerated time frame.
There are currently no vaccines to prevent the coronavirus that has infected more than nine million people and killed over 469,000 globally, and only a couple of medicines that have demonstrated benefit in hospitalised Covid-19 patients in clinical trials.
Many drugmakers are racing to come up with a safe and effective vaccine that can be produced at large scale. The Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson said the firsts in the race now were not assured of securing victory, Reuters reports.
“There are companies moving faster, but let us be brutally clear, speed has three downsides,” he said of competition. “They are using existing work, in many cases done for Sars; it is likely not to be as efficacious; and there is no guarantee on supply in large volumes,” Hudson said.
The probability of success for Sanofi is “higher than anybody else,” the CEO said.
Men who have recovered from Covid-19 are being asked to donate plasma to be used to treat sick patients in trials because they have higher levels of virus-fighting antibodies in their blood than women.
Convalescent plasma is being trialled around the world as a possible treatment for the disease. It contains antibodies generated by the immune systems of people who have fought off the virus.
NHS Blood and Transplant, which is making the appeal for donors, says it has found that more male donors have high antibody levels in their plasma than female donors – 43% to 29% – because men have tended to become sicker.
Hello from London. As Helen says, I’ll be taking you through the next few hours of global coronavirus news and updates. I can’t promise to rival the strains of that concert for plants in Barcelona, although if classical music would keep squirrels away from my courgettes then I might have to turn the volume up.
As ever, we are keen to hear your tips, ideas, thoughts and feedback. You can email me on nick.ames@theguardian.com or send me a direct Twitter message @NickAmes82.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. I have not stopped thinking about the performance given to plants at the Barcelona opera house:
I leave you in the equally soothing, but far less strange, company of my colleague Nick Ames, who will take you through the latest updates for the next few hours.
Updated
People would be prepared to continue many of the lifestyle changes enforced by the coronavirus lockdown to help tackle the climate emergency, and the government would have broad support for a green economic recovery from the crisis, according to a report.
Working from home is a popular option, along with changes to how people travel, and the government should take the opportunity to rethink investment in infrastructure and support low-carbon industries, the report found.
The findings come from Climate Assembly UK, a group of 108 members of the public chosen to be representative of the UK population and to help shape future climate policy by discussing options to reach net zero carbon emissions, in line with the government’s 2050 target.
Morning everyone. I’m Martin Farrer and here are the top stories from the UK and around the world this morning.
Boris Johnson will formally announce the easing of lockdown rules in England today as he gives the go-ahead for museums, cinemas, pubs, restaurants and hairdressers to reopen from 4 July. Two days later, millions of people with underlying health issues who have been shielded at home for three months will be permitted to leave their homes, while the government has also decided to halve the social distancing requirement to one metre. While the number of new cases yesterday was the lowest since March – 958 and 15 deaths – unions, doctors and charities expressed concern about the easing of the rules. There is also concern about the plan for pubgoers to register before they can have a drink. Accor, which runs Novotel and Mercure hotels, plans to reopen on 14 July minus its usual buffet breakfast offering.
As the government continues to struggle with the reopening of schools, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, told MPs that next year’s GCSEs and A-levels could be delayed to enable pupils more time to catch up with studies. The governor of the Bank of England says Britain nearly went bust in March as the crisis hit and an emergency cut in VAT and changes to national insurance and business rates are among the options available to Rishi Sunak as he prepares to unveil a post-Covid rescue package for the economy. And Gabi Hinsliff looks at how the crisis has set back gender equality in the UK as women grapple with childcare, home schooling and the demands of work.
Updated
What can Rishi Sunak do to boost the economy?
Rishi Sunak is drawing up plans for temporary tax cuts and spending measures to reboot the British economy after three months of lockdown.
Faced with the deepest recession in three centuries triggered by the coronavirus outbreak, the chancellor is expected to unveil the financial support package in early July.
With the government preparing to taper its furlough scheme, under which it is covering the wages of more than nine million temporarily laid-off workers, it is searching for ways to bolster an economy that faces a sharp rise in unemployment as well as more business failures. Here are some of the measures the chancellor could announce to boost jobs and growth:
Fugaku, world’s fastest supercomputer, searches for coronavirus treatment
A Japanese supercomputer that has been named the world’s fastest is using its extraordinary capacity to identify potential treatments for the coronavirus.
Japan this week regained the top spot for the first time since 2011, ending years of US and Chinese dominance on the TOP500 site, which tracks the evolution of computer processing power.
Its Fugaku supercomputer can perform more than 415 quadrillion computations a second, 2.8 times faster than the Summit system developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, which held the title when the twice-yearly rankings were last published in November.
Summary
Here are the most important updates from the last few hours:
- Confirmed cases of coronavirus passed 9 million. According to Johns Hopkins University, which keeps a tally of official statistics, 9,079,452 cases have been reported. At least 471,754 people have died. The United States is the world’s worst affected country by case numbers, with more than 2.3 million cases and 120,402 deaths.
- Beijing reports 22 new cases. China reported 22 new coronavirus cases for June 22, 13 of which were in the capital Beijing, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday. This compared with 18 confirmed cases a day earlier, 9 of which were in Beijing. Another seven asymptomatic Covid-19 patients, those who are infected but show no symptoms, were reported for June 22, the same as a day earlier. China does not count these patients as confirmed cases.
-
The US Covid-19 death toll passed 120,000. Tthe coronavirus death toll in the US has reached 120,340, according to the latest figures from John Hopkins University. Confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Florida have passed 100,000, while Covid-19 admissions at a chain of eight hospitals in Houston have tripled over the past month to 1400. An alarming 20% of Covid-19 tests in Arizona are coming back positive. The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US has reached 26,000, up from 21,000 per day two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.
- Trump executive order extends a ban on employment-based visas through 2020. The Trump administration is temporarily suspending the entry of certain foreign workers to the United States in a move painted as freeing up jobs while the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic, despite strong opposition from many businesses.
- California urges people to wear masks amid record Covid-19 hospitalisations. California officials implored residents to wear face masks and keep their distance from each other, after a record number of people were hospitalised with coronavirus over the weekend. Health officials warned that while the spread of disease seems to have stabilised in many parts of the state, metrics in some rural regions of southern and central California are cause for concern.
- WHO urges dexamethasone boom for worst virus cases. The World Health Organization called on Monday for a rapid increase in production of dexamethasone, a cheap steroid which has been shown to reduce deaths in critically ill coronavirus patients. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said demand had already surged after a British trial of the drug was publicised but he was confident production could be ramped up.
- Texas to remain ‘wide open for business’ despite dramatic Covid-19 rise. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said the state will remain “wide open for business” despite seeing a dramatic 10-day rise in Covid-19 hospitalizations and infections.An average of 3,200 Texans per day are now being admitted to hospitals, Abbott said, double the rate in mid-May. Abbott called on Texans to wear masks and continue social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus but stopped short of making masks mandatory, and made no call for businesses to restrict services.
-
Saudi Arabia closes borders to hajj attendees. Saudi Arabia said on Monday it will bar arrivals from abroad to attend the hajj this year due to the coronavirus, allowing only a limited number of Saudi citizens and residents to make the pilgrimage with social distancing measures enforced.
- Two more Trump staffers tested positive for coronavirus. Two more staff members of US president Donald Trump’s campaign who were in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his rally on Saturday have tested positive for the coronavirus, after the campaign announced on Saturday hours before the rally that six members of the campaign’s advance staff had tested positive.
- The US suspended certain work visas and green cards until end of year. The government of the United States will suspend certain categories of non-immigrant work visas through the end of the year and extend an existing ban on certain green cards, as part of a move to protect US workers amid the economic devastation tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
- South Africa now has over 100,000 infections, the highest on the continent, while the number of deaths inched towards 2,000. Despite the grim death toll, data shows that the mortality rate in South Africa is at 2%, while 52.6% of virus patients have recovered. The worst-hit area is Western Cape, the coastal province accounting for 1,458 of the country’s deaths and more than half of its infections.
- Black Americans four times as likely as whites to be hospitalised with Covid-19. US government data released on Monday showed Black Americans were around four times as likely as whites to be hospitalised for Covid-19, highlighting significant racial disparities in health outcomes during the pandemic.
-
Museums, galleries and cinemas will reopen in England from 4 July. Museums, galleries and cinemas in England will be allowed to reopen from 4 July, alongside pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, the British prime minister Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday in a decisive but potentially risky easing of lockdown measures in England.
China has approved a coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products’ unit to begin human testing, the company said in a filing on Tuesday.
Reuters reports that the potential vaccine, co-developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical and the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has received a certificate from the National Medical Products Administration to launch clinical trials.
Chinese researchers and companies are testing six experimental shots in humans, and more than a dozen vaccines are in different stages of clinical trials globally against the virus that has killed over 470,000 people.
However, none of the them have passed large-scale, late-stage phase 3 clinical trials, a necessary step before entering the consumer market.
Going off: US cities see explosion in use of fireworks
Cities across the US are experiencing a boom in the use of fireworks, with pyrotechnic-related complaints in New York City alone jumping 236 times higher than usual during the first three weeks of June.
Gothamist reported there were 6,385 calls to police about fireworks from 1 to 19 June, compared to 27 in the same period last year.
The New York Times attributed the spike in explosions to, “a release after months of boredom and seclusion in cramped apartments,” as well as “a celebration of hard-fought strides made during the demonstrations, and a show of defiance toward the police.” Other than sparklers, fireworks are illegal in New York.
Ohio-based fireworks company Phantom Fireworks has seen sales increase in stores across the country 200-400%, according to CEO Bruce Zoldan, Forbes reported. Zoldan told the magazine: “If there’s a virus called ‘inside isolation’, fireworks appear to be the vaccine.”
Fauci to testify again before House committee on Tuesday
With coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarization competing for attention with public health recommendations, Dr. Anthony Fauci will return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday at a fraught moment in the nation’s pandemic response, AP reports.
The government’s top infectious disease expert will testify before a House committee, along with the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Since Fauci’s last appearance at a high-profile hearing more than a month ago, the US is emerging from weeks of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But it’s being done in an uneven way, with some states far less cautious than others. A trio of states with Republican governors who are bullish on reopening Arizona, Florida and Texas are among those seeing worrisome increases in cases.
US President Donald Trump said at his weekend rally in Tulsa that he had asked administration officials to slow down testing, because too many positive cases are turning up. Many rally goers did not wear masks, and for some that was an act of defiance against what they see as government intrusion. White House officials later tried to walk back Trump’s comment on testing, suggesting it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
WHO urges dexamethasone boom for worst virus cases
The World Health Organization called on Monday for a rapid increase in production of dexamethasone, a cheap steroid which has been shown to reduce deaths in critically ill coronavirus patients.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said demand had already surged after a British trial of the drug was publicised but he was confident production could be ramped up.
Some 2,000 patients were given the drug by researchers led by a team from Oxford Unversity, and it reduced deaths by 35 percent among the most sickly, according to findings published last week.
“Although the data are still preliminary, the recent finding that the steroid dexamethasone has life-saving potential for critically ill COVID-19 patients gave us a much-needed reason to celebrate,” Tedros told a virtual news conference in Geneva.
“The next challenge is to increase production and rapidly and equitably distribute dexamethasone worldwide, focusing on where it is needed most.”
Podcast: how worried should smokers be about Covid-19?
WHO urges global solidarity
As global coronavirus infections topped nine million on Monday, the World Health Organization has again warned that the pandemic is accelerating.
Cases are still rising around the world, especially in Latin America with Brazil now registering more than 50,000 deaths. And there are fears of new clusters in Melbourne and Lisbon as well as renewed outbreaks in Beijing and other parts of Asia.
“The pandemic is still accelerating,” WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual health forum organised by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Monday. Earlier in the week Tedros issued a similar warning to reporters in Geneva.
Tedros said the greatest threat facing the world was not the virus itself, which has now killed over 465,000 people and infected nine million, but “the lack of global solidarity and global leadership.”
“We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world,” he said. “The politicisation of the pandemic has exacerbated it.”
Updated
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 503 to 190,862, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.
The reported death toll rose by 10 to 8,895, the tally showed.
Updated
Tokyo Disney Resort operator Oriental Land said on Tuesday it will reopen its parks on 1 July with visitor numbers restricted as a coronavirus countermeasure.
Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea were closed in late February as coronavirus cases rose in Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures, with businesses gradually reopening in recent weeks.
Visitors will need to book in advance with temperature checks on entry, enforcement of mask wearing and spaced seating at attractions, Oriental Land said.
The Nikkei earlier reported the reopening.
In Melbourne, Australia, people trying to get tested for Covid-19 have faced another day of long waits, with some forced to drive in loops for up to an hour while awaiting treatment.
Victoria is expanding its Covid-19 response in six local government areas with significant levels of community transmission, urging all residents with even mild symptoms to present for testing.
But on Tuesday lines of cars stretched down the street at some locations as people responded.
On Monday callers to talkback radio reported three-hour waits at drive-through clinics around the city, suggesting the Northland shopping centre clinic even had to turn people away.
White House scrambles to deny Trump trade adviser's claim that China deal is 'over'
The White House’s stance on China was thrown into confusion on Monday night after trade adviser Peter Navarro announced a trade deal between the two countries was “over”, only to be quickly contradicted by Donald Trump.
Navarro told Fox News the “turning point” came when the US learned about the coronavirus only after a Chinese delegation had left Washington following the signing of the phase one deal on 15 January.
“It was at a time when they had already sent hundreds of thousands of people to this country to spread that virus, and it was just minutes after wheels up when that plane took off that we began to hear about this pandemic,” said Navarro, one of the most outspoken critics of China among Trump’s senior advisers.
“It’s over,” he said.
But shortly after, the US president tweeted: “The China trade deal is fully intact. Hopefully they will continue to live up to the terms of the agreement!”
Navarro then said his comments had been taken out of context. “They had nothing at all to do with the phase one trade deal, which continues in place,” he said, and instead referred to “the lack of trust we now have in the Chinese Communist party”.
Updated
A 250m children getting no education, as coronavirus exacerbates inequality
Nearly 260 million children had no access to schooling in 2018, a United Nations agency said in a report Tuesday that blamed poverty and discrimination for educational inequalities that are being exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak, AFP reports.
Children from poorer communities as well as girls, the disabled, immigrants and ethnic minorities were at a distinct educational disadvantage in many countries, the UN’s Paris-based education body UNESCO said.
In 2018, “258 million children and youth were entirely excluded from education, with poverty as the main obstacle to access,” the report found.
This represented 17% of all school-age children, most of them in south and central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
The disparities worsened with the arrival of the coronavirus crisis, which saw over 90% of the global student population affected by school closures, the report said.
And while children from families with means could continue schooling from home using laptops, mobile phones and the internet, millions of others were cut off entirely.
“Lessons from the past - such as with Ebola - have shown that health crises can leave many behind, in particular the poorest girls, many of whom may never return to school,” UNESCO’s director general Audrey Azoulay wrote in a foreword.
Updated
In Australia, data released by the national statistics agency showed the value of imports in May was down 9% from April and down 18% from May 2019, as the economic impacts of the coronavirus outbreak continue to be felt, AAP reports.
The import of cars and SUVs has declined significantly during the pandemic and is at the lowest value in nine years, while oil imports are at their lowest value in 15 years.
The value of imports in May was $21.9bn, down 9% from April and down 18% from May 2019.
Petroleum imports in May were at their lowest level since February 2005, the ABS said.
Updated
Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian:
There are two new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, both returning travelers who were diagnosed in quarantine facilities during routine testing.
Both were men aged in their 20s; one flew to New Zealand from the United States on 18 June, while the other arrived from India on 19 June, health officials said at a news conference in Wellington that is continuing.
That means there are 10 active diagnosed cases of the coronavirus in New Zealand, all of which have emerged over the past week. After a stringent, early lockdown of the country, New Zealand had previously recorded almost a week earlier this month where there were no known active cases in the country.
But Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, and health officials had long warned the country’s battle with Covid-19 was not over as the number of New Zealanders returning from overseas – often from countries where the virus is rampant – started to increase.
All 10 of the current active cases are returning travelers; eight were diagnosed while in government-managed quarantine after arriving in the country, while two high-profile cases – travelers returning from Britain – were not diagnosed until after they were wrongly allowed to leave isolation without a test.
Only New Zealanders, their families, and essential workers are allowed to enter the country. They must spend 14 days in government-managed isolation at a hotel. During that time they are now tested twice for the coronavirus – a policy now set in stone after earlier failures to test some of those leaving quarantine.
There have been 1,165 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, with 22 deaths. All of the confirmed cases except the 10 currently active in quarantine have recovered. The country has no domestic restrictions in place except border controls, and people have gone back to daily life.
Beijing reports 22 new cases
China reported 22 new coronavirus cases for June 22, 13 of which were in the capital Beijing, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday.
This compared with 18 confirmed cases a day earlier, 9 of which were in Beijing. Authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping up other measures to prevent the virus from spreading following a series of local infections.
Another seven asymptomatic Covid-19 patients, those who are infected but show no symptoms, were reported for June 22, the same as a day earlier. China does not count these patients as confirmed cases.
California urges people to wear masks amid record Covid-19 hospitalisations
California officials implored residents to wear face masks and keep their distance from each other, after a record number of people were hospitalised with coronavirus over the weekend.
The state has reported more than 5,500 deaths and more than 178,000 cases, with more than 3,700 hospitalized on Sunday, surpassing the previous record of 3,547 hospitalizations set at the end of April. Health officials warned that while the spread of disease seems to have stabilized in many parts of the state, metrics in some rural regions of southern and central California are cause for concern.
California is seeing a surge in new cases as malls, museums, movie theaters and other public gathering-spaces reopened across the state, with 46,735 Californian testing positive for Covid-19 over the past two weeks. That number represents more than a third of all known cases since March, the governor, Gavin Newsom, said in a press conference on Monday.
Trump executive order extends a ban on employment-based visas through 2020
Here’s what we know about Trumps’ visa temporary suspension on green cards and some other visas:
The Trump administration is temporarily suspending the entry of certain foreign workers to the United States in a move painted as freeing up jobs while the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic, despite strong opposition from many businesses.
The presidential proclamation, issued on Monday, will extend a ban on green cards issued outside the US until the end of the year and adds many temporary work visas to the freeze, including the H-1B visas, which permit employers to hire foreign workers with specialized knowledge and are used heavily by technology companies and multinational corporations.
The administration cast the effort as a way to preserve US jobs amid the economic downturn. A senior official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity estimated the restrictions will free up to 525,000 jobs for Americans.
Texas to remain ‘wide open for business’ despite dramatic Covid-19 rise
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said the state will remain “wide open for business” despite seeing a dramatic 10-day rise in Covid-19 hospitalizations and infections.
An average of 3,200 Texans per day are now being admitted to hospitals, Abbott said, double the rate in mid-May. Abbott called on Texans to wear masks and continue social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus but stopped short of making masks mandatory, and made no call for businesses to restrict services.
One expert described such voluntarily guidelines as a “hodge-podge” of public health measures.
“To state the obvious, Covid-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in Texas, and it must be corralled,” said Abbott, a Republican. However, he said reimposing stay-at-home orders was a “last resort”, and that Texas will remain “wide open for business”.
imagining one of these plants, a lady artist, searching through the crowd until (!) she sees a fern whose portrait she painted once. the fern is crying, leaves rustling etc. pic.twitter.com/EgPbopqGlz
— Helen Sullivan (@helenrsullivan) June 22, 2020
In leafier, greener, altogether more oxygenated news, Barcelona’s El Liceu opera house reopened on Monday with a concert to an audience of 2,292 potted plants. The event took place a day after Spain’s three-month state of emergency came to an end:
The idea was the work of Spanish conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia, who said the inspiration came from a connection he built with nature during the pandemic: ‘I watched what was going on with nature during all this time. I heard many more birds singing. And the plants in my garden and outside growing faster. And, without a doubt, I thought that maybe I could now relate in a much more intimate way with people and nature’.
Global cases pass 9 million
The known number of cases of coronavirus has passed 9 million. According to Johns Hopkins University, which keeps a tally of official statistics, 9,036,002 cases have been reported.
The United States is the world’s worst affected country by case numbers, with more than 2.3 million cases alone.
Overall and deaths are likely to be higher due to time lags, differing testing rates and definitions, and suspected underreporting in some countries.
Saudi Arabia closes borders to hajj attendees
Saudi Arabia said on Monday it will bar arrivals from abroad to attend the hajj this year due to the coronavirus, allowing only a limited number of Saudi citizens and residents to make the pilgrimage with social distancing measures enforced.
“This decision is taken to ensure Hajj is performed in a safe manner from a public health perspective while observing all preventative measures and the necessary social distancing protocols to protect human beings from the risks associated with this pandemic and in accordance with the teachings of Islam in preserving the lives of human beings,” the ministry that oversees pilgrimages said in a statement.
The number of coronavirus cases in Saudi Arabia has exceeded 160,000, with 1,307 deaths, following a rise in new infections over the past two weeks.
Some 2.5 million pilgrims typically visit the holiest sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the week-long hajj. Official data show Saudi Arabia earns around $12bn a year from the hajj and the lesser, year-round pilgrimage known as umrah.
The kingdom halted international passenger flights in March and asked Muslims in March to put hajj plans on hold until further notice. International arrivals for umrah pilgrimages have also been suspended until further notice.
Earlier this month, Malaysia and Indonesia both barred their citizens from travelling to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage, citing fears of the coronavirus.
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest news from around the world for the next few hours.
I’d love to hear from you – get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan and via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
As global coronavirus cases passed the 9 million mark, Saudi Arabia said on Monday it will bar arrivals from abroad to attend the hajj this year due to the coronavirus, allowing only a limited number of Saudi citizens and residents to make the pilgrimage with social distancing measures enforced.
The announcement means this will be the first year in modern times that Muslims from around the world have not been allowed to make the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which all Muslims aim to perform at least once in a lifetime.
-
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus has passed 9 million. According to Johns Hopkins University, which keeps a tally of official statistics, 9,036,002 cases have been reported. The United States is the world’s worst affected country by case numbers, with more than 2.3 million cases alone.
-
The US Covid-19 death toll passed 120,000. Tthe coronavirus death toll in the US has reached 120,340, according to the latest figures from John Hopkins University. This latest grim milestone comes as health officials are raising alarms about “surging” cases in the southern and western US. Confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Florida have passed 100,000, while Covid-19 admissions at a chain of eight hospitals in Houston have tripled over the past month to 1400. An alarming 20% of Covid-19 tests in Arizona are coming back positive. The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US has reached 26,000, up from 21,000 per day two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.
- Two further Trump staffers tested positive for coronavirus. Two more staff members of US president Donald Trump’s campaign who were in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his rally on Saturday have tested positive for the coronavirus, after the campaign announced on Saturday hours before the rally that six members of the campaign’s advance staff had tested positive.
- The US suspended certain work visas and green cards until end of year. The government of the United States will suspend certain categories of non-immigrant work visas through the end of the year and extend an existing ban on certain green cards, as part of a move to protect US workers amid the economic devastation tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
- South Africa now has over 100,000 infections, the highest on the continent, while the number of deaths inched towards 2,000. Despite the grim death toll, data shows that the mortality rate in South Africa is at 2%, while 52.6% of virus patients have recovered. The worst-hit area is Western Cape, the coastal province accounting for 1,458 of the country’s deaths and more than half of its infections.
- Black Americans four times as likely as whites to be hospitalised with Covid-19. US government data released on Monday showed Black Americans were around four times as likely as whites to be hospitalised for Covid-19, highlighting significant racial disparities in health outcomes during the pandemic.
-
Museums, galleries and cinemas will reopen in England from 4 July. Museums, galleries and cinemas in England will be allowed to reopen from 4 July, alongside pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, the British prime minister Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday in a decisive but potentially risky easing of lockdown measures in England.
- Some coronavirus restrictions will be reimposed in Lisbon, Portugal to help control outbreaks. Costa said measures to be introduced from Tuesday included a restriction on gatherings of more than 10 people and orders for cafes and shops to close at 8pm in the capital.
- India reported a record number of new coronavirus cases and a death toll of more than 400 people in the past 24 hours, Reuters reports. The 15,000 new cases brought India’s total to more than 425,000, behind only the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to data from the federal health ministry.
